Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: Family Dollar, Garmin, Ruckus Wireless, UPS, VeriSign, McDonald's and More

Investing

Published: January 26, 2015 8:10 am

Stocks were indicated lower on Monday morning. The trend for 2015 has not yet been defined clearly, but throughout 2014 investors kept buying dips and buying value and overlooked stocks. 24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each morning for new investment and trading ideas for its readers. Some analyst calls cover stocks to buy, and some reports cover stocks to sell or avoid.

These are this Monday’s top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen from Wall Street.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBY) was raised to Outperform from Perform and the price target was raised to $85 from $69 (versus a $76.66 close) at Oppenheimer.

CenterPoint Energy Inc. (NYSE: CNP) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup.

DRDGOLD Ltd. (NYSE: DRD) was raised to Neutral from Underweight at J.P. Morgan.

Family Dollar Stores Inc. (NYSE: FDO) was removed from coverage at Merrill Lynch as the merger made the stock trade outside of its fundamentals.

First Niagara Financial Group Inc. (NASDAQ: FNFG) was raised to Buy from Hold at Jefferies, after beating earnings expectations last week.

Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN) was raised to Outperform from Sector Perform and was given a $67 price target (versus a $53.01 close) at RBC Capital Markets.

Gold Fields Inc. (NYSE: GFI) was downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at J.P. Morgan.

Harmony Gold Mining Co. (NYSE: HMY) was raised to Overweight from Neutral at J.P. Morgan.

ALSO READ: 5 Top Merrill Lynch Focus List Stocks for 2015

McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) was raised to Overweight from Equal Weight at Stephens. Here is our bullish and bearish case for McDonald’s in 2015.

Pier 1 Imports Inc. (NYSE: PIR) was raised to Outperform from Perform with a $20 price target (versus a $16.96 close) at Oppenheimer.

Randgold Resources Ltd. (NASDAQ: GOLD) was raised to Overweight from Neutral at J.P. Morgan.

Ruckus Wireless Inc. (NYSE: RKUS) was started with a Buy rating at Citigroup, after being raised to Outperform at Northland Securities last week.

State Street Corp. (NYSE: STT) was downgraded to Underperform from Market Perform at Bernstein.

Ubiquiti Networks Inc. (NASDAQ: UBNT) was started as Neutral at Citigroup.

United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS) was downgraded to Neutral from Outperform with a $102 price target (versus a $102.93 close) at Credit Suisse. It was also downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Barclays.

VeriSign Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) was downgraded to Underperform from Neutral and was given a big downside price target of $47.50 (versus a $56.81 close) at Credit Suisse.

ALSO READ: 5 Top High-Yielding Dividend REIT Stock Picks for 2015

Here are five analyst stock picks under $5 with gigantic upside to the stated price targets.

Here are the top 10 earnings reports to watch for this week.

In case you missed Friday’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades, they were in Altera, Chevron, Exxon, Discover, LinkedIn, Lululemon and many others.

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