RSS Updates
Email UpdatesThese are some of this Wednesday’s top analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations seen from Wall Street research calls this morning:
Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE) Raised to Outperform at Credit Suisse; Raised to Buy at Jefferies.
Apollo Investment (NASDAQ: AINV) Raised to Outperform at Wells Fargo.
Capstone Turbine Corp. (NASDAQ: CPST) Raised to Outperform at Northland.
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) Raised to Buy at BofA/Merrill Lynch.
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ: ENER) Cut to Sell at UBS.
Leap Wireless (NASDAQ: LEAP) Started as Market Perform at BMO Capital.
Massey Energy (NYSE: MEE) Cut to Neutral at JPMorgan.
Tiffany & Co. (NYSE: TIF) Raised to Buy at BofA/Merrill Lynch.
Peabody Energy Corp. (NYSE: BTU) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
VIVUS Inc. (NASDAQ: VVUS) Started as Buy at Jesup & Lamont.
Zebra Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: ZBRA) Raised to Outperform at Baird.
You are invited to join our free daily email distribution list to hear about top analyst upgrades and downgrades, IPOs and secondary offerings, ongoing day trader and options trader alerts, stock and market rumors, Buffett and guru investor news, M&A and more.
JON C. OGG
FEBRUARY 10, 2010
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) NYSE: BRK-B) is in the process of selling $8 billion in notes today to help fund the acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI). And Standard & Poor’s just gave Warren Buffett a pre-sale slap in the face. S&P has lowered the rating of Berkshire Hathaway over how the terms of the merger change the financial standing of the giant conglomerate.
SIRIUS XM Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) may have some risks for new Pandora web radio to the car and over Howard Stern’s contract expiration at the end of 2010, but that is not keeping the upgrades from coming. One day last week we saw 
Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) has just completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, and so far we are seeing analysts overwhelmingly in favor of the stock based on the most recent calls or on recent price changes. More importantly, the price targets were raised along with the earnings expectations for beyond 2010. There are some caveats and some side-bar issues here, but the pointed direction or bias continues to be a favorable one.
Friday marked month-end for January in the financial markets. There have been many efforts out there to discuss the market’s direction, but perhaps the one issue that traders will be using to judge 2010 versus the run-up in 2009 this weekend is the notorious ‘January Barometer.’ The saying is, “As goes January, so goes the year…” If the January Barometer is a real prediction tool, the markets just ended on a down note for the DJIA (-3.46%), the S&P500 (-3.7%), and the NASDAQ (-5.3%). Without calling out any individual stocks, we will be looking specifically at the DIAMONDS Trust (NYSE: DIA), SPDRs (NYSE: SPY), and the PowerShares QQQ (NASDAQ: QQQQ) to track these indexes. We want to look at a broader slate of issues and other calls on each.
SIRIUS XM Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) is a very under-followed stock considering how the company has such a cult following, millions of subscribers, and that its market cap is close to $3 billion. Yet the sub-$1.00 price is a huge restriction as many firms refuse to cover penny stocks or even stocks under $5.00. But today we have seen two positive research reports on the company. A boutique firm called Wunderlich giving this a “Buy” rating. The more important upgrade is a debt upgrade from Standard & Poor’s. A third call is not an upgrade, but is another positive call.
Chinese Solar stocks, as measured by Tickerspy’s 
Notorious banking analyst Meredith Whitney turned out to be right in her recent calls against being long the major banks and brokerage firms, although for the wrong reasons ahead of the latest sell-off that took place this week. Whitney’s call was about earnings power for the quarter and for what lies ahead in 2010 and the fresh weakness is mostly tied to added regulation goals that came from the White House yesterday. We wanted to give some pre-weekend thoughts about her take on the newest Obama attacks on the banking business model.
SIRIUS XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) has been a key trading focus of late, mostly with positive metrics. The company has now 
