Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: Alibaba, Baidu, Blackstone, Comerica, Dollar Tree, GlycoMimetics, IBM, KKR, Target, Whiting Petroleum and More

August 5, 2019 by Jon C. Ogg

Stocks were indicated to open sharply lower on Monday on continued trade war fears. Despite last week’s selling pressure, stocks are still relatively close to all-time highs in the major indexes. The bull market is now well over 10 years old, and investors should be considering exactly how they want their portfolios and assets positioned for the second half of 2019 and beyond.

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each day of the week. Our goal is to find new ideas for traders and long-term investors alike. Some of the daily analyst calls cover stocks to buy. Other analyst calls cover stocks to sell or to avoid.

We have provided these calls in a quick-hit summary for easy reading, and additional comments and trading data have been added on some of them. The consensus analyst price targets and other valuation metrics are from the Refinitiv (Thomson Reuters) sell-side research service.

These are the top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations on Monday, August 5, 2019.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE: BABA) was started with a Buy rating and assigned a $216 target price (versus a $161.00 prior close) at Jefferies. Shares closed down 2.8% on Friday and were indicated to open down another 3.5% at $155.21 on Monday, in a 52-week range of $129.77 to $195.72. The consensus target price is $216.22.

Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) was started with a Buy rating and assigned a $132 target price (versus a $107.76 close) at Jefferies. It was indicated down 3.3% at $104.25 on Monday. Baidu has a consensus target price of $158.18 and a 52-week trading range of $106.80 to $235.80.

Ball Corp. (NYSE: BLL) was downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform and the target price was raised to $72 from $68 at Wells Fargo.

Blackstone Group Inc. (NYSE: BX) was started with an Overweight rating and assigned a $56 target price (versus a $46.62 close) at Barclays. The stock was indicated down 2.35 at $45.60 on Monday, in a 52-week range of $26.88 to $49.81 and with a prior consensus target price of $51.82.

Carlyle Group L.P. (NASDAQ: CG) was started as Equal Weight with a $25 target at Barclays.

CDW Corp. (NASDAQ: CDW) was downgraded to Underweight from Neutral at JPMorgan.

Comerica Inc. (NYSE: CMA) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy and the target price was cut to $73 from $100 (versus a $67.89 close) at UBS.

Dollar Tree Inc. (NASDAQ: DLTR) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Deutsche Bank. It was down 0.8% at $96.87 on Friday and was indicated down 2.2% at $94.70 on Monday.

Ferrari N.V. (NYSE: RACE) was raised to Buy from Hold at Societe Generale.

GlycoMimetics Inc. (NASDAQ: GLYC) was down 1.3% at $9.13 on Friday, but the shares were down 50% at $4.50 on Monday after reports the top-line results from Pfizer’s Phase 3 clinical trial in sickle cell disease. Jefferies downgraded the stock to Hold from Buy, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey downgraded it to Hold from Buy and Piper Jaffray downgraded to Neutral from Overweight.