Should You Avoid PGT, Inc. (PGTI)?

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track more than 700 prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile gigantic failures like hedge funds’ recent losses in Valeant. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about PGT, Inc. (NASDAQ:PGTI) in this article.

PGT, Inc. (NASDAQ:PGTI)’s stock is up year-to-date, but it lost 13% in the third quarter, which led to a weaker sentiment from smart money investors. At the end of this article we will also compare PGTI to other stocks, including Synergy Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:SGYP), Veritiv Corp (NYSE:VRTV), and Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS) to get a better sense of its popularity.

In the 21st century investor’s toolkit there are a multitude of gauges stock traders can use to analyze publicly traded companies. Two of the best gauges are hedge fund and insider trading moves. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite hedge fund managers can trounce the broader indices by a very impressive margin (see the details here).

Keeping this in mind, let’s analyze the new action encompassing PGT, Inc. (NASDAQ:PGTI).

How have hedgies been trading PGT, Inc. (NASDAQ:PGTI)?

At the Q3’s end, a total of 11 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a decline of 39% from the second quarter. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Renaissance Technologies holds the most valuable position in PGT, Inc. (NASDAQ:PGTI). Renaissance Technologies has a $39.9 million position in the stock, comprising 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is PAR Capital Management, led by Paul Reeder and Edward Shapiro, holding a $13.8 million position; the fund has 0.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other professional money managers with similar optimism include Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital.