Should You Follow the Smart Money Stampede Out of Equity One, Inc. (EQY)?

Is Equity One, Inc. (NYSE:EQY) a good investment right now? We check hedge fund and billionaire investor sentiment before delving into hours of research. Hedge funds spend millions of dollars on Ivy League graduates, expert networks, and get tips from industry insiders. They fail miserably sometimes but historically their consensus stock picks outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk factors.

Equity One, Inc. (NYSE:EQY) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. EQY shareholders have witnessed a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money lately. There were 18 hedge funds in our database with EQY holdings at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare EQY to other stocks including Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBIX), Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ADR) (NYSE:ASR), and Guidewire Software Inc (NYSE:GWRE) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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How are hedge funds trading Equity One, Inc. (NYSE:EQY)?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a 44% fall from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards EQY over the last 5 quarters, which spiked in the first-half of the year but gave all of those gains back in Q3. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Millennium Management, one of the 10 largest hedge funds in the world, has the most valuable position in Equity One, Inc. (NYSE:EQY), worth close to $37.5 million. The second largest stake is held by Eduardo Abush of Waterfront Capital Partners, with a $26.3 million position; 3.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other peers with similar optimism encompass Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management, Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management, and Michael Swotes’ Castle Ridge Investment Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds 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.

Judging by the fact that Equity One, Inc. (NYSE:EQY) has faced declining sentiment from hedge fund managers, it’s safe to say that there lies a certain “tier” of hedgies that decided to sell off their full holdings heading into Q4. Interestingly, Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management said goodbye to the largest position of all the investors monitored by Insider Monkey, worth about $4.3 million in stock, and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $2.7 million worth of shares.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Equity One, Inc. (NYSE:EQY). We will take a look at Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBIX), Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ADR) (NYSE:ASR), Guidewire Software Inc (NYSE:GWRE), and Ubiquiti Networks Inc (NASDAQ:UBNT). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to EQY’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 21 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $266 million. That figure was $93 million in EQY’s case. Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBIX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ADR) (NYSE:ASR) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Equity One, Inc. (NYSE:EQY) 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 NBIX might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None