Is Xylem Inc (XYL) a Good Buy?

The worries about the economic slowdown in China and the ongoing uncertainty about the path of interest-rate increases triggered several waves of equity sell-offs during the third quarter. Of course, most hedge funds and other asset managers had to stomach substantial losses during the bloody three-month period, which might have caused some to consider fleeing the U.S. equity markets. Interestingly, smaller-cap stocks registered higher losses than large-capitalization stocks during the September quarter, suggesting that institutional investors heavily discarded seemingly riskier equities amid high uncertainty and turmoil. In fact, the Russell 2000 Index lost 11.9% in the third quarter, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 benchmark declined a mere 6.4%. This article will lay out and discuss the hedge fund and institutional investor sentiment towards Xylem Inc (NYSE:XYL).

Is Xylem Inc (NYSE:XYL) a buy, sell, or hold? Hedge funds are getting less bullish. The number of long hedge fund bets went down by 5 in recent months. XYL was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2015. There were 28 hedge funds in our database with XYL holdings at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare XYL to other stocks including SVB Financial Group (NASDAQ:SIVB), Macquarie Infrastructure Company LLC (NYSE:MIC), and Domino’s Pizza, Inc. (NYSE:DPZ) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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Now, we’re going to take a look at the fresh action surrounding Xylem Inc (NYSE:XYL).

Hedge fund activity in Xylem Inc (NYSE:XYL)

Heading into Q4, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -18% from the second quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors has the largest position in Xylem Inc (NYSE:XYL), worth close to $140.9 million, amounting to 0.9% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Israel Englander of Millennium Management, with a $85.4 million position; the fund has 0.2% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other members of the smart money that are bullish comprise Ian Simm’s Impax Asset Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and D E Shaw.