Top Analyst Upgrades and Stocks to Buy: Gap, Ryland, Starbucks, Yelp and More

Investors and traders often look for new research ideas that can generate higher income or more profits. 24/7 Wall St. reviews many fresh research calls each morning to find great ideas from value stocks to growth stocks to dividend stocks. We have broken out the positive analyst calls, and these are some of this Thursday’s top analyst upgrades, initiations and positive analyst research calls seen from Wall Street.

Air Products & Chemicals Inc. (NYSE: APD) was upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at R.W. Baird.

American Tower Corp. (NYSE: AMT) was upgraded to Strong Buy from Outperform after earnings at Raymond James.

Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) was upgraded to Hold from Sell at Argus.

Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) was upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at R.W. Baird.

Covance Inc. (NYSE: CVD) was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at First Analysis, but it was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA/Merrill Lynch.

Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) was started as Outperform at FBR Capital Markets.

Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN) was upgraded to Outperform from Perform at Oppenheimer.

Ryland Group Inc. (NYSE: RYL) was upgraded to Market Perform from Underperform by Raymond James.

Siemens A.G. (NYSE: SI) was upgraded to Buy from Hold at Deutsche Bank.

Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) was raised to Buy at Williams Capital.

Yelp Inc. (NYSE: YELP) was upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at J.P. Morgan.

Deutsche Bank raised price targets on some of its top stocks.