Should You Avoid Northern Oil & Gas, Inc. (NOG)?

Because Northern Oil & Gas, Inc. (NYSEAMEX:NOG) has faced a bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, logic holds that there exists a select few hedge funds who were dropping their entire stakes last quarter. At the top of the heap, Mason Hawkins’s Southeastern Asset Management dropped the largest stake of the 700 funds followed by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $5.9 million in stock, and Mark Travis’s Intrepid Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $5.8 million worth of shares. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 4 funds last quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Northern Oil & Gas, Inc. (NYSEMKT:NOG). These stocks are Synutra International, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYUT), Lion Biotechnologies Inc (NASDAQ:LBIO), Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:TTPH), and The York Water Company (NASDAQ:YORW). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to NOG’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 10 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $30 million. That figure was $36 million in NOG’s case. Lion Biotechnologies Inc (NASDAQ:LBIO) is the most popular stock in this table and Synutra International, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYUT) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Northern Oil & Gas, Inc. (NYSEMKT:NOG) 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 LBIO might be a better candidate to consider a long position.