Here’s Why Goldman Sachs, Rite Aid, Teck Resources, Freeport-McMoRan, and More are in the Spotlight

It’s Tuesday and the markets are calm once again as volatility remains low on Wall Street. The VIX fear index is hovering just around 11.13, while all three major index futures are up modestly.

In this column, let’s examine why Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS), Rite Aid Corporation (NYSE:RAD), Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (NASDAQ:WBA), Teck Resources Ltd (USA) (NYSE:TECK), and Freeport-McMoRan Inc (NYSE:FCX) are trending and use 13F data to determine what the smart money thinks of each stock.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 39.7% gains over the past 12 months and outperformed the 24.1% gain enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs. Our enhanced small-cap hedge fund strategy returned more than 45% over the last 12 months and outperformed SPY by more than 30 percentage points over the last 4.5 years (see details here).

Not long after launching Marcus, an online-lender for the middle class, Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) is said to be working on  a robo-adviser for the mass affluent sector as well. Although a Goldman spokesperson declined to comment, the bank has a job listing targeting potential employees to aid in building robo-adviser platform. Robo-advisers are the new trend and they will help Goldman win more support from the general public. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owned more than 10.9 million shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) at the end of December.

Although its stock has already fallen substantially, Rite Aid Corporation (NYSE:RAD) could even more downside if its merger with Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (NASDAQ:WBA) doesn’t go through according to analyst George Hill of Deutsche Bank — the analyst thinks Rite Aid could fall to as low as $2.25 per share in the worst case scenario. Currently, the FTC has concerns with the proposed merger despite the two companies attempting to make concessions. With that said, no one really knows the future and the worst case might not occur. Of the 742 elite funds we track, 42 were long $1.44 billion of Rite Aid Corporation (NYSE:RAD) and 63 owned $4.27 billion of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (NASDAQ:WBA) at the end of Q4.

On the next page, we examine Teck Resources Ltd (USA), and Freeport-McMoRan Inc.