How HMS Holdings Corp (HMSY) Stacks Up Against Its Peers

Because HMS Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:HMSY) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there were a few funds that decided to sell off their positions entirely heading into Q4. At the top of the heap, James Dondero’s Highland Capital Management cut the largest position of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, worth close to $3.5 million in stock. Ken Griffin’s fund, Citadel Investment Group, also dumped its stock, about $1.1 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as HMS Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:HMSY) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE), Globe Specialty Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ:GSM), Nelnet, Inc. (NYSE:NNI), and Callon Petroleum Company (NYSE:CPE). This group of stocks’ market values match HMSY’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $257 million. That figure was $98 million in HMSY’s case. Callon Petroleum Company (NYSE:CPE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Nelnet, Inc. (NYSE:NNI) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. HMS Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:HMSY) 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 CPE might be a better candidate to consider a long position in.

Disclosure: None