A Look at Five Trending Stocks on Friday

US stock market inched up on Friday amid job data that showed that the US added 215,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate grew slightly to 5% from 4.9% on the back of an increase in labor force participation rather than job losses. On the other hand, a report published by the Bank of Japan on Friday showed that the business confidence in the country has slipped to its lowest levels in three years. Among the trending stocks today are Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY), Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc (NYSE:HOT), Marriott International Inc (NASDAQ:MAR), and TerraForm Power Inc (NASDAQ:TERP). In this article we are going to take a look at the latest developments surrounding these stocks and see what the funds from our database think about them.

At Insider Monkey, we track around 730 hedge funds and institutional investors. Through extensive backtests, we have determined that imitating some of the stocks that these investors are collectively bullish on can help retail investors generate double digits of alpha per year. The key is to focus on the small-cap picks of these funds, which are usually less followed by the broader market and allow for larger price inefficiencies (see more details about our small-cap strategy).

Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s stock opened higher, but has slightly retreated and settled at around 3% in the green after the company unveiled its low-cost Model 3 Sedan on Thursday. The car starts from the base price of $35,000 excluding tax credits and incentives. The production is set to start by 2017 and pre-orders surpassed 130,000 within the first 24 hours, beating all estimates. After this development, Dougherty upped Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’a price target to $500, which is much higher than the closing price of $229 a day earlier. At the end of the fourth quarter, 29 of the hedge funds track by us held positions in Tesla, with a total value of $837.4 million, representing some 2.7% of the company’s outstanding stock. Daniel Benton’s Andor Capital Management owns approximately 1 million shares of the company.

BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)’s shares tumbled by 8% today following the company’s earnings report for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016. The Canadian phone market reported a revenue of $487 million, down by 26% on year-on-year basis and $76 million lower than expected. However, Blackberry’s loss of $0.03 per share, was better than the loss of $0.10 estimated by analysts. BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) is undergoing a major transformation from hardware to software and 32% of the company’s revenue came from software and services. John Chen, CEO of Blackberry, expressed his satisfaction over the software side of the business. The company added that  it expects a growth in software and services business by 30% and positive free cash flow and adjusted EBITDA for the full fiscal 2017. Overall, 24 hedge funds out of those tracked by Insider Monkey held positions in Blackberry heading into 2016, having amassed 16.1% of the company’s stock.  Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Financial Holdings reported ownership of approximately 46 million shares in the company in its last 13F filing.

The shares of both Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc (NYSE:HOT) and Marriott International Inc (NASDAQ:MAR) slid by more than 5% on Friday following news that the Chinese consortium Anbang Insurance Group abandoned its proposal to buy Starwood Hotels for $14 billion in cash. This offer dwarfed the $13.6 billion bid by Marriott. Marriott International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MAR) and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (HOT) encouraged shareholders to support the deal. Both companies will host their separate shareholder meetings on April 8. At the end of 2015, 52 hedge funds out of those tracked by us held positions in Starwood Hotels with an aggregate value of $325.4 million. John Paulson’s Paulson & Co is one of the biggest shareholders of Starwood with ownership of approximately 11 million shares. In Marriot, a total of 34 funds reported long positions worth $606.5 million in aggregate as of the end of 2015. Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group owns approximately 1 million shares of Marriott.

TerraForm Power Inc (NASDAQ:TERP) inclined by 6% in pre-market trading today after billionaire investor David Tepper‘s Appaloosa Management upped its stake in the clean power company to 10.88% from 9.5%. In this way, Appaloosa owns 10.81 million shares of TerraForm Power. In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Appaloosa urged the company to remove the members of its Corporate Governance and Conflicts Committee and to replace them with members elected by its publish shareholders. In addition, the investor said it had asked for the removal of TerraForm’s CEO, Brian Wuebbels, and the appointment of a monitor or director to the board that would represent the interests of publish shareholders of TerraForm. On Wednesday, TerraForm said that Wuebbels had resigned from his CEO and President positions. Overall, 24 funds among those we track have stakes in the power company as of the end of 2015, which represent more than 30% of the company’s outstanding stock. Another shareholder of TerraForm is Andrew Feldstein‘s Blue Mountain Capital owns approximately 9.1 million shares of the company.

Disclosure: none