Hedge Funds Are Crazy About Avnet, Inc. (AVT)

As aggregate interest increased, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, assembled the biggest position in Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT). Arrowstreet Capital had $7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Neil Chriss’ Hutchin Hill Capital also initiated a $5.4 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new AVT investors: Peter Muller’s PDT Partners, Thomas Bailard’s Bailard Inc and David Costen Haley’s HBK Investments.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT). These stocks are United Rentals, Inc. (NYSE:URI), Tableau Software Inc (NYSE:DATA), Commscope Holding Company Inc (NASDAQ:COMM), and The Valspar Corporation (NYSE:VAL). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to AVT’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 39 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.12 billion, compared to $782 million in AVT’s case. United Rentals, Inc. (NYSE:URI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand The Valspar Corporation (NYSE:VAL) is the least popular one with only 19 bullish hedge fund positions. Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT) 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 URI might be a better candidate to consider a long position.