Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Darden Restaurants, Inc. (DRI)

Judging by the fact that Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE:DRI) has faced bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there lies a certain “tier” of money managers that slashed their positions entirely heading into Q4. It’s worth mentioning that Neil Chriss’s Hutchin Hill Capital dropped the largest stake of the “upper crust” of funds watched by Insider Monkey, worth about $12.8 million in stock. Malcolm Fairbairn’s fund, Ascend Capital, also sold off its stock, about $10.7 million worth of DRI shares. These transactions are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 5 funds heading into Q4.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE:DRI) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Amdocs Limited (NYSE:DOX), NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP), Masco Corporation (NYSE:MAS), and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ADR) (NYSE:ASX). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble DRI’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 26 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $590 million. That figure was $1.35 billion in DRI’s case. Masco Corporation (NYSE:MAS) is the most popular stock in this table, while Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ADR) (NYSE:ASX) is the laggard with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE:DRI) 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 MAS might be a better candidate to consider a long position.