CME Group Inc (CME): Are Hedge Funds Right About This Stock?

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CME Group Inc (NASDAQ:CME) investors: pay attention.

In the eyes of many market players, hedge funds are viewed as bloated, outdated financial tools of an era lost to time. Although there are more than 8,000 hedge funds in operation currently, this site looks at the leaders of this group, about 525 funds. It is assumed that this group controls the lion’s share of the smart money’s total assets, and by monitoring their highest quality equity investments, we’ve found a few investment strategies that have historically outpaced the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat 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 a sample of our picks).

Equally as crucial, positive insider trading activity is another way to look at the financial markets. There are lots of motivations for an insider to downsize shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would behave bullishly. Many academic studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this method if piggybackers know what to do (learn more here).

CME Group Inc

Furthermore, we’re going to analyze the latest info surrounding CME Group Inc (NASDAQ:CME).

What does the smart money think about CME Group Inc (NASDAQ:CME)?

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 40 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 33% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings meaningfully.

As industrywide interest increased, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Lone Pine Capital, managed by Stephen Mandel, established the most outsized position in CME Group Inc (NASDAQ:CME). Lone Pine Capital had 296.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital also made a $151.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CME positions are Patrick Degorce’s Theleme Partners, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, and David Stemerman’s Conatus Capital Management.

How are insiders trading CME Group Inc (NASDAQ:CME)?

Bullish insider trading is at its handiest when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest six-month time period, CME Group Inc (NASDAQ:CME) has seen 1 unique insiders purchasing, and 11 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll also take a look at the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to CME Group Inc (NASDAQ:CME). These stocks are LPL Financial Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LPLA), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. (NYSE:AMTD), Nomura Holdings, Inc. (ADR) (NYSE:NMR), and Charles Schwab Corp (NYSE:SCHW). This group of stocks belong to the investment brokerage – national industry and their market caps are closest to CME’s market cap.

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