The unofficial closing bells put the DJIA down almost 27 points to 12,938.75 (-0.21%), the NASDAQ fell more than 15 points (-0.52%) to 2,933.17, and the S&P 500 fell -0.33% or nearly 5 points to 1,357.66.

There were several analyst upgrades and downgrades today, including Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) reiterated as ‘outperform’ and target price lifted to $600 at Credit Suisse; Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) cut to ‘neutral’ at Citigroup and cut to ‘hold’ at Needham; The Mosaic Co. (NYSE: MOS) raised to ‘buy’ at Canaccord Genuity; Gilead Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD) cut to ‘market perform’ at Bernstein; and Dendreon Corp. (NASDAQ: DNDN) started as ‘neutral’ at Citigroup.

Earnings reports since markets closed last night have led to some price changes as of the last half hour of trading today: Basic Energy Services Inc. (NYSE: BAS) is up 0.15% at $19.90; Community Health Systems Inc. (NYSE: CYH) is up 14.3% at $23.61; Grand Canyon Education Inc. (NASDAQ: LOPE) is down -0.95% at $17.67; Range Resources Inc. (NYSE: RRC) is up 3.4% at $66.47; Central European Media Enterprises Ltd. (NASDAQ: CETV) is down -18.5% at $6.93; Chico’s FAS Inc. (NYSE: CHS) is up 16.9% at $14.97; Dollar Tree Inc. (NASDAQ: DLTR) is down -0.76% at $87.34; Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN) is up 9.2% at $48.81 after posting a new 52-week high of $49.93 (more coverage here); Novagold Resources Inc. (AMEX: NG) is flat at $8.75; R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. (NYSE: RRD) is down -1.8% at $13.00; and Toll Brothers Inc. (NYSE: TOL) is down -4.8% at $22.56 (more coverage here).

Other standouts from today include the following stocks:

HealthStream Inc. (NASDAQ: HSTM) is up nearly 34% at $23.18 after posting a new all-time high of $23.19 earlier today. The Internet-based health learning company beat both EPS and revenue expectations in its most recent quarter.

Sourcefire Inc. (NASDAQ: FIRE) is up nearly 27% at $45.34 after posting a new all-time high of $45.50 earlier today. The Internet security provider handily beat earnings and revenue expectations last night.

Threshold Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: THLD) is up nearly 20% at $6.0. The pharmaceutical maker yesterday announced positive results for its pancreatic cancer treatment.

Newfield Exploration Co. (NYSE: NFX) is down more than -12% at $37.06. The independent oil & gas company missed EPS and revenue estimates last night.

Brightpoint Inc. (NASDAQ: CELL) is down more than -11% at $8.89. The mobile-phone wholesaler has cut its outlook for 2012.

Stay tuned for Thursday. We have noted the following events on the schedule (all times Eastern):

• 8:30 a.m. – New US claims for unemployment benefits
• 10:00 a.m. – Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) house price index
• 10:30 a.m. – EIA weekly natural gas storage report
• 11:00 a.m. – EIA weekly petroleum status report
• 11:00 a.m. – Kansas City Fed manufacturing index
• 1:00 p.m. – 7-year note auction
• 4:30 p.m. – Federal Reserve balance sheet and money supply

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Paul Ausick

Several other standouts from today are as follows…

Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE: VLO) is down nearly -9%, at $22.67. Valero and other refiners’ stocks got hit with a narrowing of the gap between WTI and Brent crudes, as well as an announcement by Enbridge Inc. (NYSE: ENB) that it is buying a 50% stake in the Seaway pipeline from ConocoPhillips Corp. (NYSE: COP) and reversing the pipeline’s flow to carry 150,000 barrels/day of crude from Cushing, Oklahoma, to the Gulf Coast.

Western Refining Inc. (NYSE: WNR) is down more than -13%, at $13.47, and Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC) is down about -11%, at $32.91.

Novagold Resources Inc. (AMEX: NG) is up more than 23.5%, at $10-.89. The company has appointed a new CEO to start in January and also announced that it would spin-off a subsidiary, NovaCopper, to current NovaGold shareholders.

Pacific Ethanol Inc. (NASDAQ: PEIX) is up more than 3%, at $1.37. The company announced that it has fully retired $35 million in senior convertible notes.

Amtech Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ASYS) is down more than -17%, at $8.59. The company issued a statement that it expects to post $21-$23 million in sales for the third quarter, where analysts had been expecting revenue of $50 million.

