Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Otter Tail Corporation (OTTR)

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Should Otter Tail Corporation (NASDAQ:OTTR) investors track the following data?

If you were to ask many of your peers, hedge funds are perceived as overrated, outdated investment tools of a period lost to current times. Although there are over 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open in present day, this site aim at the upper echelon of this group, close to 525 funds. It is widely held that this group has its hands on most of all hedge funds’ total assets, and by watching their best equity investments, we’ve figured out a number of investment strategies that have historically outperformed the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per annum 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 33 percentage points in 11 months (explore the details and some picks here).

 Otter Tail Corporation (NASDAQ:OTTR)

Equally as useful, positive insider trading sentiment is another way to analyze the world of equities. As the old adage goes: there are lots of incentives for a bullish insider to cut shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would initiate a purchase. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this tactic if shareholders understand what to do (learn more here).

Thus, we’re going to analyze the recent info surrounding Otter Tail Corporation (NASDAQ:OTTR).

How have hedgies been trading Otter Tail Corporation (NASDAQ:OTTR)?

In preparation for the third quarter, a total of 6 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings considerably.

Out of the hedge funds we follow, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors had the biggest position in Otter Tail Corporation (NASDAQ:OTTR), worth close to $8.7 million, accounting for 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. On GAMCO Investors’s heels is Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management, with a $5.6 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedgies that are bullish include Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.

Since Otter Tail Corporation (NASDAQ:OTTR) has witnessed declining interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there is a sect of funds that slashed their entire stakes at the end of the second quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management dropped the biggest position of the “upper crust” of funds we track, totaling an estimated $2.3 million in stock. Ken Griffin’s fund, Citadel Investment Group, also said goodbye to its stock, about $0.5 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

What do corporate executives and insiders think about Otter Tail Corporation (NASDAQ:OTTR)?

Insider buying made by high-level executives is at its handiest when the company in focus has experienced transactions within the past six months. Over the latest six-month time period, Otter Tail Corporation (NASDAQ:OTTR) has seen zero unique insiders buying, 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 Otter Tail Corporation (NASDAQ:OTTR). These stocks are Avista Corp (NYSE:AVA), NorthWestern Corp (NYSE:NWE), Just Energy Group, Inc. Ordinary Shares (Canada) (NYSE:JE), CH Energy Group Inc (NYSE:CHG), and MGE Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ:MGEE). This group of stocks are in the diversified utilities industry and their market caps are similar to OTTR’s market cap.

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