Do Hedge Funds Love Applied Industrial Technologies (AIT)?

Seeing as Applied Industrial Technologies (NYSE:AIT) has faced bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there was a specific group of funds that decided to sell off their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. Interestingly, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors dumped the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling about $0.7 million in stock, and Peter Muller’s PDT Partners was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $0.3 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 4 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Applied Industrial Technologies (NYSE:AIT). These stocks are Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:CORE), Sabra Health Care REIT Inc (NASDAQ:SBRA), Compania de Minas Buenaventura SA (ADR) (NYSE:BVN), and Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXST). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble AIT’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 14.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $168 million, lower than the $182 million figure in AIT’s case. Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXST) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Compania de Minas Buenaventura SA (ADR) (NYSE:BVN) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Applied Industrial Technologies (NYSE:AIT) 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 NXST might be a better candidate to consider a long position.