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Bear Market Rally or True Recovery? Analysts Upgrade or Downgrade Comcast, Dollar General, Southwest Air and More

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Markets were relatively flat to slightly negative to start out the week. This comes after the S&P 500 notched its fourth straight week of gains, seemingly signaling that a recovery is very much in the works.

Overall, investors have cheered this recent rally, which has been spurred on by better-than-expected economic data in the form of July’s employment report, CPI data and even jobless claims. However, bears are still somewhat skeptical of this rebound because inflation is still at historic levels and the Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening policy is still not in full effect.

24/7 Wall St. is reviewing additional analyst calls seen on Monday. We have included the latest call on each stock, as well as a recent trading history and the consensus targets among analysts. Note that analyst calls seen earlier in the day were on CrowdStrike, Oracle, Palo Alto Networks, Rivian, Salesforce and more.

Academy Sports and Outdoors Inc. (NASDAQ: ASO): Morgan Stanley started coverage with an Equal Weight rating and a $50 price target. The 52-week trading range is $25.10 to $51.08, and shares were trading near $47 on Monday.

Charter Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: CHTR): Atlantic Equities downgraded the stock to a Neutral rating from Overweight and cut the $755 price target to $477. The stock traded near $479 on Monday, in a 52-week range of $407.75 to $825.62.

Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA): Atlantic Equities cut its Overweight rating to Neutral and cut $60 the price target to $44. The stock traded at around $40 on Monday. The 52-week range is $36.57 to $61.80 a share.

Dillard’s Inc. (NYSE: DDS): J.P. Morgan’s upgrade was to Neutral from Underweight, and it raised the $210 price target to $298. The 52-week trading range is $167.03 to $416.71, and the share price was near $316 on Monday.

Dollar General Corp. (NYSE: DG): The BMO Capital Markets downgrade was from Outperform to Market Perform with a $265 price target. Shares have traded as high as $183.25 in the past year but were near $252 on Monday, which is up 7% year to date.

ResMed Inc. (NYSE: RMD): CLSA downgraded the shares to Outperform from Buy. The 52-week trading range is $189.40 to $301.34. Shares changed hands near $235 apiece on Monday.

Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV): Argus lowered its Buy rating to Hold. The 52-week trading range is $34.36 to $56.33, and shares traded near $40 apiece on Monday.

Truist Financial Corp. (NYSE: TFC): Compass Point’s downgrade was from Buy to Neutral with a $55 price target. The shares traded near $51 on Monday. The 52-week trading range is $44.68 to $68.95.

Vroom Inc. (NASDAQ: VRM): J.P. Morgan downgraded the stock to Neutral from Underweight. Shares traded near $2 on Monday, in a 52-week range of $1.03 to $29.80.


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