Is The Western Union Company (NYSE:WU) a good bet right now? We like to analyze hedge fund sentiment before doing days of in-depth research. We do so because hedge funds and other elite investors have numerous Ivy league graduates, expert network advisers, and supply chain tipsters working or consulting for them. There is not a shortage of news stories covering failed hedge fund investments (for some reason media paid a ton of attention to Ackman’s gigantic JC Penney and Valeant failures) and it is a fact that hedge funds’ picks don’t beat the market 100% of the time, but their consensus picks have historically done very well and have outperformed the market after adjusting for risk.
Is The Western Union Company (NYSE:WU) a healthy stock for your portfolio? The smart money is taking a pessimistic view. The number of long hedge fund positions retreated by 2 recently. WU was in 27 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 29 hedge funds in our database with WU positions 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 Lululemon Athletica inc. (NASDAQ:LULU), Verisign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN), and Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP) to gather more data points.
Follow Western Union Co (NYSE:WU)
Follow Western Union Co (NYSE:WU)
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How have hedgies been trading The Western Union Company (NYSE:WU)?
At Q3’s end, a total of 27 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a 7% decline from one quarter earlier, pushing hedge fund ownership to a yearly low, though the range of ownership is narrow. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, David Abrams’ Abrams Capital Management has the number one position in The Western Union Company (NYSE:WU), worth close to $449.9 million, comprising 22.3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Ariel Investments, led by John W. Rogers, holding a $129.2 million position; 1.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other professional money managers that are bullish consist of David Harding’s Winton Capital Management, Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management, and Bernard Horn’s Polaris Capital Management.
