Today brought five very unusual research reports: Baker Hughes Incorporated (NYSE: BHI); CYS Investments, Inc. (NYSE: CYS); NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP); RailAmerica, Inc. (NYSE: RA); and Trina Solar Limited (NYSE: TSL).  The summary on each call, the price reaction, and why the call was so unusual on each has been outlined below:

Baker Hughes Incorporated (NYSE: BHI) has been cut in half from its highs over the last year.  What has been happening though is that the stock has been trying to form a base here in the very low $40-handles after hitting a recent 52-week low of $39.40.  Societe Generale decided in its wisdom after the huge drop that has been seen that today was the day to downgrade its rating to HOLD from BUY.  Shares are were down 1.8% at $40.95 right before the close, but frankly this is one of those calls that so much bad news has been priced in that we wonder why the call is just today.

CYS Investments, Inc. (NYSE: CYS) hardly budged today but this call really stood out.  Bank of America Merrill Lynch reinstated new coverage here with a BUY rating and a price target of $13.75.  This is a mortgage REIT for residential agency MBS that pays a double-digit yield as of now and the call suggests that CYS will generate a 15% dividend yield in 2012 and it is only about 1.05-times book value.  The call must be solely based upon the dividend though because the stock closed at $13.77 yesterday and the Thursday late-day price was $13.85.  How often do you see a “Buy” rating when the price target is under the current price?  This analyst call is just highly unusual.

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) took several downgrades today after it gave a revenue and earnings warning.  We called this a new thing for NetApp as it represents the Death of Growth.  Shares were down over 12% in the final hour at $28.72 but a firm named FBN Securities actually likes this pullback and raised its ratings to “Outperform” from “Market Perform.”  NetApp traded over 50 million shares as well and hit a new 52-week low of $27.75 Thursday, so this is now a broken high-flyer that is now a battleground stock.

RailAmerica, Inc. (NYSE: RA) was down about 2.2% at $23.49 late in the day after J.P. Morgan cut the rating to Neutral from Overweight based upon valuation.  What makes this so interesting is that this is on the heels of buyout interest perhaps from Warren Buffett being reported earlier this week.

Trina Solar Limited (NYSE: TSL) is in the highly unloved solar sector and this stock is down over 75% from ist 52-week high.  Things got bad enough that it is now down under $500 million in market value.  Still, today brought a gain of 5.2% to $5.84 after Maxim Group simply removed its SELL rating and gave a new HOLD rating in an upgrade.  A “Hold” rating is often considered the same as a “Sell” rating by many investors.

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JON C. OGG

When was the last time anything good happened to Alcatel-Lucent, S.A. (NYSE: ALU)? It has been a while.  With a contract win, with the highlights around its patents, and with the highlight around speedier web traffic, this one rose on a down day.  In fact, Alcatel-Lucent was up 4.7% a $1.55 on the day with less than an hour until the closing bell.

Gold was down big earlier as investors are liquidating everything for a source of liquidity.  So what are gold miners rising handily?  Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (AMEX: GDX) is the go-to ETF for gold mining stocks and offers a great basket of the major global gold players.  This ETF was up 3.6% at $44.10 against a 52-week range of $39.08 to $66.98.  We just highlighted the value and huge upside that the components offer here.

Patriot Coal Corporation (NYSE: PCX) is in trouble and its viability is in question,  Still, yesterday’s news of working with Blackstone trumped a credit rating downgrade today.  The coal player was up 21% at $2.65 on more than 19 million shares as of the end of the day.

Rosetta Genomics Ltd. (NASDAQ: ROSG) has continued its post-reverse-split surge  and this is up almost 400% from the start of last week.  This is continued buying pressure after Medicare coverage came out.  Even a small capital raise has been ignored.  Shares are up another 37% at $10.23 and the post-split adjusted 52-week range is $1.40 to $36.45.

School Specialty Inc. (NASDAQ: SCHS) is surging simply on a debt refinancing.  That is not your usual rally tool, but the move here is massive. Shares were up 23% at $3.00 in the last hour of trading and the 52-week range is $2.15 to $15.84.

JON C. OGG

Short sellers have been reported as being able to find some shares to borrow as early as Tuesday, a day or two before the first wave of traditional short sellers were supposed to be able to find stock to borrow.  It generally takes three trading days.  Generally.  In many cases it can take as long as two weeks before short sellers can find any shares.

As an indication that short selling has already begun, Dow Jones has a note this morning that short sellers borrowed about 13 million shares on Tuesday and the source was Sungard.  This is supposedly ahead of having to pay the high cost to borrow.

