Smart Money Is Losing Confidence In Deere & Company (DE)

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Judging by the fact that Deere & Company (NYSE:DE) has faced bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there was a specific group of money managers who were dropping their entire stakes last quarter. At the top of the heap, Jean-Marie Eveillard’s First Eagle Investment Management dropped the biggest stake of the 700 funds watched by Insider Monkey, valued at about $425.7 million in stock. Stanley Druckenmiller’s fund, Duquesne Capital, also said goodbye to its stock, about $29.2 million worth. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 6 funds last quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Deere & Company (NYSE:DE). We will take a look at Cardinal Health, Inc. (NYSE:CAH), Edison International (NYSE:EIX), LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD), and Archer Daniels Midland Company (NYSE:ADM). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble DE’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
CAH 26 666390 -8
EIX 19 640459 -1
LNKD 59 4838915 -7
ADM 24 676010 -2

As you can see these stocks had an average of 32 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.71 billion. That figure was $3.32 billion in DE’s case. LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Edison International (NYSE:EIX) is the least popular one with only 19 bullish hedge fund positions. Deere & Company (NYSE:DE) 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 LNKD might be a better candidate to consider a long position.

Disclosure: None

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