Is Murphy Oil Corporation (MUR) A Good Stock To Buy?

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have just completed filing their 13Fs with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing their equity portfolios as of the end of September. At Insider Monkey, we follow over 700 of the best-performing investors and by analyzing their 13F filings, we can determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on. One of their picks is Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE:MUR) , so let’s take a closer look at the sentiment that surrounds it in the current quarter.

Is Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE:MUR) a buy here? Investors who are in the know are taking a bullish view. The number of bullish hedge fund investments advanced by 1 recently. MUR was in 16 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 15 hedge funds in our database with MUR positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare MUR to other stocks including VCA Antech Inc (NASDAQ:WOOF), MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX), and Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

How are hedge funds trading Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE:MUR)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 16 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a gain of 7% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 17 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in MUR heading into this year. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Richard S. Pzena’s Pzena Investment Management has the most valuable position in Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE:MUR), worth close to $290.6 million, accounting for 1.8% of its total 13F portfolio. On Pzena Investment Management’s heels is Till Bechtolsheimer of Arosa Capital Management, with a $25 million position; 3.3% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism encompass Ron Gutfleish’s Elm Ridge Capital and Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management. We should note that two of these hedge funds (Arosa Capital Management and Elm Ridge Capital) are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

Consequently, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Nokota Management, led by Matthew Knauer and Mina Faltas, initiated the biggest call position in Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE:MUR). Nokota Management had $22.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw also made a $5.6 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies, and Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE:MUR). We will take a look at VCA Antech Inc (NASDAQ:WOOF), MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX), Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF), and Empresa Nacional de Electricidad S.A. (NYSE:EOCC). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble MUR’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 27 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $932 million. That figure was $392 million in MUR’s case. Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Empresa Nacional de Electricidad S.A. (NYSE:EOCC) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE:MUR) 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 HLF might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None