Mining giant Freeport-McMoRan announced Tuesday morning that it has parted company with the executive management team at its oil and gas division.
Paul Ausick The top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen this Wednesday morning include Apple, AIG, Medivation, PayPal, Shake Shack and TerraForm Power.
Interest in almost all of the most heavily shorted stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange shrank between the February 29 and March 15 settlement dates. Except for Pfizer, that is.
Most of the stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange with the greatest number of shares short saw their short interest decline between the February 12 and February 29 settlement dates.
After a dismal two years, shares of Freeport-McMoRan have been down so long that anything looks like up.
Paul Ausick Freeport-McMoRan sold an interest in its stake in a Serbian copper project at Timok to Toronto's Lundin Mining. The deal could be worth up to $262.5 million to Freeport.
Paul Ausick The top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen on Thursday, March 3, include Alcoa, Boeing, Freeport-McMoRan, Intel, SunEdison and Walt Disney.
The top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen on Tuesday, March 1, include Freeport-McMoRan, PTC Therapeutics, SunEdison, Transocean, United Technologies, Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Windstream.
The most shorted stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange — Chesapeake Energy — bucked the short interest trend with a modest gain in February.
Activist investor Carl Icahn has added 4 million class B shares of Freeport-McMoRan to his stake.
Paul Ausick Freeport-McMoRan has agreed to sell a 13% ownership stake in its Morenci mine for $1 billion to its joint-venture partner in the Arizona mine, Japan-based Sumitomo.
Paul Ausick Among the six most heavily shorted stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange, short sellers continued to pile on Alcoa and Freeport-McMoRan between the January 15 and January 29 settlement dates.
The top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen on Tuesday include Apple, Freeport-McMoRan, Kinross Gold, Pfizer, Plains All American, Salesforce,com, Tesla and Yelp.
A falling dollar favors commodities, like gold and copper, that trade in dollars by making them cheaper compared with other currencies.
So what are investors supposed to make of an analyst downgrade of Freeport-McMoRan coming out now?
Jon C. Ogg 
