Top Investors Are Abandoning Shire PLC (SHPG) in Droves

Since Shire PLC (ADR) (NASDAQ:SHPG) has experienced declining sentiment from the smart money, logic holds that there is a sect of funds that decided to sell off their entire stakes in the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Nick Niell’s Arrowgrass Capital Partners said goodbye to the largest position of the 700 funds followed by Insider Monkey, valued at an estimated $73.1 million in call options. Highline Capital Management also said goodbye to its call options, about $54.3 million worth, though as mentioned earlier, it still holds a large long position. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least though, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 14 funds in the third quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Shire PLC (ADR) (NASDAQ:SHPG). We will take a look at Signature Bank (NASDAQ:SBNY), Allegion PLC (NYSE:ALLE), Mallinckrodt PLC (NYSE:MNK), and CDW Corp (NASDAQ:CDW). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to SHPG’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 29.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $770 million. That figure was $3.58 billion in SHPG’s case. Allegion PLC (NYSE:ALLE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand CDW Corp (NASDAQ:CDW) is the least popular one with only 21 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Shire PLC (ADR) (NASDAQ:SHPG) is more popular among hedge funds. Considering that hedge funds are fond of this stock in relation to its market cap peers, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and potentially include it in your portfolio, bearing in mind that more than a dozen successful hedge funds got cold feet when it came to Shire last quarter.

Disclosure: None