Koppers Holdings Inc. (KOP): Hedge Funds Are Bullish and Insiders Are Undecided, What Should You Do?

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In the eyes of many traders, hedge funds are viewed as bloated, outdated investment vehicles of a period lost to current times. Although there are In excess of 8,000 hedge funds trading currently, Insider Monkey focuses on the aristocrats of this club, close to 525 funds. It is assumed that this group has its hands on most of the hedge fund industry’s total assets, and by monitoring their highest quality investments, we’ve brought to light a few investment strategies that have historically outstripped the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per year 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 topped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find a sample of our picks).

Koppers Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KOP)

Just as key, positive insider trading sentiment is a second way to analyze the investments you’re interested in. Just as you’d expect, there are lots of motivations for an insider to sell shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would behave bullishly. Various academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this strategy if shareholders understand where to look (learn more here).

What’s more, we’re going to study the recent info for Koppers Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KOP).

What does the smart money think about Koppers Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KOP)?

In preparation for the third quarter, a total of 9 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 29% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably.

According to our 13F database, David Dreman’s Dreman Value Management had the largest position in Koppers Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KOP), worth close to $6.5 million, accounting for 0.2% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies, with a $4.5 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other hedgies with similar optimism include Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.

Now, certain bigger names have jumped into Koppers Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KOP) headfirst. Dreman Value Management, managed by David Dreman, assembled the most outsized position in Koppers Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KOP). Dreman Value Management had 6.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies also made a $4.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new KOP positions are Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management, and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.

What have insiders been doing with Koppers Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KOP)?

Insider buying made by high-level executives is most useful when the company in focus has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last six-month time frame, Koppers Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KOP) has experienced 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 Koppers Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KOP). These stocks are OM Group, Inc. (NYSE:OMG), Quaker Chemical Corp (NYSE:KWR), Flotek Industries Inc (NYSE:FTK), Innospec Inc. (NASDAQ:IOSP), and WD-40 Company (NASDAQ:WDFC). All of these stocks are in the specialty chemicals industry and their market caps resemble KOP’s market cap.

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