Is Williams Partners L.P. (WPZ) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

Since Williams Partners L.P. (NYSE:WPZ) has faced falling interest from the smart money, it’s safe to say that there lies a certain “tier” of fund managers who sold off their positions entirely in the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management cut the largest position of all the hedgies watched by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $65.6 million in stock. Daniel S. Och’s fund, OZ Management, also dropped its stock, about $21 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Williams Partners L.P. (NYSE:WPZ). We will take a look at Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc (NYSE:ZBH), Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG), TELUS Corporation (USA) (NYSE:TU), and Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE:FIS). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to WPZ’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 35 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $900 million. That figure was $170 million in WPZ’s case. Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG) is the most popular stock in this table, while the least popular one is TELUS Corporation (USA) (NYSE:TU). In comparison, with 19 bullish hedge fund positions, Williams Partners L.P. (NYSE:WPZ) is not the least popular stock in this group, but still it has not attracted much attention from investors. This may imply that this stock doesn’t represent a good buying opportunity at the moment. Therefore, we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are collectively the fondest of and, in this case, HIG may be a better alternative.