Trending Stocks: Lockheed Martin to Get Trump Boost? Plus the Latest on ConocoPhillips, Netflix, Pfizer, and More

Crude futures are lower today as traders brace for the upcoming OPEC meeting later this month. If the cartel fails to agree on the specifics of a production cut, some analysts think crude could fall to $40 per barrel. If they do come to an agreement, the commodity could rise to $50 per barrel or higher.

In this article, we’ll examine the reasons why Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT), ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP), eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY), Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE), and Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) are in the spotlight this morning, and uncover relevant hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks using the latest 13F data.

At Insider Monkey, we track over 750 hedge funds, whose quarterly 13F filings we analyze and determine their collective sentiment towards several thousand stocks. However, our research has shown that the best strategy is to follow hedge funds into their small-cap picks. This approach can allow monthly returns of nearly 95 basis points above the market, as we determined through extensive backtests covering the period between 1999 and 2012 (see the details).

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Traders are watching Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT) after Carter Copeland of Barclays upgraded the stock to ‘Equal Weight’ from ‘Underweight’ and hiked his price target on it to $275 from $245. Copeland thinks that the market is pricing in an almost-certain probability that the Trump administration will spend more in defense in the near-term. More defense spending will likely benefit the U.S. Aerospace and Defense sector and Lockheed. Of the 749 funds in our system which filed 13Fs for the June quarter, 39 owned $1.19 billion worth of Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT)’s stock on June 30, which accounted for 1.60% of the float.

ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) shares are in the green in the pre-market hours after the oil and gas giant announced that it will divest between $5 billion and $8 billion in assets (with much of it focused on North American gas) and use some of the money to finance a $3 billion stock buyback program. In addition, ConocoPhillips has a debt target of $20 billion, a 20%-to-30% payout of operating cash flows, and modest production growth to drive cash flow and margin expansion. The company expects 2017 full year production to be in the range of 1.54 million-to-1.57 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, versus the full year 2016 production expected average of 1.54 million BOE/D. 43 funds in our database were long ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) at the end of June.

On the next page we’ll find out why eBay, Pfizer, and Netflix are trending.