Hedge Funds Are Crazy About Old Dominion Freight Line (ODFL)

As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Stevens Capital Management, managed by Matthew Tewksbury, initiated the most outsized position in Old Dominion Freight Line (NASDAQ:ODFL). Stevens Capital Management had $3.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Hondros’ AlphaOne Capital Partners also made a $3.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new ODFL investors: Neil Chriss’ Hutchin Hill Capital, Jonathan Dawson’s Southport Management, and George Hall’s Clinton Group.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Old Dominion Freight Line (NASDAQ:ODFL). These stocks are Flowers Foods, Inc. (NYSE:FLO), Anacor Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ANAC), Teleflex Incorporated (NYSE:TFX), and Avery Dennison Corp (NYSE:AVY). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to ODFL’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 23 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $619 million, which is higher than the $296 million in ODFL’s case. Anacor Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ANAC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Flowers Foods, Inc. (NYSE:FLO) is the least popular one with only 17 bullish hedge fund positions. Old Dominion Freight Line (NASDAQ:ODFL) 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 ANAC might be a better candidate to consider a long position.