Why Are These Stocks Shining Bright Today?

Weight Watchers International, Inc. (NYSE:WTW), Fitbit Inc. (NYSE:FIT), Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:CRBP), Team Health Holdings LLC (NYSE:TMH), and Amsurg Corp (NASDAQ:AMSG) are trending today on a spate of news. Let’s take a closer look inside the headlines and see what has investors so excited about them.

Wall Street Bull

First, a little about ourselves: our website tracks hedge fund moves. We pay attention to hedge funds’ moves because our research has shown that hedge funds are extremely talented at picking stocks on the long side of their portfolios. It is true that hedge fund investors have been underperforming the market in recent years. However, this was mainly because hedge funds’ short stock picks lost a ton of money during the bull market that started in March 2009. Hedge fund investors also paid an arm and a leg for the services that they received. We have been tracking the performance of hedge funds’ 15 most popular small-cap stock picks in real time since the end of August 2012. These stocks have returned 102% since then and outperformed the S&P 500 Index by around 53 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe it is important to pay attention to hedge fund sentiment; we also don’t like paying huge fees.

Weight Watchers International, Inc. (NYSE:WTW) is up by another 30% following yesterday’s 105% rally on optimism that Oprah Winfrey’s recent purchase of 6.36 million shares and seat on the company’s board will help ramp up revenue and profits for the company. We suspect short covering is also playing a big part too, as 27.5% of Weight Watchers International’s float is short. At some point, the rally will retrace, although currently it’s good times for Weight Watchers’ shareholders, including Winfrey herself, who has made over $60 million on her investment already.

Shares of Fitbit Inc. (NYSE:FIT) are up by 6.4% today after the company announced that Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS), Aon Service Corporation, and Gonzaga University are among the more than 20 enterprise clients Fitbit has picked up in the last four months. Barclays will be providing more than 75,000 of its employees in the U.S and U.K with the option of buying a Fitbit device at a subsidized price. Although the news is certainly positive and enterprise support will increase demand, we believe the 6% push today may be an overreaction. Shares remain very volatile ahead of the company’s December 15 lockup expiration.

Hedge funds seem to be underweight Fitbit Inc. (NYSE:FIT). Of the 730 elite funds we track, 27 owned worth $249.92 million of the company’s stock (representing 3.20% of the float) at the end of June. This compares to the 33.9% of the float that is short. John Griffin‘s Blue Ridge Capital owns 3.5 million shares, while Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global Management LLC owns 500,000 shares. Daniel Benton’s Andor Capital Management owns 350,000 shares.

On the next page, we’ll analyze why Team Health Holdings, Amsurg, and Corbus Pharmaceuticals are trending.