RenTech’s Secret Formula Sent Buy Signals On These Tech Stocks

In Marc Zuckerberg’s Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Renaissance Technologies purchased a stake of 2.65 million shares with a value of $217.60 million during the first quarter. Facebook has returned 5.8% year-to-date and is up by 27.9% during the last year. Facebook and Marc Zuckerberg surprised the market last year by announcing the purchase of Oculus and its Rift virtual reality (VR) headset. When the news was announced, the markets were fairly skeptical but now it seems like Zuckerberg knew what he was doing, since the VR market is projected to explode in the coming years. The market of 1.2 billion gamers isn’t however the only market Zuckerberg is after, as he’s revealed that the VR technology could be applied to any kind of video conference call, appointment, or event. Christopher Lord of Criterion Capital seems to think that it was a great idea, since he added 16% to his stake in Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), giving him 2.76 million shares. Facebook is the third-most popular stock among hedge funds (see the rankings here).

Lastly, in San Francisco-based Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), Renaissance Technologies bought a stake of 2.62 million shares with a value of $131.38 million. Twitter, with a slightly negative return now year-to-date, announced earlier in June that its CEO Dick Costolo had resigned and would leave the company on July 1. Twitter is now about to enter into the Artificial Intelligence race, competing with giants like Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) after its announced acquisition of Whetlab last week. This acquisition is in line with Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)’s purchase of Madbits last year. Indeed, Twitter has to do something in order to increase its revenues, which had a low growth rate in the first quarter. Scott Fine and Peter Richards from Empire Capital Management also bought a stake in Twitter during the first quarter, of 260,856 shares.

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