Equity Moves on Sell-Side Sentiment for July 18, 2012

As Benzinga rubs shoulders with the investment legends at CNBC's Delivering Alpha conference in New York, sell-side analysts are having no issues living up to that mission. A composite of 23 stocks that were assigned new bullish or bearish ratings today is up more than twice today's move on the S&P 500 index. This composite is built by selling (going short on) stocks downgraded or initiated with a Sell, Underperform or Underweight rating, as well as by buying (going long) on upgrades or initiations with a Buy, Outperform or Overweight. With those trades occurring at the opening prices this morning, the index is up 1.8 percent in Wednesday intraday trading. The S&P 500 in comparison closed Wednesday up 0.67 percent. Wednesday's largest pop, at 8.06%, came from JP Morgan's initiation of Tenneco

at Overweight with a price target of $40. Benzinga Professional reported on this at 5:52 a.m. Shares opened at $26.79 at 9:30 a.m. and soared to an intraday high of $28.95 just before 11 a.m. The stock closed Wednesday's trading session at $28.11. All but one of the 23 stocks moved in the direction of their new ratings to various extents. Each stock's peak price in-line with their sell-side ratings (intraday high for bullish ratings and intraday lows for bearish ratings), registered a favorable move average of 3.43 percent. In the stocks'

price points - intraday highs for bearish ratings and intraday lows for bullish ratings - that average would have been a negative 1.25 percent. Alpha makers and seekers alike would agree that Wednesday's composite movers offer a respectable risk-to-reward ratio within a single session.