Should You Avoid Northwest Natural Gas Co (NWN)?

Since Northwest Natural Gas Co (NYSE:NWN) has weathered bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there exists a select few fund managers that decided to sell off their positions entirely by the end of the third quarter. Interestingly, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group dropped the largest stake of all the investors tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $3.4 million in stock. Matthew Hulsizer’s fund, PEAK6 Capital Management, also said goodbye to its call options, about $3 million worth.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Northwest Natural Gas Co (NYSE:NWN). These stocks are Eagle Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGBN), Cyberark Software Ltd (NASDAQ:CYBR), Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. (NASDAQ:ARLP), and Dave & Buster’s Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ:PLAY). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to NWN’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18 funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $173 million. That figure was $53 million in NWN’s case. Dave & Buster’s Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ:PLAY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. (NASDAQ:ARLP) is the least popular one with only seven funds holding shares. Northwest Natural Gas Co (NYSE:NWN) 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 Dave & Buster’s Entertainment might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: none