Is National HealthCare Corporation (NHC) A Good Stock To Buy?

Seeing as National HealthCare Corporation (NYSEAMEX:NHC) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the smart money, we can see that there is a sect of funds who were dropping their full holdings heading into Q4. At the top of the heap, Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management sold off the biggest position of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, valued at about $1.1 million in stock, and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $0.8 million worth of shares.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as National HealthCare Corporation (NYSEAMEX:NHC) but similarly valued. These stocks are Secureworks Corp (NASDAQ:SCWX), Chart Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLS), Inter Parfums, Inc. (NASDAQ:IPAR), and Green Plains Renewable Energy Inc. (NASDAQ:GPRE). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to NHC’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $112 million. That figure was $23 million in NHC’s case. Chart Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Secureworks Corp (NASDAQ:SCWX) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. National HealthCare Corporation (NYSEAMEX:NHC) 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 GTLS might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.