3 Stocks Getting Clobbered Today For Very Different Reasons

Freeport-McMoRan Inc (NYSE:FCX) 

• Investors with Long Positions (as of June 30): 41
• Aggregate Value of Investors’ Holdings (as of June 30): $582 million
• Percentage of Shares Owned by Investors: 3.00%

Lastly is Freeport-McMoRan Inc (NYSE:FCX), down by 9.46% after it was revealed that the mining company would sell up to $1 billion in shares, which comes hot on the heels of its share sale in August, when it sold 96.7 million shares for $1 billion in gross proceeds. Freeport-McMoRan is the latest target of activist investor Carl Icahn, who took a stake of 88.0 million shares towards the end of August, calling the stock “undervalued”. Shares gained over 25% after his position was revealed and have trended even further up since then, even factoring in today’s losses.

Even before Icahn’s big move, funds in our database were showing extreme bullishness towards Freeport-McMoRan during the second quarter, as ten additional firms held long positions in the stock by the end of the period, and the aggregate value of investors’ holdings more than doubled, despite a slight decline in the value of the stock. However, this is a case where the smart money has not been rewarded thus far, as shares plummeted by over 50% during the third quarter before Icahn’s intervention. Yesterday, we profiled Freeport-McMoRan as a stock that could suffer from a rate hike, based on JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM)’s list of the 25 companies with the most floating-rate debt on their balance sheets. Coincidentally, the stock has tumbled today despite the lack of said rate hike.

As of June 30, Stanley Druckenmiller’s family office Duquesne Capital held the largest position in Freeport-McMoRan within our database, at just under 3.55 million shares, which also happened to be a new position. Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management also opened a large new position during the quarter, of 2.02 million shares.

Disclosure: None