Do Hedge Funds Love Wells Fargo & Co (WFC)?

Seeing as Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) has experienced a declining sentiment from the smart money, it’s easy to see that there exists a select few money managers who sold off their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. Intriguingly, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management sold off the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $77.6 million in call options., and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $61.9 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC). These stocks are JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), China Mobile Ltd. (ADR) (NYSE:CHL), The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG), and AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T). This group of stocks’ market caps match WFC’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 56 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $4.98 billion. That figure was $32.56 billion in WFC’s case, although the largest part of it is represented by Buffett’s position. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand China Mobile Ltd. (ADR) (NYSE:CHL) is the least popular one with only 24 bullish hedge fund positions. Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) is not the most popular stock in this group, but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal, but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard JPM might be a better candidate to consider a long position.