Should You Buy Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA)?

As aggregate interest increased, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Tide Point Capital, managed by Christopher A. Winham, initiated the most valuable position in Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA). Tide Point Capital had $27.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Dirk Ziff’s ZBI Services also initiated a $17.3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are James Crichton’s Hitchwood Capital Management, and Bijan Modanlou, Joseph Bou-Saba, and Jayaveera Kodali’s Alta Park Capital.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), Luxottica Group SpA (ADR) (NYSE:LUX), Emerson Electric Co. (NYSE:EMR), and Sony Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:SNE). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to TSLA’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 34 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.72 billion. That figure was $837 million in TSLA’s case. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Luxottica Group SpA (ADR) (NYSE:LUX) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) 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 YHOO might be a better candidate to consider a long position.