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6 Key Analyst Downgrades From Wednesday That Cannot Be Overlooked

With the Dow Jones Industrial Average having bounced about 1,300 points in less than three weeks, investors are looking for value and growth. It has been proven even in this market cycle that investors will buy weakness. The problem is that some value may represent a value trap, and investors hate when they buy a stock they thought was cheap just because it sold off.

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens and dozens of analyst research reports each morning. Some cover stocks to buy, but others cover stocks to sell or avoid. It turns out that there were several key analyst downgrades on Wednesday that were too big to overlook. Some moves may seem obvious, but they may actually seal the fate of some stocks to have much lower upside expectations ahead.

Here are six analyst downgrades or key price target cuts seen on Wednesday.

Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) was already lower ahead of earnings because of lowered guidance, and we saw at least two downgrades the following day. Now we have the formal earnings reaction after the real report, with shares down 3.2% more at $140.45, against a 52-week range of $130.00 to $242.37. Whether that $193.00 or so consensus analyst target holds remains to be seen, but here are some downgrades and target cuts: Citi keeps Buy, cuts target to $200 from $240; JPMorgan kept Overweight, cut target to $235 from $270; Janney keeps Neutral, cut target to $140 from $154.

ALSO READ: Will the Last IBM Analyst Cutting Price Targets Please Turn Out the Lights?

Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU) was included in the day’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades. The reality is that the Western Digital merger with SanDisk should highlight Micron’s value here. The problem is that shares were down 1.7% at $16.80 after two analyst downgrades. Needham cut its rating to Hold from Buy, but Bank of America Merrill Lynch cut its rating to Underperform from an already unenthusiastic Neutral rating and slashed the price objective to $12.50 from $17.00. The downgrade was after Intel’s capital spending plan will eat into Micron’s NAND market and could conflict with the Micron-Intel Joint venture. Micron’s 52-week range is $13.50 to $36.59, and the consensus price target has drifted down to just over $22.00.

Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) may simply be too large in market cap and too late in the business cycle for Jack Dorsey or anyone else to fix. That was the take of Morgan Stanley, with the firm downgrading Twitter to Underweight from Equal Weight. The new price target of $24.00 also implies more than 20% downside from the $30.91 prior close. All this knocked 6.5% off Twitter’s share price, taking the stock to under $29.00, with a consensus price target of $38.12 and a 52-week range of $21.01 to $53.49.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. (NYSE: VRX) is hard to consider a true independent downgrade because the author is short the stock. Still, Citron Research’s accusation took out 25% of the stock’s value (or about $12.5 billion in market cap) by suggesting that Valeant could this be the pharmaceutical version Enron. We will leave the rest of that up to readers to decide the validity of, but the already battered Valeant was last trading down 25% at $109.75, after hitting a new 52-week low. Its 52-week range is now $98.35 to $263.81.

VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) just went from bad to even worse. Earnings and guidance are to blame here, and it may just create a wider rift in the Dell-EMC merger. Rather than going through the whole lineup of actual downgrades, the 18.6% drop to $55.97 is now a five-year low! Firms throwing in the towel with downgrades and/or price targets here included: BMO, Merrill Lynch, Cowen, FBR, Jefferies, Macquarie, Nomura, Oppenheimer, Pac-Crest, Sterne Agee CRT, SunTrust, Susquehanna and even more.

ALSO READ: 9 Great Stocks Will Hike Dividends for a Decade

Harley-Davidson Inc. (NYSE: HOG) was last seen down almost 3% at $46.85, barely 30 cents above the prior 52-week low of $46.52 and down over $23 from the 52-week high of $70.41. Tuesday’s earnings report already took out 14% from Harley-Davidson’s value, and the wave of analyst downgrades took out more value on Wednesday. Downgrades and/or price cuts were seen from BMO, JPMorgan, RBC and Wedbush.

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