Analysts at Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch upgraded Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) from Neutral to Buy today. In a note, lead analyst Guy Moszkowski said Goldman "is on track to beat its 2007 trading-revenue record, enabling it to boost compensation by an estimated 64 percent from last year," Bloomberg reported. BAC/Merrill analysts also upped their target price from $144 to $175. In response, GS stock rose about 3.5% to trade around $143.40.

Moszkowski gushed over Goldman's management skills, saying they're unmatched in the way the company manages risks. This, he said, is paying off in this market where most companies are far more risk averse than they used to be, offering Goldman "mute" competition.

This morning, Goldman Sachs felt it prudent to up its view of the U.S. auto sector to Attractive from Neutral. The brokerage stated that it would use any current weakness as an opportunity to build positions. If, like me, you are questioning Goldman's strategy, the firm explained, "Despite the significant rally in auto shares since the February lows, we think we are still in the middle phase of a cyclical rebound in the auto sector."

In its note to clients, Goldman Sachs predicted, "improved affordability, improving confidence and significant pent-up demand as likely to offset the impact from gas prices and deliver significantly more upside in the space as auto sales gain momentum."

Goldman Sachs has upped its share price estimate on Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) to $486, an increase of 17%. The analysts cite both search query growth and improvements in emerging markets coverage as the reasons for giving a nod to the dominant player in the online search business. The higher estimate implies that Google still has plenty of room to grow, which leaves plenty of upside for investors.

On a per-share basis, Goldman Sachs pushed its earnings forecast for the search giant 2% higher for this year – to $21.30. Per-share earnings estimates for 2010 were increased to by 8% to $23.36, and the 2011 estimate is now $27.02 (up 12%).

The most powerful investment bank on the planet boasts a respected team of technology analysts. But Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) seemed to miss the boat on grabbing a good Twitter handle. The company tweets under @GS_News (and it has plenty of useful tweets).

A logical handle would have been @GS, same as its ticker symbol, but some dude name Gary grabbed the @GS twitter handle. He's got less than 10 followers right now. What might be a possible business opportunity for Gary, is a Fail Whale for the Goldman Sachs brain trust.

Today was a day marked by selling, partly on economic news and partly on a call from S&P. S&P put the credit bias of the United Kingdom at "negative" from "stable" giving the notion that the nation's Triple-A ranking is possibly at risk to be cut. Then came the implications from Bill Gross and others that the U.S. could ultimately see the same fate. To show how bad the trend and bias was, long-dated Treasuries saw their yields rise as much as 15 basis points today.

A slightly less-bad jobs report failed to catch any attention today. In short, if you are a market bear you are getting more feathers in your cap now that earnings are basically finished. Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 8,291.82 -130.22 (-1.55%)
S&P 500 888.23 -15.24 (-1.69%)
Nasdaq 1,695.25 -32.59 (-1.89%)

Top Analyst Calls

"Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) surprised investors with better-than-expected earnings while also raising equity to help replay $10 billion in TARP money," says Bill Martin In BullMarket.com.

"On the earnings front, Goldman swung back to solid profitability after turning in its first-ever quarterly loss at the end of its last fiscal year, which ended November 28th, 2008.

"Goldman earned a net profit of $1.66 billion, or $3.39 a share, compared to a Q1 2008 profit of $1.47 billion, or $3.23 a share. The results are a vast improvement over the loss of -$2.29 billion, or -$4.97 a share, reported for Q4 2008.

"Goldman Sachs has long been the best run of what were previously Wall Street's top investment banks and the strength of its trading operations were evident in the quarter.

Earlier this morning, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) announced that it raised its fifth dedicated private equity secondaries fund -- GS Vintage Fund V -- with roughly $5.5 billion in capital commitments. This news was hinted at on Friday in The Wall Street Journal and was confirmed by the investment bank. The fund will focus on acquiring portfolios of private equity assets and includes private investors throughout America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

This isn't the only news GS will make this week, as the firm is slated to step into the earnings spotlight. The current quarterly earnings estimate stands at $1.59 per share. Let's take a quick technical look at the investment bank and see what could happen if earnings miss or beat expectations.

