Is QUALCOMM, Inc. (QCOM) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

Concerns over a shift in Fed’s easy monetary policy have hit several hedge funds hard during the third quarter. A number of sectors are in correction territory. More importantly, Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) underperformed the larger S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by more than 14 percentage points between June 25, 2015 and October 30, 2015. Hedge funds and institutional investors tracked by Insider Monkey usually invest a disproportionate amount of their portfolios in smaller cap stocks. We have been receiving indications that hedge funds were paring back their overall exposure and this is one of the factors behind the recent movements in major indices. In this article, we will take a closer look at hedge fund sentiment towards QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM).

QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the fourth quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged and the stock was in 68 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2015. At the end of this article we will also compare QCOM to other stocks including U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB), Toronto-Dominion Bank (USA) (NYSE:TD), and UBS AG (USA) (NYSE:UBS) to get a better sense of its popularity.

Today there are many gauges shareholders can use to appraise publicly traded companies. A pair of the less utilized gauges are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best fund managers can trounce the market by a significant margin (see the details here).

Among Qualcomm’s largest shareholders is activist fund JANA Partners, managed by billionaire Barry Rosenstein. In its third-quarter investor letter, JANA discussed its investment in Qualcomm. Another fund that discussed its bet on the company is Wedgewood Partners. Here’s what both investors said about the company: