Is Kate Spade & Co (KATE) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

Judging by the fact that Kate Spade & Co (NYSE:KATE) has faced falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there lies a certain “tier” of fund managers that slashed their positions entirely heading into fourth quarter. Intriguingly, Principal Global Investors’s Columbus Circle Investors sold off the largest stake of all the hedgies watched by Insider Monkey, comprising about $54.5 million in stock. Gregg Moskowitz’s fund, Interval Partners, also dropped its stock, about $11.3 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 1 fund heading into the fourth quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Kate Spade & Co (NYSE:KATE). We will take a look at Logitech International SA (USA) (NASDAQ:LOGI), UMB Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:UMBF), GrubHub Inc (NYSE:GRUB), and F.N.B. Corp (NYSE:FNB). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble KATE’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 $353 million. That figure was $535 million in KATE’s case. GrubHub Inc (NYSE:GRUB) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand UMB Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:UMBF) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Kate Spade & Co (NYSE:KATE) is tied as the most popular stock in this group, but has far less money invested in it than GRUB does. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are pouring money into. In this regard GRUB might be a better candidate to consider a long position in.

Disclosure: None