Why Chesapeake, Wal-Mart Stores, Amazon, UPS, and FedEx Are in Spotlight Today

Traders are awaiting today’s EIA report after yesterday’s API data showed that inventories falling 0.75 million barrels last week versus expectations of a 2.5 million barrel increase.

In this article, we analyze why investors talking about five stocks, Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK), Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS), and FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX). We also find out how the smart money investors in our database of 749 funds feel about these stocks.

We believe that imitating hedge funds and other large institutional investors can be helpful in identifying stocks capable of outperforming the broader market. Through extensive research that covered portfolios of several hundred large investors between 1999 and 2012, we determined that following the small-cap stocks that large money managers are collectively bullish on, can generate monthly returns nearly 1.0 percentage points above the market (see the details here).

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Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK) shares are trending after Carl Icahn’s Icahn Capital LP filed to sell another 15 million shares of the company (according to a Form 144), with UBS being the book runner. Icahn had previously pared his stake by 37.7 million shares to 35.3 million shares in a move that Icahn termed as for ‘tax planning’ purposes. According to our database, 31 funds owned shares of Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK) at the end of June, unchanged from the previous quarter.

Traders are talking about Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) after Financial Times reported that the retailing giant is in preliminary talks for potentially buying a stake in Flipkart, which is, in many ways, an Indian version of Amazon.com. If it buys a stake, Wal-Mart would be beefing up its e-commerce presence abroad and would take the battle with Amazon.com to India as well. Wal-Mart previously shelled out over $3 billion to buy e-commerce startup Jet.com. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owned over 40 million shares of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) at the end of June, down by 28% over the quarter.

On the next page, we examine why Amazon.com, United Parcel Service, and FedEx Corporation are each trending.