Hedge Funds Are Dumping Atwood Oceanics, Inc. (ATW)

Since Atwood Oceanics, Inc. (NYSE:ATW) has faced declining sentiment from the smart money, it’s easy to see that there were a few hedge funds that slashed their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. Interestingly, Robert Rodriguez and Steven Romick’s First Pacific Advisors LLC dumped the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $69 million in stock. Neil Chriss’s fund, Hutchin Hill Capital, also dumped its stock, about $3.9 million worth of ATW shares. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 3 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Atwood Oceanics, Inc. (NYSE:ATW) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Ferro Corporation (NYSE:FOE), Linn Energy LLC (NASDAQ:LINE), Cato Corp (NYSE:CATO), and The Andersons, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANDE). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble ATW’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 13 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $107 million. That figure was $140 million in ATW’s case. Ferro Corporation (NYSE:FOE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Linn Energy LLC (NASDAQ:LINE) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Atwood Oceanics, Inc. (NYSE:ATW) 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 FOE might be a better candidate to consider a long position.