Twilio Inc (TWLO), Alphabet Inc (GOOGL) and More: These 5 Stocks Are Dominating the Charts

The global markets are trending lower on the final day of the trading week, as the Shanghai Composite closed down by 0.28% while the Hang Seng closed 0.49% lower. Various European markets, including the FTSE 100 and CAC 40 also finished in the red. Even the U.S markets, which were expected to retain their Fed-fueled ascent, all in the red this morning.

Nonetheless, several stocks are red-hot right now, having hit 52-week highs yesterday. Those stocks are Becton Dickinson and Co (NYSE:BDX), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM), Workday Inc (NYSE:WDAY), and Twilio Inc (NYSE:TWLO). In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at what’s been fueling these stocks to new heights.

In our backtests, a portfolio of the 15 most popular small-cap stocks generated monthly alpha of 81 basis points, versus 0.7 percentage points posted by hedge funds’ top large- and mega-cap picks (see more details).

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Twilio Inc (NYSE:TWLO) hit a 52-week high yesterday and has pushed it even higher this morning, being up by 3.86% on the day. The company announced the acquisition of Kurento earlier this week, which will allow it to integrate Kurento’s media server technology with its products. It will be used for various purposes such as tanscoding and recording media processing features and group calls. The deal was just Twilio Inc (NYSE:TWLO)’s second acquisition since its 2007 launch; it acquired Authy early in 2015. Nine of the hedge funds that we track held about $47 million worth of Twilio’s stock at the end of June. The company went public on June 23 and its shares have already gained over 134%.

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) hit its 52-week high of $819.06 yesterday amid news that its cloud service will be used by the Royal Bank of Scotland to test blockchain technologies for banking purposes. The field is currently dominated by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM). The news was announced by consulting firm GFT, which said that the technology will also be used by other bank clients of the firm. Google also launched a new funding round for Airbnb via its VC arm, Google Capital, which was revealed yesterday. The number of funds in our hedge fund database long either Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Class A or Class C shares stood at 187 at the end of June.

We’ll check out three more stocks that are flying high right now on the next page.

QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) touched its 52-week high of $64 yesterday. It was announced earlier this month that the company will collaborate with four other companies to form a consortium called Avanci. The consortium will jointly license patents in the Internet of Things (IoT) market. The other four companies are Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), KPN, ZTE, and InterDigital, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDCC). Ericsson also hit a 52-week high earlier this month, shortly after the deal was announced. The alliance will remove the need for acquiring separate licenses for developing IoT-enabled products. 48 hedge funds in our database had positions in QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) at the end of June, with their total holdings valued at about $3.97 billion, or 5.10% of QUALCOMM’s outstanding stock. Those figures were down from $4.42 billion in shares being held by 59 hedge funds on March 31.

Becton Dickinson and Co (NYSE:BDX) shares rose to their 52-week high of $181.76 yesterday, moving strongly on the news of its $100 million investment in its Nebraska plant to boost its insulin syringe manufacturing. The funds will be used to update the plant’s technology and equipment. The company also announced the launch of its wireless diagnostic device, the BD Veritor Plus System. The device is used for detecting influenza A and B, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and group A strep. Among the funds we track, 41 held $695 million worth of Becton Dickinson and Co (NYSE:BDX)’s stock in aggregate at the end of June, having amassed 1.90% of its outstanding stock. There were 32 investors long $964 million worth of its shares a quarter earlier.

Workday Inc (NYSE:WDAY) inked an agreement with Qantas earlier this week which contributed to the stock hitting its 52-week high yesterday. Under the agreement, the Australian airline will use Workday’s technology for managing its enterprise applications. The U.S.-based Workday had earlier clinched a deal with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The technology company is looking to the Asia Pacific market for further expansion. Workday competes with the likes of SAP and Oracle, but is much smaller in size. 25 hedge funds that we track hold about $1.01 billion in Workday shares at the end of June, amounting to 6.90% of the float.

Disclosure: None