When Wall Street analysts upgrade or downgrade a stock, the effects can be immediate. A single upgrade from a top-tier firm can spark buying, while a downgrade can trigger sharp selling. That's why institutional investors and traders monitor rating activity closely—it captures shifts in sentiment before prices fully adjust.

Over the past week, several companies experienced a burst of analyst revisions, from takeover reactions to sector realignments.

Below, we spotlight five notable names and show how you can systematically track analyst rating waves using FMP's Stock Grade Latest News API.

5 Companies with Notable Rating Changes

1. Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA) — 10 Downgrades

A rare wave of consensus cuts followed EA's $55 billion all-cash acquisition by a consortium led by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners.
Ten firms—including Freedom Capital Markets, Roth/MKM, TD Cowen, and Oppenheimer—moved from Buy or Outperform to Hold or Perform, with price targets clustering near $210 per share, the deal value.

Analysis: The pending acquisition effectively caps upside at the offer price, prompting analysts to neutral stances until closing.

2. Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) — 2 Upgrades

Mizuho and HSBC both upgraded OXY after Berkshire Hathaway agreed to purchase the company's chemical arm OxyChem for $9.7 billion in cash. Price targets rose to $55-60, citing expected debt reduction and balance-sheet improvement.

Analysis: Proceeds will retire $6.5 billion of debt, moving OXY closer to its sub-$15 billion leverage goal—an encouraging signal for credit and equity holders alike.

3. Knight-Swift Transportation (NYSE: KNX) — 2 Upgrades

Stifel and Deutsche Bank shifted ratings to Buy as freight fundamentals showed signs of bottoming after a multi-year downturn. Both analysts highlighted cost discipline, regulatory tightening on driver supply, and growth potential in less-than-truckload (LTL) operations.

Analysis: Early indications of freight-rate stabilization and operational scale advantages point to improving earnings visibility into 2026.

4. Corteva (NYSE: CTVA) — 2 Downgrades and 1 Upgrade

KeyBanc and Citi cut Corteva to neutral following its announcement to split into two public companies—Crop Protection (New Corteva) and Seed (SpinCo). JPMorgan, however, upgraded the stock, arguing that valuation now implies a discount to the sum of its parts.

Analysis: The planned separation introduces short-term complexity but may unlock long-term value as investors assign distinct multiples to each business line.

5. Southern Co. (NYSE: SO) — 1 Downgrade

Scotiabank moved SO from Sector Outperform to Sector Perform, citing valuation limits after a strong run and fading near-term catalysts. The analyst still praised SO's defensive profile and growth from data-center energy demand but expects returns to moderate.

Analysis: Post-project completion and regulatory clarity leave limited upside until new rate cases or capacity expansions emerge.

Interpreting the Rating Changes: Beyond the Numbers

Rating flurries rarely occur in isolation—they cluster around specific catalysts.
This week's activity underscored three clear patterns:

M&A compression: EA's and OXY's actions show how takeovers or divestitures prompt mass downgrades or upgrades once deal pricing fixes expected value.

Cyclicality rebound: Knight-Swift's upgrade illustrates how analysts front-run early cycle turns when fundamentals bottom.

Structural repositioning: Corteva's split drew divided opinions, revealing how strategic transformations create valuation uncertainty before new comps stabilize.

Make it systematic with FMP. Start with Stock Grade Latest News API to capture fresh upgrades/downgrades, then use Search Stock News API to classify catalysts (M&A, partnerships, operational). Together, these give you a labeled, searchable feed of clen catalyst-driven rating changes.

Analyst ratings can drive big institutional flows. Understanding how ratings influence buy, hold, or sell decisions is essential for anyone tracking sentiment shifts — and for reliable context around those shifts, using tools like the FMP API Viewer can be invaluable. That no-code interface lets you pull up financial statements, stock performance charts, and analyst estimates all in one place (no spreadsheets or manual data collection required).

Tracking Analyst Rating Changes with FMP APIs

Instead of relying on scattered news, investors can automate the discovery of rating activity using FMP's APIs.

1. Pull Latest Analyst Ratings

Use the Stock Grade Latest News API to fetch the newest analyst rating changes.

Endpoint:

https://financialmodelingprep.com/stable/grades-latest-news?page=0&limit=10&apikey=YOUR_API_KEY

Sample Response:

[

{

"symbol": "PYPL",

"publishedDate": "2025-02-04T19:18:04.000Z",

"newsURL": "https://www.benzinga.com/25/02/43475080/paypal-beats-q4-estimates...",

"newsTitle": "PayPal Transaction Margins and Payment Volume Drive Growth",

"gradingCompany": "J.P. Morgan",

"newGrade": "Overweight",

"previousGrade": "Overweight",

"action": "hold",

"priceWhenPosted": 77.725

}

]

This response includes the ticker, analyst firm, rating action, and even the link to the original report.

2. Count Changes per Ticker

Loop results and count upgrades/downgrades over a given timeframe—say, the past 7 days—to surface high-activity names like EA or Corteva.

3. Investigate Catalysts with News Search

Feed those tickers into Search Stock News API to identify the event driving the wave—M&A, earnings, or sector news.

Endpoint:

https://financialmodelingprep.com/stable/news/stock?symbols=AAPL&apikey=YOUR_API_KEY

This API returns relevant news stories, which you can tie back to rating shifts — for instance, acquisitions, earnings misses, or major contract announcements.

Example Workflow: Finding the “Most Active” Stocks

1. Call Stock Grade Latest News API to fetch rating changes from the last 7 days.
   
   
2. Count the number of upgrades/downgrades per ticker.
   
   
3. Filter for companies with at least 3 rating changes. 3+ is just an example — you might want to filter for those with 3+, 4+, and so on.
   
   
4. Use Search Stock News API to retrieve the key event that likely triggered the activity.
   
   

This process surfaces names like EA or Corteva — companies that saw concentrated analyst attention in a short window.

Scaling Analyst Rating Tracking

You can start testing this workflow on FMP's Free plan, which returns 10 results per call. For heavier daily screening, the Starter plan lifts that limit to 100 results —ideal for tracking dozens of tickers across coverage universes.

Scaling Analyst Rating Tracking Across Teams

When these APIs feed directly into research dashboards, portfolio managers, research, and risk teams all see the same sentiment data the same day—no manual collection required. Larger institutions often institutionalize this workflow with FMP's Enterprise plan, adding audit trails and permission controls so that every rating change is versioned, timestamped, and archived.

This transforms a one-analyst shortcut into a firm-wide signal layer:

• PMs monitor exposure to downgraded sectors.
  
  
• Risk tests rating-shift clusters against volatility outcomes.
  
  
• Research leads set automated alerts (e.g., ≥ 3 downgrades in 72 hours).

When this kind of automated ratings feed powers your dashboard, you're no longer chasing headlines — you're spotting upgrade and downgrade waves the moment they hit. Explore the full range of data sets and APIs behind this workflow on the Financial Modeling Prep homepage.

Putting Analyst Activity to Work

Analyst rating changes are concise, data-rich indicators of shifting market sentiment. In just one week, companies such as Electronic Arts, Occidental Petroleum, Knight-Swift Transportation, Corteva, and Southern saw meaningful revisions—each tied to distinct catalysts from M&A to macro rotation.

By pairing FMP's Stock Grade Latest News API with the Search Stock News API, you can build an always-current feed of rating momentum—complete with triggers and trend context.