Updated with additional comments from Jim Cramer.

There's no doubt about it, 2016 is off to an awful start. As I write, just five weeks into the New Year, the big S&P 500 is down about 10% already. And investors big and small are moving from seeking return on capital to return of capital.

With anxiety ratcheting higher, there are some interesting things happening on the institutional side of things. 

When institutional investors unload stocks en masse, they're sending a big message. After all, admitting to their "sell list" is often an act of contrition for hedge funds -- and even the most disciplined investors don't like spotlighting the names they're getting creamed on.

Scouring fund managers' hate list is valuable for two important reasons: It includes names you should sell too, and it includes names that could soon present buying opportunities.

Why would you buy a name that pro investors hate?

It's because, often, when investors get emotionally involved with the names in their portfolios, they do the wrong thing. The big performance gap between hedge funds and the S&P 500 index in the last couple of years is proof of that. So that leaves us free to take a more sober look at the names fund managers are capitulating on.

Luckily for us, we can get a glimpse at exactly which stocks top hedge funds' hate lists by looking at 13F statements. Institutional investors with more than $100 million in assets are required to file a 13F, a form that breaks down their stock positions for public consumption. From hedge funds to mutual funds to insurance companies, any professional investors who manage more than that $100 million watermark are required to file a 13F. Today, we'll take a look at five stocks that are getting the most selling from institutions as a group.

Without further ado, here's a look at five stocks fund managers hate.

Apple

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Up first on hedge funds' hate list is Apple (AAPL) - Get Report . The Apple hate is notable for a couple of reasons. First, the fourth quarter is the second consecutive one during which Apple was one of the most-sold stocks in institutional portfolios. And second, the rest of the tech sector (including all of Apple's major peers) saw huge buying activity from funds this past quarter. According to research released last month by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, long-only hedge funds are 62% underweight Apple right now based on S&P weightings. That's a big conviction bet against this stock.

But the selling continues. Funds unloaded another 13.01 million shares of Apple in the fourth quarter, dumping a $1.24 billion position at current price levels.

Apple is a consumer electronics giant. The firm's line of PCs, phones, tablets and wearables is the most profitable in the entire industry. For instance, Canaccord Genuity estimates that Apple earns approximately 94% of the smartphone industry's profits, despite selling only about 15% of its phones. The numbers are similar for Apple's Macintosh line of computers, out-earning peers that have seen their product lines commoditized. One key to Apple's earnings prowess is software. Because the firm's hardware operates in a closed software ecosystem, Apple users are more likely to "keep it in the family."

Financially speaking, Apple is extremely cheap right now. The firm currently has $152.8 billion in net cash on its balance sheet, enough to pay for 29% of its market capitalization at current price levels. Ex-cash, Apple trades for about 7 times trailing earnings right now. And while shares have been under pressure year-to-date, Apple still looks like a buying opportunity long-term.

As funds sell Apple, it makes sense to pick shares back up.

Apple is also a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS charitable portfolio.

Cramer and co-portfolio-manager Jack Mohr wrote recently that they have "reiterated many times our positive, long-term view on shares given the myriad upcoming catalysts, the enormous cash balance and well-seasoned management team." However, they noted, investor concern about "the tough upcoming quarter" could mean that shares will "remain range-bound in the near term until catalysts come to fruition in the back half of the year.

"Own apple, don't trade it," Cramer added recently. "The service stream will be huge in 2016."

Exclusive Look Inside: You see Jim Cramer on TV. Now, see where he invests his money and why Apple is a core holding of his multi-million dollar portfolio. 

Want to be alerted before Jim Cramer buys or sells AAPL? Learn more now.

Kinder Morgan 

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Kinder Morgan (KMI) - Get Report  has had a rough year. In the last 12 months, shares have lost about 64% of their market value, as a rough energy market forced the firm to cut its dividend payout by 75% to avoid needing to raise capital to keep it up. In the aggregate, funds sold 24.38 million shares of this stock as a result. The irony is that, while funds dumped Kinder Morgan en masse during the fourth quarter, this energy infrastructure stock has actually been outperforming the rest of the market ever since the calendar flipped to 2016.

