Hedge Funds Are Betting On WesBanco, Inc. (WSBC)

Is WesBanco, Inc. (NASDAQ:WSBC) a buy right now? Prominent investors are getting more optimistic. The number of long hedge fund positions moved up by 1 in recent months.

In the financial world, there are dozens of indicators market participants can use to analyze Mr. Market. A pair of the best are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can beat their index-focused peers by a very impressive amount (see just how much).

Just as important, optimistic insider trading activity is another way to break down the investments you’re interested in. There are lots of reasons for a bullish insider to sell shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would behave bullishly. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this strategy if investors know what to do (learn more here).

With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a peek at the recent action regarding WesBanco, Inc. (NASDAQ:WSBC).

How are hedge funds trading WesBanco, Inc. (NASDAQ:WSBC)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 9 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 13% from the previous quarter. As one would reasonably expect, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, initiated the largest position in WesBanco, Inc. (NASDAQ:WSBC). Citadel Investment Group had 0.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.

What do corporate executives and insiders think about WesBanco, Inc. (NASDAQ:WSBC)?

Bullish insider trading is particularly usable when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past six months. Over the latest 180-day time period, WesBanco, Inc. (NASDAQ:WSBC) has experienced zero unique insiders buying, and 2 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to WesBanco, Inc. (NASDAQ:WSBC). These stocks are Eagle Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGBN), The Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:TBBK), SCBT Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:SCBT), City Holding Company (NASDAQ:CHCO), and United Community Banks Inc (NASDAQ:UCBI). This group of stocks are the members of the regional – mid-atlantic banks industry and their market caps match WSBC’s market cap.