Wednesday's Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: Activision Blizzard, American Express, Chewy, eBay, Kohl's, Kroger, Monster Beverage, Occidental Petroleum, Tesla, Shopify and More

Investing

Published: July 6, 2022 8:53 am

Last Updated: July 6, 2022 9:04 am

The futures were lower after a decidedly mixed start to the holiday-shortened trading week. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed higher on Tuesday, after opening down big before a huge reversal in the afternoon, which left only the Dow Jones industrials in the red at the closing bell. Recession fears were cited across Wall Street for the early weakness, and with good reason. The latest data from the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker is now in negative territory, predicting second-quarter real GDP growth of −2.08% as of July 1, down from +0.30% on June 27.

If that is indeed the case (and as we have said for some time), we will indeed be in a recession, which by definition is two straight quarters of negative GDP. Remember that the final first-quarter numbers last week were revised down to −1.60%.

The buyers returned to the Treasury market, as yields were down across the curve, with the benchmark 30-year long bond closing at a 3.03% handle. Clearly the Treasury market is sensing a recession, as yields have dropped dramatically over the past two weeks. One bright spot for beleaguered consumers is that both Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude closed down over 8%, both right near the $100 mark, while natural gas dropped almost 4%. Gold was down almost 2%, while Bitcoin was slightly higher.

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each day of the week with a goal of finding fresh 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 Wednesday, July 6, 2022.

AGCO Corp. (NYSE: AGCO): Oppenheimer maintained an Outperform rating with a $156 target price. The consensus target is $156.64. The stock closed over 4% lower on Tuesday at $96.56.

Activision Blizzard Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI): Zacks selected this video game leader as its Bear of the Day, citing that the shares have underperformed the S&P 500 by a fair margin. The stock has traded as high as $95.27 apiece in the past year but closed most recently at $78.87. That is down about 2% in the past 90 days.