Hedge Funds Have Bought DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc (DVA), Equinix Inc (EQIX), and More

The most comprehensive picture of activity by hedge funds and other notable investors comes in the form of quarterly 13F filings, and we’ve found that tracking these picks can be useful in developing investment strategies; for example, the most popular small cap stocks among hedge funds generate an average excess return of 18 percentage points per year (learn more about our small cap strategy). Since the information in 13Fs is a bit old, however, some investors prefer to track 13D and 13G filings, which are filed with regard to individual stocks shortly after a fund takes a 5% ownership stake or makes changes to that position. These names can then be reviewed for interesting ideas for further research. Here are five stocks which the filers we track have bought recently:

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has continued to buy shares of DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc (NYSE:DVA), which provides kidney dialysis services at dialysis centers and in hospitals; its most recent purchases have given it a total close to 16 million shares (check out Buffett’s stock picks). When we looked at the company we saw that it was increasing its own revenue nicely even aside from its recent merger with Health Care Partners, with pretax income growing almost 40% in its last quarterly report compared to the first quarter of 2012 if we add back a loss contingency reserve. Some of that is from the merger of course, but DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc (NYSE:DVA) appears to be growing nicely in any case.

Equinix Inc (NASDAQ:EQIX), the $9.1 billion market cap data center services company, is another stock where we’ve recorded activity as SPO Advisory has initiated a position of roughly 2.8 million shares- 5.6% of the total shares outstanding- in the second quarter of 2013. See more stocks SPO has been buying. Equinix Inc (NASDAQ:EQIX) is planning to convert to a real estate investment trust, which many of its peers already operate as, but there have been reports that the IRS may tighten its requirements for REIT status. This has caused its stock price to fall year to date, though fundamentals still suggest that the market is pricing in expectations of an REIT conversion.