Do Hedge Funds Love Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA)?

Judging by the fact that Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) has witnessed falling interest from the smart money, we can see that there exists a select few fund managers that slashed their full holdings in the third quarter. Interestingly, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies dumped the biggest investment of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $177.4 million in stock, and William B. Gray’s Orbis Investment Management was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $126.1 million worth of BABA shares. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 25 funds in the third quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA). We will take a look at Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD), Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSK), Novo Nordisk A/S (ADR) (NYSE:NVO), and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC). This group of stocks’ market valuations match BABA’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 45 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $3.09 billion. That figure was $3.79 billion in BABA’s case. Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Novo Nordisk A/S (ADR) (NYSE:NVO) is the least popular one with only 17 bullish hedge fund positions. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) is not the most popular stock in this group, but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal, but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard GILD might be a better candidate to consider a long position.