Crude futures are in the green on Tuesday as traders look forward to the upcoming API inventory release later today. Not surprisingly, the S&P, Dow, and Nasdaq are also well up in morning trading, as some investors have become more bullish given the S&P reaching an all-time high.
Among the stocks traders are talking about today are Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL), Alcoa Inc (NYSE:AA), Seagate Technology PLC (NASDAQ:STX), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). In this article, we’ll find out why each stock is in the spotlight and examine what elite funds think of each of them.
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Analyst Give Thumbs Up to Oracle
Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) shares are moderately higher today after analysts at BMO Capital Markets upgraded the database software maker’s stock to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ and raised its price target on the stock to $47 from $45. The analysts believe Oracle’s growth prospects are sound and that the stock trades for a decent discount to where it should. Shares of Oracle sport a forward P/E of 13.5 versus the Nasdaq’s 19. 62 elite funds in our database had a long position in Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) at the end of the first quarter.
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Follow Oracle Corp (NYSE:ORCL)
Alcoa Reports Solid Results
Alcoa Inc (NYSE:AA) is over 3% higher after reporting stronger than expected earnings for the second quarter. For the period, the materials manufacturer earned $0.15 per share on revenue of $5.3 billion, beating the consensus estimates by $0.05 per share and $100 million respectively. The company’s smelting and mining operations reported sales of $2.3 billion, up by 7% quarter-over-quarter, while the company’s engineering segment for automotive and aerospace turned in $3.5 billion in sales, up by 1% year-over-year. Alcoa management said that the company remains on track to break up into two parts sometime in 2016. 37 funds that we track owned shares of Alcoa Inc (NYSE:AA) as of the most recent 13F reporting period, down by four funds from the previous reporting period.
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Follow Howmet Aerospace Inc. (NYSE:HWM)
On the next page, we’ll find out why Seagate Technology, Facebook, and Microsoft are in the spotlight this morning.
