Here’s Why Traders Are Buzzing about These Five Stocks on Friday

On the last day of the trading week, crude futures are modestly higher and the S&P 500 futures are pretty much flat. Among the stocks that display more volatility than usual are Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), Concordia Healthcare Corp (NASDAQ:CXRX), and TerraForm Power Inc (NASDAQ:TERP). Let’s take a look at the news that attracted attention to these stocks and analyze how hedge funds have been trading these stocks.

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Microsoft Down On Earnings

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares have lost 8% so far today after the tech giant reported a soft third fiscal quarter. For the period, Microsoft earned $0.62 per share on revenue of $22.1 billion, missing the bottom-line by $0.02 per share and meeting top-line estimates. Sales dropped 5.5% on the year due to the strong dollar and the challenging PC market. Although sales of the company’s cloud offering, Azure, more than doubled (rose 120%) in the quarter, investors were not as impressed because of Azure’s small base compared to Microsoft’s total revenues. Guidance is a bit light and the company expects next quarter sales to be in the range of $21.7 billion to $22.4 billion, versus estimates of $23.1 billion. Jeffrey Ubben’s ValueAct Capital was among 140 top funds, which Insider Monkey tracks, that owned shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) at the end of the fourth quarter of 2015.

Traders Sell Alphabet After Quarterly Miss

Search and mobile giant Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) wasn’t immune to a bad quarter either, as the company, like Microsoft, reported disappointing results. In the first quarter, Alphabet earned $7.50 per share on sales of $20.26 billion, versus estimates of $7.97 and $20.37 billion, respectively. Declining ad prices were one of the reasons for the lower revenue, as the average cost per click dropped by 9% year-over-year. In terms of segment performance, Alphabet’s Google division is still the 800 pound gorilla, with the segment’s sales jumping 17% year-over-year to $20.1 billion. The Other Bets division, which includes self driving cars, reported revenue of $166 million and an operating loss of $802 million. Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global owned more than 1.85 million class A shares of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) at the end of December. Shares of the company are down 6% in the intraday trading.

On the next page, we take a closer look at the news involving General Electric Company, Concordia Healthcare Corp, and TerraForm Power.