Hedge Funds Are Selling DDR Corp (DDR) – Federal Realty Investment Trust (FRT), Regency Centers Corp (REG)

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DDR Corp (NYSE:DDR) has experienced a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently.

DDR Corp (NYSE:DDR)

If you’d ask most investors, hedge funds are assumed to be slow, outdated financial vehicles of years past. While there are greater than 8000 funds with their doors open today, we at Insider Monkey look at the masters of this club, close to 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group has its hands on the majority of the smart money’s total capital, and by paying attention to their best picks, we have found a number of investment strategies that have historically outpaced 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 started sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have outperformed the S&P 500 index by 24 percentage points in 7 months (check out a sample of our picks).

Equally as important, bullish insider trading sentiment is another way to break down the marketplace. There are plenty of motivations for an executive to drop shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would initiate a purchase. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this strategy if “monkeys” know where to look (learn more here).

With these “truths” under our belt, let’s take a peek at the latest action surrounding DDR Corp (NYSE:DDR).

What does the smart money think about DDR Corp (NYSE:DDR)?

At year’s end, a total of 9 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of -18% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes meaningfully.

According to our comprehensive database, Jeffrey Furber’s AEW Capital Management had the biggest position in DDR Corp (NYSE:DDR), worth close to $64.2 million, comprising 1.7% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies, with a $16.2 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds with similar optimism include Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Anil Stevens and Glenn Shapiro’s Parameter Capital Management.

Since DDR Corp (NYSE:DDR) has experienced falling interest from the smart money, we can see that there was a specific group of hedge funds that slashed their full holdings heading into 2013. It’s worth mentioning that Jeffrey Furber’s AEW Capital Management sold off the largest investment of the 450+ funds we key on, valued at about $64 million in stock.. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s fund, Arrowstreet Capital, also dropped its stock, about $4.5 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 2 funds heading into 2013.

How are insiders trading DDR Corp (NYSE:DDR)?

Bullish insider trading is at its handiest when the company in question has experienced transactions within the past six months. Over the latest 180-day time frame, DDR Corp (NYSE:DDR) has experienced zero unique insiders buying, and 7 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to DDR Corp (NYSE:DDR). These stocks are SL Green Realty Corp (NYSE:SLG), Weingarten Realty Investors (NYSE:WRI), Federal Realty Investment Trust (NYSE:FRT), Regency Centers Corp (NYSE:REG), and Taubman Centers, Inc. (NYSE:TCO). This group of stocks are the members of the reit – retail industry and their market caps are closest to DDR’s market cap.

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