Airgas, Inc. (ARG) Hedge Funds Are Snapping Up

At Insider Monkey we follow around 730 of the best-performing investors and even though many of them lost money in the last several months, the history teaches us that over the long-run they still manage to beat the market, which is why it can be profitable for us to imitate their activity. Of course, even the best money managers can sometimes get it wrong, but following some of their picks gives us a better chance to outperform the crowd than picking a random stock and this is where our research comes in.

Is Airgas, Inc. (NYSE:ARG) a safe investment today? Prominent investors are turning bullish. The number of long hedge fund bets rose by 1 recently. Airgas, Inc. (NYSE:ARG) was in 30 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2015. There were 29 hedge funds in our database with Airgas, Inc. (NYSE:ARG) holdings at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity, but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article, we will examine companies such as PulteGroup, Inc. (NYSE:PHM), Partnerre Ltd (NYSE:PRE), and NetSuite Inc (NYSE:N) to gather more data points.

In the eyes of most investors, hedge funds are assumed to be slow, outdated financial vehicles of yesteryear. While there are over 8000 funds in operation at present, We hone in on the upper echelon of this group, around 700 funds. These investment experts orchestrate most of the smart money’s total asset base, and by following their top picks, Insider Monkey has spotted various investment strategies that have historically defeated the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 index by 12 percentage points annually for a decade in their back tests.

With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a gander at the recent action encompassing Airgas, Inc. (NYSE:ARG).

How have hedgies been trading Airgas, Inc. (NYSE:ARG)?

At the end of September, a total of 30 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, an increase of 3% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Select Equity Group, managed by Robert Joseph Caruso, holds the biggest position in Airgas, Inc. (NYSE:ARG). Select Equity Group has a $243.5 million position in the stock, comprising 2.3% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Edgar Wachenheim of Greenhaven Associates, with a $149 million position; the fund has 3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers that are bullish comprise Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.