Which 10 Gurus All Hold Wells Fargo?

When hedge fund manager "titans" think alike, investors are wise to pay attention. At Holdings Channel, we have reviewed 4,003 13F filings for the 12/31/2014 reporting period, and noticed that Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) was held by 10 of the particular managers we have flagged as "titans" most widely followed by investors. It is not every day we see this many notable hedge fund managers thinking alike, so we wanted to take a closer look.

Click here to find out 10 S&P 500 Components Hedge Funds Are Buying »

Before we continue, it is important to point out that 13F filings do not tell the whole story, because these funds are only required to disclose their long positions with the SEC, but are not required to disclose their short positions. A fund making a bearish bet against a stock by shorting calls, for example, might also be long some amount of stock as they trade around their overall bearish position. This long component could show up in a 13F filing and everyone might assume the fund is bullish, but this tells only part of the story because the bearish/short side of the position is not seen.

Having given that caveat, we believe that looking at groups of 13F filings can be revealing, especially when comparing one holding period to another. Below, let's take a look at the change in WFC positions for each of the titans that reported holding some amount of WFC at 12/31/2014:

In terms of shares owned, we count 1 of the identified titans above having increased existing WFC positions from 09/30/2014 to 12/31/2014, with 4 having decreased their positions and 3 new positions. Worth noting is that Jim Simons (Renaissance Tech) — also deemed to have "titan" status — exited WFC common stock as of 12/31/2014.

Looking beyond these particular hedge funds of interest, we tallied up the WFC share count in the aggregate among all of the funds which held WFC at the 12/31/2014 reporting period (out of the 4,003 we looked at). We then compared that number to the sum total of WFC shares those same funds held back at the 09/30/2014 period, to see how the aggregate share count held by hedge funds has moved for WFC. We found that between these two periods, hedge funds increased their holdings by 321,022,105 shares in the aggregate, from 3,652,470,171 up to 3,973,492,276 for a share count increase of approximately 8.79%. The overall top three hedge funds holding WFC on 12/31/2014 were:

We'll keep following the latest 13F filings by hedge fund managers and bring you interesting stories derived from a look at the aggregate information across groups of managers between filing periods. While looking at individual 13F filings can sometimes be misleading due to the long-only nature of the information, the sum total across groups of funds from one reporting period to another can be a lot more revealing and relevant, providing interesting stock ideas that merit further research, like Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC).