Should You Buy Northrop Grumman Corporation (NOC)?

As aggregate interest increased, some big names have jumped into Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) headfirst. Balyasny Asset Management, managed by Dmitry Balyasny, initiated the most valuable position in Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC). Balyasny Asset Management had $40.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also made a $18.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new NOC investors: Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management, Douglas Dethy’s DC Capital Partners, and Peter Muller’s PDT Partners.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) but similarly valued. These stocks are T MOBILE US INC (NYSE:TMUS), Ecolab Inc. (NYSE:ECL), Ericsson (ADR) (NASDAQ:ERIC), and HCA Holdings Inc (NYSE:HCA). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to NOC’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 41 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2.28 billion. That figure was $1.99 billion in NOC’s case. HCA Holdings Inc (NYSE:HCA) is the most popular stock in this table, while Ericsson (ADR) (NASDAQ:ERIC) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) 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 HCA might be a better candidate to consider for a long position.