Kinder Morgan is the biggest midstream energy company in the world, with more than 80,000 miles of pipeline and 180 terminals in its huge portfolio. That network transports, stores, and processes everything from natural gas to crude oil to ethanol. And while the firm's fee-based contracts mean that Kinder Morgan gets paid for the volume of commodities it handles, distancing shares from commodity price swings, the prolonged rout in commodity prices have threatened Kinder's customers and put the kibosh on this stock's growth.

Frankly, there's a lot to like about being a buyer in Kinder Morgan right now. The pronounced selloff in shares means that this stock's dividend yield is back up to 3.4%. And, from a technical standpoint, shares are starting to show traders a reversal pattern that triggers on a breakout above $17. That said, it's still a little early to start being a buyer here -- but a move through $17 looks like a reduced-risk opportunity to pick up shares of Kinder Morgan.

Comcast

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Cable utility Comcast (CMCSA) - Get Report  is having a unique year in 2016. It's one of the few mega-cap stocks that's actually higher than it started the year. Comcast is the biggest company in the cable industry -- its networks reach 55 million households nationwide. In recent years, Comcast has undergone a massive transformation, buying out NBC Universal to gain control of the NBC broadcast network, film studio, and a couple dozen cable networks.

That big bid for content assets comes at a key time for cable networks. As competition from streaming services spurs more consumers to "cut the cord" and skip conventional cable service, Comcast's NBCU assets mean that it's able to get cheaper access to valuable content for its own uses -- and it's able to earn revenues licensing that content to the streaming services. Still, Comcast is a cable network at heart, and the fact that it owns a vast, high-speed network means that it's able to court data-hungry users with only modest infrastructure investments overall.

Hedge funds still hate Comcast, however. Last quarter, funds unloaded 43.27 million shares of this $143 billion cable stock, a $2.5 billion sell operation at current price levels. There are certainly worse names to own than Comcast right now, but it's not a particularly standout stock either. That said, as long as the flight-to-quality continues in 2016, asset-heavy utility businesses should continue to be a good defensive bet.

Union Pacific 

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It's not hard to see why funds hate Union Pacific (UNP) - Get Report  right now. This $64 billion railroad stock has railroaded investors' portfolios in the last year, shedding nearly 40% of its market value in the last 12 months. So predictably, funds have been shedding their positions in Union Pacific, cutting 6.8 million shares of this big stock collectively in the fourth quarter.

Union Pacific has been at the mercy of big macro trends in recent quarters. The firm is the largest public railroad on the continent, with 32,000 miles of track concentrated in the Western half of the country. Railroads are a great investment when commodity prices are high -- they're vastly more efficient per freight ton mile than trucking, and since commodity producers are one of their biggest customers, high prices mean higher freight charges can go without much pushback.

But with commodity prices plummeting, the firm's huge exposure to transporting coal, agricultural commodities and the like is under immense pressure. At the same time, more shipments are moving to trucks, which move freight faster, albeit at a higher cost. Unless oil prices rebound in a big way, expect Union Pacific's business is likely to remain under pressure.

This is one sell that the funds got very right.

Walmart

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Now for one that the funds got very wrong. I'm talking about retail behemoth Walmart (WMT) - Get Report . Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer on the planet, moving more than $485 billion in merchandise last year. The firm was a conspicuous laggard in 2015, but it's been in rebound-mode this year, rallying 7% in the first five weeks of 2016. In other words, Walmart is outperforming the S&P by a whopping 16% as I write this year.

That marks some exceptionally bad timing on the part of hedge funds. Funds sold off almost 16 million shares of Walmart in the fourth quarter, making up a $1.05 billion sell operation at today's price levels.

In a lot of ways, Walmart is the antithesis of Amazon.com (AMZN) - Get Report , a stock that did extremely well in 2015 and that's correcting very hard this year. It's primarily brick-and-mortar, with a network of 11,453 stores worldwide. And it's immensely profitable, earning $16 billion last year. For a little perspective, while Walmart and Amazon trade at similar market capitalizations right now, Walmart's profits last year were 27 times higher than Amazon's profits from the last four years combined. That speaks a lot to the difference in these two retailers' trajectories right now.

And Walmart has been sharing those profits with shareholders, paying out a 3% dividend yield at current levels and returning capital through a $20 billion share buyback over the next two years. That buyback operation amounts to almost 10% of Walmart's outstanding share base at current price levels. That's a big contributor to shareholder yield right now.

Put simply, Walmart looks like a name you want to own in 2016.

Disclosure: This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author was long AAPL and WMT.