Post-Bezos, is The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO) a buy?
If you were to ask many market players, hedge funds are perceived as delayed, old investment tools of a forgotten age. Although there are more than 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open currently, this site aim at the elite of this group, close to 525 funds. It is widely held that this group has its hands on the lion’s share of all hedge funds’ total assets, and by watching their highest performing picks, we’ve deciphered a number of investment strategies that have historically outperformed the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per year for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve began to sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have topped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (see all of our picks from August).
Equally as key, optimistic insider trading sentiment is another way to look at the marketplace. Just as you’d expect, there are many incentives for a bullish insider to sell shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would initiate a purchase. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this tactic if investors understand what to do (learn more here).
Now that that’s out of the way, we’re going to study the newest info about The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO).
What does the smart money think about The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO)?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 18 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of -5% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes meaningfully.
Since The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO) has witnessed declining interest from the smart money’s best and brightest, logic holds that there exists a select few funds that slashed their full holdings at the end of the second quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Ben Levine Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s LMR Partners dropped the largest investment of all the hedgies we monitor, totaling an estimated $0.8 million in stock, and Alec Litowitz and Ross Laser of Magnetar Capital was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $0.6 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds at the end of the second quarter.
What do corporate executives and insiders think about The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO)?
Legal insider trading, particularly when it’s bullish, is at its handiest when the company in question has experienced transactions within the past half-year. Over the last 180-day time frame, The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll also review the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO). These stocks are TAL Education Group (ADR) (NYSE:XRS), K12 Inc. (NYSE:LRN), Grand Canyon Education Inc (NASDAQ:LOPE), Apollo Group Inc (NASDAQ:APOL), and DeVry Inc. (NYSE:DV). This group of stocks are in the education & training services industry and their market caps are similar to WPO’s market cap.
| Company Name | # of Hedge Funds | # of Insiders Buying | # of Insiders Selling |
| TAL Education Group (ADR) (NYSE:XRS) | 7 | 0 | 0 |
| K12 Inc. (NYSE:LRN) | 12 | 0 | 0 |
| Grand Canyon Education Inc (NASDAQ:LOPE) | 18 | 0 | 0 |
| Apollo Group Inc (NASDAQ:APOL) | 31 | 0 | 0 |
| DeVry Inc. (NYSE:DV) | 22 | 0 | 0 |
Using the returns shown by the previously mentioned analyses, average investors must always keep one eye on hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO) is an important part of this process.
