Benzinga - by Lisa Levin, Benzinga Editor.
U.S. stocks closed mostly lower, with the Dow Jones falling around 170 points on Thursday. The Nasdaq Composite, however, gained for a fifth straight day, but recorded its worst month of the year.
The S&P index fell around 1.77%, while the Nasdaq lost 2.17% last month. The 30-stock index fell around 2.36% in August.
Wall Street analysts make new stock picks on a daily basis. Unfortunately for investors, not all analysts have particularly impressive track records at predicting market movements. Even when it comes to one single stock, analyst ratings and price targets can vary widely, leaving investors confused about which analyst's opinion to trust.
Benzinga's Analyst Ratings API is a collection of the highest-quality stock ratings curated by the Benzinga news desk via direct partnerships with major sell-side banks. Benzinga displays overnight ratings changes on a daily basis three hours prior to the U.S. equity market opening. Data specialists at investment dashboard provider Toggle.ai recently uncovered that the analyst insights Benzinga Pro subscribers and Benzinga readers regularly receive can successfully be used as trading indicators to outperform the stock market.
Top Analyst Picks: Fortunately, any Benzinga reader can access the latest analyst ratings on the Analyst Stock Ratings page. One of the ways traders can sort through Benzinga's extensive database of analyst ratings is by analyst accuracy. Here's a look at the most recent stock picks from each of the five most accurate Wall Street analysts, according to Benzinga Analyst Stock Ratings.
Analyst: Zachary Fadem
- Analyst Firm: Wells Fargo
- Ratings Accuracy: 87%
- Latest Rating: Maintained an Overweight rating on Petco Health and Wellness Company, Inc. (NASDAQ: WOOF) and cut the price target from $11 to $7 on Aug. 25, 2023. This analyst sees around 38% upside in the stock.
- Recent News: Petco Health and Wellness reported quarterly earnings of 6 cents per share. The company reported quarterly sales of $1.53 billion.
- Analyst Firm: Stifel
- Ratings Accuracy: 87%
- Latest Rating: Reiterated a Buy rating on The Trade Desk, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTD) with a price target of $91 on Aug. 31, 2023. This analyst sees around 14% upside in the stock.
- Recent News: The Trade Desk reported quarterly earnings of 28 cents per share which beat the analyst consensus estimate of 26 cents, a 40% increase over earnings of 20 cents per share from the same period last year.
- Analyst Firm: Raymond James
- Ratings Accuracy: 85%
- Latest Rating: Maintained an Outperform rating on Chewy, Inc. (NYSE: CHWY) and cut the price target from $36 to $33 on Aug. 28, 2023. This analyst sees around 38% upside in the stock.
- Recent News: Chewy reported better-than-expected second-quarter financial results.
- Analyst Firm: B. Riley Securities
- Ratings Accuracy: 85%
- Latest Rating: Downgraded rating on MasterCraft Boat Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCFT) from Buy to Neutral and cut the price target from $37 to $23 on Aug. 31, 2023. This analyst sees around 6% upside in the stock.
- Recent News: MasterCraft Boat reported a fourth-quarter FY23 sales decline of 15.5% year-on-year to $166.57 million, beating the analyst consensus of $162.08 million.
- Analyst Firm: B of A Securities
- Ratings Accuracy: 83%
- Latest Rating: Maintained a Buy rating on Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and increased the price target from $142 to $146 on Aug. 30, 2023. This analyst sees over 7% upside in the stock.
- Recent News: Alphabet’s Google announced its annual Pixel hardware event will be held on Oct. 4 in New York City. The company is expected to launch the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro smartphones along with the Pixel Watch 2.
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