Should You Avoid BlackRock, Inc. (BLK)?

Since BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) has faced falling interest from the smart money, it’s easy to see that there lies a certain “tier” of fund managers who sold off their positions entirely last quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management said goodbye to the biggest investment of the 700 funds tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising roughly $22.9 million in stock, and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $19.6 million worth of BLK shares. These transactions are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 2 funds last quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK). These stocks are HDFC Bank Limited (ADR) (NYSE:HDB), The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW), Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO), and Baidu.com, Inc. (ADR) (NASDAQ:BIDU). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to BLK’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 47 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $3.54 billion. That figure was a meager $507 million in BLK’s case. The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) is the most popular stock in this table, whereas HDFC Bank Limited (ADR) (NYSE:HDB) is the laggard with only 29 bullish hedge fund positions. BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) 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 DOW might be a better candidate to consider a long position.