Unilife Corp. (NASDAQ: UNIS) is down about -12.5%, at $4.17. The company priced a secondary stock offering of 8.25 million shares at $4.35, well below yesterday’s closing price of $4.76.

Stay tuned for Thursday. Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank president Sandra Pianalto and New York Fed president William Dudley are giving speeches tomorrow afternoon. Here’s a list of other noteworthy events (all times Eastern):

• 8:30 a.m. – Housing starts
• 8:30 a.m. – Initial unemployment benefits claims
• 10.00 a.m. – Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s October business outlook survey
• 10:00 a.m. – E-commerce retail sales
• 10:30 a.m. – EIA weekly natural gas status report
• 1:00 p.m. – 10-year TIPS auction
• 4:30 p.m. – Federal Reserve balance sheet and money supply report

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Northern Dynasty was named in April as a top undiscovered pick by Midas Fund manager Tom Winmill, provided an investor can wait until 2016 for the investment to pay off.  That’s no less true today, even if the price has come down significantly.

The company fully expects further legal and legislative challenges, including a ballot measure in the local taxing jurisdiction that would prohibit all large-scale development and is specifically aimed at Pebble.

A pre-feasibility study for the project is expected next year, but the current estimate for the size of the resource is 350,000 tons of copper, 12,000 tons of molybdenum, and 600,000 ounces of gold. Anglo American has committed $1.5 billion to the initial stages of the project, of which about $350 million  has been spent so far.

The total development cost could go much higher though. A joint venture between Barrick Gold Corp. (NYSE: ABX) and Novagold Resources Inc. (AMEX: NG) has raised the development cost estimate for its Donlin Creek project in Alaska from $4.5 billion to $7 billion. A total of 38 million ounces of gold has already been identified at the Donlin Creek project, but that didn’t keep investor George Soros from dumping all his shares earlier this year.

Junior miners like Northern Dynasty and Novagold have no choice but to form partnerships with the big miners on projects like Donlin Creek or Pebble because they simply can’t raise enough capital on their own. Yet a gold mine like Donlin Creek could be worth the billions it will cost, and a project like Pebble, which is primarily copper, is far more subject to commodity price swings and thus more sensitive to cost increases.

Northern Dynasty shares closed last night at $6.84, up about 6% on the day, in a 52-week range of $4.87-$21.76. Novagold closed at $7.02, up about 2.6% on the day, in a 52-week range of $5.93-$16.90. Shares in both are down about -21% over the past 12 months. The Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF (NYSE: GDXJ) closed at $29.54 yesterday, in a 52-week range of $25.22-$44.86. The Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (NYSE: GDX) closed at $56.27, in a 52-week range of $50.42-$66.98. Neither Northern Dynasty nor Novagold is included in either fund.

The SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) closed at $160.49 last night, up about 0.65% on the day, in a 52-week range of $127.80-$185.85. Shares are trading up another 0.85% in the pre-market this morning.

Paul Ausick

The project was slowed to a near-stop several years ago due to the high cost of developing the mine. The new PFS shows that over an 18-year life, Galore Creek will produce 4 million ounces of gold, nearly 66 million ounces of silver, and more than 6 billion pounds of copper. It still won’t be cheap, but the scale is now so large and higher prices for all three metals make the project worth doing.

That is if NovaGold and Teck can figure out a way to come up with the estimated $5.2 billion development cost to get the project into full production. The massive project could get even bigger as it moves next to the feasibility study stage, where new tests may indicate new opportunities for recovery.

Interestingly, NovaGold’s stock didn’t get much of a charge from the PFS. On July 25th, the first trading day following the company’s release of the PFS, shares actually closed down a bit. The news is finally filtering down to investors this week, and NovaGold’s share price has risen more than 4.5% at around mid-day, to $10.48, in a 52-week range of $5.98-$16.90.

As we noted last month, the company has no profits to show in the past 12 months and none are expected in the next 12 months. At that time the stock’s price/book ratio was 8.5, which has now fallen to 8.02.

NovaGold is not a value pick, and given the reaction to its Galore Creek PFS it may not even be a growth pick. The good news on Galore Creek had already been priced into the stock. Alternatively, there’s caution on the accuracy of this PFS because the last one NovaGold issued was believed by many investors to be too good to be true.

But even if the PFS is accurate, $5.2 billion is a lot of money and while Teck may have the resources to push development at Galore Creek, NovaGold will likely have to strike a deal with Teck or get financing from another source. Provided, of course, that the feasibility study turns out as well as the PFS.

The Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF (NYSE: GDXJ) is up about 0.5% at mid-day, to $36.21, in a 52-week range of $26.05-$44.86. The SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) is up about 0.25%, and the Comex gold quote is up less than 1%, at around $1,633/ounce.

Paul Ausick

The top earnings reports due in the coming week are from Alcoa, Inc. (NYSE: AA), Novellus Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVLS), ADTRAN Inc. (NASDAQ: ADTN), Marriott International, Inc. (NYSE: MAR), Novagold Resources Inc. (NYSE: NG), Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM), Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CBST), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), J B Hunt Transport Services Inc. (NASDAQ: JBHT), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C), and Mattel Inc. (NASDAQ: MAT).

We have added color on each of these reports, along with showing trading data, Thomson Reuters estimates, and more.

Alcoa, Inc. (NYSE: AA) is due to report Monday and acts as the unofficial kick-off for earnings season.  It was one of those top 15 reports to follow for all of the summer earnings trends.  Estimates are $0.34 EPS and $6.32 billion in revenues; estimates for the next report are $0.34 EPS and $6.33 billion in revenues.  Shares are now trading around $16.17 and the 52-week trading range is $9.92 to $18.47.  With sowing in Japan and China, we will be giving Alcoa more or less “a pass” on the last quarter as long as it is not atrocious.  Mainly, investors need to focus on just how much of a bounce in orders are coming right now.  This has been a takeover-rumor stock as well, but we are not going to try to deal with the reality of that possibility. This one also made our value screen for the metals sector on Friday.

Novellus Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVLS) reports on Monday and it is usually not a sector mover with its $3.2 billion market cap.  Estimates are $0.76 EPS and $352.3 million in revenues; estimates for the next report are $0.87 EPS and $363 million in revenues.  Shares are now trading around $35.89 and the 52-week trading range is $22.88 to $41.82.  Why we care is that it is the first of the equipment makers for circuits and chips to report, and it is frequent that investors try to look for cause and effect in the rest of tech.

ADTRAN Inc. (NASDAQ: ADTN) reports on Wednesday and will lead off the telecom and communications equipment makers in its report.  Estimates are $0.53 EPS and $179.4 million in revenues; estimates for the next report are $0.55 EPS and $187.2 million in revenues.  Shares are now trading around $41.98 and the 52-week trading range is $27.55 to $47.60.  Just like Novellus, analysts and traders will possibly look for cause and effect in its peers.  Keep in mind, its market cap is a mere $2.7 billion and these companies in the space are now subject to what we call “good hits and bad misses” in earnings.

Marriott International, Inc. (NYSE: MAR) reports this coming Wednesday and estimates are $0.37 EPS and $3.02 billion in revenues; estimates for the next report are $0.30 EPS and $2.88 billion in revenues.  Shares are now trading around $36.70 and the 52-week trading range is $29.80 to $42.56. With hotel rates running strong, it is hard to not notice that this stock is right in the middle of its 52-week trading range.

Novagold Resources Inc. (NYSE: NG) is due Wednesday and is more Canadian than U.S., but investors will try to use it as a bogey for the gold mining stocks as it is into exploration for gold, zinc, silver and other minerals.  Its market cap is only $2.3 billion.  As a reminder, Novagold was one of our fresh value hunt stocks as it is among the most sold-off gold stocks.  Estimates are in Canada and not widely followed in America.

Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM) estimates are $0.61 EPS and $2.70 billion in revenues; next quarter estimates are $0.84 EPS and $3.03 billion in revenues. Shares are now trading around $55.13 and the 52-week trading range is $38.43 to $57.04.  Yum! is really about China, and many are now using Yum!’s China market comments to try to make determinations about the discretionary spending for China’s consumer spending market.

The individual mining stocks are even worse, which may be an opportunity. Can these guys come back?  The worst performers among miners with market caps greater than $500 million are Peru’s Compania de Minas Buenaventura SA (NYSE: BVN), Golden Star Resources, Ltd. (AMEX: GSS), Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. (AMEX: NAK), NovaGold Resources Inc. (AMEX: NG), Rubicon Minerals Corp. (AMEX: RBY), and US Gold Corp. (NYSE: UXG). Here’s a chart compiled from data at Yahoo! Finance and Morningstar:

Sometimes a chart as ugly as this indicates some value to be plucked. That does not appear to be the case this time.

