Why These 5 Stocks Are Posting Big Moves Today

The markets are surging on Monday, with all major U.S stock indexes, as well as oil and gold trading up. Of course, not all stocks are benefiting from the overall trend. In this article we will take a look into the events driving the moves in both directions that we’ve witnessed in the shares of Banco Bradesco SA (ADR) (NYSE:BBD), MannKind Corporation (NASDAQ:MNKD), Lucas Energy, Inc. (NYSEMKT:LEI), Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX), and Endo International plc – Ordinary Shares (NASDAQ:ENDP) today. In addition, we will analyze what the collection of hedge funds in our database think about these companies.

At Insider Monkey, we track more than 785 hedge funds, whose 13F filings we analyze as part of our small-cap strategy. Our research has shown that imitating a portfolio that includes the 15 most popular small-cap stocks among hedge funds can outperform the market by as much as 95 basis points per month on average (see more details here).

Back to Monday’s movers, let’s start with Banco Bradesco SA (ADR) (NYSE:BBD), which is up by almost 6% in the early afternoon hours. It is in fact just one of several U.S-traded stocks of Brazilian companies that is on the rise today, driven by a surge of almost 2% in the Brazilian Real, which in turn, was triggered by increasing speculation about the likeliness of President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment.

Among the funds that we track, nine of them were long Banco Bradesco SA (ADR) (NYSE:BBD) at the end of the fourth quarter. A noteworthy position was that of Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management, which held 10.61 million shares of the company valued at more than $51 million.

Next up is MannKind Corporation (NASDAQ:MNKD), which is trading up by more than 23.5% today after the company announced it would host an analyst call to share information concerning its U.S commercialization strategy for Afrezza® (insulin human) Inhalation Powder with investors. The biopharmaceutical company recently assumed responsibility for the worldwide development and commercialization of the drug from Sanofi SA (ADR) (NYSE:SNY) and will start distributing it in the third quarter of this year. Sanofi will continue to distribute Afrezza from its existing inventory until that time.

11 funds in our database held long positions in MannKind Corporation (NASDAQ:MNKD) at the end of the fourth quarter. While hedge fund support was not overly high, several funds became very bullish during the quarter, including D E Shaw, which reported a position of 1.06 million shares, up by more than 6,000% quarter-over-quarter.

We’ll examine the latest activity in three more of the day’s trending stocks on the following page.

Shares of Lucas Energy, Inc. (NYSEMKT:LEI) are trading up by more than 12.2% this afternoon, in what seems to be a continuation of a spike seen last week . Over the past five trading days, the stock has more than doubled in value, driven by news that the company managed to secure $10 million of equity capital from an institutional investor. An additional $5 million will be made available to Lucas Energy, Inc. (NYSEMKT:LEI) through the exercise of a second warrant upon mutual consent. As of December 31, none of the funds in our database held long equity stakes in the company.

Among Monday’s top decliners is Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX), which is down by roughly 4.3% after the company’s Board requested its outgoing CEO, Michael Pearson, to cooperate with the Senate Committee on Aging’s subpoena, prior to the scheduled April 27 hearing. In fact, according to the company’s statement, “The Board understands that Mr. Pearson is in dialogue with the Senate Committee on Aging regarding his deposition and that those discussions are ongoing.”

Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square is one of the largest stockholders of record in Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX) and has repeatedly made headlines due to its heavy losses from the investment. The fund recently disclosed a 9% stake in the company comprised of about 30.71 million shares, with 9.12 million of those shares underlying over-the-counter American-style call options. In addition to Pershing Square, 82 other funds in our database were long Valeant at the end of the fourth quarter, with their combined stakes accounting for more than one-third of the company’s outstanding shares.

Finally, there’s Endo International plc – Ordinary Shares (NASDAQ:ENDP), which is down by approximately 7.8% this afternoon. It appears the driving force behind the decline is the weak financial guidance provided by Insys Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:INSY). Insys has lost almost 20% today on disappointing first quarter sales guidance for its fentanyl painkiller, Subsys, as prescription volumes slumped over the period, potentially due to public backlash against opioids. Endo International sells the well-known opioid pain medication Percocet.

Among the investors followed by Insider Monkey, 53 were long Endo International plc – Ordinary Shares (NASDAQ:ENDP) at the end of the fourth quarter, with their combined stakes accounting for more than 20% of the company’s float. A noticeable position was that of Jacob Gottlieb’s Visium Asset Management, which declared holding 5.17 million shares of the company as of December 31.

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article.