This Metric Says You Are Smart to Buy MICROS Systems, Inc. (MCRS)

Page 1 of 2

Is MICROS Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCRS) a good investment?

Now, according to many of your fellow readers, hedge funds are assumed to be useless, old investment tools of a forgotten age. Although there are more than 8,000 hedge funds trading today, this site aim at the top tier of this group, close to 525 funds. Analysts calculate that this group oversees the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total assets, and by keeping an eye on their highest quality picks, we’ve discovered a few investment strategies that have historically outstripped the S&P 500. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per year 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 outclassed the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (see all of our picks from August).

Equally as crucial, optimistic insider trading sentiment is another way to analyze the marketplace. Just as you’d expect, there are a variety of reasons for a bullish insider to sell shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would buy. Several academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this tactic if shareholders understand where to look (learn more here).

MICROS Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCRS)

Keeping this in mind, it’s important to discuss the newest info for MICROS Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCRS).

What have hedge funds been doing with MICROS Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCRS)?

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 25 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 14% from the first quarter. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably.

According to our 13F database, ValueAct Capital, managed by Jeffrey Ubben, holds the largest position in MICROS Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCRS). ValueAct Capital has a $289 million position in the stock, comprising 3% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Robert Joseph Caruso of Select Equity Group, with a $135.9 million position; 1.9% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other hedgies that hold long positions include D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies and Bill Miller’s Legg Mason Capital Management.

As industrywide interest increased, certain money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. ValueAct Capital, managed by Jeffrey Ubben, created the largest position in MICROS Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCRS). ValueAct Capital had 289 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Robert Joseph Caruso’s Select Equity Group also initiated a $135.9 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, and Bill Miller’s Legg Mason Capital Management.

What do corporate executives and insiders think about MICROS Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCRS)?

Legal insider trading, particularly when it’s bullish, is at its handiest when the company in question has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest 180-day time frame, MICROS Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCRS) 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 MICROS Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCRS). These stocks are Splunk Inc (NASDAQ:SPLK), Cadence Design Systems Inc (NASDAQ:CDNS), Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT), CommVault Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CVLT), and Open Text Corporation (USA) (NASDAQ:OTEX). This group of stocks are the members of the application software industry and their market caps are similar to MCRS’s market cap.

Page 1 of 2