Why United Natural Foods, Wells Fargo, Intersil, and Two Others Are Trending On Tuesday

After falling sharply on Friday, volatility is lower this week as some Fed officials have given somewhat contradictory signals on the timeline of an eventual interest rate hike. On one hand, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Dennis Lockhart, gave his personal opinion that there should be “serious discussion” about whether the economy is strong enough to absorb a hike. On the other hand, Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard hinted that she was on the dovish side and espoused “prudence” in terms of interest rate hikes.

In this article we’ll analyze why traders are talking about Blue Buffalo Pet Products Inc (NASDAQ:BUFF), United Natural Foods, Inc. (NASDAQ:UNFI), Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK), Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC), and Intersil Corp (NASDAQ:ISIL) today. We’ll also see how hedge funds are positioned in the five stocks using the latest 13F data.

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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Blue Buffalo Pet Products Inc (NASDAQ:BUFF) is in the spotlight after the company announced that some of its stockholders intend to offer 14.3 million shares of the company for sale in an underwritten secondary offering. Because it isn’t the one doing the selling, Blue Buffalo will not receive any of the proceeds. The offering is expected to close on September 16. Of the 749 hedge funds that we track which filed 13Fs for the June quarter, 26 owned shares of Blue Buffalo Pet Products Inc (NASDAQ:BUFF) at the end of June. Shares of the company are flat in pre-market trading.

Traders are talking about United Natural Foods, Inc. (NASDAQ:UNFI) after the company reported stronger-than-expected fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016 results. For the period, United Natural Foods earned $0.70 per share, or $0.07 better than expectations. Revenue was $2.22 billion, up by 7.8% year-over-year, and in-line with estimates. Adjusted net income for the full 2016 fiscal year was $2.59 per share (versus $2.85 per share for fiscal year 2015) on sales of $8.47 billion (up by 3.5% year-over-year). In terms of guidance, UNF’s management expects GAAP EPS of $2.53-to-$2.63 for fiscal 2017 on revenue of $9.43 billion-to-$9.6 billion. Ken Fisher‘s Fisher Asset Management was long 741,170 shares of United Natural Foods, Inc. (NASDAQ:UNFI) at the end of the second quarter, up by 1% from the number of shares it was long at the end of the first quarter.

On the next page, we’ll examine why Chesapeake Energy, Wells Fargo, and Intersil Corp have traders’ attention this morning.