Is Prudential Financial Inc (PRU) A Good Stock To Buy?

Since Prudential Financial Inc (NYSE:PRU) has experienced a declination in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there were a few hedgies that elected to cut their positions entirely by the end of the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Michael Messner’s Seminole Capital (Investment Mgmt) dropped the biggest investment of the 700 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, valued at an estimated $14 million in stock. Eric Halet and Davide Serra’s fund, Algebris Investments, also cut its stock, about $13.6 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 2 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Prudential Financial Inc (NYSE:PRU) but similarly valued. These stocks are General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS), ACE Limited (NYSE:ACE), Luxottica Group SpA (ADR) (NYSE:LUX), and VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to PRU’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 26.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $698 million. That figure was $971 million in PRU’s case. ACE Limited (NYSE:ACE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Luxottica Group SpA (ADR) (NYSE:LUX) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Prudential Financial Inc (NYSE:PRU) is the most popular stock in this group and that makes it worth a closer look.