Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades (ARG, ALL, BBRY, CEO, CMCSA, FINL, HSP, JCP, LIFE, RBS, SYW, SIAL, SPW, WFM)

Investing

Published: March 25, 2013 8:45 am

Last Updated: March 18, 2020 9:07 pm

Investors and active traders are always on the lookout for new ideas to generate profits. 24/7 Wall St. looks over research calls from all over to find great ideas. Many research-driven ideas for stocks to buy and for stocks to sell come from independent research firms. Some also come from the large sell-side investment banking firms on Wall St. The goal is often to find good value stocks and growth stocks, or to avoid the value traps and those where the growth has stalled.

These are some of this Monday’s top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen from select Wall St. research calls.

Airgas Inc. (NYSE: ARG) cut to Underperform from Neutral at BofA/Merrill Lynch.

Allstate Corp. (NYSE: ALL) raised to Buy at Goldman Sachs.

BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY) cut to Neutral from Buy at Goldman Sachs.

CNOOC Ltd. (NYSE: CEO) raised to Buy from Neutral at BofA/Merrill Lynch and raised to Hold from Underperform at Jefferies.

Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) started as Overweight at J.P. Morgan and started as Buy at Goldman Sachs.

Finish Line Inc. (NASDAQ: FINL) cut to Underperform at Stern Agee.

Hospira Inc. (NYSE: HSP) named Bear of the Day at Zacks.

J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (NYSE: JCP) cut to Underperform at BMO Capital Markets.

Life Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: LIFE) cut to Neutral at Citigroup.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (NYSE: RBS) raised to Neutral from Sell at Goldman Sachs.

Safeway Co. (NYSE: SWY) named Bull of the Day at Zacks.

Sigma-Aldrich Corp. (NASDAQ: SIAL) cut to Underperform from Neutral at BofA/Merrill Lynch.

SPX Corp. (NYSE: SPW) downgraded to Neutral at J.P. Morgan and downgraded to Hold at Deutsche Bank.

Whole Foods Market Inc. (NASDAQ: WFM) cut to Neutral from Overweight at Piper Jaffray.

Deutsche Bank not only is calling for a secular bull market and not only raised its GDP forecast for the United States. The firm gave a huge list of companies it expects to win in the next leg of the bull market over the coming years.

BofA/Merrill Lynch identified many top leveraged buyout candidates.

Canaccord Genuity aggressively raised LED stocks.

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