Investors Are Going Crazy for EOG Resources Inc (EOG)

The worries about the election and the ongoing uncertainty about the path of interest-rate increases have been keeping investors on the sidelines. Of course, most hedge funds and other asset managers have been underperforming main stock market indices since the middle of 2015. Interestingly though, smaller-cap stocks registered their best performance relative to the large-capitalization stocks since the end of the June quarter, suggesting that this may be the best time to take a cue from their stock picks. In fact, the Russell 2000 Index gained more than 15% since the beginning of the third quarter, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 benchmark returned less than 6%. This article will lay out and discuss the hedge fund and institutional investor sentiment towards EOG Resources Inc (NYSE:EOG).

Is EOG Resources Inc (NYSE:EOG) a bargain? Investors who are in the know are buying. The number of long hedge fund bets advanced by 15 recently. At the end of this article we will also compare EOG to other stocks including Canadian National Railway (USA) (NYSE:CNI), BHP Billiton Limited (ADR) (NYSE:BHP), and Honda Motor Co Ltd (ADR) (NYSE:HMC) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

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How are hedge funds trading EOG Resources Inc (NYSE:EOG)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 51 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a 42% jump from the previous quarter, which lifted it back near its Q4 ownership level. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, OZ Management, managed by Daniel S. Och, holds the largest position in EOG Resources Inc (NYSE:EOG). OZ Management has a $181.9 million call position in the stock, comprising 1% of its 13F portfolio. Other professional money managers that hold long positions include Ric Dillon’s Diamond Hill Capital, Ross Margolies’ Stelliam Investment Management, and Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management.