Interest Rate Hike not Enough to Interest Smart Money in Bank of Hawaii Corporation (BOH)

Due to the fact that Bank of Hawaii Corporation (NYSE:BOH) has experienced declining sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there were a few fund managers that slashed their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. Interestingly, Jacob Gottlieb’s Visium Asset Management dumped the biggest stake of the 700 funds watched by Insider Monkey, totaling about $3.3 million in stock, and Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $2.2 million worth of shares. 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 now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Bank of Hawaii Corporation (NYSE:BOH). These stocks are Chimera Investment Corporation (NYSE:CIM), Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE:CHH), SouFun Holdings Limited (ADR) (NYSE:SFUN), and Home Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:HOMB). This group of stocks’ market caps match BOH’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 16 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $188 million. That figure was $34 million in BOH’s case. SouFun Holdings Limited (ADR) (NYSE:SFUN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE:CHH) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Bank of Hawaii Corporation (NYSE:BOH) is even less popular than CHH. Considering that hedge funds aren’t fond of this stock in relation to other companies analyzed 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.