Top five weekend stock stories

Catch up on the weekend’s top five stories with this list compiled by The Fly: 1. Activist investor Ryan Cohen has built a stake in Alibaba (BABA) worth hundreds of millions of dollars and is privately pushing the Chinese e-commerce giant to accelerate and further boost its share-repurchase program, The Wall Street Journal’s Lauren Thomas reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Cohen, known as the meme-stock king for helping ignite explosive rallies in GameStop (GME) and others, built the stake in the second half of last year, the people said. 2. Microsoft (MSFT) is likely to receive an EU antitrust warning about its $69 billion bid for "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard (ATVI) that could pose another challenge to completing the deal, Reuters’ Foo Yun Chee reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The European Commission is readying a charge sheet known as a statement of objections setting out its concerns about the deal which will be sent to Microsoft in the coming weeks, the people said. 3. Martin Marietta (MLM) is a producer of aggregates, the industry term for stone, sand, and gravel, and it’s a pretty solid business. It has some natural barriers to entry-it isn’t easy to find and start a new quarry-and high regional market shares give players some pricing stability. It can weather both inflationary and deflationary environments, and despite the weakening economy, its outlook for growth is improving, Al Root writes in this week’s edition of Barron’s. 4. Disney’s (DIS) "Avatar: The Way of Water" won the long weekend with an estimated $40.6M for a domestic total of $572.4M. Globally, the movie has crossed the $1.9B mark, as the James Cameron’s sequel becomes the 13th highest-grossing film of all time at the U.S. box office. 5. Endava (DAVA) saw a positive mention in this week’s edition of Barron’s.