Investors and traders are constantly looking for new ideas that will generate profits. 24/7 Wall St. looks over research calls from all over to find great ideas, from value stocks to dividends to growth stocks. Many research-driven ideas for stocks to buy and to sell come from independent research firms. Some also come from the large sell-side investment banking firms on Wall St.

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

Aastrom Biosciences Inc. (NASDAQ: ASTM) imploded on Wednesday. Needham threw in its towel with a downgrade yesterday being reported today: cut to Hold from Buy. As we noted, that implosion may be even worse than the bad stock reaction indicated yesterday.

Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: ARIA) started as Neutral at Goldman Sachs.

Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ: BIIB) started as Outperform at JMP Securities.

Lululemon Athletica Inc. (NASDAQ: LULU) started as Neutral at Goldman Sachs.

Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE) started as Buy with $70 price target at Goldman Sachs.

Ryanair Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: RYAAY) raised to Buy at Citigroup.

Under Armour Inc. (NYSE: UA) started as Neutral at Goldman Sachs.

United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX) started as Overweight at Morgan Stanley.

Vanguard Health Systems Inc. (NYSE: VHS) cut to Market Perform at Wells Fargo.

VF Corp. (NYSE: VFC) started as Buy with $200 price target at Goldman Sachs.

A firm called Guggenheim has initiated coverage on brokers, with a Neutral rating on Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and with a Buy on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS).

Here are five big dividend hikes to watch for in April.

Deutsche Bank has two big lists with the first being a list of the next winners for the secular bull market. This list is great and includes themes for global growth, capital expenditure, dividend growth, debt capacity and economic profit growth.

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