Stockpickr's Activist Track Stocks

Updated from 8:27 a.m. EDT

Most hedge funds are drastically underperforming the markets this year. In fact, since 2004, most hedge funds have actually underperformed the boarder markets, despite the huge bull market in stocks.

Since most hedge funds get paid based on their returns for the year, managers who do not want to underperform are turning to shareholder activism as a way to increase shareholder value and ultimately boost their returns.

Here at Stockpickr.com, we track many of the Latest Activist Situations for those interested in piggybacking these funds. We highlight a few of those situations here.

Recently, Barington Capital increased its pressure on Lancaster Colony(LANC Quote), saying that "the company should live up to its agreement with the hedge fund to publicly disclose its plan to improve its operations and profitability." Lancaster Colony, which sells various food ideas, has an enterprise value-to-EBITDA ratio of 8.3 and a forward P/E of 13.5.

Barington Capital said that the firm intends to closely monitor the company's compliance with the terms of the agreement.

Barington Capital also has sizeable positions in Pep Boys(PBY Quote), which has a forward P/E of 24 and a 17% short interest. It also own plastics makers A. Schulman(SHLM Quote), which has a forward P/E of 14 and an 8% short position.

Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn entered into an agreement with Guaranty Financial(GFG Quote) under which the company will sell him about 1.06 million shares of its Series B convertible preferred stock for $55 million.

Icahn is also still waging war against Yahoo!'s(YHOO Quote) board to sell the company to Microsoft(MSFT Quote), and challenging Motorola(MOT Quote) to spin off the hands-free unit of the company. He also has positions in Biogen Idec(BIIB Quote) and Anadarko Petroleum(APC Quote).