Hedge Funds Are Buying Brown & Brown, Inc. (NYSE:BRO)

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With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key hedge funds have jumped into Brown & Brown, Inc. (NYSE:BRO) headfirst. Select Equity Group, led by Robert Joseph Caruso, initiated the largest position in Brown & Brown, Inc. (NYSE:BRO). Select Equity Group had $34.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander’s Millennium Management also initiated a $18.9 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management, George Hall’s Clinton Group, and Andrew Feldstein and Stephen Siderow’s Blue Mountain Capital.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Brown & Brown, Inc. (NYSE:BRO). We will take a look at CBOE Holdings, Inc (NASDAQ:CBOE), Cheniere Energy Partners LP Holdings LLC (NYSEMKT:CQH), B/E Aerospace Inc (NASDAQ:BEAV), and Kinross Gold Corporation (USA) (NYSE:KGC). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble BRO’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
CBOE 24 590194 9
CQH 19 541571 6
BEAV 33 992778 0
KGC 26 633503 -5

As you can see these stocks had an average of 26 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $690 million. That figure was $276 million in BRO’s case. B/E Aerospace Inc (NASDAQ:BEAV) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Cheniere Energy Partners LP Holdings LLC (NYSEMKT:CQH) is the least popular one with only 19 bullish hedge fund positions. Brown & Brown, Inc. (NYSE:BRO) 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 BEAV might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None

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