What happened

Shares of Snap (SNAP -2.72%) were rising today after an analyst raised his price target for the company's stock. Its shares were up by as much as 10.5% earlier but settled to 8.1% as of 12:28 p.m. EDT.  

So what 

Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet raised his price target for Snap today to $24, up from the previous $19, though he kept a sell rating for the stock. The price target increase comes after Snap's third-quarter results beat analysts' revenue and earnings estimates earlier this week.

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Image source: Getty Images.

Snap's revenue of $679 million in the quarter easily outpaced Wall Street's expectation of $556 million, and the company's adjusted diluted earnings of $0.01 per share beat analysts' consensus estimate loss of $0.05 per share. 

Daily active users also increased for the company's Snapchat app by 18% year over year to 249 million, and the company's net loss narrowed to $200 million, an improvement from a loss of $227 million in the year-ago quarter.  

Investors have been pushing Snap's stock up since the company released third-quarter results on Tuesday, and today's price target increase helped keep the momentum going. 

Now what 

Snap's stock is up 158% year to date, but investors should keep in mind that the market is anything but predictable right now. The U.S. is still in a recession and dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. These factors could bring increased volatility to the stock market in the coming months and could eventually lead to a pullback for some stocks that have experienced significant gains over the past several months.