Is MFA Financial, Inc. (MFA) A Good Stock To Buy?

Consequently, key hedge funds have jumped into MFA Financial, Inc. (NYSE:MFA) headfirst. Clough Capital Partners, managed by Charles Clough, assembled the most valuable position in MFA Financial, Inc. (NYSE:MFA). Clough Capital Partners had $2.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies also made a $2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new MFA investors: Michael Platt and William Reeves’s BlueCrest Capital Mgmt., Jacob Gottlieb’s Visium Asset Management, and David Costen Haley’s HBK Investments.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as MFA Financial, Inc. (NYSE:MFA) but similarly valued. These stocks are Sunoco LP (NYSE:SUN), Golar LNG Limited (USA) (NASDAQ:GLNG), The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN), and Avolon Holdings Ltd (NYSE:AVOL). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble MFA’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 21.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $389 million. That figure was $52 million in MFA’s case. Golar LNG Limited (USA) (NASDAQ:GLNG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Sunoco LP (NYSE:SUN) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. MFA Financial, Inc. (NYSE:MFA) 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 GLNG might be a better candidate to consider a long position.