Should You Buy 3M Co (MMM)?

As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. David Harding’s Winton Capital Management initiated a $15 million position during the third quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are George Hall’s Clinton Group, Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management, and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as 3M Co (NYSE:MMM) but similarly valued. We will take a look at McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD), GlaxoSmithKline plc (ADR) (NYSE:GSK), CVS Caremark Corporation (NYSE:CVS), and AbbVie Inc (NYSE:ABBV). This group of stocks’ market values resemble MMM’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 51 investors with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2.51 billion. That figure was just $539 million in MMM’s case. CVS Caremark Corporation (NYSE:CVS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand GlaxoSmithKline plc (ADR) (NYSE:GSK) is the least popular one with only 33 bullish hedge fund positions. 3M Co (NYSE:MMM) 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 CVS Caremark Corporation (NYSE:CVS) might be a better candidate to consider a long position.