Last month, I blasted the new requirement that banks in receipt of TARP funds hire exclusively American workers as unfair, un-American and not in the best interests of the taxpayers who have absurd amounts of money at stake in these turnaround efforts.

Now Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein is joining me in blasting this idiotic amendment to the stimulus package. He told a group of fund managers that the "Hire America" requirements are "protectionist and self-defeating" and could lead foreign governments and employers to take "punitive measures" against U.S. nationals.

Four weeks in a row of gains were met with at least the first day of the week having sellers win over buyers. The good news is that the market came back at the end of the day. We might have closed up if we had another hour of trading on the clock.

Geithner's comments about running out management and boards of directors at banks which need capital did not help, nor did an influential banking analyst coming out with very negative coverage of the sector at a new firm. Here were today's closing bell levels:

Dow 7,975.85 -41.74 (-0.52%)
S&P 500 835.48 -7.02 (-0.83%)
Nasdaq 1,606.71 -15.16 (-0.93%)

Top Analyst Upgrades
Top Analyst Downgrades

Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) closed at $22.13. MS is expected to report Q1 EPS soon. April option implied volatility is at 120; July is at 107; near its 26-week average of 113, according to Track Data, suggesting non-directional price movement.

Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) closed at $100.46. GS is expected to report Q1 EPS soon. GS April option implied volatility is at 87, July is at 81; above its 26-week average of 80, according to Track Data, suggesting larger price movement.

Option Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com

In one of my previous blogs: Is the stock market spring loaded? I coined the phrase Lightspeed Inflation in reference to the rate at which the government was able to dilute our currency. It is time we stopped referring to the government's over spending as "running the printing presses".

We have reached a point, given our maximum note size of $100, that we would actually be better off if the government did have to print the money. Now they can just add whatever amount they want to the balance sheet electronically.

Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is set to make some news today, as the company is going to hold a conference call to address "questions from journalists, and clarify certain misperceptions in the press regarding Goldman Sachs' trading relationship with American International Group." Furthermore, the call will be available to you and me over webcast -- according to GS's press release.

GS has drawn some scrutiny after it was discovered that $13 billion of the AIG-marked government funds actually went to GS. GS was not alone, as Sunday's release of spending details from AIG (NYSE: AIG) showed that Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale also received funds. Of the banks on the list submitted by AIG, GS received the most cash: $12.9 billion. Most of these payments were to compensate for collateral demands from hedges GS purchased from AIG.

The New York Times reports that Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) has offered "to lend money to more than 1,000 employees who have been squeezed by the financial crisis. The loans, offered via e-mail last week, could range from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands."

The irony here is just wonderful. A job with Goldman Sachs has historically been viewed as one of the very few surefire ways to get rich. Sure, you'll work a lot of late nights but the compensation can be pretty spectacular. In 2006, the average Goldman employee earned $622,000.

Today one of my picks for the year, Anglo American ADR (NASDAQ: AAUK), was upgraded from neutral to buy at the investment bank now regular bank Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS).

It was only yesterday that AAUK was downgraded from neutral to underweight by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM). No doubt they were responding to the news that Standard & Poors cut Anglo's rating two notches to 'BBB' based on it's 40% leverage and the potential for its cash-flow and income to be impacted by continuing soft markets throughout the year in many commodities.

While Washington wrangles over $820 billion to stimulate the economy, the Fed and the Treasury have already invested or guaranteed $9 trillion to keep the financial system from imploding. For some strange reason, this much bigger figure seems to fly out the door with no public debate; little clear idea of how it's being spent; or what benefit it's creating. Now the Treasury is poised to announce its own plan to rescue the financial system. I think that plan needs work.

However, the Treasury plan will not be announced as originally scheduled on Monday because there seems to be a concern that it would complicate the passage of the stimulus plan. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) has estimated that it would cost $4 trillion to absorb all the banks' troubled mortgage and consumer debt.

Will Treasury propose a plan to use government funds to do this absorbing? If so, it would mark the biggest example in American history of letting private interests reap profits from their bad decisions -- in the form of keeping their bonuses which total about $100 billion over the last several years -- while sticking the public with the resulting losses which so far exceed $1 trillion.