Why These 5 Stocks Are Surging Amid Today’s Gloomy Market

Amira Nature Foods Ltd (NYSE:ANFI) shares are surging on hopes of a share buyback program being announced by the company today. Following the completion of an audit for fiscal years 2013 through 2015, the company said no material changes to its financial reports are required and that it plans to implement a share repurchase program, recently approved by the board. No further information with regard to the size of the program has been offered. Amira shares are currently trading up by roughly 30% from Friday’s closing price.

Hedge funds are not particularly interested in Amira Nature Foods Ltd (NYSE:ANFI), as only four of them reported a long position in the stock as of the end of September, together amassing less than 1% of the company’s common stock. Polaris Capital Management, run by Bernard Horn, held 129,217 shares of Amira at the end of September.

Affimed NV (NASDAQ:AFMD) is up by more than 14% after the company announced a research collaboration with Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK). According to the terms of the agreement, Affimed will finance a clinical trial to investigate the possibility of combining Merck’s KEYTRUDA(R) with its drug candidate AFM13 for the treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma. Affimed shares are trending higher on heavy volume, having slumped by 47% since the start of the year.

At the end of the third quarter, roughly 33% of Affimed NV (NASDAQ:AFMD)’s common stock was held by nine of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey. Although Samuel Isaly‘s Orbimed Advisors held the largest of those nine stakes, he reduced his position by 21% over the quarter to 4.58 million shares.

Disclosure: None