All three major US indexes opened higher on Friday amid weaker dollar following the release of lower-than-expected non-farm payroll figures released by the Labor Department.
Among the companies that are making headlines on the last day of the trading week are Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT), Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (NYSE:HPE), Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC), and Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C). In this article, we are going to take a closer look at why the five companies are trending and use the latest SEC filings to determine how elite funds are positioned towards them.
Hedge fund sentiment is an important metric for assessing the long-term profitability. At Insider Monkey, we track over 740 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 here).
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Facebook’s Free Internet Initiative Suffers a Setback
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is in the spotlight after a SpaceX rocket carrying one of Facebook’s first commissioned satellites exploded yesterday. The AMOS-6 satellite, which was part of Facebook’s Internet.org program and was valued at around $200 million, would have brought internet access to millions of people in Africa, who otherwise would not have been able to afford it. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:
“As I’m here in Africa, I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent. Fortunately, we have developed other technologies like Aquila that will connect people as well. We remain committed to our mission of connecting everyone, and we will keep working until everyone has the opportunities this satellite would have provided.”
Andreas Halvorsen‘s Viking Global owned 20.1 million shares of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) at the end of June, which represented around 10% of its equity portfolio.
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Follow Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META)
Wal-Mart Cuts Costs
A few weeks after announcing that it would spend $3.3 billion to buy Jet.com, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is planning to recoup some of that capital outlay by cutting jobs. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company plans to eliminate around 7,000 jobs in back office positions such as accounting and invoicing by using automated technologies and other methods. The eliminated jobs are some of the higher-paying and most-coveted positions at Wal-Mart. A total of 58 funds from our database had a bullish position in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) at the end of the second quarter, up by four funds from the previous quarter.
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Follow Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT)
On the next page, we examine Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Bank of America Corp, and Citigroup.
