Is Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NLSN) A Good Stock To Buy?

Since Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NYSE:NLSN) has faced falling interest from the smart money, it’s safe to say that there was a specific group of hedge funds that decided to sell off their positions entirely heading into Q4. Interestingly, Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies dumped the largest investment of the 700 funds watched by Insider Monkey, worth close to $23.7 million in stock. James Parsons’ fund, Junto Capital Management, also said goodbye to its stock, about $20.3 million worth. These moves are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 9 funds heading into Q4.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NYSE:NLSN) but similarly valued. We will take a look at M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB), Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU), Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBKR), and Skyworks Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:SWKS). This group of stocks’ market valuations match NLSN’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 41 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1025 million. That figure was $463 million in NLSN’s case. Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB) is the least popular one with only 20 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NYSE:NLSN) is even less popular than MTB. Considering that hedge funds aren’t fond of this stock in relation to other companies analyzed in this article, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and understand why the smart money isn’t behind this stock. This isn’t necessarily bad news. Although it is possible that hedge funds may think the stock is overpriced and view the stock as a short candidate, they may not be very familiar with the bullish thesis. In either case more research is warranted.