Is Verisign, Inc. (VRSN) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

Due to the fact that Verisign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) has faced falling interest from hedge fund managers, we can see that there exists a select few hedgies who sold off their full holdings in the third quarter. Interestingly, Christopher Lyle’s SCGE Management dropped the biggest position of the “upper crust” of funds tracked by Insider Monkey, totaling about $17.3 million in stock, and Thomas Bancroft’s Makaira Partners was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $9.5 million worth of VRSN shares. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 4 funds in the third quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Verisign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP), Ingredion Inc (NYSE:INGR), KeyCorp (NYSE:KEY), and Interpublic Group of Companies Inc (NYSE:IPG). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble VRSN’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 34 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $814 million. That figure was $2.17 billion in VRSN’s case. KeyCorp (NYSE:KEY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Ingredion Inc (NYSE:INGR) is the least popular one with only 23 bullish hedge fund positions. Verisign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) 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 recently. In this regard TRIP might be a better candidate to consider a long position in.

Disclosure: None