Is Accenture Plc (ACN) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

Because Accenture Plc (NYSE:ACN) has witnessed falling interest from the smart money, logic holds that there is a sect of hedgies that slashed their positions entirely in the third quarter. Interestingly, Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management sold off the largest position of the 700 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, worth about $14.3 million in call options.. Dmitry Balyasny’s fund, Balyasny Asset Management, also said goodbye to its call options., about $9.7 million worth. These moves are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Accenture Plc (NYSE:ACN). We will take a look at Lowe’s Companies, Inc. (NYSE:LOW), Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST), Priceline.com Inc (NASDAQ:PCLN), and Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to ACN’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 $3.14 billion. That figure was $1.12 billion in ACN’s case. Priceline.com Inc (NASDAQ:PCLN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Accenture Plc (NYSE:ACN) 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 PCLN might be a better candidate to consider a long position.