Advent Software, Inc. (ADVS): Are Hedge Funds Right About This Stock?

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Is it smart to be bullish on Advent Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADVS)?

In the eyes of many of your peers, hedge funds are viewed as bloated, old investment vehicles of a forgotten age. Although there are In excess of 8,000 hedge funds trading in present day, this site focuses on the upper echelon of this group, around 525 funds. It is assumed that this group controls most of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by keeping an eye on their highest performing picks, we’ve found a few investment strategies that have historically beaten Mr. Market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outstripped the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per annum 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 outperformed the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find the details here).

Equally as key, positive insider trading activity is a second way to look at the investments you’re interested in. Just as you’d expect, there are a variety of incentives for an executive to get rid of shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would buy. Various academic studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this tactic if you know where to look (learn more here).

Advent Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADVS)

Thus, it’s important to analyze the recent info surrounding Advent Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADVS).

What does the smart money think about Advent Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADVS)?

Heading into Q3, a total of 12 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 33% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings considerably.

When using filings from the hedgies we track, John H. Scully’s SPO Advisory Corp had the biggest position in Advent Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADVS), worth close to $287.5 million, comprising 3.9% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell of Arrowstreet Capital, with a $4.1 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining peers with similar optimism include John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw.

Consequently, certain bigger names have been driving this bullishness. SPO Advisory Corp, managed by John H. Scully, created the most valuable position in Advent Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADVS). SPO Advisory Corp had 287.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also made a $4.1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ADVS positions are John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw.

Insider trading activity in Advent Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADVS)

Legal insider trading, particularly when it’s bullish, is at its handiest when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past six months. Over the last 180-day time frame, Advent Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADVS) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll check out the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Advent Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADVS). These stocks are Synchronoss Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNCR), NIC Inc. (NASDAQ:EGOV), RealPage, Inc. (NASDAQ:RP), Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ:PRGS), and Manhattan Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ:MANH). This group of stocks belong to the application software industry and their market caps are similar to ADVS’s market cap.

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