New Year, New “Dogs of the Dow.”

New Year, New “Dogs of the Dow.” With the New Year comes a list of the new “Dogs of the Dow.” This year’s list of the 10 “Dogs of the Dow” looks a lot like the list from 2013. The list consists of the 10 highest yielding stocks in the Dow Jones Index. This year the top honor goes to AT&T (T) with a yield of 5.3%, followed by Verizon (VZ) with a dividend yield of 4.4%. Other companies making the Dog list this year include Merck (MRK), Intel (INTC), Pfizer (PFE), McDonald’s (MCD), Chevron (CVX), General Electric (GE), Cisco (CSCO) and Microsoft (MSFT). Collectively, this year’s “Dogs of the Dow” have a dividend yield of near 4%. Last year the “Dogs” outperform the market with a return of 33%.

Upgrades:

Cadence Design Systems (CDNS): Needham raised their rating from Hold to Buy and placed a target price of $16.00 on the company. Pre-market: 14.51 +0.50 (3.57%)

Infosys Ltd (INFY): HSBC raised their rating from Neutral to Overweight.

Metlife (MET): Janney Capital raised their rating from Neutral to Buy. Pre-market: 53.19 0.00 (0.00%)

Downgrades:

Chubb (CB): Janney Capital lowered their rating from Buy to Neutral.

General Electric (GE): Oppenheimer lowered their rating from Outperform to Perform.

Joy Global (JOY): Goldman Sachs lowered their rating from Neutral to Sell and placed a target price of $52.00 on the company. Pre-market: 55.00 -1.36 (-2.41%)

Micron Tech (MU): RBC Capital lowered their rating from Outperform to Sector Perform and maintained their target price of $19.00. Pre-market: 21.19 -0.47 (-2.17%)

Prudential Financial (PRU): Janney Capital lowered their rating from Buy to Neutral. Pre-market: 90.76 0.00 (0.00%)

Sprint (S): Stifel lowered their rating from Hold to Sell. Pre-market: 10.08 -0.32 (-3.08%)

Coverage Initiated:

Bank of Montreal (BMO): RBC Capital initiated coverage with an Outperform rating.

Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS): RBC Capital initiated coverage with an Outperform rating.

Canadian Imperial Bank (CM): RBC Capital initiated coverage with a Sector Perform rating.

Toronto Dominion Bank (TD): RBC Capital initiated coverage with an Outperform rating.

Markets: 

Futures at 8:38: Dow +0.20%. S&P +0.20%. Nasdaq +0.06%. Crude -0.31% to $95.13. Gold +0.24% to $1228.20. U.S. 10 Year -3/32 to 3.004%.

Europe: London +0.28%. Paris +0.66%. Frankfurt +0.41%. 

Asia: Japan +0.69% to 16291. Hong Kong -2.25% to 22817. China -0.31% to 2083. India -0.18% to 20851. 

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