Morning Coffee Pre-Market Wall Street News

Obama Is Spying On You! 

Shocking revelations have surfaced the Obama Administration using the NSA and other government agencies to spy on millions of Americans. Under a program with the NSA called PRISM the government has “direct access” to the servers of Apple (AAPL), AOL (AOL), Facebook (FB), Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Paltalk, Skype, Yahoo (YHOO), and YouTube. Through this access the NSA is data mining key words, phrases, photos and more.

This comes on the news that the NSA has also been monitoring every call made through AT&T (T), Sprint (S), and Verizon (VZ).  The call monitoring includes who you called, when you called, the location of your call, how often you called and who those people called. Together, the service providers have 314.6M wirelesss and landline accounts. Yesterday in testimony Attorney General Eric Holder refused to answer when questioned by a member of congress as to whether they are or have been monitoring any member of Congress’s phone calls.

Additionally, reports are breaking that the NSA's operations also encompass your purchase information from unnamed credit-card providers.

Many are now saying that these actions are a direct violation of both the first and second amendments and that this government and administration is out of control.

This shocking news comes on the heels of several scandals. The IRS scandal where the IRS targeted conservative, religious and Jewish groups with audits, the AP and Fox News wire tapping scandal, the Benghazi attack scandal in which a U.S Ambassador and 4 other were killed, and the Fast & Furious gun running scandal, in which hundreds of Mexican citizen have been killed.

Upgrades

Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF): BofA Merrill Lynch raised their rating from Neutral to Buy and placed a target price of $60.00 on the company.

Bayer AG (BAYRY): BNP Paribas raised their rating from Neutral to Outperform.

Broadcom (BRCM): Macquarie raised their rating from Neutral to Outperform and raised their target price from $35.70 to $40.80. Pre-market: 35.34 +0.38 (1.09%)

Brocade Communications (BRCD): ISI Group raised their rating from Neutral to Buy and placed a target price of $7.50 on the company. Pre-market: 5.55 +0.15 (2.78%)

Tyson Foods (TSN): Stephens raised their rating from Equal Weight to Overweight and raised their target price from $26.00 to $30.00.

Yum! Brands (YUM): UBS raised their rating from Neutral to Buy and raised their target price from $73.00 to $80.00. Pre-market: 72.15 +1.03 (1.45%)

Downgrades

Arch Coal (ACI): Raymond James lowered their rating from Market Perform to Underperform. Pre-market: 5.10 -0.01 (-0.20%)

Intel (INTC): Piper Jaffrey lowered their rating from Neutral to Underweight and lowered their target price from $21.00 to $20.00. Pre-market: 24.55 -0.10 (-0.41%)

Iron Mountain (IRM): Stifel lowered their rating from Buy to Hold. Pre-market: 29.06 -5.34 (-15.52%)

James River Coal (JRCC): Raymond James lowered their rating from Market Perform to Underperform. Pre-market: 2.43 -0.43 (-15.03%)

Sprint Nextel (S): Nomura lowered their rating from Buy to Neutral. Pre-market: 7.34 0.00 (0.00%)

VMware (VMW): Drexel Hamilton lowered their rating from Buy to Hold. Pre-market: 71.00 -0.83 (-1.16%)

Coverage Initiated

Bank of America (BAC): Macquarie initiated coverage with an Underperform rating and target price of $12.00. Pre-market: 13.28 +0.08 (0.61%)

Citigroup (C): Macquarie initiated coverage with an Outperform rating and target price of $62.00. Pre-market: 51.30 +0.47 (0.92%)

Goldman Sachs (GS): Macquarie resumed coverage with a Neutral rating. Pre-market: 160.70 +1.02 (0.64%)

Morgan Stanley (MS): Macquarie initiated coverage with an Outperform rating and target price of $30.00. Pre-market: 25.66 +0.25 (0.98%)

Qualcomm (QCOM): Topeka initiated coverage with a Hold rating and target price of $65.00. Pre-market: 63.23 +0.26 (0.41%)

Rambus (RMBS): Topeka initiated coverage with a Buy rating and target price of $10.00.

Take-Two (TTWO): Stifel initiated coverage with a Buy rating and target price of $21.00. After Hours: 16.29 +0.21 (1.31%)

Earning Reports:

Quiksilver (ZQK): Reported EPS of -$0.12 missing estimates by -$0.16. Pre-market: 6.90 -0.77 (-10.04%)

Thor Industries (THO): Reported EPS of $0.82 missing estimates by -$0.06. After Hours: 42.50 +1.26 (3.06%)

Vail Resorts (MTN): Reported EPS of $2.66 missing estimates by -$0.09. After Hours: 59.50 -2.66 (-4.28%)

Markets: 
Futures at 7:53: Dow -0.06%. S&P -0.06%. Nasdaq -0.06%. Crude +0.46% to $95.20. Gold -0.45% to $1409.40.

Europe: London -0.16%. Paris -0.10%. Frankfurt -0.27%. 

Asia: Japan -0.21% to 12878. Hong Kong -1.21% to 21575. China -1.39% to 2211. India -0.46% to 19429.