Golden Star had a tough fourth quarter of 2010 and didn’t perform a lot better in the first quarter of this year. And with a trailing P/E of nearly 90, something has to give. The company is re-evaluating operations at one of its major mines and is struggling to keep cash costs under control. Even its very low price/book ratio and its low forward P/E make this a risky play. Golden Star has posted a loss for the last three consecutive quarters, and missed estimates on the quarter before that.

Northern Dynasty posted a 52-week high of more than $21/share in early February and it’s all been pretty consistently downhill since. The company is expected to post a loss in 2011 and again in 2012. The company was chose as a top undiscovered pick by Midas Fund manager Tom Winmill, provided an investor can wait until 2016 for the investment to pay off.  In the meantime, this stock could go lower still, as its price/book ratio indicates.

Rubicon posted a net loss of about US$82 million in 2010 according to US GAAP accounting. The loss under Canadian GAAP totaled CDN$24 million. The company’s former president also sold more than 45 million shares in Rubicon at $4.16/share in a secondary offering from which Rubicon took in not one dime. Shares soared to a record high over $6/share following an announcement in late November that Rubicon’s Phoenix project contained 4 million ounces of gold. When that number was cut to 2.8 million ounces in late June, the shares fell below $3.25. Rubicon’s forward P/E is still too high to justify this as a value stock.

NovaGold, like the others, has failed to keep pace with the price of gold. Investor George Soros dumped more than 9 million shares earlier this year, which didn’t help the stock at all. The company has pinned its hopes on a pre-feasibility study of its Galore Creek property. NovaGold, which also mines substantial amounts of copper, provided another pre-feasibility study on a copper property that was too good for many investors to believe. With no profits to show or to come, and a price/book ratio of 8.5, NovaGold looks like another wait-and-see gold stock.

US Gold completed a secondary offering of over 17 million shares in late February, and the stock actually rose to its 52-week high of $9.44 in early April. Since then the stock has tumbled nearly -40%, even though US Gold’s CEO and largest stockholder, Robert McEwen, proposed offering $626 million in US Gold stock to buy Mineras Andes, another company he controls. The deal would give McEwen a stake in the merged companies of about $358 million. McEwen was the Rubicon investor who also cleaned up on that company’s secondary offering. For a company with no profits to print its own money seems like the height of irrationality. The price/book ratio on US Gold is 3.1, a bit rich all things considered.

Peru’s Buenaventura, with a share price loss of -35% since its peak, is the best of the lot, which isn’t saying much. The company has posted real profits and even pays a dividend. Its dividend yield is a paltry 1.7%, but compared with the rest of this bunch that’s positively nosebleed territory. Buenaventura’s dividend yield is higher than any other gold miner’s, including the big ones like Barrick Gold Corp. (NYSE: ABX and Goldcorp Inc. (NYSE: GG).

The company’s share price suffers from the recent election of a left-leaning nationalist as Peru’s new president has raised a lot of uncertainty about the future of mining royalties and taxes in the country. This could be particularly hard on Buenaventura and the country in general, which is the world’s leading silver producer, its second leading copper producer, and the world’s sixth-largest producer of gold. Political uncertainty has hit Buenaventura hard and investors are apparently expecting more. Though its shares post a below average P/E ratio, the price/book ratio of 3.5 is still a bit rich.

Paul Ausick

Soros Fund Management counted 4,721,808 SPDR Gold Trust shares with a date of December 31, 2010.  That is up from 4,697,008 shares in the quarter before.  Some may have been from call options as those were listed in the third quarter but not this quarter.  NovaGold Resources Inc. (NYSE: NG) was another large Soros holding worth for 11,213,000 shares.

Paulson & Co. has his largest bet on the SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD).  His position was counted as 31.5 million shares and that was unchanged.  This comes to $4.37 billion in the dold trust alone.  Paulson also listed the following gold shares:

AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (NYSE: AU) as being $2.015 billion for 40,949,437 shares;
IAMGOLD Corp. (NYSE: IAG) worth $48 million for 2,700,000 shares;
Kinross Gold Corporation (NYSE: KGC) worth $369.318 million for 19,478,794 shares;
NovaGold Resources Inc. (NYSE: NG) worth $287.995 million for 20,181,818 shares;
Randgold Resources Ltd. (NASDAQ: GOLD) worth $40.753 million for 495,000 shares.

