Benzinga's Bulls & Bears Of The Week: Amazon, Costco, Netflix, Tesla And More

Benzinga has featured looks at many investor favorite stocks over the past week.

• Bullish calls included top semiconductor stocks and the e-commerce leader.
• Bearish calls featured an electric vehicle giant and a video streaming leader.

The bull run is now officially nine years old and there is plenty of uncertainty to go around. Yet, the markets finished higher last week. And Benzinga continues to feature looks at the prospects for many investor favorite stocks. Here are just a few of this past week's bullish and bearish posts that may be worth another look.

Bulls

"Another Analyst Sees Amazon Shares Rising To $1,700" by Wayne Duggan examines why growth prospects in cloud computing led another key analyst to upgrade its Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN price target, despite the strong rise of its share price so far this year.

In "How Valeant Finally Won Over A Longtime Bear," Elizabeth Balboa points out that a post-earnings sell-off in Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc VRX shares had one analyst rethinking its stance on the stock, even expressing confidence in management.

Wayne Duggan's "4 Semiconductor Stocks Grossly 'Underowned', According To Bank Of America" discusses why one top analyst feels Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD and some other chip stocks are underowned by active fund managers.

At least one analyst sees the mixed Costco Wholesale Corporation COST quarterly results offering a buying opportunity, according to Jayson Derrick's "Costco 'Has The Tools To Compete And Win': Analysts React To Retailer's Q2 Report."

In Shanthi Rexaline's "Barclays Notches Sell-Side Upgrade On Capital Progress, Dwindling Regulatory Risks," see why a previous bear changed his tune on Barclays PLC BCS. Find out how much financial regulation risks have receded for this UK banking giant.

Also have a look at "Expecting A Tax Refund? Investing It Could Pay Off."

Bears

"Stifel: Netflix's 70% Run Is Overdone" by Elizabeth Balboa takes a look at why some bulls think that Netflix, Inc. NFLX, trading at an all-time high after recent strong quarterly results, has gotten a bit ahead of itself. But what are the long-term prospects for the streaming video giant?

In Wayne Duggan's "Morgan Stanley: Tesla Investors Have A Profit-Taking Opportunity," see why one top analyst thinks Tesla Inc TSLA getting its Model 3 production on track is an opportunity to sell the stock, naming four specific long-term risks.

Even though fundamentals at CF Industries Holdings, Inc. CF have improved significantly, the fertilizer company could suffer a setback, says "CF Industries Hit With Double Downgrade On Nitrogen Pricing, Long-Term Demand Concerns" by Shanthi Rexaline.

In "Analysts: International Paper's Smurfit Kappa Acquisition Could Create Near-Term Difficulties," Bill Haddad shows why some analysts are concerned that corporate culture differences could make the integration of International Paper Co IP and its new acquisition a challenge.

Jayson Derrick's "Bank Of America's Appetite For GrubHub Fades" suggests that the fundamentals at GrubHub Inc GRUB remain strong, but that the stock is just not attractive at current levels. Are the shares fairly valued now?

Be sure to check out 8 Ways To Start Investing In 2018 as well to see why investing is simpler than ever.

At the time of this writing, the author had no position in the mentioned equities.

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