Is Deere & Company (DE) A Good Stock To Buy?

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Firefly Value Partners, managed by Ryan Heslop and Ariel Warszawski, assembled the biggest position in Deere & Company (NYSE:DE). Firefly Value Partners had $26.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies also made a $21.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new DE investors: Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management, Paul Orlin and Alex Porter’s Amici Capital, and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Deere & Company (NYSE:DE). These stocks are TE Connectivity Ltd. (NYSE:TEL), Eaton Corporation, PLC Ordinary Shares (NYSE:ETN), Sempra Energy (NYSE:SRE), and PPG Industries, Inc. (NYSE:PPG). This group of stocks’ market values resemble DE’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 37 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1,211 million. That figure was $2,637 million in DE’s case. PPG Industries, Inc. (NYSE:PPG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand TE Connectivity Ltd. (NYSE:TEL) is the least popular one with only 28 bullish hedge fund positions. Deere & Company (NYSE:DE) 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 PPG might be a better candidate to consider a long position.