STL - What We Can Learn From Bank Investor Lawrence Seidman's First-Quarter 13F
Activist investor Lawrence Seidman is known for his ability to spot opportunities in the banking sector, either by finding an acquisition target or by convincing a bank's management team to change its approach. Seidman has acquired more than a 5% stake in banks 43 times, according to Barron's, and has an average return on those investments of almost 52%.
One good investment strategy can be to follow the moves of activist investors who know certain industries well -- and many of them are required to tell us. Every quarter, you can get an idea of which stocks large investors are buying and selling through their 13F reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
One thing to note about these reports is that, while they tell you what stocks an investor bought and sold in a given three-month quarter, they don't tell you when. For instance, Berkshire Hathaway bought airline stocks in the first quarter before disclosing at its annual shareholders meeting that the company had dumped its entire stakes in those companies in April. So keep in mind that you can't determine the timing of the move -- but these quarterly reports from activist investors can still be useful guidance. Let's see what Seidman was up to in the first quarter.