Polaris, Syntel: Why These 5 Stocks Are Making Big Moves Today

After selling off by almost 4% on Friday, crude futures have bounced back today and are 0.74% in the green as investors anticipate the upcoming API report on Tuesday.

Among the stocks showing a great deal of movement today are Polaris Industries Inc. (NYSE:PII), Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN), Caesarstone Ltd (NASDAQ:CSTE), VimpelCom Ltd (ADR) (NASDAQ:VIP), and Syntel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNT). Let’s take a closer look at the robust trading activity in these stocks today and see how successful hedge funds are positioned in them.

At Insider Monkey, we track around 750 hedge funds and 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 the details here).

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Polaris Industries Inc. (NYSE:PII) is almost 6% in the red after the company issued disappointing full-year EPS guidance of $3.30-to-$3.80, or $2.50-to-$2.70 per diluted share lower than previously expected. Management also expects full-year 2016 sales to decline in the mid-to-high single-digit percentage range. Polaris’ management previously guided for sales to be between flat and a decline of 2%. Part of the reason for the lowering of its guidance was due to further RZR thermal-related issues. 17 hedge funds in our system owned shares of Polaris Industries Inc. (NYSE:PII) at the end of the second quarter, unchanged from the end of the previous quarter.

Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN) shares are off by almost 20% on Monday after the biotech company issued an update related to two clinical trials conducted with Janssen Research & Development, LLC over the telomerase inhibitor imetelstat. According to the update, Geron said:

“Planned internal reviews of initial data from both trials have been completed by Janssen, and both trials are continuing in order to evaluate additional and more mature data.”

The mention of the need for additional time likely disappointed some traders who were expecting good news from the update. The number of funds that we track which had holdings in Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN) fell by one during the second quarter to 11 at the end of June.

On the next page, we’ll examine why Caesarstone, VimpelCom, and Syntel are on the move today.

Caesarstone Ltd (NASDAQ:CSTE) shares have rocketed upwards by 13% in afternoon trading after Bloomberg published a story saying that Isreali private equity firm Tene Investment Funds has agreed to purchase 1.00 million shares in Caesarstone from founder/major shareholder Kibbutz Sdot Yam for $43.5 million. Moreover, Tene has the option to purchase 2.00 million shares within the next half-decade. Ten funds in our database had a long position in Caesarstone Ltd (NASDAQ:CSTE) at the end of the second quarter, down by four funds quarter-over-quarter.

VimpelCom Ltd (ADR) (NASDAQ:VIP) is 6.4% in the red after one of its major shareholders, the Norwegian telecom Teleno, announced its intention through an offering held by VimpelCom to sell 142.5 million American Depositary Shares and to grant underwriters the option to purchase an additional 21.375 million ADSs. Although VimpelCom will not receive any cash from the sale by Telnor, traders didn’t like the fact that Telnor was cutting its holdings in the company. Ten funds in our system owned $113.56 million worth of VimpelCom Ltd (ADR) (NASDAQ:VIP) shares on June 30, which accounted for 1.70% of the float.

Syntel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNT) has rallied by over 10% today after the tech company’s Board of Directors declared a special, one-time  cash dividend payment of $15 per share to shareholders of record at the close of business on September 22. The dividend will be funded by a one-time repatriation of around $1.24 billion of cash held by the company’s foreign subsidiaries and through borrowings under a new senior credit facility. Due to the repatriation, Syntel is revising its 2016 EPS outlook to a loss of between $0.60 and $0.75 from the previous expectations of a profit of between $2.55 and $2.70. Jim Simons‘ Renaissance Technologies owned almost 700,000 shares of Syntel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNT) at the end of June.

Disclosure: None