Here’s What You Should Know about These Five Trending Stocks

A strengthening dollar against the Japanese Yen and a rise in oil prices gave a boost to the markets on Monday. Among the companies that are making headlines today are Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL), Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), and LendingClub Corp (NYSE:LC). In

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Google and Oracle Back in Court

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Google and Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) are back in court regarding their six-year old legal dispute over software infringement. A U.S. District Court in San Francisco will determine today whether Google’s use of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in its mobile platform Android is fair use or not. The dispute between the two tech giants started when Oracle sued Google in 2010 and claimed that Google used 37 Java APIs in Android. Sun’s Java became the property of Oracle after its acquisition of 2009. The first trial was won by Google, but a US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned that decision in 2014 and said that API comes under the intellectual copyright laws. But Google was not barred from using 37 APIs in Android. If the decision goes in favor of Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL), Google will have to pay $8.8 billion to the Enterprise company. The outcome of this case is also crucial for thousands of Android app and software developers.

As of March 31, Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management holds 973,292 class A shares of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), whereas First Eagle Investment Management was one of the biggest Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) shareholder with more than 39 million shares of the company as of March this year.

Twitter Stops Providing Data to US Intelligence Agencies

Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has stopped Dataminr, a New-York based data gathering and tweet analysis service, from providing information to US intelligence agencies, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Dataminr is a private company that sends news, analysis and alerts regarding terror attacks, political unrest and other activities to its clients, which include US secret agencies. The source cited a senior U.S. intelligence official who confirmed the information.  Twitter has a 5% stake in Dataminr and it is the only service having full access to the real-time stream of current and historical tweets on the social media service. The source cited a person familiar with the matter, who said that executives at Dataminr recently told the intelligence services that Twitter no longer wants the service to provide data to the agencies.

Out of the total funds tracked by Insider Monkey, 30 funds had long positions in Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) at the end of the fourth quarter of 2015. Paul Cantor, Joseph Weiss, and Will Wurm’s Beech Hill Partners owns 85,370 shares of the company, as of the end of the first quarter.

On the next page, we will take a took at why the Facebook and LendingClub Corp are trending today.

Facebook Wins Trademark Case in China

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has won its trademark battle in China after a Beijing court ruled against a Chinese beverage company which had registered the trademark “face book” in 2011 and in 2014 got the approval to use the trademark despite the objections from Facebook. The Beijing Municipal High People’s Court said that registering “face book” was an obvious act of copying. Facebook is banned in China, but the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is trying hard to get the social media service opened in China.

As of the end of March, Columbus Circle Investors owns more than 2.8 million shares of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). Overall, at the end of the last year, 146 funds from our database held around $10 billion worth of the company’s stock, up from 128 investors a quarter earlier.

LendingClub Board’s CEO Departs Following Violation of Company Policies

LendingClub Corp (NYSE:LC)’s stock plunged more than 22% this morning after the company announced that its CEO, Renaud Laplanche, has resigned after the board found that he violated company’s business practices after an internal investigation. The internal review revealed that near-prime loans of $22 million were extended to one investor, who had provided instructions against such actions.  Three senior managers were also ousted following the investigation. President Scott Sanborn will take over as the acting CEO of the San Francisco-based online lending company. In a statement, the company said that the effect of the $22 million loans was minor, but the violation of business practices and lack of disclosure was unacceptable to the board.

Among the funds we track, 18 held shares of LendingClub Corp (NYSE:LC) at the end of 2015. As of March, Alexander Tamas’s VY Capital reported holding 4.4 million shares.

Disclosure: None