A Look at Today’s Trending Stocks: Phillips 66 (PSX), Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) & More

Wall Street is well in the green today as worries over a potential rate hike on the horizon fade away. Helping the bulls are crude prices, which are up by 1.7% as sentiment around the commodity has bounced back.

Among the stocks trending/on the move are is one energy related company, as well as some other notable stocks. Let’s take a deeper look into Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ:WFM), Aralez Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ARLZ), and Platform Specialty Products Corp (NYSE:PAH) and use the latest hedge fund data to see what elite funds think of the five stocks.

While there are many metrics that investors can assess in the investment process, the hedge fund sentiment is something that is often overlooked. However, hedge funds and other institutional investors allocate significant resources while making their bets and their long-term focus makes them the perfect investors to emulate. This is supported by our research, which determined that following the small-cap stocks that hedge funds are collectively bullish on can help a smaller investor to beat the S&P 500 by around 95 basis points per month (see the details here).

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Billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway keeps increasing its exposure to Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX), at least according to the latest SEC filing, which showed that Berkshire added 1.02 million shares in the refiner between September 12 and September 14. In this way, Berkshire currently owns over 80.67 million shares, which represent 15.4% of Phillips 66’s outstanding stock. Although crack spreads weren’t very healthy in the second quarter, many analysts anticipate the spread between crude and distillate products to widen over time as refiners cut back on production/refining. Among the funds we track,  26 owned $7.27 billion worth of Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX)’s stock, which accounted for 17.40% of the float on June 30.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is making some headlines after the tech giant announced a new 253 MW wind farm in West Texas, which will generate enough energy to power almost 90,000 American homes. Amazon has contracted Lincoln Clean Energy to do the construction and operation work, while Amazon will in turn purchase 90% of the energy generated from the plant. Given that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s AWS division consumes a substantial amount of energy and is growing rapidly, Amazon’s dive into sustainable energy will help the company in the long run by helping lower renewable energy costs through more investment in the sector. The smart money was pretty bullish on Bezos and Co’s brainchild in the second quarter, as 145 funds from our database owned shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) at the end of June, up by 12 funds from the end of March.

On the next page, we find out why Whole Foods Market, Aralez Pharmaceuticals, and Platform Specialty Products Corp are trending.
Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ:WFM) is 1% in the green today after the grocery chain opened its third 365 outlet. Whole Foods’ new 365 store, which sells around 7,000 products, versus the 25,000 products sold in normal Whole Foods’ stores, is part of the management’s hope of turning around the company and increasing its profits. Shares of Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ:WFM) have fallen by 15% year-to-date and trade close to their 52 week low. Hedge fund sentiment in the stock has been relatively stable. 26 funds tracked by Insider Monkey reported long positions in Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ:WFM) at the end of June, up 1 from the previous quarter.

Aralez Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ARLZ) bulls are happy today as shares are up by over 8% after the FDA approved YOSPRALA for the secondary prevention of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events in patients at risk for aspirin-associated gastric ulcers. Due to the FDA’s approval, Aralez Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ARLZ) plans to increase its sales force by 85 to 110, and to commercially launch the product in the US during the first week of October. According to our data, 20 funds owned $65.24 million worth of Aralez Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ARLZ)’s shares, which represented almost a third (30.90%) of the outstanding stock at the end of June.

Platform Specialty Products Corp (NYSE:PAH) shares have retreated by almost 8% after after the company commenced a public offering of $350 million shares worth of common stock. Platform intends to use the money raised for general corporate purposes. The pricing and terms of the offering were not revealed in the initial press release. Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square owned 42.7 million shares of Platform Specialty Products Corp (NYSE:PAH) at the end of the second quarter.

Disclosure: None