A Look at Five Stocks Gaining Ground on Wednesday

US stocks are trading in the red on Wednesday as traders await the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve’s July meeting, which might give clues on the rate hike timing.

Nevertheless, a number of stocks are trading higher today, including Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX), Urban Outfitters, Inc. (NASDAQ:URBN), OSI Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSIS), MeetMe Inc (NASDAQ:MEET), and Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc (NYSE:LL). Let’s take a closer look at the events that sent these stocks higher and analyze the hedge fund sentiment towards them.  

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Morgan Stanley Bullish on Valeant Pharmaceuticals

Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX)’s stock has gained over 14% so far today after Morgan Stanley upgraded the company to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal weight’ and upped its price target to $42 from $33 as the investment firm  believes that the risk of “severe” financial stress is abating because the company is renegotiating its covenants and paying the debts. Morgan Stanley’s analyst David Risinger said in a report that the Canadian medical company has strong growth prospects under its new CEO, Joe Papa. Mr. Risinger thinks that if Valeant’s Enterprise Value remains constant, deleveraging would result in higher equity value accretion. Earlier this week, Mizuho Securities also upgraded Valeant to ‘Neutral’ following reports that the company placed an offer to pay lenders a higher interest rate in order to amend its debt agreements. Activist Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square owns 21.59 million shares of Valeant Pharmaceuticals as of the end of June.

Urban Outfitters Posts Impressive Q2

Urban Outfitters, Inc. (NASDAQ:URBN)’s stock has surged by some 16% on the back of the company posting better-than-expected results for the second quarter. Overall, the Philadelphia-based lifestyle retail company earned $0.66 per share on revenue of $890.6 million during the quarter, surpassing the consensus estimates of $0.56 and $886.84 million, respectively. In addition, comparable-store sales rose 1%, while analysts had expected a decline of 1.2%. Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies owns about 1.25 million shares of the company, according to its last 13F filing

On the next page, we will discuss the other three stocks that are trading higher today.