Why Are These Five Stocks Trending Today?

With all three indices in the red today, shares of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:KBIO), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Fairchild Semiconductor Intl Inc (NASDAQ:FCS), Schlumberger Limited. (NYSE:SLB) and ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) are trending for various reasons. So let’s take a look at these stocks today and see the hedge fund sentiment towards them.

At Insider Monkey, we track over 730 hedge funds and other institutional investors. By analyzing their quarterly 13F filings we determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on, which allows us to mimic some of these picks and beat the market. Our focus is the small-cap picks of the investors we track and by imitating the 15 most popular small-cap stocks among these funds we have managed to generate returns of around 102% since August 2012, outperforming the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by some 53 percentage points (see more details here).

The first on the list is KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:KBIO), which has filed for bankruptcy court protection. The drugmaker listed between 100 and 199 creditors with liabilities between $1 million and $10 million. A similar amount of assets was recorded too. It’s been less than two weeks since the company’s former CEO Martin Shkreli was arrested for securities fraud and the company got a delisting notice from NASDAQ.

Among the funds we follow, KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:KBIO) is not very popular with only one fund reporting a long position in the last round of 13F filings, amassing around 3.3% of its outstanding stock. Jim Simons‘ Renaissance Technologies owned 135,610 shares at the end of September.

Second in our list of trending stocks is Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), whose shares are in the red amid a Reuters report stating that a federal Judge in Manhattan gave a green light to two U.S. class-action lawsuits against the company. There are retail and institutional investors who say they lost money after buying Facebook shares at inflated prices in connection with the initial public offering in May 2012. They should pursue their claims as a group.

Among the funds we follow, 128 reported long positions in Facebook as of the end of September, down by five funds over the quarter.  Stephen Mandel‘s Lone Pine Capital is the largest shareholder of the company among the investors we follow, with 10.70 million shares valued at $962.1 million as of the end of the third quarter.

On the next page we are going to discuss the developments that put Fairchild Semiconductor, Schlumberger Limited, and ConocoPhillips in the spotlight.

Next on our list is Fairchild Semiconductor Intl Inc (NASDAQ:FCS), whose shares are 3.3% in the green following the announcement that the company has received a revised acquisition offer of $21.70 per share cash and states that it will  “carefully review and consider” this offer, which values the company’s equity at $2.46 billion. In November, the company signed a plan of merger with ON Semiconductor Corporation, under the terms of which a subsidiary of ON Semiconductor agreed to acquire Fairchild at $20.00 per share.

Fairchild Semiconductor Intl Inc (NASDAQ:FCS) registered a decrease in popularity among the funds we track, with 14 investors holding long positions versus 20 funds in the previous quarter. Chuck Royce‘s Royce & Associates is the largest shareholder with 1.64 million shares, valued at $23.0 million at the end of September.

Finally, among the trending securities today are Schlumberger Limited. (NYSE:SLB) and ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP), whose shares are in the red on the back of a drop in oil prices. Yesterday, the American Petroleum Institute (API) published weekly data showing that the crude oil inventory rose 2.9 million barrels last week.

According to our database, 61 hedge funds were long Schlumberger Limited. (NYSE:SLB) while 44 funds held shares of ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) at the end of the third quarter.

Disclosure: none