Hedge Funds Aren’t Crazy About The Coca-Cola Company (KO) Anymore

Does The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) represent a good buying opportunity at the moment? Let’s briefly check the hedge fund sentiment towards the company. Hedge fund firms constantly search out bright intellectuals and highly-experienced employees and throw away millions of dollars on research activities, so it is no wonder why they tend to generate millions in profits each year. It is also true that some hedge fund players fail unconceivably on some occasions, but their stock picks have been generating superior risk-adjusted returns on average over the years.

The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) has experienced a slight decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. At the end of this article we will also compare KO to other stocks, including The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS), Anheuser-Busch InBev NV (ADR) (NYSE:BUD), and Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At the moment there are plenty of signals shareholders put to use to evaluate publicly traded companies. A duo of the most innovative signals are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best hedge fund managers can outperform their index-focused peers by a very impressive margin (see the details here).

With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a look at the new action surrounding The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO).

How have hedgies been trading The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 54 of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -13% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has the most valuable position in The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO), worth close to $16.048 billion, accounting for 12.6% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Yacktman Asset Management, managed by Donald Yacktman, which holds an $998.6 million position; 6.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other peers that are bullish consist of Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management.