What Do Hedge Funds Think of Eaton Corporation, PLC Ordinary Shares (NYSE:ETN)?

Due to the fact that Eaton Corp plc (NYSE:ETN) has witnessed a declination in interest from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there is a sect of hedgies who sold off their entire stakes by the end of the third quarter. Interestingly, Rob Citrone’s Discovery Capital Management dumped the largest investment of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, worth about $46.8 million in stock. Barry Rosenstein’s fund, JANA Partners, also said goodbye to its stock, about $37.1 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 5 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Eaton Corp plc (NYSE:ETN) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Sempra Energy (NYSE:SRE), PPG Industries, Inc. (NYSE:PPG), McGraw Hill Financial Inc (NYSE:MHFI), and Kellogg Company (NYSE:K). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble ETN’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 41.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1,489 million. That figure was $985 million in ETN’s case. McGraw Hill Financial Inc (NYSE:MHFI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Sempra Energy (NYSE:SRE) is the least popular one with only 28 bullish hedge fund positions. Eaton Corp plc (NYSE:ETN) 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 MHFI might be a better candidate to consider a long position.