Before the bell -- markets turning positive: HD, CFC, EBAY, PFE ...

Posted Aug 17th 2007 8:50AM by Melly Alazraki
Filed under: Before the Bell, Analyst Reports, Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades, Apple Inc (AAPL), eBay (EBAY), Pfizer (PFE), Home Depot (HD), Blockbuster Inc 'A' (BBI), Countrywide Financial (CFC), Abercrombie and Fitch (ANF), Harley-Davidson (HOG)

Main market news: Before the bell: Could yesterday's late session recovery continue?

8:30 update: Stock futures are now up following the Federal Reserve cutting its discount rate to 5.75% from 6.25%. So far the Fed had tried to address liquidity concerns by injecting money into the market, but when another $17 billion injected into the banking system yesterday did little, it seemed the Fed had decided on this rate cut, which would narrow the spreads between the rates and could help market liquidity improve.
Stock futures are shooting up despite the 5.4% decline in Japan's Nikkei 225 index.

UBS upgraded Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE: HD) to Neutral from Sell mostly due to valuation and despite the belief that the weakness in the U.S. housing sector will continue to weigh on the shares over the next several quarters.

Bank of America Securities upgraded Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC) to Neutral from Sell, saying the credit undertaken by Countrywide should help its liquidity and capital concerns. The broker cut the price target to $21 from $31 while valuing a liquidity induced asset/break-up sale at $7.25 a share. CFC stock is up 4.7% in premarket trading.

eBay Inc.'s (NASDAQ: EBAY) Skype is still down, nearly 24 hours by now, although users in Asia and parts of Europe were able to log on and use the free phone service today.

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) yesterday lost a bid to reissue a U.S. patent protection on its blockbuster Lipitor cholesterol medicine, meaning Pfizer may face U.S. generic competition to Lipitor as early as March 2010.

Several other companies were upgraded this morning including Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF), Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) and Harley-Davidson (NYSE: HOG).

Finally, TUAW is polling what kinds of Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone application users want to see. You can see the results and vote yourself here.

Tags: aapl, anf, bbi, cfc, ebay, hd, hog, pfe