Each morning we review our top upgrades, downgrades and initiations from Wall St. research notes. We then look back over these at the end of the week to more closely review calls that highlight underlying catalysts or developments that go far beyond just a one-day impact. Many calls turn out to offer keen insight, but some get a failing grade.

This last week’s top analyst calls of the week were in the following: Carbonite Inc. (NASDAQ: CARB); Corning Inc. (NYSE: GLW); Dollar General Corporation (NYSE: DG); Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC); Logitech International SA (NASDAQ: LOGI); Lululemon Athletica Inc. (NASDAQ: LULU); MAKO Surgical Corp. (NASDAQ: MAKO); McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE: MCD); Molycorp Inc. (NYSE: MCP); Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX); National Bank of Greece SA (NYSE: NBG); Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P); Renren Inc. (NYSE: RENN); Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO); Yandex NV (NASDAQ: YNDX); Youku.com Inc. (NYSE: YOKU); Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE: LVS); Wynn Resorts Ltd. (NASDAQ: WYNN); Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC); and Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC).

Carbonite (NASDAQ: CARB) was one of the most mispriced IPOs for 2011, but to the downside by our take due to poor market conditions. The cloud storage player saw its quiet period end and the firms were mostly positive on the stock:

• Started as Buy with a $16 target at Canaccord Genuity;
• Started as Outperform with a $17 target at Oppenheimer;
• Started as Outperform at William Blair;
• Started as Overweight at JP Morgan;
• Started as Buy with a $16 target at BofA/ML.

Corning (NYSE: GLW) is truly a tech value stock. Unfortunately, it is going to have a crummy Christmas in TVs and monitors unless can be massively offset and overcome by smartphones. The company already talked down its numbers a week or so earlier. On Friday it was named as the dubious Bear of the Day at Zacks.