Is Marathon Oil Corporation (MRO) A Good Stock To Buy?

As industrywide interest jumped, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Encompass Capital Advisors, managed by Todd J. Kantor, assembled the most outsized position in Marathon Oil Corporation (NYSE:MRO). Encompass Capital Advisors had $34.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Muller’s PDT Partners also made a $19.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new MRO positions are Ron Gutfleish’s Elm Ridge Capital, Sander Gerber’s Hudson Bay Capital Management, and Michael Platt and William Reeves’s BlueCrest Capital Mgmt..

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Marathon Oil Corporation (NYSE:MRO). These stocks are Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX), Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT), MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM), and Goldcorp Inc. (USA) (NYSE:GG). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to MRO’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 34.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1005 million. That figure was $429 million in MRO’s case. MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT) is the least popular one with only 26 bullish hedge fund positions. Marathon Oil Corporation (NYSE:MRO) 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 MGM might be a better candidate to consider a long position.