Tuesday's Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: Dominion Energy, FireEye, Intuit, Occidental Petroleum, Unity Software, Virgin Galactic and More

Investing

Published: August 31, 2021 9:00 am

Last Updated: August 31, 2021 9:24 am

Tuesday morning futures turned negative, but this shouldn’t stop markets from posting a solid month. August has been particularly good to the broad markets, as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are each eyeing a gain of around 4% for the month. This also would mark the seventh straight month that the S&P 500 has closed higher. While the stock market is not necessarily a good indicator for the economy in general, many investors are looking to the August employment report for those numbers on Friday.

For the employment report, analysts are targeting a “robust” 750,000 jobs coming back in August, according to Bloomberg. Note that this is still an impressive number by prepandemic standards, but it does demonstrate a deceleration from July’s report, which saw an increase of 943,000 jobs. Also, analysts are expecting the unemployment rate to narrow to 5.2% in August from July’s reported 5.4%.

While many expect the report to be a fairly positive one, it will still reflect the surge in coronavirus cases that we saw across the United States over the past month. It goes without saying that the Federal Reserve also will be monitoring these numbers, per its dual mandate, and the report could influence the Fed’s monetary policy to come later this year. For now, the labor market appears to be improving and the Fed policy is favorable.

With major Wall Street firms still warning of the potential for impending 5% to 10% correction across the board, which may have seen beginning last week, it makes sense for investors to continue building some cash reserves into any market strength while repositioning portfolios for the balance of 2021.

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each day of the week with a goal of finding new ideas for investors and traders alike. Some of these daily analyst calls cover stocks to buy. Other calls cover stocks to sell or avoid. Remember that no single analyst call should ever be used as a basis to buy or sell a stock. Consensus analyst target data is from Refinitiv.

These are the top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen on Tuesday, August 31, 2021.

AppLovin Corp. (NASDAQ: APP): Macquarie initiated coverage with an Outperform rating and a $90 price target. That compares with a $76.57 consensus target and Monday’s close at $73.30.