Hedge Funds Added To Legg Mason Positions

At Holdings Channel, we have reviewed 3,692 13-F filings for the 03/31/2014 reporting period, and looked at the various S&P 500 components held by each of these reporting hedge funds and other 13-F filers. For each component, we totaled the number of shares across across all of these funds. Next Next, we went back to the 12/31/2013 period, and went through the same exercise for each of those 3,692 hedge funds. By comparing the same group across the two periods, we can see which S&P 500 components, in the aggregate, these particular hedge funds have been buying and selling.

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

One of the components that stands out with notable buying, is Legg Mason (NYSE: LM). Legg Mason is a global asset management firm with $686 billion in assets under management as of May 31, 2014. The Company provides active asset management in many major investment centers throughout the world.

We should point out before going any further, that 13-F 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 13-F 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.

However, we believe that looking at groups of 13-F filings can be an interesting exercise, especially when comparing one holding period to another. So, let's take a look at the change in LM positions across that group of 3,692 funds we have looked at that have filed for the 03/31/2014 period, versus back at their 12/31/2013 report. We found that between these two periods, hedge funds increased their holdings by 7,604,520 shares in the aggregate, from 99,326,367 up to 106,930,887 for a share count increase of approximately 7.66%.

The overall top three funds holding LM on 03/31/2014 were: