Hedge Funds Are Dumping State Street Corporation (STT)

Judging by the fact that State Street Corporation (NYSE:STT) has faced falling interest from hedge fund managers, we can see that there is a sect of fund managers that elected to cut their full holdings last quarter. Intriguingly, Chao Ku’s Nine Chapters Capital Management cut the biggest stake of the 700 funds tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $14.1 million in stock. Gregg Moskowitz’s fund, Interval Partners, also said goodbye to its stock, about $2.4 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 6 funds last quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as State Street Corporation (NYSE:STT) but similarly valued. These stocks are Equity Residential (NYSE:EQR), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), Johnson Controls, Inc. (NYSE:JCI), and DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble STT’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 50 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2.43 billion. That figure was $748 million in STT’s case. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is the most popular stock in this table, while Equity Residential (NYSE:EQR) is the least popular one with only 24 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks State Street Corporation (NYSE:STT) is even less popular than EQR. Considering that hedge funds aren’t fond of this stock in relation to other companies mentioned in this article, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and understand why the smart money isn’t behind this stock. This isn’t necessarily bad news. Although it is possible that hedge funds may think the stock is overpriced and view the stock as a short candidate, they may not be very familiar with the bullish thesis. In either case more research is warranted.