Too Many Cautious Analyst Calls & Downgrades??? (GRPN, AWAY, ANDE, CCL, PCL, REXX, DIS, IPI, NIHD, NYX, POT, RSH)

January 31, 2012 by Jon C. Ogg

Every morning we publish the top analyst upgrades and downgrades that we see from Wall Street and investment banking analysts.  Some calls are insightful, some are total duds.  But about when you see a wide trend in a day.  Analysts are supposedly considered as always more bullish than bearish, but there is a theme worth noting on Tuesday and that is the broad number of highly cautious analyst calls with new ratings or lower ratings from Sell to Underperform, to Underweight to Neutral to Hold to Market Perform.

Groupon, Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN) and HomeAway, Inc. (NASDAQ: AWAY) are both very interesting and widely used companies in America, but the stocks were both given dull new coverage of “Market Perform” by Raymond James.

The Andersons, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANDE) is down over 4% after being downgraded to Neutral from Overweight by Piper Jaffray.

Carnival Corporation (NYSE: CCL) continues to face scrutiny and the stock was downgraded to Equalweight from Overweight with a new $26 price target at Barclays. Carnival is now at risk of dropping back under the $30 mark again.

Plum Creek Timber Company, Inc. (NYSE: PCL) is down by 3,3% at $38.75 after UBS took an already cautious rating of Neutral down to the proverbial “Sell” rating.
 
Rex Energy Corporation (NASDAQ: REXX) was down because of a sneaky one-underwriter secondary offering. Brean Murray was apparently offended that it did not get in on the offering because it downgraded the stock to Hold from Buy.  Now shares are down over 10% rather than about 7% as it originally appeared.

The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) was given the most cautious of three seen media calls by Wells Fargo as the firm initiated coverage with a “Market Perform” rating versus Outperform at two large rivals.

Other downgrades which have been covered or addressed earlier:

Intrepid Potash (NYSE: IPI) Cut to Sell at Goldman Sachs.

NII Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: NIHD) named as Bear of the Day at Zacks.

NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX) Cut to Sector Perform at RBC Capital.

Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (NYSE: POT) Cut to Neutral at Goldman Sachs.

RadioShack Corporation (NYSE: RSH) has been downgraded or targets cut by several firms after what was awful margin news after an already dismal performance.

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JON C. OGG

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