Here’s Why Traders Are Buzzing About Sprouts Farmers Market, Transocean, Mobileye, and More

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Crude futures are in the red again this morning as sentiment around the commodity remains sluggish. Although OPEC jawboning could always send the price of the commodity up, many investors won’t jump in until inventory data shows U.S. shale production slowing or topping, something that hasn’t happened yet.

While crude is commanding a lot of attention, five stocks, Sprouts Farmers Market Inc (NASDAQ:SFM), Transocean LTD (NYSE:RIG), Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF), Mobileye NV (NYSE:MBLY), and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC), are also in the spotlight. Let’s take a deeper look at why each stock is trending and analyze how elite funds were positioned among them according to the latest 13F data.

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).

Sprouts Farmers Market Inc (NASDAQ:SFM) shares have popped in the pre-market after Bloomberg reported that chain store Albertsons has held preliminary talks to potentially merge with Sprouts. Albertsons is backed by the private equity fund, Cerberus, which manages tens of billions of dollars. If it does sell itself, Christopher Mandeville of Jefferies estimates that Sprouts could sell for $26 per share based on historical transactions in the past. Mandeville currently has a $22 price target. Of the 742 elite funds we track, 23 funds owned $164.96 million of Sprouts Farmers Market Inc (NASDAQ:SFM) and accounted for 6.10% of the float on December 31, versus 22 funds and $139.94 million respectively on September 30.

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Transocean LTD (NYSE:RIG)

 is in the spotlight after Norway’s Borr Drilling agreed in a letter of intent to purchase 15 drilling rigs from the company for $1.35 billion. Those rigs include 10 rigs currently operating and five under construction. Despite the news, Transocean shares are modestly lower in the pre-market due to the lower crude futures. 29 top funds were long Transocean LTD (NYSE:RIG) at the end of the fourth quarter, down 6 funds from the previous quarter.

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On the next page, we analyze the events causing Tiffany & Co, Mobileye NV, and Intel Corporation to trend.

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