Why These Five Stocks Are Trending Today

Page 1 of 2

U.S. stocks are down on Monday, driven by tumbling oil prices and the anticipation building up around the Federal Reserve meeting. However, stocks are oscillating in both directions.

Among the stocks posting relevant moves, we can count NeoPhotonics Corp (NYSE:NPTN), Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD), MGIC Investment Corp. (NYSE:MTG), Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) and Ritter Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:RTTR). Let’s take a look into the events behind the volatility of the stocks in question, and see what the hedge funds in our database think about them.

At Insider Monkey, we track around 765 hedge funds and other institutional investors. Through extensive backtests, we have determined that imitating some of the stocks that these investors are collectively bullish on can help retail investors generate double digits of alpha per year (see more details about our small-cap strategy).

stock, trading, market, trader, traders, investor, investment, screen, bank, banking, share, broker, graph, business, chart, index, data, information, capital, team, money,

Matej Kastelic/Shutterstock.com

NeoPhotonics Spikes On Needham Upgrade

So, let’s start with NeoPhotonics Corp (NYSE:NPTN), which has gained more than 17% on Monday, driven by a bullish report from Needham & Company’s Alex Henderson, Quinn Bolton and James Ricchiuti, who predicted a cycle with three major simultaneous drivers. Consequently, the experts boosted their rating on shares of NeoPhotonics and four other optical components stocks from ‘Buy’ to ‘Strong Buy’. As of the end of the first quarter, 17 funds among those we track are long NeoPhotonics Corp (NYSE:NPTN). Notable was the stake of Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies, which last disclosed ownership of 1.16 million shares.

Follow Neophotonics Corp (NYSE:NPTN)

AMD Rises After Bullish Forbes Article

Next up is Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD), which is surprisingly up about 17.75% on more than double its average volume, and witnessing plenty of options activity. Behind such a surge seemed to be a Forbes article written by Patrick Moorhead, who shared a look into the company’s “positive” decision to diversify its silicon manufacturing away from GlobalFoundries. “We have the option of enabling production with Samsung if needed as part of the strategic collaboration agreement they have with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to deliver 14nm FinFET process technology capacity,” AMD told Moorhead. “All in all, this lowers the risk to AMD and their products and puts them in a much better position on CPUs, APUs and SoCs then they have been in years,” the analyst concluded. A total of 13 funds among those we track were long Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) at the end of the first quarter of 2016. Among them were D E Shaw, which held 4.68 million shares and Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies, which disclosed ownership of 794,400 shares.

Follow Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD)

Page 1 of 2