Why These Stocks Are Trading Higher on Monday?

Stocks kicked off with a bullish trend on Monday morning after the long Easter weekend. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average are up by approximately 0.31% and 0.26%, respectively. Among the notable stocks which are rising today include Alder Biopharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ALDR), Sunedison Inc (NYSE:SUNE), Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A), ADT Corp (NYSE:ADT) and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc (NYSE:HOT). Let’s dig deeper and see why these stocks are trading higher today.

At Insider Monkey, we track around 790 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. The key is to focus on the small-cap picks of these funds, which are usually less followed by the broader market and allow for larger price inefficiencies (see more details about our small-cap strategy).

Alder Biopharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ALDR)’s stock has surged by 17% after the company announced top-line data of ALD403, its drug for migraine. According to Randall C. Schatzman, the CEO of ALDR, the company has met the primary and secondary endpoints of Phase 2b ALD403 drug trial. At the end of the fourth quarter, 17 funds we track at Insider Monkey were bullish on Alder Biopharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ALDR), down from 23 funds a quarter earlier, while the total value their positions decreased to $235.21 million from $241.59 million and totaled 16.30% of the company’s stock. Billionaire Steve Cohen‘s Point72 Asset Management reported ownership of 1.28 million shares of Alder BioPharmaceuticals in its last 13F filing.

On Monday morning, UBS assigned a “Buy” rating to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A), with a price target of $244,500 per share. According to the analyst, Berkshire Hathaway’s relatively sloppy performance was due to problems in insurance and railroads. UBS says that Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A) has structural advantages which will help it grow its earnings. At the end of the fourth quarter, 75 investors from our database held shares of Berkshire Hathaway with a total value of $19.3 billion, versus  69 investors and $19.4 billion, respectively a quarter earlier. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, managed by Michael Larson, owns approximately 74 million shares of Berkshire Hathaway.