Why JPMorgan (JPM), Facebook (FB), and Fitbit (FIT) Are Among Today’s Trending Stocks

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Despite declining oil and gold prices, the markets are up on Wednesday, driven by surprisingly positive Chinese international trade data and a stronger dollar. Some of the stocks trending today are JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C), Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ARWR), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), and Fitbit Inc (NYSE:FIT), all of which are witnessing robust activity. Let’s take a look into the catalysts pushing the action on these stocks today and see what the hedge funds in our database think about the companies involved.

At Insider Monkey, we track more than 785 hedge funds, whose 13F filings we analyze as part of our small-cap strategy. Our research has shown that imitating a portfolio that includes the 15 most popular small-cap stocks among hedge funds can outperform the market by as much as 95 basis points per month on average (see more details here).

JPMorgan Soars on Earnings Beat

Let’s start with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), probably one of the most relevant stocks today. Shares of the mega-cap bank are up by roughly 4.5% on Wednesday afternoon, following the announcement of the company’s first quarter financial results. Before the market opened this morning, JPMorgan posted earnings of $1.35 per share, $0.09 ahead of the consensus estimate, on revenue of $24.08 billion, which also beat estimates by $680 million. Expectations were somewhat low, so the results seem to have made most analysts happy. For instance, Wells Fargo highlighted “the consumer beat, better-than-feared [investment banking] results, visible cost discipline, and positive fee guidance.”

Among the funds that we track, 100 were long JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) at the end of the fourth quarter of 2015. A noteworthy position was that of Alex Snow’s Lansdowne Partners, which disclosed ownership of 20.16 million shares worth more than $1.3 billion as of December 31.

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Citi Also Benefits From JPMorgan’s Results

Another bank surging on Wednesday is Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C), which has gained more than 5.3% since the bell rang this morning, driven by JPMorgan’s beat. The company is scheduled to report its own first quarter financial results on Friday, and the Street is predicting earnings of $1.04 per share on revenue of $17.68 billion, down from $1.52 per share and $19.81 billion a year earlier.

Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) also counts plenty of hedge fund supporters. At the end of the fourth quarter, 106 funds in our database held long positions in the stock, owning 6.5% of its float. The largest of those positions was held by Boykin Curry’s Eagle Capital Management, which declared holding 25.26 million shares of the company valued at $1.3 billion as of December 31.

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The latest concerning three other trending stocks is dissected on the following page.

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