The Upgrades: Prudential, AFLAC and FirstEnergy (NYSE:PRU),(NYSE:AFL),(NYSE:FE)

Today’s upgrades are brought to us by various analysts and include Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE:PRU), AFLAC Incorporated (NYSE:AFL) and FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE:FE).

Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE:PRU) gets an upgrade today from Barclays Capital as the analysts moves its outlook on the stock from Underweight to Equal Weight.  Unfortunately they did not set a price target for investors to use.  Looking at the chart for Prudential, we see that the stock price is pushed right up against the $55 resistance set back on September 16, 2009.  The upgrade may help propel the stock past the resistance level.  It opened the day with a gap up to $54.65 (+$1.16/+2.2%) from the previous close of $53.49 and volume is already at 1.3M shares versus the 13-week average of 4.2M.

AFLAC Incorporated (NYSE:AFL) also gets its upgrade today from Barclays Capital.  For this stock, the analysts also moved from Underweight to Equal Weight and set a price target of $52.  The price target is not all that exciting since the stock is currently trading at $51.48 a share after a gap open to $51.39 (+$0.68/+1.3%) from the previous close of $50.71.  Studying the chart, we see that the stock pattern has made a wedge up which is a bullish pattern and the stock bounced above the top trend line of the wedge today and may signal a breakout to the upside for the stock.

The last upgrade highlighted is for FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE:FE) as Deutsche Bank raised outlook on the stock from a Hold to a Buy.  A price target of $53 was set Deutsche Bank and that is marked as it sits nearly 14% above current trading price of $46.59.  FirstEnergy also had a slight gap up at the open on the upgrade news to $46.96 (+$0.35/+0.8%) from the previous close of $46.61.  However, the stock gave all of it back in the early hours of trading.  Looking at the chart, the appears to have significant resistance at about $47.50 as this price level was tested three times in 2009 (September, October and December).  The chart does not lend itself any strong reason that the stock will break this resistance level of $47.50, so this might be one stock to just skip over.

Disclosure: No positions.