Stocks hit new highs on Friday with the Dow Jones industrials closing above 28,000 for the first time and with the S&P 500 up over 3,100, but stocks were looking for any direction without a clear bias on Monday. Despite the record levels in the past two weeks, investors still have a lot of pressing issues and risks to consider, now that the bull market is over 10 and a half years old. This is a time for investors to consider what changes they should be making for their portfolios and assets heading into late 2019 and as 2020 approaches.

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each day of the week. Our goal is to find new ideas for traders and long-term investors alike. Some of the daily analyst calls cover stocks to buy, while some calls cover stocks to sell or to avoid.

We have provided these calls in a quick-hit summary for easy reading, and additional comments and trading data have been added on some of the calls. The consensus analyst price targets and other valuation metrics are from the Refinitiv sell-side research service.

These are the top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations for Monday, November 18, 2019.

Amarin Corp. PLC (NASDAQ: AMRN) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy but the target price was raised to $27 from $23 at Citigroup.

AmerisourceBergen Corp. (NYSE: ABC) was reiterated as Buy with a $110 target price at Argus.

Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) was up handily after earnings on Friday, and Argus joined other analysts by reiterating its Buy rating and raising its target price to $72.

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) was reiterated as Overweight and the target price was raised to $38 from $35 (versus a $32.93 prior close) at Morgan Stanley.

CarMax Inc. (NYSE: KMX) was reiterated as Neutral with an $80 target price (versus a $98.00 close) at Wedbush Securities.

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) was reiterated as Overweight and the target price was raised to $90 from $84 (versus a $74.40 close) at Morgan Stanley.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) was reiterated as Equal Weight and the target price was raised to $250 from $244 (versus a $220.25 close) at Morgan Stanley.

Huntsman Corp. (NYSE: HUN) was reiterated as Buy with a $29 target price (versus a $23.21 close) at Goldman Sachs.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) was reiterated as Overweight and the target price was raised to $141 from $138 (versus a $129.53 close) at Morgan Stanley.

Liberty Global PLC (NASDAQ: LBTYA) was downgraded to Underweight from Equal Weight at Barclays.

Liberty SiriusXM Group (NASDAQ: LSXMA) was started with an Outperform rating and a $55 target price (versus a $47.01 close) at Credit Suisse. The firm noted that this is the tracking stock of Liberty Media’s 71% ownership stake in Sirius, and it sees the shares trading in tandem with room for further multiple expansion and its significant stock repurchases to keep driving shares higher.

LyondellBasell Industries N.V. (NYSE: LYB) was reiterated as Buy with a $121 target price (versus a $96.00 close) at Goldman Sachs.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) was reiterated as Outperform with a $155 target price (versus a $149.97 close) at Credit Suisse, with the firm noting that Microsoft and Salesforce.com have expanded their strategic partnership with Azure being adopted as its public cloud provider and Microsoft Teams will be integrated in Salesforce.com’s Sales and Service Clouds.

Okta Inc. (NASDAQ: OKTA) was downgraded to Hold from Buy with a $120 target price (versus a $117.72 close) at Canaccord Genuity.

Owens Corning (NYSE: OC) was raised to Outperform from Market Perform with a $77 target price (versus a $65.15 close) at Wells Fargo.

Progressive Corp. (NYSE: PGR) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy and the target price was lowered to $81 from $91 at Goldman Sachs. Shares previously closed at $72.90, in a 52-week range of $56.71 to $84.96 and with a consensus target price of $86.29.

Sherwin-Williams Co. (NYSE: SHW) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Goldman Sachs. It previously closed at $592.77, in a 52-week range of $365.20 to $597.00 and with a consensus target price of $610.14.

Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) was raised to Overweight from Equal Weight and the target price was raised to $169 from $140 at Morgan Stanley. The stock previously closed at $119.20 and was indicated up almost 3% at $122.65 on Monday, and it had a prior consensus target price of $150.26.

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) was reiterated as Hold but the target price was raised by 12% to $290 (versus a $352.17 close) at Deutsche Bank.

TripAdvisor Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIP) was raised to Market Perform from Underperform but the target price was lowered to $30 at Cowen in a post-earnings scenario. At $31.14 a share on Friday’s close, this was a $40 stock earlier in November.

Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) was maintained as Market Perform but its price target was lowered to $33 from $45 (versus a $29.25 close) at BMO Capital Markets.

Ultra Clean Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: UCTT) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Stifel.

U.S. Concrete Inc. (NASDAQ: USCR) was downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight and its target price was lowered to $47 from $60 at Stephens.

Viasat Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT) was raised to Overweight from Neutral with a $90 target price (versus a $71.83 close) at JPMorgan.

Weyerhaeuser Co. (NYSE: WY) was reiterated as Buy and its target price was raised to $32 from $27 at Argus.

Wolverine World Wide Inc. (NYSE: WWW) was raised to Buy from Hold and assigned a $39 price target at Argus.

Workday Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY) was downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight and the target price was cut to $180 from $220 (versus a $165.98 close) at Morgan Stanley.

Credit Suisse is out with its 2020 outlook efforts, calling for earnings per share to improve and for price-to-earnings ratios to expand. The firm is initiating its 2020 S&P 500 price target of 3,425, which represents 9.8% upside from current levels and is based on an per-share earnings of $164.50 in 2019 (reduced from $166.50) and $173 per share in 2020 (reduced from $176) and imply earnings per share growth of 5.2% next year (from just 1% in 2019). The firm projects that the forward multiple will expand to 18.9 times by year-end 2020 from 18.1 times currently. Several assumptions are key to its 2020 outlook:

1) revenues to advance in-line with nominal GDP;
2) margin headwinds to be substantially less onerous;
3) buybacks to remain abundant;
4) reversal of decelerating economics to support multiple expansion.

Zacks has released its daily picks, and the Bull of the Day was Jazz Pharmaceuticals PLC (NASDAQ: JAZZ), with strength after earnings having the shares look solid ahead. The firm’s Bear of the Day is Canon Inc. (NYSE: CAJ), with the earnings trend looking troubling for the company.

Friday’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades included Ambev, American Water Works, Apple, BeiGene, CenterPoint Energy, Microsoft, NetApp, Pinterest, RealReal, Walmart and many more.

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