Stocks were indicated marginally higher on Friday after a 2.6% inflation reading in May matched expectations. Many investors remain focused on the aftermath of the U.S. presidential debate and overseas trading on Friday. Regardless of the daily noise and market blips, Tactical Bulls is continually looking for new ideas and research for long-term investors and short-term traders alike.

Wall Street’s daily flow of analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations can be a strong source for some of those new ideas. Many of the daily analyst calls are “tactical bull” calls by nature. Other analyst calls may seem more permanent as analysts can maintain the same rating for years in many cases. Many analysts have a slew of stocks to buy in their daily calls. Other analyst calls also offer ideas for stocks to sell or stocks to avoid.

Investors should always keep in mind that no analyst call should act as the sole reason to buy or sell a stock. These daily analyst calls and the impact from the calls also help to enforce one of the Tactical Bulls mantras that the so-called Efficient Market Hypothesis is not all that efficient in its assumptions.

Here are the top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations for Friday, June 28, 2024.

Affirm Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: AFRM) was started with a Market Perform rating at JMP Securities

AGCO Corp. (NYSE: AGCO) was started as Market Perform at Raymond James.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) was reiterated as Outperform and its price target was raised to $250 from $200 at Oppenheimer. Apple closed up 0.4% at $214.10 on Thursday and its prior consensus analyst target price was $211.80.

Brookdale Senior Living Inc. (NYSE: BKD) was started as Outperform by Macquarie and was assigned a $7,50 target price at Macquarie. Brookdale closed at $6.56 ahead of the call with a $7.58 consensus analyst target price.

Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT) was started as Market Perform at Raymond James.

Chewy, Inc. (NYSE: CHWY) was reiterated as Buy and its target price was raised to $32 from $25 at Guggenheim. Wedbush Securities reiterated its Outperform rating and raised its target to $35 from $28. Chewy closed down 9-cents at $29.05 and was indicated down over 50-cents at $28.50 on Friday.

Cummins Inc. (NYSE: CMI) was started as Market Perform at Raymond James.

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Deere & Company (NYSE: DE) was started as Outperform with a $420 target price at Raymond James. Deere shares closed up 0.14% at $376.79 ahead of the call and the stock was indicated up 1% at $379.00 on Friday morning.

Dollar General Corporation (NYSE: DG) was reiterated as Hold but its price target was raised to $140 from $135 at Loop Capital. Dollar General closed up 1% at $130.28 on Thursday with a consensus analyst target price of $150.54.

NIKE, Inc. (NYSE: NKE) was seeing a post-earnings drop of 15% to about $80.00 after closing at $94.19, and this was well under its prior 52-week low of $88.66. Many analysts have thrown in the towel or slashed targets on Friday. Baird maintained its Outperform rating but cut its target to $100 from $125. Evercore ISI maintained its Outperform rating but cut its target to $105 from $110. TD Cowen maintained its Hold rating but cut Nike’s price target down to $75 from $89. Nike downgraded to Equal-Weight from Overweight and its price target was slashed down to $79 from $114 at Morgan Stanley. Nike was also downgraded to Hold and its target price was slashed down to $88 from $117 at Stifel.

Oshkosh Corp. (NYSE: OSK) was started as Market Perform at Raymond James.

PACCAR Inc. (NASDAQ: PCAR) was started as Market Perform at Raymond James.

Rivian Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: RIVN) pulled back 2% to $14.47 after its prior VW-investment surge. Rivian was reiterated as Buy and its target was raised to $20 from $13 at Needham & Co.

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) was upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform and its target price was raised to $237 from $218 at BMO Capital Markets. SAP shares closed up 1.1% at $200.75 on Thursday and the stock was up 0.8% at $202.40 in Friday’s early indications.

Stellantis N.V. (NYSE: STLA) was started as Market Perform with a $23.50 price target (versus $19.77 prior close, after a 4.6% drop) at Bernstein.

Synchrony Financial (NYSE: SYF) was started as Outperform with a $56 price target (versus $44.23 prior close) at Robert W. Baird. Synchrony Financial has a 52-week range of $27.30 to $46.72 and its consensus analyst price target was $49.05.

United Rentals, Inc. (NYSE: URI) was started with an Outperform rating and was assigned a $750 price target at Raymond James. United Rentals closed down 1.1% at $623.04 ahead of the call and was indicated up 1.3% at $631 on Friday.

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Xerox Holdings Corporation (XRX) was started with a Sell rating and was assigned an $11 price target at Citi, with the analyst describing investor difficulty in continual restructuring and cost-cutting while trying to improve margins in a post-pandemic office environment. Xerox closed down 2.3% at $12.30 on Thursday and Friday’s reaction was down another 0.3% to $12.00.

Thursday’s top analyst calls were in shares of BlackBerry, Chipotle, Levi, Micron, Next Era, Rio Tinto and many more stocks.