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Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: Alcoa, Apple, CSC, Kellogg, Raytheon, Toyota and More

Stocks were looking firm on Tuesday after Monday’s drop turned out to not be as deep as feared. Investors are proving able and willing to step in and look for opportunity in pullbacks and overlooked stock stories. Each morning 24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of brokerage analyst reports for new investment and trading ideas for its readers. Some of these reports cover stocks to buy, but some also cover stocks to sell or to avoid.

These are this Tuesday’s top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations covered by 24/7 Wall St.

Alcoa Inc. (NYSE: AA) was raised to Buy from Neutral and the price target was raised to $18 from $16 at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) was started as Hold with a $110 price target (versus a $100.11 close) at Jefferies. While this is a Hold rating rather than a Buy rating, note that the consensus analyst price target of $110.79 is less than $1 higher than this target issued today — and this target still implies 10% upside plus the dividend.

Computers Science Corp. (NYSE: CSC) was raised Outperform from Market Perform at Raymond James.

Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT) was raised to Buy from Hold at Stifel.

Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) was raised to Overweight from Neutral at J.P. Morgan.

Other top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations were as follows:

Athlon Energy Inc. (NYSE: ATHL) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at UBS. Canaccord Genuity downgraded it to Hold from Buy as well.

Century Aluminum Co. (NASDAQ: CENX) was raised to Buy from Neutral and the price target was raised to $30 from $21 (versus a $23.86 close) at Merrill Lynch.

ALSO READ: Was Ford’s Guidance Out to 2020 Simply Misunderstood?

Great Plains Energy Inc. (NYSE: GXP) was maintained as Buy but the price target was cut to $29 from $32 (versus a $24.29 close) at Argus, due to earnings pressure from increases in transmission and distribution expenses and higher generation expenses.

Kellogg Co. (NYSE: K) was downgraded to Underweight from Equal Weight and the price target was set at $58 (versus a $61.81 close) at Morgan Stanley.

Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: MLNX) was raised to Overweight from Neutral at Piper Jaffray.

NiSource Inc. (NYSE: NI) was raised to Outperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse, on the heels of its spin-off news.

NuVasive Inc. (NASDAQ: NUVA) was raised to Buy from Hold at Brean Capital.

Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. (NASDAQ: PTEN) was raised to Equal Weight from Underweight at Morgan Stanley.

Raytheon Co. (NYSE: RTN) was raised to Buy from Hold at Stifel.

Seattle Genetics Inc. (NASDAQ: SGEN) was downgraded to Underperform from Neutral at Merrill Lynch.

Teekay Corp. (NYSE: TK) was raised to Buy from Hold at Deutsche Bank.

ALSO READ: 8 Analyst Stocks Under $10 With Massive Upside Calls

In case you missed Monday’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades, they were in AT&T, Baidu, FedEx, F5 Networks, Google, Janus Capital, Micron, Nike, Yahoo and a dozen or so more.

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