AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (MITT): Hedge Fund and Insider Sentiment Unchanged, What Should You Do?

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What’s a smart AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (NYSE:MITT) investor to do?

To many investors, hedge funds are perceived as useless, old investment vehicles of a period lost to current times. Although there are more than 8,000 hedge funds in operation currently, Insider Monkey aim at the elite of this group, about 525 funds. It is widely held that this group controls most of the smart money’s total capital, and by paying attention to their best equity investments, we’ve figured out a number of investment strategies that have historically outperformed the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually 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 trumped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find a sample of our picks).

Equally as necessary, bullish insider trading activity is a second way to analyze the investments you’re interested in. Obviously, there are many stimuli for a corporate insider to cut shares of his or her company, but only one, very clear reason why they would behave bullishly. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this tactic if piggybackers know what to do (learn more here).

What’s more, it’s important to examine the recent info about AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (NYSE:MITT).

Hedge fund activity in AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (NYSE:MITT)

In preparation for the third quarter, a total of 9 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings considerably.

AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (NYSE:MITT)When using filings from the hedgies we track, Angelo Gordon & Co, managed by John M. Angelo and Michael L. Gordon, holds the most valuable position in AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (NYSE:MITT). Angelo Gordon & Co has a $7.5 million position in the stock, comprising 0.5% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Omega Advisors, managed by Leon Cooperman, which held a $5.1 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining hedge funds that hold long positions include John Fichthorn’s Dialectic Capital Management, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Adam Usdan’s Trellus Management Company.

Due to the fact AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (NYSE:MITT) has witnessed dropping sentiment from the smart money’s best and brightest, it’s safe to say that there were a few funds that decided to sell off their entire stakes last quarter. Intriguingly, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies sold off the biggest investment of the “upper crust” of funds we monitor, worth about $6.9 million in stock, and Malcolm Fairbairn of Ascend Capital was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $6.2 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

What have insiders been doing with AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (NYSE:MITT)?

Insider buying made by high-level executives is at its handiest when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest six-month time period, AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (NYSE:MITT) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll also examine the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (NYSE:MITT). These stocks are Crexus Investment Corp (NYSE:CXS), iStar Financial Inc. (NYSE:SFI), Anworth Mortgage Asset Corporation (NYSE:ANH), Apollo Commercial Real Est. Finance Inc (NYSE:ARI), and Excel Trust Inc (NYSE:EXL). This group of stocks are the members of the reit – diversified industry and their market caps match MITT’s market cap.

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