Anglo American plc (LON:AAL) has been cut to 'sell', from 'neutral', by UBS because the Swiss bank believes it will struggle to sell coal, nickel and iron ore assets at sufficiently attractive prices.
Analyst Myles Allsop also highlights that the mining share has performed too well recently.
“The stock is up 137% from the low in mid-Jan, outperforming the sector by around 85%,” he said in a note.
“We believe the outlook for Anglo's key commodity prices has not improved materially and the execution risk with the proposed restructuring remains high.”
Morgan Stanley meanwhile downgraded London’s largest gold stock, Randgold Resources (LON:RRS), to ‘equal weight’ from ‘overweight’,
South American oil explorer Amerisur Resources (LON:AMER) is downgraded to ‘underperform’ from ‘neutral’ by Macquarie.
Barclays (LON:BARC) has been downgraded by both Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan, with prices targets lowering to 180p and 230p from 255p and 250p respectively.
Nomura moved its target for HSBC (LON:HSBA) to 475p from 555p.
Hunting Plc (LON:HTG), the services group for the oil industry, was downgraded by Liberum Capital to a ‘sell’ from ‘hold’.
City analysts were upbeat on advertising giant WPP (LON:WPP) today, following strong 2015 results on Friday.
Deutsche and Nomura both repeat a 'buy' with the latter pushing the target to 1725p from 1700p and Deutsche putting it up to 1630p from 1580p.
It said in a note to clients: " WPP delivered another strong year and reiterated its outlook for 2016 as another year of solid organic revenue growth and margin improvement. We upgrade earnings 5% due to currency (weaker Sterling),."
"WPP indicated that the coming year should look very similar to the last: revenue growth of well over 3%, net sales up 3% and 30b.p of pre-FX margin improvement."
Barclays also repeated an 'overweight' stance on the stock and pumped up the price target to 1850p from 1700p.
Car insurer Admiral (LON:ADM) was also in the sights of Deutsche today, which repeated a 'hold' stance and lifted the price target to 1750p from 1515p - also after strong earnings.
"Admiral seems to have discovered the secret of perpetual motion. It remains strongly positioned in UK motor, now gaining share (and prospectively margin) as prices recover," the broker said.
London Stock Exchange (LON:LSE) had an 'outperform' rating repeated by heavyweight Credit Suisse, which also lifted the price target to 3,350p from 2,900p.