After Many Months of Selling, Hedge Funds Are Finally Buying Harris Corporation (HRS) Again

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Is Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS) shareholders have witnessed an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. HRS was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 21 hedge funds in our database with HRS holdings at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare HRS to other stocks including International Flavors & Fragrances Inc (NYSE:IFF), Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. (NYSE:MLM), and Masco Corporation (NYSE:MAS) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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What have hedge funds been doing with Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS)?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a 5% uptick from the previous quarter. By comparison, 31 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in HRS heading into this year, so hedge fund ownership is still own greatly in 2016. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

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When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Barry Rosenstein’s JANA Partners has the number one position in Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS), worth close to $221.7 million, corresponding to 3.9% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Mario Gabelli of GAMCO Investors, with a $55.6 million position. Some other peers that hold long positions comprise Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies, Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management, and Israel Englander’s Millennium 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.

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