What Do Hedge Funds Think of International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)?

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Fairholme (FAIRX), managed by Bruce Berkowitz, assembled the biggest position in International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM). Fairholme (FAIRX) had $109.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Edward Lampert’s ESL Investments also initiated a $63.8 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new IBM positions are Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, and Alec Litowitz and Ross Laser’s Magnetar Capital.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM). We will take a look at Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK), PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP), Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), and PetroChina Company Limited (ADR) (NYSE:PTR). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to IBM’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 49 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $3,343 million. That figure was $13,495 million in IBM’s case. Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand PetroChina Company Limited (ADR) (NYSE:PTR) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard CSCO might be a better candidate to consider a long position.