Investors Are Excited About These 5 Stocks As The Trading Week Kicks Off

The Republican Presidential ticket is now set after Donald Trump formally announced that Indiana Governor Mike Pence will be his VP running mate. Gun rights activists are no doubt happy, as Pence has an ‘A’ rating from the National Rifle Association. The governor has also previously worked to roll back some gun control laws.

Amidst the political backdrop, five stocks, including three gun-related ones, are trending this morning. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the news driving interest in the shares of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT), Coach Inc (NYSE:COH), Smith & Wesson Holding Corp (NASDAQ:SWHC), Sturm, Ruger & Company (NYSE:RGR), and TASER International, Inc. (NASDAQ:TASR) this pre-market, and see how the elite funds tracked by Insider Monkey are positioned in each stock.

At Insider Monkey, we track around 765 hedge funds and institutional investors. Through extensive backtests, we have determined that imitating some of the stocks that these investors are collectively bullish on, can help retail investors generate double digits of alpha per year. The key is to focus on the small-cap picks of these funds, which are usually less followed by the broader market and allow for larger price inefficiencies (see the details here).

Wal-Mart Labor Unions Collaborate Across Pacific

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is in the spotlight after Reuters published an exclusive article stating that OUR Wal-Mart, a U.S. labor union with the support of around 100,000 Wal-Mart workers, collaborated with the Wal-Mart Chinese Workers Association, a Chinese Wal-Mart labor group, to talk strategy about how to increase wages and flexibility. The collaboration is one of the first of its kind. Although increased collaboration between labor groups could theoretically lead to higher wages and potentially lower Wal-Mart’s profits, analysts don’t expect the cross-ocean collaboration to yield meaningful benefits for labor workers any time soon, given that the two unions don’t have much leverage at the moment. Warren Buffett‘s Berkshire Hathaway owned owned more than 55 million shares of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) at the end of March.

Analysts Upgrade Coach 

Traders are watching Coach Inc (NYSE:COH) today after analysts at Baird upgraded the stock to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ and raised their price target on it to $50 per share from $45 per share. The analysts see demand improving for Coach products as the U.S economy remains strong. Coach shares have rallied by 31% year-to-date and pay an attractive 3.19% annual dividend yield at current prices. 37 funds in our database owned shares of Coach Inc (NYSE:COH) as of the most recent 13F reporting period, unchanged from the end of the previous quarter. Shares are up by 1.6% in pre-market trading.

On the next page we examine why Smith & Wesson, Sturm Ruger & Company, and TASER International are being watched closely this morning.