How Waters Corporation (WAT) Stacks Up Against Its Peers

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Since Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) has witnessed no change in sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we will take a look at the few money managers that elected to cut their full holdings in the third quarter. Interestingly, Arthur B Cohen and Joseph Healey’s Healthcor Management LP sold off the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds followed by Insider Monkey, worth close to $13.4 million in stock. Dmitry Balyasny’s fund, Balyasny Asset Management, also cut its call options., about $9 million worth of call options. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT). These stocks are Coach, Inc. (NYSE:COH), BRF Brasil Foods SA (ADR) (NYSE:BRFS), Cimarex Energy Co (NYSE:XEC), and L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:LLL). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to WAT’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
COH 32 220693 -4
BRFS 8 172293 -1
XEC 43 1635342 4
LLL 34 771957 1

As you can see these stocks had an average of 29 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $700 million. That figure was $632 million in WAT’s case. Cimarex Energy Co (NYSE:XEC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand BRF Brasil Foods SA (ADR) (NYSE:BRFS) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard XEC might be a better candidate to consider a long position.

Disclosure: none.

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