Hedge Funds Are Betting On W.R. Grace & Co. (GRA)

As industrywide interest jumped, some big names have jumped into W.R. Grace & Co. (NYSE:GRA) headfirst. Hitchwood Capital Management, managed by James Crichton, initiated the largest position in W.R. Grace & Co. (NYSE:GRA). Hitchwood Capital Management had $37.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Robert Vollero and Gentry T. Beach’s Vollero Beach Capital Partners also made a $12.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new GRA positions are Todd J. Kantor’s Encompass Capital Advisors, Michael Platt and William Reeves’s BlueCrest Capital Mgmt., and Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s LMR Partners.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as W.R. Grace & Co. (NYSE:GRA) but similarly valued. These stocks are W.R. Berkley Corporation (NYSE:WRB), The AES Corporation (NYSE:AES), Airgas, Inc. (NYSE:ARG), and PulteGroup, Inc. (NYSE:PHM). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble GRA’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 27 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $576 million. That figure was $2.77 billion in GRA’s case. The AES Corporation (NYSE:AES) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand W.R. Berkley Corporation (NYSE:WRB) is the least popular one with only 22 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks W.R. Grace & Co. (NYSE:GRA) is more popular among hedge funds. Considering that hedge funds are fond of this stock in relation to its market cap peers, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and potentially include it in your portfolio.