Here is What Hedge Funds Think About O’Reilly Automotive Inc (ORLY)

As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. Melvin Capital Management, managed by Gabriel Plotkin, established the most outsized position in O’Reilly Automotive Inc (NASDAQ:ORLY). Melvin Capital Management had $23.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management also made an $19.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ORLY positions are Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management, Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management, and Mike Vranos’s Ellington.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as O’Reilly Automotive Inc (NASDAQ:ORLY) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE:MPC), Aon PLC (NYSE:AON), LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD), and Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU). This group of stocks’ market caps match ORLY’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 37.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2060 million. That figure was $1517 million in ORLY’s case. Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE:MPC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) is the least popular one with only 32 bullish hedge fund positions. O’Reilly Automotive Inc (NASDAQ:ORLY) 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 MPC might be a better candidate to consider a long position.