Should You Buy MB Financial, Inc. (MBFI)?

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MB Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBFI) shares didn’t see a lot of action during the third quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 11 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. At the end of this article we will also compare MBFI to other stocks including Aspen Insurance Holdings Limited (NYSE:AHL), Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:RARE), and Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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With all of this in mind, let’s take a gander at the key action encompassing MB Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBFI).

How have hedgies been trading MB Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBFI)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 11 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 0% from the second quarter of 2016. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards MBFI over the last 5 quarters. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Cardinal Capital, led by Amy Minella, holds the biggest position in MB Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBFI). Cardinal Capital has a $68.5 million position in the stock, comprising 3.2% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Balyasny Asset Management, led by Dmitry Balyasny, which holds a $9.1 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other professional money managers with similar optimism include Matthew Lindenbaum’s Basswood Capital, John W. Rogers’s Ariel Investments and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. We should note that none of these elite funds are among our list of the 100 best performing elite funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

Since MB Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBFI) has weathered bearish sentiment from the smart money, it’s easy to see that there were a few money managers who sold off their positions entirely heading into Q4. At the top of the heap, D E Shaw, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, dumped the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds studied by Insider Monkey, comprising about $1.3 million in stock. Michael Platt and William Reeves’s fund, BlueCrest Capital Mgmt., also sold off its stock, about $0.2 million worth.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to MB Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBFI). We will take a look at Aspen Insurance Holdings Limited (NYSE:AHL), Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:RARE), Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE), and PIMCO Dynamic Credit Income Fund (NYSE:PCI). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble MBFI’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 11.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $101 million. That figure was $103 million in MBFI’s case. Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:RARE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand PIMCO Dynamic Credit Income Fund (NYSE:PCI) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. MB Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBFI) 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 RARE might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.