Ticker Sense

Upgrades & Downgrades to Start the Quarter

Several high profile downgrades came across the wires this morning.  Most notably were Caterpillar and John Deere catching multiple hits from major firms.  Caterpillar was cut to neutral at Bank of America / Merrill Lynch, but note that the price target was raised from $85 to $89 (still a 13% gain from yesterday's close).  John Deere was cut at both JP Morgan and Wells Fargo.  Wells Fargo does not provide a price target, but JPM also raised their target on the stock.  

Given that CAT was up 20% in September and DE gained 10% for the month it might be wise to take some profits. Regardless of the ratings changes, Wall Street analysts clearly don't expect that these stocks have topped out just yet.

 

New Bond ETFs

This weekend's Financial Times ran an article highlighting a new line of ETFs recently introduced by Barclays.  The eight new ETFs offer investors an easy way to gain exposure to different areas of the fixed income markets, although we would warn that liquidity in most of these issues is lacking.  In the table below, we have highlighted the new and existing fixed income ETFs along with their average daily volume.

U.S. ETF Overbought/Oversold

Here are the U.S. ETFs that are currently the most overbought and oversold.  It's curious that while most fixed income ETFs are in oversold territory, the real estate ETFs are overbought.

S&P 500 Extremes

S&P 500 Extremes

While the S&P 500 10-day advance/decline line is getting up there, not too many stocks in the Index have been up for 5 days in a row (unlike a couple of weeks ago), and individual stocks aren't as extended from their 50-days as they were at the start of the year.