Is Ross Stores, Inc. (ROST) Worthy of Your Portfolio?

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Two Sigma Advisors, managed by John Overdeck and David Siegel, assembled the biggest position in Ross Stores, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROST). Two Sigma Advisors had $124.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Robert Pohly’s Samlyn Capital also initiated a $31.5 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are James Parsons’ Junto Capital Management, Louis Bacon’s Moore Global Investments, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Ross Stores, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROST). These stocks are Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc (NYSE:HLT), Weyerhaeuser Company (NYSE:WY), Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR), and St. Jude Medical, Inc. (NYSE:STJ). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to ROST’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 45 funds holding long positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2.69 billion at the end of September. That figure was $811 million in ROST’s case. Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR) is the most popular stock in this table, while Weyerhaeuser Company (NYSE:WY) is the least popular one with only 27 bullish hedge fund positions. Ross Stores, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROST) 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 Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR) might be a better candidate to consider a long position.