As far as the rest of the street is concerned, borrowing shares to short sell Facebook is likely to happen throughout the rest of the week and even next week after the options start to trade on Facebook.

Facebook shares are trading up 1.7% at $31.55 this morning ahead of the opening bell.  As a reminder, $38.00 was the IPO price and all those sellers who were hitting the ‘market sell’ orders this week were investors who were allocated shares at the IPO and those investors who chased the stock at a premium after it opened when NASDAQ’s order system was botched.

JON C. OGG

Here is the huge option spike.  The January 2013 $15 Call Options last traded ad $1.85 per contract, but the volume is 17,401 contracts.  The prior open interest is a mere 338 contracts.  Keep in mind that this translates to a speculative bet on 1.74 million shares on a fully leveraged basis if you count one contract as being the equivalent to 100 shares.

As far as the volume spike in the shares, we have seen over 730,000 shares traded as of 11:07 AM EST and the gain is 8.4% to $13.43.  The stock hit a low of $12.25 today and the prior 52-week range is $12.20 to $31.34.  An average day’s volume in Seabridge is only 322,000 shares.

The Yahoo! Finance description of the company is that Seabridge is a development stage company which engages in the acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral properties, primarily gold properties located in North America.

Seabridge is based in Toronto, Canada and here is its own description: “Seabridge Gold’s resource base of gold, copper and silver is one of the world’s largest. Our principal projects are located in Canada. Our objective is to grow resource and reserve ownership per share. Our risk-reducing strategy: acquire North American deposits; expand them through exploration; move them to reserves through engineering; and sell or joint venture them to established producers for mine construction and operation.”

JON C. OGG

Refiners are no better off: Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE: VLO) is down -7.7% in the past month, Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC) is down about -9.8%, while Tesoro Corp. (NYSE: TSO) is up a bare 0.4%. Refiners have been surviving off the wide differential between WTI and Brent crudes and as the differential narrows, profits are harder to come by.

For the integrated oil companies, the price of crude has been the determining factor in a company’s profit picture: the higher the price, the bigger the profit. That makes sense. For the services company, higher prices typically mean more work as producers want to get more oil to sell.

Because crude prices are at a seven-month low now, we thought it would be interesting to look for value in some of the big oil stocks. After all, low crude prices mean share sell-offs, so there ought to be some value left on the table.

With the exceptions of Exxon and Chevron, all the companies we looked at have implied gains exceeding 30% if analysts have gotten target prices right. That’s some pretty good value, but we thought we’d try to handicap the race a bit more closely.

Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) traded at $82.21 and has a market value of $383 billion. The consensus target price from Thomson Reuters is $94.53 and the 52-week range is $67.03 to $87.94. Exxon has a dividend yield of 2.8%. The implied upside to the consensus target is 15%, but we would note that the target is above the 52-week high.

Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) traded at $99.71 and has a market value of $196 billion. The consensus target price from Thomson Reuters is $124.88 and the 52-week range is $86.68 to $112.28. Chevron has a dividend yield of 3.7%. The implied upside to the consensus target is 25%, but we would note again that the target is above the 52-week high.

BP plc (NYSE: BP) traded at $38.26 and has a market value of $121 billion. The consensus target price from Thomson Reuters is $53.25 and the 52-week range is $33.62 to $48.34. BP has a dividend yield of 5.2%. The implied upside to the consensus target is 39%, but we would note again that the target is above the 52-week high.

Schlumberger Ltd. (NYSE: SLB) traded at $67.47 and has a market value of $89 billion. The consensus target price from Thomson Reuters is $89.20 and the 52-week range is $54.79 to $95.53. Schlumberger has a dividend yield of 1.7%. The implied upside to the consensus target is 32%, and the target price is lower than the 52-week high.

Halliburton Co. (NYSE: HAL) traded at $31.40 and has a market value of about $29 billion. The consensus target price from Thomson Reuters is $47.28 and the 52-week range is $27.21 to $57.77. Halliburton has a dividend yield of 1.2%. The implied upside to the consensus target is 51%, and again the target price is lower than the 52-week high.

Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) traded at $42.20 and has a market value of about $18 billion. The consensus target price from Thomson Reuters is $56.33 and the 52-week range is $39.40 to $81.00. Baker Hughes has a dividend yield of 1.5%. The implied upside to the consensus target is 33%, and again the target price is well below the 52-week high.

Valero Energy Co. (NYSE: VLO) traded at $22.17 and has a market value of about $12 billion. The consensus target price from Thomson Reuters is $30.15 and the 52-week range is $16.40 to $28.68. Valero has a dividend yield of 2.8%. The implied upside to the consensus target is 36%, and again the target price is above the 52-week high.

Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC) traded at $36.38 and has a market value of about $12 billion. The consensus target price from Thomson Reuters is $52.50 and the 52-week range is $26.35 to $47.43. Marathon has a dividend yield of 2.9%. The implied upside to the consensus target is 44%, and again the target price is above the 52-week high.

Tesoro Corp. (NYSE: TSO) traded at $23.49 and has a market value of about $3 billion. The consensus target price from Thomson Reuters is $31.36 and the 52-week range is $17.43 to $30.15. Tesoro does not pay a dividend. The implied upside to the consensus target is 34%, and again the target price is above the 52-week high.

For comparison, The SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration and Production ETF (AMEX: XOP) traded at $50.45 in a 52-week range of $37.67 to $65.58. That’s about 30% below the 52-week high. The Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (AMEX: OIH) traded at $37.47 in a 52-week range of $35.32 to $45.14, again about 30% below the 52-week high.

Target prices for the large integrated oil companies are above 52-week highs, as are target prices for the refiners. Unless the price of crude rises sharply, the targets are out of reach for the integrated companies. For refiners, they’re whipsawed if prices for WTI open a bigger gap versus Brent or if WTI rise and Brent falls. No chance at those targets either way.

Targets for the services companies are lower than 52-week highs, which improves the chances of hitting those targets. Schlumberger, the largest of the services companies, and Baker Hughes both look appear to have the best chance to boost their share prices.

Paul Ausick

At issue may be a stock market stabilization, or perhaps it is a stabilization aimed solely at the commodities and those companies which profit from either the rise of commodity prices or the rise of the demand for those commodities. It was just yesterday evening that Dennis Gartman of the Gartman Letter was talking up gold miners as his method of choice to play the current bounce in gold.

To show just how much implied upside there is we found some large cap gold stocks that have upside of about 100% and many of the big players have implied upside of well over 50%.  The key ETFs for these miners show just how widespread the damage was during the last sell-off.  The Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (AMEX: GDX) trades at $43.35 against a 52-week trading range of $39.08 to $66.98 and that is down about 35% as a group from the highs.  The Global X Silver Miners ETF (AMEX: SIL) trades at $18.00 against a 52-week range of $16.54 to $29.05 and that is down almost 38% from its high in the last year.

We included the implied dividend yields but due to foreign issues and ADRs causing currency translations and due to some payouts not being quarter like U.S. companies do, we would urge you to only consider the dividend as a footnote and something you should be verifying on your own.  Besides that, who buys gold (and silver) miners because of their dividend yields only?

We have evaluated the following large-cap gold stocks: Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE: ABX); Goldcorp Inc. (NYSE: GG); Newmont Mining Corp. (NYSE: NEM); AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (NYSE: AU); Kinross Gold Corporation (NYSE: KGC); Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd. (NYSE: AEM); Gold Fields Ltd. (NYSE: GFI); Yamana Gold, Inc. (NYSE: AUY); IAMGOLD Corp. (NYSE: IAG); Harmony Gold Mining Co. Ltd. (NYSE: HMY); Eldorado Gold Corp. (NYSE: EGO); and Royal Gold, Inc. (NASDAQ: RGLD). We have covered also two of the larger silver players of Silver Wheaton Corp. (NYSE: SLW) and Pan American Silver Corp. (NASDAQ: PAAS).

Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE: ABX) traded at $37.60 and has a market value of $37.6 billion.  The consensus target price from Thomson Reuters is $59.10 and the 52-week range is $34.82 to $55.95.  Barrick has a dividend yield of 2.2%. The implied upside to the consensus target: 57% but we would note that the target is above the 52-week high.

Goldcorp Inc. (NYSE: GG) traded at $34.90 with a market value of $28.2 billion.  The consensus target price from Thomson Reuters is $60.42 and the 52-week trading range is $32.16 to $56.31.  Goldcorp’s most recent yield was listed as 1.6%. The implied upside to the consensus target is 73% but we would note that the consensus target is still above the 52-week high.

The NASDAQ pre-market trading at 8:18 AM EST has shares trading at $37.30 on last look with 1.89 million shares having traded hands.  The pre-market high is listed as $38.50 and the pre-market low on the NASDAQ print system is $37.02.  If this holds, then the stock will be down 2.4% and the Facebook IPO will be called a BUSTED IPO.

Morgan Stanley offered significant support for this offering with a huge bidding wave at $38.00 per share on Friday.  If the firm is going to support the offering today then it better gets its checkbook out now that investors have had a weekend to digest the notion that they are valuing this company at just over $100 billion in market value.

