Stocks were very mixed and without direction on Wednesday after preliminary news that consumer inflation rose by 0.3% to a 2.7% annualized rate in November. Investors are making their plans for 2025 with a new regime, new policies, tariffs, and likely government spending cuts all expected. All major Wall Street strategists have also raised their S&P 500 targets for 2025 in the last three weeks.

Tactical Bulls searches the daily flow of analyst research reports covering the upgrades, downgrades and initiations from Wall Street looking for new ideas that might have otherwise been overlooked or missed. These analyst reports generally try to look out a year out into the future with ratings and target prices.

Some analyst calls are just reactionary to earnings and other news. Other analyst calls are preemptive and can move stocks. Short-term traders get a glimpse of immediate price reactions to news and to the analyst calls. Long-term investors get a picture of new buy, sell and hold ratings with targets looking a year out.

Tactical Bulls always reminds its readers and investors that no single analyst report should ever be the sole basis to buy or sell a stock. That decision to buy or sell, or hold or short sell, is up to each investor and the decision should be made with a financial advisor. And there are of course no assurances that any of the price predictions and the scenarios that back the calls up will actually come to fruition.

There are another 25 or 30 analyst calls that can be covered, but these are the top analyst initiations, upgrades and downgrades from brokerage firms and independent research firms on Wednesday, December 11, 2024.

C3.ai, inc. (NYSE: AI) was downgraded to Underweight from Neutral with $28 target at JP Morgan. The stock closed at $41.73 ahead of the call and was indicated down 5.3% at $39.50 on Wednesday morning.

Dave & Buster’s Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ: PLAY) closed up 45 at $36.80 but was indicated down 13% at $32.00 on Wednesday’s reaction to a wider loss and CEO departure. Dave & Buster’s was downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at William Blair. It was also cut to Hold from Buy with price target cut to $36 from $56 at Truist Securities.

A Big housing sector call… DR Horton (NYSE: DHI) was downgraded to Equal-Weight from Overweight at Barclays. Also noted, KB Home (NYSE: KBH) and Lennar Corp. (NYSE: LEN) were both downgraded to Equal-Weight from Overweight at Barclays. PulteGroup, Inc. (NYSE: PHM) was also downgraded to Equal Weight in this sector call at Barclays. Taylor Morrison Home Corporation (NYSE: TMHC) was raised to Overweight from Equal-Weight and its price target was raised to $90 from $75 (versus $68.25 close) in the Barclays sector call, and TMHC was up 1% in early trading..

Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy with a price target cut to $165 from $190 (versus $148.53 close) at Citigroup.

Lattice Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: LSCC) was down 1.6% at $59.48 on Tuesday but was up 4.25 at $62.00 in early indications on Wednesday. Lattice Semiconductor was maintained at Outperform and its price target was raised to $68 from $44 at Baird. It was also reiterated as Buy with its price target raised to $70 from $56 at Needham.

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MoneyLion Inc. (NYSE: ML) was cut to Hold from Buy at Needham on the heels of its $82 acquisition by Gen Digital. MoneyLion closed up over 14% at $88.02 on the merger reaction.

OneStream, Inc. (NASDAQ: OS) was initiated at Buy with a $37 target (versus $30.45 close) at Goldman Sachs.

Reddit, Inc. (NYSE: RDDT) was down 6.7% at $155.93 on Tuesday. Reddit was maintained at Neutral and its price target was raised to $160 from $100 at Baird. Reddit was also reiterated with a Buy rating and its price target was raised to $190 from $120 at Needham.

Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) was cut to Neutral from Buy at Seaport Global. Sirius XM closed down 12.2% at $25.22 ahead of the call but was indicated up about 1% at $25.50 on Wednesday morning.

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) was maintained at Neutral but its price target was raised to $345 from $250 at Goldman Sachs. Tesla closed up 2.8% at $400.99 and was indicated up around $407 for what would mark a sixth straight day of gains.

The Travelers Companies, Inc. (NYSE: TRV) was downgraded to Underweight from Equal-Weight and its price target as cut to $217 from $256 at Wells Fargo. Travelers closed down 1.3% at $247.65 ahead of the call and was indicated down less than 1% on Wednesday morning.

Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA Securities. Voya closed down over 9% at $72.21 on Tuesday ahead of this call.

If you missed Tuesday’s top analyst calls, they were in shares of Amazon, Apple, C3.ai, Carnival, eBay, GM, MARA, Oracle, Pinterest, Tesla, UPS and over 20 more stocks.