Should Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO) investors track the following data?
If you were to ask many of your fellow readers, hedge funds are assumed to be overrated, old investment vehicles of an era lost to time. Although there are over 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open in present day, this site looks at the upper echelon of this group, close to 525 funds. It is assumed that this group has its hands on the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by paying attention to their best stock picks, we’ve found a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten Mr. Market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed 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 trumped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find the details here).
Equally as key, optimistic insider trading activity is another way to look at the marketplace. There are many incentives for a bullish insider to drop shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would buy. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this method if shareholders know what to do (learn more here).
Furthermore, let’s study the recent info about Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO).
Hedge fund activity in Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO)
In preparation for the third quarter, a total of 10 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 11% from the first quarter. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully.
Out of the hedge funds we follow, Joshua Friedman and Mitchell Julis’s Canyon Capital Advisors had the largest position in Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO), worth close to $39.4 million, comprising 6.2% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Mason Capital Management, managed by Kenneth Mario Garschina, which held a $31.1 million position; the fund has 0.6% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedgies that are bullish include David Abrams’s Abrams Capital Management, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors and John Khoury’s Long Pond Capital.
Now, certain money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Canyon Capital Advisors, managed by Joshua Friedman and Mitchell Julis, created the most outsized position in Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO). Canyon Capital Advisors had 39.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Kenneth Mario Garschina’s Mason Capital Management also initiated a $31.1 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are David Abrams’s Abrams Capital Management, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors, and John Khoury’s Long Pond Capital.
Insider trading activity in Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO)
Insider buying is particularly usable when the company in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last half-year time frame, Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, 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 Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO). These stocks are Millennial Media, Inc. (NYSE:MM), MDC Partners Inc. (USA) (NASDAQ:MDCA), National CineMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:NCMI), Valassis Communications, Inc. (NYSE:VCI), and Arbitron Inc. (NYSE:ARB). This group of stocks belong to the marketing services industry and their market caps are similar to CCO’s market cap.
| Company Name | # of Hedge Funds | # of Insiders Buying | # of Insiders Selling |
| Millennial Media, Inc. (NYSE:MM) | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| MDC Partners Inc. (USA) (NASDAQ:MDCA) | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| National CineMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:NCMI) | 13 | 0 | 0 |
| Valassis Communications, Inc. (NYSE:VCI) | 18 | 0 | 0 |
| Arbitron Inc. (NYSE:ARB) | 24 | 0 | 0 |
Using the results shown by the previously mentioned studies, average investors should always pay attention to hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO) shareholders fit into this picture quite nicely.
