Is Aaron’s, Inc. (AAN) A Good Stock to Buy?

Because Aaron’s, Inc. (NYSE:AAN) has witnessed flat interest from the smart money, we can see that there exists a select few hedgies who sold off their positions entirely heading into Q4. At the top of the heap, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management dumped the largest investment of the 700 funds watched by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $3 million in stock, and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $2.4 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 also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Aaron’s, Inc. (NYSE:AAN). These stocks are Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:AGIO), FIRSTSERVICE CORPORATION (TSE:FSV), LogMeIn Inc (NASDAQ:LOGM), and Kemper Corporation (NYSE:KMPR). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to AAN’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $159 million. That figure was $288 million in AAN’s case. LogMeIn Inc (NASDAQ:LOGM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Kemper Corporation (NYSE:KMPR) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Aaron’s, Inc. (NYSE:AAN) 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 LOGM might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None