Is Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NLSN) A Good Stock To Buy?

Before putting in our own effort and resources into finding a good investment, we can quickly utilize hedge fund expertise to give us a quick glimpse of whether that stock could make for a good addition to our portfolios. The odds are not exactly stacked in investors’ favor when it comes to beating the market, as evidenced by the fact that less than 49% of the stocks in the S&P 500 did so during the 12-month period ending October 30. However, 63% of hedge funds’ top 30 stock picks from the index did beat the market, and returned nearly twice as much on average as the index. Thus, we can see that the tireless research and efforts of hedge funds to identify winning stocks can work to our advantage when we know how to use the data. While not all of their picks will be winners, our odds are much better following their best stock picks than trying to go it alone.

Is Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NYSE:NLSN) a healthy stock for your portfolio? Investors who are in the know are becoming less hopeful. The number of long hedge fund bets dropped by 9 in recent months. NLSN was in 19 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 28 hedge funds in our database with NLSN positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare NLSN to other stocks including M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB), Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU), and Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBKR) to get a better sense of its popularity.

Keeping this in mind, we’re going to view the key action encompassing Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NYSE:NLSN).

How have hedgies been trading Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NYSE:NLSN)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 19 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -32% from the second quarter. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Kerr Neilson’s Platinum Asset Management has the number one position in Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NYSE:NLSN), worth close to $154.5 million, comprising 4.2% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Generation Investment Management, managed by David Blood and Al Gore, which holds a $88.3 million position; 1.3% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism encompass Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management, Daniel Bubis’ Tetrem Capital Management and Lee Hicks and Jan Koerner’s Park Presidio Capital.

Since Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NYSE:NLSN) has faced falling interest from the smart money, it’s safe to say that there was a specific group of hedge funds that decided to sell off their positions entirely heading into Q4. Interestingly, Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies dumped the largest investment of the 700 funds watched by Insider Monkey, worth close to $23.7 million in stock. James Parsons’ fund, Junto Capital Management, also said goodbye to its stock, about $20.3 million worth. These moves are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 9 funds heading into Q4.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NYSE:NLSN) but similarly valued. We will take a look at M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB), Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU), Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBKR), and Skyworks Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:SWKS). This group of stocks’ market valuations match NLSN’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 41 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1025 million. That figure was $463 million in NLSN’s case. Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB) is the least popular one with only 20 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Nielsen N.V. Ordinary Shares (NYSE:NLSN) is even less popular than MTB. Considering that hedge funds aren’t fond of this stock in relation to other companies analyzed in this article, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and understand why the smart money isn’t behind this stock. This isn’t necessarily bad news. Although it is possible that hedge funds may think the stock is overpriced and view the stock as a short candidate, they may not be very familiar with the bullish thesis. In either case more research is warranted.