L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LLL) was raised to Outperform from Sector Perform and the price target was raised to $150 from $137 (versus a $136.61 close) at RBC Capital Markets. The consensus price target is $144.30. The 52-week trading range is $101.11 to $137.84.

Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC) was started with a Sell rating and was given a $34 price target (versus a $36.74 close) at UBS. It has a consensus price target of $52.20 and a 52-week range of $29.24 to $60.38.

Mazor Robotics Ltd. (NASDAQ: MZOR) was raised to Outperform from Market Perform at $13.28 at Wells Fargo. The company is a small-cap with a mere $278 million value. After shares closed at $13.28, the consensus price target is $17.10, and they have traded in a range of $8.31 to $14.99 in the past 52 weeks.

Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE: NSC) was started with an Outperform rating and was given a $98 price target (versus an $85.51 close) at CLSA. It has a consensus price target of $91.46 and a 52-week range of $64.51 to $98.75.

Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE: NOC) was downgraded to Sector Perform from Outperform with a $222 price target (versus a $214.14 close) at RBC Capital Markets.

Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) was started as Neutral and was given a price target of $84 (versus a $78.13 close) at UBS. The consensus price target is $90.85, and the shares have a 52-week range of $69.79 to $94.12.

RLJ Lodging Trust (NYSE: RLJ) was downgraded to Underperform from Buy at Merrill Lynch.

Union Pacific Corp. (NYSE: UNP) was started with a Sell rating and was given a $79 price target (versus an $82.48 close) at CLSA. The consensus price target is $90.81. The 52-week trading range is $67.06 to $105.65.

Vipshop Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: VIPS) was downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Macquarie, just a day after JPMorgan lowered its rating from Overweight to Neutral with an $11 price target. Merrill Lynch has a Neutral rating but lowered estimates and targets. The consensus price target is $16.45, and the 52-week range is $10.37 to $26.95.

Wednesday’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades included Apple, Brocade Communications, Clean Harbors, Eldorado Gold, Exxon Mobil, First Solar, Home Depot and Vipshop and many more.

Credit Suisse issued several key notes on a global equity theme on Wednesday. Two that stood out were as follows:

• Quality growth will do well against the background of a challenged global economy. The recent underperformance of quality as a style has also had an impact on the performance of its key growth themes. The strongest ranked themes in terms of quality have weak and/or declining valuation conditions.
• The strongest themes in terms of quality and momentum characteristics are heavily exposed to technology and new media and are the Potential of Internet (1st), Content is King (2nd) and Big, Fast Data (3rd). Shale remains bottom ranked although momentum is improving.