Do Hedge Funds Love SkyWest, Inc. (SKYW)?

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, initiated the biggest position in SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW). As reported in its latest 13F filing, the fund had $10.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also initiated a $7 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new SKYW positions are Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital, Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW). We will take a look at Badger Meter, Inc. (NYSE:BMI), Irsa Inversiones y Rprsntcins SA (ADR) (NYSE:IRS), Ocwen Financial Corporation (NYSE:OCN), and Theravance Inc (NASDAQ:THRX). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble SKYW’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 17 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $192 million. That figure was just $94 million in SKYW’s case. Ocwen Financial Corporation (NYSE:OCN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Badger Meter, Inc. (NYSE:BMI) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW) 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 OCN might be a better candidate to consider a long position.