Stocks were trying to hold positive ground on Friday morning after a huge sell-off on Thursday. Investors still seem eager and willing to look for value and overlooked stocks for upside into 2015. 24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each morning of the week for new investment ideas and trading ideas for its readers. Some analyst reports cover stocks to buy, and other analyst reports cover stocks to sell or stocks to avoid. These are this Friday’s top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations covered by 24/7 Wall St.
Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) was started as Outperform with a $27 to $28 price target range at Wells Fargo.
Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO) was raised to Buy from Neutral and the price target was raised to $50 from $44 by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Celldex Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: CLDX) was started as Outperform with a $22 price target (versus a $14.16 close) at Cowen.
Commercial Metals Co. (NYSE: CMC) was raised to Buy from Neutral at Citigroup.
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Jabil Circuit Inc. (NYSE: JBL) was reiterated as Buy with a $23 price target (versus a $20.39 close) at Argus, based on seeing room for further upside surprises in operations in fiscal 2015.
LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD) was raised to Outperform from Market Perform at Cowen & Co.
Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE) was raised to Buy from Neutral at Janney Capital Markets and reiterated as Buy with a $95 target at Sterne Agee. Canaccord Genuity maintained its Hold rating but raised the target to $88 from $76.
Phillip Morris International Inc. (NYSE: PM) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy and the price target was cut to $87 from $91 at Merrill Lynch.
Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE: NOC) was raised to Buy from Hold and the price target was raised to $145 from $140 (versus a $128.90 close) at Deutsche Bank.
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (NYSE: PHG) was raised to Overweight from Equal Weight by Morgan Stanley.
Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) was raised to Buy from Hold with a $44 price target (versus $35.54 close) at Stifel.
Seadrill Ltd. (NYSE: SDRL) was downgraded to Sell from Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
Steel Dynamics Inc. (NASDAQ: STLD) was started as Neutral from Buy at Citigroup.
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Vale S.A. (NYSE: VALE) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy and the price target was cut to $12.50 from $15 (versus a $11.32 close) at Citigroup.
Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: VRNT) was started with a Buy rating and $68 price target (versus a $53.05 close) at Goldman Sachs.
Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) was reiterated as Buy with a target price of $59 at Argus, based on it having a substantial lead over competitors in building out its advanced 4G LTE network and in providing fundamental network reliability.
In case you missed Thursday’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades they included Alcoa, Yahoo, BHP Billiton, KB Home, Medtronic and a dozen more.
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