The media hyped this thing up endlessly last week and before the deal came to market as the greatest thing since sliced bread.  It will be interesting to see how the media treats this company and its management team now that the public’s dollars are involved in playing the greatest internet growth story of the last decade.

JON C. OGG

DealBook of the New York Times has reported the news and it cited current and former colleagues as saying the timing of this departure is not known.

• UPDATE 1:52 PM EST: CNBC reported that J.P. Morgan’s comment is that Iksil is still employed at the firm.

Today’s news should really not be a shock. Jamie Dimon survived efforts to split his office of the Chairman and CEO, but the damage to Jamie Dimon is that now politicians and the critics sitting back afar on Main Street think much less of him.

Other departures are cited in the Times around this issue and chances are high that either more firings are coming or are already in the works.

If J.P. Morgan can have stupid oversight procedures and poor risk management, then what does it say for the other participants?

J.P. Morgan shares are down 0.3% at $36.10 against a 52-week range of $27.85 to $46.49.

JON C. OGG

Dendreon Corporation (NASDAQ: DNDN) said that its total revenue rose almost 200% to $82 million, but that is almost in-line and shows no upside surprise for PROVENGE sales.  Despite still having some $559 million in cash and near-term liquidity, a drop of 21% to $9.17 is really not hurting the overall biotech sector anywhere close to as much as we feared it would.

VIVUS Inc. (NASDAQ: VVUS) is weak after earnings as well as the loss was wider than expected, but it now has some of $333.4 million in cash and short-term now that it raised cash via a secondary offering.  This is still in a holding pattern as the current Qnexa NDA final decision is still out to about July 17, 2012.  A surprise mover to the upside is Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARNA) with a rally ahead of its FDA meeting for lorcaserin as a weight-loss pill.  Arena shares are up 15% at $3.14 against a 52-week range of $1.23 to $3.47 and the current market cap is $571 million.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: VRTX) was up so much on Monday that you would have thought it was a takeover stock rather than a cystic fibrosis drug test that caused the pop.  Shares were up huge on Monday and Tuesday is seeing another day of bucking the trend as shares are up 5.3% at $61.20 at yet another 52-week high.  Its market cap is now magically almost $13 billion.  So far on Tuesday we have seen the following analyst rating changes: Raised to Equal-weight at Morgan Stanley; Raised to Outperform at Wells Fargo; and Raised to Buy at Needham.

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALNY) is one of the upside exception today as J.P. Morgan initiated coverage with an Overweight rating.  Shares are up almost 5% at $10.44 against a 52-week range of $5.88 to $13.75.

Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) is a mix somewhere between biotech and pharma and it is following the defensive stocks today with a gain of 0.6% to $70.04 against a 52-week high of $72.00.  That new 2.1% dividend yield is offering some cushion it appears.

Savient Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SVNT) shows that investors will reward emerging pharma players merely for reaching agreements with creditors,  This stock is up 19% at $1.855 on only 2 million shares after it reached an agreement with some creditors to restructure a portion of its debt in a move anticipated to bring the equivalent of $44 million.  Its market cap is $131 million and the $1.86 compares to a 52-week range of $1.26 to $9.14.

JON C. OGG

Over the last year we have witnessed shares falling from over $30.00 to almost $16.00 before the recent recovery.  The problem is that the bad news has not ended and the turnaround has yet to even really get started.  So why is there such highly unusual options trading activity in this stock?

If you look out to the July options trading, which is now only about two months out, there is some speculative call options activity.  Either someone is under the impression that something good is about to happen on the M&A front or they are expecting business to pick up this summer for Avon.

We have seen more than 37,000 contracts trade in the JULY $22 CALLS and the open interest before today was listed as only 5,999 contracts.  As a reminder, this is worth some 3.7 million shares if you count this options activity on a fully leveraged basis.  Avon trades an average of 7.7 million shares or so each day.

Joe Kunkle of OptionsHawk.com wrote in options trader lingo, “Avon Products (AVP) with 34,900 calls trading, initial buyers on $0.85 offer and IV jumping as blocks of 10K and 24,700 come in at $1.15, opening buyers.  Calls trading with a block of 1.357M shares of stock.”

The move today is with Avon down 3% at $20.36 and its 52-week range is $16.09 to $30.63.  Shares closed at $21.57 and the stock traded as low as almost $19.50 on two days this week.

If there are any rumors out there it is not evident at all in the stock.  Still, it is always interesting when you see very unusual options trading on Fridays when the options are not just hedging transactions.

JON C. OGG