Is Lazard Ltd (LAZ) A Good Stock To Buy?

Seeing as Lazard Ltd (NYSE:LAZ) has gone through falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there is a sect of funds who sold off their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. Interestingly, Anton Schutz’s Mendon Capital Advisors sold off the biggest investment of the “upper crust” of funds tracked by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $3 million in stock. Ken Griffin’s fund, Citadel Investment Group, also sold off its call options, about $1.7 million worth.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Lazard Ltd (NYSE:LAZ). We will take a look at Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc. (NYSE:SKT), TESARO Inc (NASDAQ:TSRO), ICON plc – Ordinary Shares (NASDAQ:ICLR), and TC Pipelines, LP (NYSE:TCP). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to LAZ’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 $213 million. That figure was $421 million in LAZ’s case. TESARO Inc (NASDAQ:TSRO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand TC Pipelines, LP (NYSE:TCP) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Lazard Ltd (NYSE:LAZ) 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 TSRO might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: none.