These Stocks Are in Spotlight on Monday for Various Reasons

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In other news, General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) caught our attention after reports that the company managed to reach a tentative agreement with the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union on Sunday night, which covers around 52,000 employees. The new agreement was reached minutes before the previous contract was set to expire. Last week, the UAW managed to reach a similar agreement with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (NYSE:FCAU). Last week, General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) reported strong financial results for the third quarter, with revenue beating the estimates by some 25% (see details).

Visa Inc (NYSE:V) is also heading towards being a highly traded stock today, as it is already nearly 2% up in pre-market trading. Yesterday, USAA, which is the top issuer of credit and debit cards, announced the decision to switch its portfolio to Visa. The same news will probably hit Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA)‘s stock today, since Mastercard processed USAA transactions for around 30 years. It’s interesting that Visa Inc (NYSE:V) is also more popular among the hedge funds from our database, with 98 reporting long positions in the company, compared to 75 with stakes in Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA). Among investors bullish on Visa Inc (NYSE:V) is billionaire Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management, which further increased its stake in the third quarter and reported holding 14.63 million shares as of the end of September. Fisher also owns some 235,400 shares of Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA).

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is also in the news today on the back of the new store opening in New York on the well-known Fifth Avenue. The store is the largest of Microsoft’s 113 retail locations and represents an attempt of the company to boost its interaction with customers. On Friday, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) reported its financial results for the third quarter (see more details), which sent its stock 10% in the green in the intraday session.

Disclosure: none

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