This Week's Top Hedge Fund Moves: GAMCO, Lone Pine & Viking Global

Many investors consider tracking hedge fund moves central to their strategy. Thus, let’s take a look at this week’s most relevant hedge fund moves.

GAMCO Investors

As usual, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors was quite active this week. On Tuesday, the fund disclosed a new position, with 2,980,338 shares of Common stock, in DealerTrack Technologies Inc TRAK.  The stake, worth more than $185 million, accounts for 5.43 percent of the company’s shares outstanding, and make of GAMCO the fifth largest known institutional investor.

On Monday, Gabelli declared another move, this time in micro-cap Eastern Co EML. After acquiring 55,906 shares of Common Stock, the fund said it owns 387,341 shares, or 6.2 percent of the company’s outstanding stock. Following this transaction, GAMCO is the second-largest institutional investor at Eastern Co, only trailing NSB Advisors.

Two Other Giants

Two other big hedge funds (with equity portfolios worth more than $25 billion, each) disclosed moves this week. Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital said it has added 3,010,321 shares of Class A Common Stock to its holding at Charter Communications, Inc. CHTR, taking them to 6,338,300 shares, which represent 5.7 percent of the company’s outstanding stock, and make it the second-biggest institutional investor, after SPO Advisory Corp and ahead of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

For its part, Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global Investors disclosed, on Monday, a new stake in Whiting Petroleum Corp WLL, comprising 10,260,287 shares, or 5 percent of the outstanding stock. The wage positions the fund, once again, among the largest institutional investors in the company, along with the Vanguard Group, Paulson & Co. and Citadel Advisors.