BofA Adds GE, Gilead, Regions and Valero to Most Attractive Buy List

Key research changes have been made in the last few days over at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch’s research coverage. The firm published its 2013 target for an S&P 500 Index target of 1,600 last week, but the caution was made that equities were already fully valued for 2012.

Now today came some key changes to the “Most Attractive Buy List” from BofA, which is a bit like the “Conviction Buy List” that is released by Goldman Sachs. The firm has now added General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), Gilead Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD), Regions Financial Corp. (NYSE: RF), and also Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE: VLO) to the Most Attractive Buy List.

BofA notes that this MAB List aims to identify stocks which are attractive based on technical analysis to generate alpha and risk-adjusted returns over the S&P 500 Index using tactical and strategic stock selection.

We would advise traders and investors that those are not exactly new “buy” rating issued today. GE was upgraded last week after shares hit a multi-year high. In fact, 3M Co. (NYSE: MMM) was also given a target that was implying more upside on price appreciation than GE from the fundamental analysis team. 3M is not even on the MAB list, but today’s call shows GE going up to the $25 to $26 area. FULL FUNDAMENTAL GE UPGRADE

We would also note that today’s additions were not met with any deletions from BofA’s MAB list.

JON C. OGG