What happened
Three days, three analyst price-target raises: That was the wind behind the sails of S&P Global (SPGI 0.07%) stock on Wednesday, with the financial information specialist's share price rising by almost 3% on day three. That performance was more than good enough to top the 0.7% rise of the S&P 500 index.
So what
Wednesday's raiser was Raymond James pundit Patrick O'Shaughnessy, who now believes S&P Global's fair value is $421 per share. Prior to that, he had a price target of $413. His recommendation on the shares was unchanged: outperform (buy, in other words).
It wasn't immediately apparent why O'Shaughnessy raised his price target, but it's part of a recent trend. Before market open Tuesday, his peer Alex Kramm at UBS made a more drastic move, upping his S&P Global price target to $460 from the preceding $420. Like his Raymond James counterpart, Kramm maintained his buy rating.
Rounding out the trio was Morgan Stanley prognosticator Toni Kaplan. She added $7 to her existing level for a target of $427 per share. In line with general analyst sentiment on the specialty financial stock, she kept her overweight (buy) recommendation intact.
Now what
S&P Global is by far the most influential provider of finance sector data and information solutions. it manages the S&P family of indexes, for a start. While we should never entirely base our investing decisions on the opinions of analysts, the company has enough juice and potential to be on anyone's radar as a stock pick.
