Analyst Upgrades: Home Depot Inc, Paypal Holdings Inc, and Yahoo! Inc.

Analysts upwardly revised their ratings and price targets on Home Depot Inc (HD), Paypal Holdings Inc (PYPL), and Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO)

Jan 25, 2016 at 9:09 AM

Analysts are weighing in on do-it-yourself retailer Home Depot Inc (NYSE:HD), payment processor Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL), and tech stock Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). Here's a quick roundup of today's bullish brokerage notes on HD, PYPL, and YHOO.

HD received an upgrade to "buy" from "hold" at Deutsche Bank, helping the shares to a 0.3% pre-market lead. Longer term, the stock has fared quite well, adding 15.4% year-over-year to trade at $122.76, and recently bouncing from its 320-day moving average. Amid this uptrend, Home Depot Inc call buyers have been active. During the last two weeks at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), traders have initiated 1.38 long calls for every put. The corresponding call/put volume ratio outranks 70% of comparable readings taken in the past year, hinting at a pronounced bias toward bullish HD bets over bearish.

Ahead of this Wednesday night's earnings report, PYPL is on the receiving end of an upgrade to "neutral" from "sell" at Monness Crespi Hardt. On the other hand, the shares were hit with a $7 price-target cut to $38 at SunTrust Robinson. Looking at the charts, Paypal Holdings Inc has trended sharply lower in 2016, surrendering 12.5% to rest at $31.69. Nonetheless, option traders have bought to open nearly twice as many calls as puts during the past 10 sessions at the ISE, CBOE, and PHLX, based on PYPL's call/put volume ratio of 1.97.

YHOO has tacked on 1.8% ahead of the bell, after Pivotal Research upped its outlook to "buy" from "hold," but trimmed its price target to $36 from $37. Meanwhile, SunTrust Robinson cut its price target to $40 from $45. Yahoo! Inc. shares could certainly use a boost, as they're down 40% on a year-over-year basis, settling Friday at $29.75. Not surprisingly, short-term speculators are very put-focused at present. Specifically, YHOO's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) checks in at 0.82, just 6 percentage points from a 12-month high.

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