Hedge Funds Are Selling West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. (WST)

Now that we’ve mentioned the most bullish investors, let’s also take a look at some funds that cut their entire stakes in the stock during the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s LMR Partners cut the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds tracked by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $3.7 million in stock. Jim Simons’s fund, Renaissance Technologies, also cut its stock, about $3.5 million worth of West Pharmaceutical shares.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. (NYSE:WST) but similarly valued. These stocks are Twilio Inc (NYSE:TWLO), Empresa Nacional de Electricidad S.A. (NYSE:EOCC), Aqua America Inc (NYSE:WTR), and Arris Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARRS). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to WST’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $373 million. That figure was $334 million in WST’s case. Arris Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARRS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Twilio Inc (NYSE:TWLO) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. (NYSE:WST) 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 ARRS might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: none.