Do Hedge Funds Love Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)?

Since Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) has experienced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, logic holds that there exists a select few hedge funds that decided to sell off their entire stakes by the end of the third quarter. Intriguingly, Stephen DuBois’ Camber Capital Management said goodbye to the largest investment of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $48.7 million in call options. James Crichton’s fund, Hitchwood Capital Management, also dropped its call options, about $29.2 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest fell by 4 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ). These stocks are General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), China Mobile Ltd. (ADR) (NYSE:CHL), and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). This group of stocks’ market valuations match JNJ’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 83.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $7,525 million. That figure was $3,939 million in JNJ’s case. Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand China Mobile Ltd. (ADR) (NYSE:CHL) is the least popular one with only 20 bullish hedge fund positions. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) 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 FB might be a better candidate to consider a long position.