Facebook, Google, and More: Why Investors Are Buzzing About These 5 Stocks

All three indexes are in the red today as traders again take profits off the table from the market’s run-up over the past few months after the fears concerning Britain’s decision to exit the EU subsided.

Among the stocks investors are talking about today are several tech companies and two grocers/retail stores. Let’s dive in and analyze the events affecting Kroger Co (NYSE:KR), PriceSmart, Inc. (NASDAQ:PSMT), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) and use the latest SEC filings to see how many of the smart money investors that we follow have added each stock to their portfolios.

Hedge fund sentiment is an important metric for assessing the long-term profitability. 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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Kroger Co (NYSE:KR) is in the spotlight after the grocer reported mixed earnings for its fiscal second quarter. Although the company’s earnings of $0.47 per share came in $0.02 ahead of expectations, Kroger’s revenue of $26.57 billion missed by $220 million. Sales rose by 4% year-over-year (and were up by 7.3% when excluding fuel) as identical supermarket sales excluding fuel inched up by 1.7%. Kroger’s management anticipates adjusted EPS coming in at between $2.10 and $2.20 for the full fiscal year. Jim Simons‘ Renaissance Technologies established a new stake of over 2 million shares in Kroger Co (NYSE:KR) between March 31 and June 30. Shares of the company are 1.79% in the red this morning.

Traders are talking about PriceSmart, Inc. (NASDAQ:PSMT) today after the company announced its sales data for the month of August. For the period, PriceSmart’s net sales inched lower by 1.5% year-over-year to $229.1 million, while comparable-warehouse sales for the six weeks ended September 4 at its 36 warehouse clubs open for at least 13-and-a-half months inched lower by 1.5% as well. PriceSmart plans to release its fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016 results on October 27 after the market close. The number of funds in our database with holdings in PriceSmart, Inc. (NASDAQ:PSMT) rose by two quarter-over-quarter to seven at the end of June.

On the next page, we’ll take a look at why Facebook, Alphabet, and AMD are trending this morning.