Analyst Upgrades

• JPMorgan upgraded Anadarko Petroleum (APC) to overweight from neutral on valuation as it views the recent pullback in shares as excessive. Despite upgrading, the firm lowered its target for shares to $82 from $90.
• Oppenheimer upgraded Office Depot (ODP) to perform from underperform and upped its target for shares to $7 from $3 after raising its estimates for companies in the Office Products Retail space. The firm expects trends to accelerate for the sector due to moderating unemployment pressures. In conjunction with the upgrade, Opco raised its target for OfficeMax (OMX) to $26 from $21 and target for Staples (SPLS) to $30 from $28. Both stocks remain outperform rated.
• C.K. Cooper upgraded iRobot (IRBT) to buy from hold with a $30 price target following the company's analyst day.
• Seadrill (SDRL) was upgraded to buy from hold at Jefferies.
• Vodafone (VOD) was upgraded to neutral from reduce at Nomura.

Investors shuddered in horror as the market was dropping; with the Dow down 800 points in midday trading and finally closing at a better but still dismal 9,955.50, off -369.88 or -3.58%.

So, on this terrible day what if anything made a good showing of itself? Four stocks among the ones that I follow popped up.

Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) closed at $98.14, up 1.07, or 1.10%. Apple needs no introduction to most readers of BloggingStocks or anyone breathing almost anywhere on the planet. Although the stock appears to be a fallen star for the time being and is down 51% for the year it managed to outshine almost everything else today. Apple has not traded at a P/E below it's projected growth rate in years so the bargain hunters were obviously interested.

East West Bancorp (NASDAQ: EWBC) closed at $15.69, up 0.61, or 4.05%. Some banking stocks are recovering nicely and this small California bank with business in the Asian community here and in China as well seems to be getting out from under the taint of the sector. It is one of the stocks I included in Chasing Value: Financial devastation? Still up but less. If I had to 'bank' on whether this stock is higher or lower in a years time I would say higher.