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The Daily Dow LEXINGTON, KY. (December 2) -- One of the missions of The Motley Fool is to give individual investors a way to fend for themselves against the large, impersonal, and mediocre-performing Wall Street institutional machine. Yet to deny that the Wall Street machine is still plenty powerful is a little like pretending Tiger Woods is a short hitter.
If we ever needed evidence that these Wall Street analysts still command a lot of attention, even where the biggest and most liquid stocks traded are concerned, we need look no further than the last two or three trading sessions and our own 1996 Foolish Four group.
Right before Thanksgiving, Prudential downgraded 3M and since then the stock is down about 3%, not a monumental drop, but the downgrade derailed a stock in the middle of a fairly rapid advance.
Today, two more analyst ratings affected the Foolish Four. Fortunately, both were upgrades and the model portfolio benefited from them nicely. Prudential was back in the act today, upgrading Eastman Kodak to "buy" from "hold" and setting a 12-month price target of $95. That's some 17% above where the stock closed on Friday. Kodak was up roughly a point today before slipping back to a modest gain.
The big winner today, though, was already a big winner for the Foolish Four -- DuPont. Smith Barney upgraded DuPont from "neutral" to "buy," driving the stock up two more points today.
Now, of course, we could be real cocky and make some clever remark about the analysts finally catching onto the Dow Approach, but it's probably not the case anyway, and we've started the holiday season with all that goodwill humbug stuff, so I'll just let it go and say, "Thanks, guys. Keep the upgrades coming."
The monster move today, though, was our footnote holding, Imation. The 3M offspring has been on a torrid run lately and was up nearly 8% just today. I haven't found anything crossing the wire to explain the jump so I'll chalk it up to momentum, coattails with the technology group, or whatever else is in vogue these days to explain a jump on no news. Either way, this baby's been moving lately.
Today's Dow Numbers Stock Change Bid ------------------- DD +1 7/8 96.13 CHV --- 67.00 MMM - 5/8 83.13 EK + 3/8 81.50 IMN +2 3/8 32.63
Day Month Year History
FOOL-4 +0.40% 4.27% 31.91% 31.91%
DJIA +0.00% 8.17% 27.45% 27.45%
S&P 500 -0.06% 7.27% 22.83% 22.83%
NASDAQ +0.56% 6.41% 23.54% 23.54%
Rec'd # Security In At Now Change
1/2/96 142 DuPont 69.88 96.13 37.57%
1/2/96 149 3M 63.76 83.13 30.37%
1/2/96 380 Chevron 52.38 67.00 27.92%
7/16/96 14 Imation 26.16 32.63 24.72%
1/2/96 148 E. Kodak 67.00 81.50 21.64%
Rec'd # Security In At Value Change
1/2/96 380 Chevron 19902.50 25460.00 $5557.50
1/2/96 142 DuPont 9922.25 13649.75 $3727.50
1/2/96 149 3M 9500.09 12385.63 $2885.54
1/2/96 148 E. Kodak 9916.00 12062.00 $2146.00
7/16/96 14 Imation 366.21 456.75 $90.54
CASH $1942.85
TOTAL $65956.98
Transmitted: 12/2/96
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