With all eyes on the political debate later this evening, all three major index futures are moderately in the red as traders take profits and protect gains.
Among the stocks that are grabbing attention today are major names such as Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE), Deutsche Bank AG (USA) (NYSE:DB), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), as well as one company that just reported its earnings, Cal-Maine Foods Inc (NASDAQ:CALM). Let’s take a look into why each stock is attracting attention and use the latest 13F regulatory filings to see what the smart money thinks of each stock.
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 here).
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Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) is trending today after its management team decided that its current one-company structure with two distinct and complementary businesses was the best strategy to maximize future value creation going forward. Pfizer had previously considered splitting into two companies, Pfizer Essential Health and Pfizer Innovative Health, to help the market better understand the inherent value in the company. Pfizer said:
“We believe that by operating two separate and autonomous units within Pfizer we are already accessing many of the potential benefits of a split – sharper focus, increased accountability, and a greater sense of urgency – while also retaining the operational strength, efficiency and financial flexibility of operating as a single company as compared with operating as two, separate publicly traded companies. We will continue to generate the financial information necessary to preserve our option to split our businesses should factors materially change at some point in the future.”
Ken Fisher‘s Fisher Asset Management trimmed its stake in Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) by 1% during the second quarter to just over 31.7 million shares at the end of June.
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Follow Pfizer Inc (NYSE:PFE)
Deutsche Bank AG (USA) (NYSE:DB) shares are 5.76% in the red after German Chancellor Angela Merkel ruled out any sort of financial assistance from the government to the embattled investment bank, whose capital levels aren’t exactly the picture of health right now. In addition, Merkel has refused to intervene in the DOJ suit over Deutsche Bank’s past mortgage-related misdeeds during and before the financial crisis. The DOJ has asked for up to $14 billion for Deutsche Bank to settle those cases, a sum that is multiples of what analysts were previously expecting. Not many funds owned Deutsche Bank AG (USA) (NYSE:DB) at the end of June. According to our database of 749 funds that filed 13Fs for the June 30 reporting period, only 15 of them were long a collective 0.30% of Deutsche Bank’s float at that time.
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Follow Deutsche Bank Ag (NYSE:DB)
On the next page, we’ll take a closer look at the latest out of Cal-Maine Foods, Netflix, and Amazon.
