Is First Cash Financial Services, Inc. (FCFS) A Good Stock To Buy?

Seeing as First Cash Financial Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:FCFS) has faced bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there was a specific group of money managers that slashed their full holdings last quarter. At the top of the heap, Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management dropped the biggest position of the 700 funds tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $0.6 million in stock. Chao Ku’s fund, Nine Chapters Capital Management, also said goodbye to its stock, about $0.6 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 1 fund last quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as First Cash Financial Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:FCFS) but similarly valued. These stocks are FirstService Corporation (TSE:FSV), Axiall Corp (NYSE:AXLL), Benchmark Electronics, Inc. (NYSE:BHE), and Emergent Biosolutions Inc (NYSE:EBS). This group of stocks’ market caps match FCFS’s market cap.

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 $174 million. That figure was $54 million in FCFS’s case. Axiall Corp (NYSE:AXLL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand, FirstService Corporation (TSE:FSV) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Although First Cash Financial Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:FCFS) is not the least popular, it has not attracted much attention from investors. This may indicate not being a good choice for investment, which is why we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that that hedge funds are collectively most bullish on. In this particular case, AXLL might be worth considering and further analyzing.