Is Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) A Good Stock To Buy?

Because Bank of Nova Scotia (NYSE:BNS) has sustained bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there lies a certain “tier” of hedge funds that slashed their entire stakes heading into Q4. At the top of the heap, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group sold off the biggest position of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $2.1 million in call options, and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $1.1 million worth of shares.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Bank of Nova Scotia (NYSE:BNS). We will take a look at Eni SpA (ADR) (NYSE:E), National Grid plc (ADR) (NYSE:NGG), Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO), and Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to BNS’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 28 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.65 billion. That figure was $273 million in BNS’s case. Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Eni SpA (ADR) (NYSE:E) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Bank of Nova Scotia (NYSE:BNS) 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 TWX might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None