A look at the shareholders of America's Car-Mart, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRMT) can tell us which group is most powerful. Insiders often own a large chunk of younger, smaller, companies while huge companies tend to have institutions as shareholders. Warren Buffett said that he likes "a business with enduring competitive advantages that is run by able and owner-oriented people." So it's nice to see some insider ownership, because it may suggest that management is owner-oriented.

With a market capitalization of US$1.0b, America's Car-Mart is a decent size, so it is probably on the radar of institutional investors. Taking a look at our data on the ownership groups (below), it seems that institutions own shares in the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about America's Car-Mart.

See our latest analysis for America's Car-Mart

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About America's Car-Mart?

Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in America's Car-Mart. This implies the analysts working for those institutions have looked at the stock and they like it. But just like anyone else, they could be wrong. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of America's Car-Mart, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. Hedge funds don't have many shares in America's Car-Mart. Our data shows that BlackRock, Inc. is the largest shareholder with 15% of shares outstanding. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is the second largest shareholder owning 6.1% of common stock, and Dimensional Fund Advisors L.P. holds about 5.4% of the company stock. Additionally, the company's CEO Jeffrey Williams directly holds 1.4% of the total shares outstanding.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 11 have the combined ownership of 51% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.