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Don’t Miss Out: 10 Stocks Getting Major Upgrades From Top Analysts

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Wall Street ended a punishing week on Friday with a partial recovery. The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.09% to 24,579.42 and the S&P 500 gained 0.31% to 7,376.86, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.46% on November 6. The S&P 500 was still on track for its worst week since June.

A Chip-Led Rout Shakes the Market

Thursday did the damage. The S&P 500 fell more than 4%, its worst day since the April 2025 tariff crash, and about $3 trillion in market value disappeared. The PHLX Semiconductor Index dropped 12%, its worst day since March 2020, and the Nasdaq slipped into a correction.

The trigger was political. After Tuesday’s election, Democratic gains raised fears of tighter rules on AI data centers, Reuters reported on November 6, and investors worried that new rules could slow data center construction. For the week, technology stocks fell 7% and energy stocks fell 11%.

Volatility spiked along with prices. The VVIX rose as much as 70% on Thursday, a move seen only eight times since 1991, according to CBOE data cited by Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi. In the eight earlier cases, the S&P 500 averaged a 3.0% gain one month later and 14.7% one year later. You might also be interested in reading our piece on oversold AI stocks where Wall Street analysts are spotting 50%+ upside.

A Hot Jobs Report Revives Rate-Hike Bets

Friday’s October jobs report added a second jolt. Employers added 165,000 jobs, more than twice what economists expected, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%, Reuters reported. Markets priced about a 78% chance of a quarter-point hike at the Federal Reserve’s December meeting, up from about 67% a day earlier.

Fitch Ratings analyst Olu Sonola said the economy “remains on firm footing,” and that the labor market’s resilience pushes the debate toward a December hike. St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem, who has advocated further hikes, called inflation “a regressive tax, a distortionary tax.” Our analysis of 52-week low technology stocks to buy according to analysts covers another group.

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh said last month that policymakers would watch “the accumulation of data” to decide whether more tightening is needed. The 10-year Treasury yield was about 4.86% on Friday, up roughly 2 basis points. The Fed meets December 8-9, and a quarter-point hike is the widely expected outcome.

Photo by Arturo Añez on Unsplash

Our Methodology

For this article, we reviewed analyst upgrades issued on Friday, November 6, 2026, excluding new coverage initiations, and kept stocks listed on US exchanges whose ratings came from firms we track. We ranked the 10 stocks in ascending order of average upside potential, based on the average price target of all analysts covering the stock, as of November 7, 2026. We also list each stock’s number of hedge fund holders as of Q2 2026, from our database of 1,006 hedge funds.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Insider Monkey’s quarterly newsletter strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 612% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 375 percentage points (see more details here).

Don’t Miss Out: 10 Stocks Getting Major Upgrades From Top Analysts

10. Becton Dickinson (NYSE:BDX)

Market Cap: $57.71 billion

Average Upside Potential: 4%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 46

Wells Fargo analyst Lawrence Biegelsen upgraded Becton Dickinson to Overweight from Equal Weight on November 6 and raised his price target to $242 from $170.

Wells Fargo cited improved execution. The medical device maker’s second-half fiscal 2026 results came in ahead of expectations for sales growth and earnings per share, and, according to the note, management described fiscal 2027 guidance as prudent, leaving room for upside. The target is about 17 times a calendar 2028 earnings estimate of $14.40. A summary of the note adds that Becton is a more focused medical technology business after the Waters transaction.

In its fiscal fourth quarter, Becton reported revenue of $5.27 billion, up 5.4%, and adjusted earnings per share of $4.15, up 27.3%. Over the full fiscal year, adjusted earnings per share were $12.70, free cash flow rose 42.5% to $2.9 billion and cash from continuing operations rose 30.0% to $3.6 billion. Becton’s fiscal 2027 targets are adjusted earnings per share of $13.10 to $13.30 and low single-digit revenue growth.

For the backstory on the profit slump, see why Becton’s earnings fell so much further than its revenue grew.

9. Appian (NASDAQ:APPN)

Market Cap: $3.70 billion

Average Upside Potential: 6%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 33

William Blair upgraded Appian to Outperform from Market Perform following the third-quarter results of the McLean, Virginia-based software company.

The firm based the upgrade on faster growth. Total revenue rose 26% in constant currency and cloud revenue rose 21%. Cloud net revenue retention increased five percentage points from the previous quarter to 120%, and adjusted EBITDA finished about 36% above what Wall Street had projected. William Blair also highlighted Appian’s raised fourth-quarter cloud guidance of 22% to 24% growth, against a Street estimate of 17% beforehand. That works out to four to five points of acceleration from the third quarter, and the firm observed that Appian has tended to guide cautiously.

Appian reported its results for the quarter ended September 30 on November 5. Cloud subscriptions revenue was $136.4 million, up 20% from the third quarter of 2025, and professional services revenue was $46.9 million, up 18%. Adjusted EBITDA was $43.4 million against $32.2 million a year earlier. GAAP net income was $12.3 million, or $0.17 per diluted share, compared with $7.8 million, or $0.10, in the year-ago quarter.

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