Hedge Funds Are Betting On W.W. Grainger, Inc. (GWW)

Consequently, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Pine River Capital Management, managed by Brian Taylor, initiated the most outsized position in W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW). Pine River Capital Management had $1.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management also made an $0.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new GWW investors: Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp and Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s LMR Partners.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW). We will take a look at Motorola Solutions Inc (NYSE:MSI), CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE:CTL), Tyco International Ltd. (NYSE:TYC), and Pearson PLC (ADR) (NYSE:PSO). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble GWW’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 23 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1083 million. That figure was $855 million in GWW’s case. Tyco International Ltd. (NYSE:TYC) is the most popular stock in this table, while the least popular one is Pearson PLC (ADR) (NYSE:PSO). W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW), with 18 bullish hedge fund positions 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 collectively most fond of, such as, in this case, TYC..