Stocks were indicated sharply higher on Tuesday morning, likely with a thin-volume in trading participation this week. The stock market is still fighting for a positive 2015, but the trend that has endured for over four years now is that investors have bought every single market pullback.
24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each morning of the week to find new investing and trading ideas for its readers. Some of these analyst reports cover stocks to buy, and other calls cover stocks to sell or avoid.
As a reminder, 14 strategists are calling for a positive, but mixed, S&P 500 performance in 2016.
These are this Tuesday’s top analyst calls.
Albemarle Corp. (NYSE: ALB) was reiterated as Buy at Jefferies, but the price target was raised to $65.00 from $58.00 in the call. Jefferies believes the jump in the highly illiquid spot lithium market is an incremental positive.
Atara Biotherapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: ATRA) was reiterated as Buy with a $47.00 price target (versus a $22.77 prior close) at Canaccord Genuity. The firm noted that the Chimerix drug study failure is an incremental positive for Atara. Canaccord sees its valuation only assuming a 55% chance that its EBV and CMV programs are successful.
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Chimerix Inc. (NASDAQ: CMRX) saw its shares crushed on Monday due to a late-stage drug test failure. It was downgraded elsewhere, but JPMorgan jumped on the downgrade wagon by lower it to Neutral from Overweight and slashing the price target to $15.00 from $65.00. William Blair cut its rating to Market Perform from Outperform and slashed its price target to $12.00 from $62.00. Chimerix closed down 81% at $6.62 on Monday.
IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS) was reiterated as Neutral with a $130.00 price target (versus a $119.16 close) at Credit Suisse. This is after the Carproof acquisition. IHS has a consensus price target of $125.23 and a 52-week trading range of $104.65 to $135.17.
Primo Water Corp. (NASDAQ: PRMW) was raised to Outperform from Market Perform at Barrington Research.
NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) was maintained with a Sell rating at a firm called Moneness Crespi & Hardt, but the firm lowered its price target to $23.00 from $27.00 (versus a $26.57 close).
Pure Storage Inc. (NYSE: PSTG) was started as Hold with a $15.00 price target (versus a $16.58 close) at a firm called Summit Research. Pure Storage has a $21.10 consensus price target and it a 52-week range of $12.26 to $20.60.
TransAtlantic Petroleum Ltd. (NYSEMKT: TAT) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at TD Securities. This is only a $1.28 stock, with a 52-week range of $1.02 to $6.18.
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