UPDATE: Stifel Nicolaus Initiates Buy, $16 Target on Knight Capital Group

Stifel Nicolaus initiates its coverage on Knight Capital Group

with a Buy rating and a $16 target price as the company outperforms challenging market conditions. Stifel Nicolaus says, "The company has weathered extremely challenging conditions in equity markets over the last three years, marked by ongoing financial sector deleveraging, declining market volume, and frequent bouts of high volatility that have kept retail investors on the sidelines. While these industry headwinds may well persist for the time being, we believe Knight's technology focused, human capital-light model is the wave of the future in the equities business, and KCG is likely to continue to gain share as the industry consolidates." KCG closed at $13.07 a share on Thursday.