Is Marathon Petroleum Corp (MPC) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

Since Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE:MPC) has faced a declination in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there exists a select few fund managers who were dropping their entire stakes last quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Robert Pohly’s Samlyn Capital said goodbye to the largest position of the 700 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling about $106.6 million in stock, and David Greenspan’s Slate Path Capital was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $94.2 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest fell by 2 funds last quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE:MPC) but similarly valued. These stocks are Aon PLC (NYSE:AON), LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD), Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU), and Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ). All of these stocks’ market caps match MPC’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 42 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2.66 billion. That figure was $2.49 billion in MPC’s case. Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ) is the most popular stock in this table, while Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) is the least popular one with only 32 bullish hedge fund positions. Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE:MPC) 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 STZ might be a better candidate to consider a long position.