Chesapeake Granite Wash Trust (CHKR): Hedge Funds Are Bullish, What Should You Do?

Is Chesapeake Granite Wash Trust (NYSE:CHKR) a buy, sell, or hold? The best stock pickers are taking a bullish view. The number of long hedge fund bets rose by 1 in recent months.

In today’s marketplace, there are tons of gauges market participants can use to analyze stocks. A couple of the most innovative are hedge fund and insider trading interest. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite money managers can trounce their index-focused peers by a significant amount (see just how much).

Just as key, bullish insider trading sentiment is a second way to parse down the world of equities. Obviously, there are lots of incentives for a corporate insider to downsize shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would buy. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this method if “monkeys” know what to do (learn more here).

Now, it’s important to take a look at the recent action regarding Chesapeake Granite Wash Trust (NYSE:CHKR).

What have hedge funds been doing with Chesapeake Granite Wash Trust (NYSE:CHKR)?

In preparation for this year, a total of 4 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 33% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings substantially.

As one would reasonably expect, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Renaissance Technologies, managed by Jim Simons, created the biggest position in Chesapeake Granite Wash Trust (NYSE:CHKR). Renaissance Technologies had $0.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.

What have insiders been doing with Chesapeake Granite Wash Trust (NYSE:CHKR)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is most useful when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the last half-year time period, Chesapeake Granite Wash Trust (NYSE:CHKR) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also examine hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Chesapeake Granite Wash Trust (NYSE:CHKR). These stocks are Contango Oil & Gas Company (NYSEAMEX:MCF), Sanchez Energy Corp (NYSE:SN), Forest Oil Corporation (NYSE:FST), TransGlobe Energy Corporation (USA) (NASDAQ:TGA), and Swift Energy Company (NYSE:SFY). All of these stocks are in the independent oil & gas industry and their market caps are similar to CHKR’s market cap.