Interesting past couple of days for CREE. I wonder if there was a little reverse window dressing going on, as well as the earlier scare about our competitor from the "sandpaper" business.
Sometimes money managers will deviate from an established style a little bit if they find a certain company interesting. However, even if the bet is successful, they don't want to show it in the portfolio at the end of the quarter. This is even more true, paradoxically, if the stock has been successful because it has then become a larger percentage of a portfolio!. In CREE's case the market cap and P/E might be on the edge of some manager's stated tolerances. However, they love the story. So, they buy some during the quarter and sell out at the end, replacing the "unknown" CREE with a more familiar name and a more legitimate set of market characteristics. Then, after the first days of the new quarter, they rebalance in some manner and buy some CREE back.
I know this used to happen with some giddy stocks like AMZN and EBAY when managers just didn't want to explain why they owned them to customers, so they disguised it on the surface at least. This might be a little of the CREE noise last week. |