JON C. OGG

Apollo Group Inc. (NASDAQ: APOL) Raised to Market Perform at FBR.
Exelon Corp. (NYSE: EXC) Raised to Buy at Jefferies.
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, Inc. (NYSE: GAP) Cut to Sell from Hold at Citigroup.
JDS Uniphase Corporation (NASDAQ: JDSU) Raised to Overweight at Piper Jaffray.
Kansas City Southern (NYSE: KSU) Cut to Neutral at UBS.
Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd. (NASDAQ: MPEL) Maintained Overweight but Target Raised at Morgan Stanley.
NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) Raised to Overweight at Barclays.
NRG Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NRG) Raised to Outperform at Oppenheimer.
Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE) Raised to Buy at UBS.
NovaGold Resources Inc. (NYSE: NG) Started as Overweight at JPMorgan.
SodaStream International (NASDAQ: SODA) Started as Hold at Deutsche Bank; Started as Outperform at William Blair; Started as Neutral at JPMorgan.
OmniVision Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: OVTI) Cut to Neutral at JPMorgan.
Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE: UA) Cut to Neutral at UBS.
Verigy, Ltd. (NASDAQ: VRGY) Cut to Hold at Stifel Nicolaus; Raised to Equal-Weight at Barclays.
Western Refining Inc. (NYSE: WNR) Cut to Underperform at RBC.

You can join our free daily email distribution list to hear more about dividend trends, analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader and active trader alerts, news on Buffett and other investment gurus, IPOs, secondary offerings, private equity, and more.

JON C. OGG

Prices have been provided and we have provided some basic data on each along with color for an outlook or what has been a driving force.  Those which were within 1% of the objective price targets were also included in the screen, but we left off the highly speculative Canadian names that trade in Vancouver or Toronto with small market caps and which have limited operations.

AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (NYSE: AU) is one of the biggest companies in our investing gold universe that we track.  It is also based in South Africa and it operates in many friendly and many hostile environments.  Operations are in Congo, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Russia, Guinea, and the U.S. At $46.62 it has a market cap of $17.1 billion.  Analysts have a consensus price target objective of $42.12 and it has traded in a range of $34.11 to $47.75 over the last 52-weeks.  The company trades ate nearly 19-times forward earnings and the screen shows that it trades at about 5.4-times an implied book value.  Shares are up 36.68% from a year low and down only 2.37% from a year high.

Gold Fields Ltd. (NYSE: GFI) is also one of the largest gold players in our investing in gold universe.  It too is a South African-based company and it operates in South Africa, Australia, Peru, and Ghana.  At $15.55 it has a market cap of nearly $11 billion and a consensus analyst price target objective is $15.39.  The 52-week trading range is $10.88 to $15.99 and the screen listed that it trades at about 1.7-times an implied book value.  Shares are up 42.9% from the lows of the year and are only down 2.75% from the highs.

Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE: AEM) is based in Canada and has operations in Canada, Mexico, U.S., and Finland.  At $72.21 it has a market cap of $11.3 billion and analysts hav a price target objective of $72.77.  the 52-week trading range is $49.64 to $74.43 and it trades at an implied forward ratio of about 26-times earnings.  The screen also showed that it trades at about 3.8-times an implied book value and shares are up 45% from lows and down only 3% from highs over the last year.

In a recent call, our affiliate Adam Hewison of INO recently put $1,150.30 as the critical pivot to watch in gold for other reasons and he outlines what to expect down the road in much more detail.  That was a call of a technical nature, not one of Paulson ties.  With spot gold at $1,134 to $1,135 per ounce on a $24.00 drop, that $1,150.30 may now be the next ceiling rather than floor.

The reason that Paulson being implicated in the gold trade is that Paulson & Co. opened up a hedge fund to make bank on the long-term move that may come in the gold markets.  If he is implicated too deeply in the SEC charges, again IF, then traders are betting that there will be an exodus from his funds and that Paulson will have to sell just to deal with redemptions and client losses. Here are just some of the Paulson holdings:

• NovaGold Resources Inc. (NYSE: NG)
• Kinross Gold Corp. (NYSE: KGC).. PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. with 23,550,000.. 3.34%.. $308,740,500.. Dec-31-09
• AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (NYSE: AU).. PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. with 42,849,864.. 11.99%.. $1,721,707,535.. Dec-31-2009
• Gold Fields Ltd. (NYSE: GFI) PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. with 23,550,000.. 3.34%.. $308,740,500.. 31-Dec-09

Again, this is the trade happening on Wall Street today.  One fund and one man won’t likely fix the trade forever.  You know trades, they go for the gold (no pun intended) when it comes to “where there is smoke, there is fire” theory.

JON C. OGG