Stocks were down again on Friday morning ahead of the weekend. It remains to be seen what the trend will be for 2015, but throughout 2014 (and before) investors proved day in and day out that they will buy stocks on weakness or will buy value. 24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each morning to find new investment and trading ideas for its readers. Some of these analyst calls cover stocks to buy, while other reports cover stocks to sell or avoid.
These are this Friday’s top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen from Wall Street.
Abraxas Petroleum Corp. (NASDAQ: AXAS) was downgraded to Hold from Buy and its price target was cut to $2.75 from $4.00 (from a $2.69 close) at Canaccord Genuity.
Boston Beer Co. (NYSE: SAM) was started as Buy at Jefferies.
Coach Inc. (NYSE: COH) was started as Market Perform at Bernstein.
Costco Wholesale Inc. (NASDAQ: COST) was started as Outperform at BMO Capital Markets.
Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) was started as Market Perform at Bernstein.
GrubHub Inc. (NYSE: GRUB) was started as Buy at Stifel.
Hershey Co. (NYSE: HSY) was raised to Outperform from Market Perform at Wells Fargo, just a day after Goldman Sachs raised its rating to Neutral from Sell.
ALSO READ: How Low Oil Prices Are Already Affecting Houston
FXCM Inc. (NYSE: FXCM) appears to have suffered a catastrophic loss on the Swiss central bank move. With shares down over 80%, we have seen two downgrades so far: to Sell from Neutral at Citigroup and to Underperform from Neutral with a $4 price target at Credit Suisse.
Family Dollar Stores Inc. (NYSE: FDO) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Jefferies.
Lululemon Athletica Inc. (NASDAQ: LULU) was started as Outperform at Bernstein.
Marlin Midstream Partners L.P. (NASDAQ: FISH) upgraded to Buy from Neutral with a $28 price target (versus a $19.02 close) at Janney Capital Markets.
ALSO READ: Oppenheimer’s Top 5 Ideas for 2015
Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: KORS) was started as Outperform at Bernstein.
Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) was raised to Outperform from Market Perform at Cowen. Just two days earlier, Stifel raised its rating to Buy from Hold.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. (NYSE: HOT) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) was raised to Neutral from Underperform at Merrill Lynch.
ALSO READ: J.P. Morgan’s Top Defensive MLPs to Buy in 2015
T. Rowe Price Group Inc. (NASDAQ: TROW) was downgraded to Underweight from Overweight at J.P. Morgan.
TJX Companies Inc. (NYSE: TJX) was started as Outperform at Bernstein.
We recently have been giving the S&P 500 price targets from major strategists, but now we have our own DJIA target modeled showing why the Dow will hit 19,142 in 2015. It includes a bullish and bearish case for each of the 30 DJIA stocks.
In case you missed Thursday’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades, they were in shares of Apple, Barrick Gold, Corning, Groupon, Peabody Energy, SolarCity and over a dozen more.
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