Do Hedge Funds and Insiders Love Commercial Metals Company (CMC)?

Is Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC) a superb investment today? The smart money is in a pessimistic mood. The number of long hedge fund positions were trimmed by 4 recently.

At the moment, there are many metrics market participants can use to watch stocks. A duo of the most underrated are hedge fund and insider trading interest. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outpace their index-focused peers by a healthy margin (see just how much).

Chuck RoyceEqually as key, optimistic insider trading sentiment is another way to parse down the stock market universe. Just as you’d expect, there are many stimuli for a bullish insider to get rid of shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would buy. Many academic studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this tactic if piggybackers understand where to look (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a gander at the latest action encompassing Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC).

Hedge fund activity in Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC)

Heading into Q2, a total of 11 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of -27% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes substantially.

Of the funds we track, Kevin Michael Ulrich’s Anchorage Advisors had the most valuable position in Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC), worth close to $32 million, comprising 1.9% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Chuck Royce of Royce & Associates, with a $23.4 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedgies that hold long positions include Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management.

Since Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC) has faced declining sentiment from hedge fund managers, we can see that there exists a select few money managers that decided to sell off their entire stakes in Q1. It’s worth mentioning that Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies cut the largest investment of all the hedgies we key on, totaling close to $6.4 million in stock.. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s fund, Arrowstreet Capital, also cut its stock, about $0.8 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 4 funds in Q1.

Insider trading activity in Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC)

Insider trading activity, especially when it’s bullish, is particularly usable when the company in question has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest 180-day time frame, Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC) has experienced 1 unique insiders purchasing, and 1 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

With the returns exhibited by the aforementioned tactics, retail investors should always monitor hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC) applies perfectly to this mantra.

Click here to learn why you should track hedge funds