Here’s Why These Five Stocks Are Trading Higher Today

The US stock market is advancing on Thursday uplifted by the Fed’s decision to keep interest rates unchanged. In other positive news, initial jobless claims for the previous week were the lowest since April. 

A number of stocks are trading higher than the broader market, including Anavex Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:AVXL), Vipshop Holdings Ltd – ADR (NYSE:VIPS), Centrus Energy Corp (NYSEMKT:LEU), Wave Life Sciences Ltd (NASDAQ:WVE) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). In this article, we will look at the news that sent these stocks higher and will see what the funds from our database think about them.

At Insider Monkey, we track around 740 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).

Anavex Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:AVXL) jumped by over 21%, boosted by positive results for its ANAVEX 2-73, a sigma-1 receptor agonist. The drug candidate showed efficacy in supporting potential disease modification in Parkinson’s disease. Two funds tracked by us held just $442,000 worth of Anavex Life Sciences’s stock in aggregate at the end of June, down from five investors that held $921,000 worth of shares a quarter earlier.

Vipshop Holdings Ltd – ADR (NYSE:VIPS)’s stock has appreciated by over 7% so far today, although no particular news seem to be behind the rally. However, despite the gains, the stock is down by nearly 2% year-to-date. At an event in New York on Tuesday, China’s Premier Li Keqiang stated that China could maintain a medium-to-high growth rate in the long term. On Wednesday, Keqiang said that China plans to further push the economic development by opening its economy more widely.  The number of funds from our database long Vipshop Holdings slid to 25 from 42 during the second quarter and the total value of their holdings fell to $604 million from $879 million.

Centrus Energy Corp (NYSEMKT:LEU) stock is trading 15.47% in the green following news of the company signing a contract with UT-Battelle for maintaining and advancing U.S. gas centrifuge uranium enrichment technology. The contract is worth nearly $25 million and will remain in effect till September 30, 2017. Centrus will offer engineering and testing services. It will work on the American Centrifuge uranium enrichment technology, which will be used for energy security and national security requirements.

Wave Life Sciences Ltd (NASDAQ:WVE) stock has surged by 15% as it is keeping up its momentum and is already almost 200% up from its bottom of $9 in the first quarter of the year. The main point driving the stock price higher is the company’s potential filing of INDs for Huntington’s disease program later this year. Six hedge funds we track hold about $194 million of Wave Life Sciences shares as on the end of June quarter, up from five funds holding $128 million worth of stock a quarter earlier.

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) stock inched up by 0.13% amid news of growth in the number of advertisers on its Instagram platform. The platform now has 500,000 advertisers, up from 200,000 it had at the end of February. A total of 148 investors we track hold about $15.24 billion worth of Facebook stock as of the end of June, down from 164 funds with stakes worth $14.53 billion in aggregate. Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) ranked as the most popular stock among the funds we track at the end of the last quarter.

Disclosure: none