Why These 5 NYSE Stocks Are Down Big Time Today

Bill Barrett Corporation (NYSE:BBG) is trading down by about 12% this afternoon, even amidst surging oil prices. It seems like the drop has been triggered by the firm’s financial and operational update, released yesterday, which led to a ratings downgrade from research firm Ladenburg Thalmann, which demoted the stock to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ earlier today.

That may prove to be disappointing to the hedge funds in our database, which were becoming increasingly bullish on the company. Among the funds that we track, 16 disclosed long stakes in Bill Barrett Corporation (NYSE:BBG) as of the end of the third quarter of last year, up by 6.6% quarter-over-quarter. In fact, the largest hedge fund investor of record in our database, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, boosted its position by 35% over the period, taking its holding to approximately 1.2 million shares.

VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), which also reported its quarterly financial results on Tuesday afternoon, is down by more than 8.5% in Wednesday trading. The company delivered earnings of $1.26 per share on revenue of $1.87 billion, beating the Street’s consensus of $1.25 per share and $1.85 billion. However, guidance for the first quarter came in considerably below analysts’ expectations, which seems to have disappointed investors.

Two other announcements that caught shareholders’ attention on late-Tuesday were that of the departure of CFO and COO Jonathan Chadwick, who will be replaced as CFO by EMC’s CFO Denis Cashman. Furthermore, the company revealed that it will cut 800 jobs, instead of the 900 that management had previously specified.

VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW) counts a nice number of hedge fund backers, 35 among those that we track. One of its largest supporters as of the end of the third quarter was Matt Sirovich and Jeremy Mindich’s Scopia Capital Management, which disclosed ownership of 1.83 million shares worth about $144 million as of September 30.

Finally, we’ve got Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT), down by about 10% in the afternoon hours. Before the market opened today, the company posted EPS of $0.81 on sales of $3.92 billion, missing the Street’s consensus of $0.83 and $4.18 billion respectively. The company’s outlook for 2016 also came in below analysts’ expectations.

Interestingly, it seems like hedge funds saw the poor performance coming. Over the third quarter, Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT)’s hedge fund support fell by 21% to 26 funds in our system. Among those that fled the company, we can point to Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management, which sold all of its 1.55 million shares during the third quarter of 2015.

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article.