When Wall Street analysts upgrade or downgrade a stock, the ripple effects can be immediate. A single upgrade from a top-tier firm can boost confidence and drive short-term price gains. Conversely, a downgrade often triggers selling pressure. That's why institutional investors, traders, and even retail investors pay close attention to analyst ratings — they reflect sentiment shifts and often move markets.

Over the past week, several companies saw a wave of analyst activity — multiple upgrades or downgrades in quick succession. Below we spotlight five notable examples, then show you how to systematically track rating changes with the FMP Stock Grade Latest News API.

5 Companies with Notable Rating Changes

Integral Ad Science (IAS) — 7 Downgrades

A flurry of downgrades followed the announcement that Integral Ad Science (NASDAQ: IAS) will be acquired by Novacap for $1.9 billion in cash.

Analyst actions included:

• Stifel: Buy → Hold (PT $10.30 from $14.00)
  
  
• Raymond James: Outperform → Market Perform
  
  
• Loop Capital: Buy → Hold
  
  
• Oppenheimer: Outperform → Perform
  
  
• BMO Capital: Outperform → Market Perform (PT $10.30 from $15.00)
  
  
• Truist Securities: Buy → Hold (PT $10.30 from $17.00)
  
  
• Craig-Hallum: Buy → Hold (PT $10.30)
  
  

Trigger: The pending $1.9B acquisition by Novacap.

CarMax (KMX) — 4 Downgrades

CarMax (NYSE: KMX) was hit with four downgrades after missing earnings expectations.

Analyst actions included:

• CFRA: Strong Buy → Buy (PT $60 from $100)
  
  
• Evercore ISI: Outperform → In Line (PT $52 from $80)
  
  
• Oppenheimer: Outperform → Perform
  
  
• Wedbush: Outperform → Neutral (PT $54 from $84)
  
  

Trigger: Q2 EPS of $0.64 missed the $1.04 estimate; revenue also fell short.

PROS Holdings (PRO) — 4 Downgrades

PROS Holdings (NYSE: PRO) faced multiple downgrades after an acquisition announcement.

Analyst actions included:

• KeyBanc: Overweight → Sector Weight
  
  
• Craig-Hallum: Buy → Hold (PT $23.25)
  
  
• Needham: Buy → Hold
  
  
• Stifel: Buy → Hold (PT $23.25 from $20.00)
  
  

Trigger: A $1.4B all-cash buyout by Thoma Bravo.

Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) — Mixed Reactions

Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE: FCX) saw 3 downgrades and 1 upgrade after tragic news from its Indonesian operations.

Analyst actions included:

• Clarksons Platou: Buy → Neutral (PT $42 from $55)
  
  
• Scotiabank: Sector Outperform → Sector Perform (PT $45 from $55)
  
  
• BofA Securities: Buy → Neutral (PT $42 from $50)
  
  
• Bernstein SocGen Group: Market Perform → Outperform (PT $48.50 from $50.50)
  
  

Trigger: A mud rush incident at the Grasberg mine, resulting in fatalities and missing workers.

CoreWeave (CRVW) — 2 Upgrades

CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRVW) moved higher in analysts' eyes after expanding its relationship with OpenAI.

Analyst actions included:

• Melius: Hold → Buy (PT $165)
  
  
• Wells Fargo: Equal Weight → Overweight (PT $170 from $105)
  
  

Trigger: An expanded $6.5B deal with OpenAI, bringing the total contract value to $22.4B.

Beyond the Headlines: What Rating Waves Reveal

Rating flurries rarely happen at random—they cluster around catalysts, and the catalyst dictates the read-through. This week's pattern is clear: earnings misses and takeovers drove most downgrades, while strategic contracts fueled upgrades.

For a primer, check out Buy, Hold, or Sell: Understanding Stock Ratings on FMP.

Sector lens. Consumer cyclicals felt the heat: CarMax's post-earnings downgrades reflected worries about demand, credit, and execution. Software names tied to take-privates (PROS) and ad-tech M&A (IAS) also drew fast cuts as upside became bounded by cash offers. At the other end, AI infrastructure (CoreWeave) saw upgrades on a step-change in contracted demand, while materials (Freeport-McMoRan) split opinions as an operational shock collided with a bullish copper backdrop.

Catalyst mechanics. Deal announcements tend to compress return paths: IAS and PROS slid toward their offer prices, and many firms moved to Hold/Market Perform with targets anchoring near the cash consideration. Earnings surprises behave differently—CarMax's downgrades pointed to a fundamental reset (margins, credit costs, share pressure) rather than a one-time headline. Freeport's mix of downgrades and an upgrade highlights how disaster-driven uncertainty can widen analyst dispersion when the macro tailwind (tight copper supply) conflicts with company-specific risk.

Make it systematic with FMP. Start with Stock Grade Latest News API to capture fresh upgrades/downgrades, then join to Earnings Calendar API to label moves that cluster around results. Use Search Stock News API to classify catalysts (M&A, partnerships, operational). Together, these give you a labeled, searchable feed of analyst sentiment—cleanly separating earnings- and deal-driven waves from routine coverage changes.

Tracking Analyst Rating Changes with FMP APIs

Rather than piecing this information together from news headlines, you can use FMP's APIs to automatically surface companies with the most rating changes. Here's how.

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 Rating Changes by Company

Loop through the API results and calculate how many upgrades or downgrades each stock received over your chosen period (e.g., 7 days). This allows you to surface companies with unusually high activity, like IAS or CarMax.

3. Investigate Triggers with News Search

Once you have a list of active tickers, use the Search Stock News API to pinpoint what caused the wave of changes.

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 Integral Ad Science and CarMax — companies that saw concentrated analyst attention in a short window.

Scaling Analyst Rating Tracking

You can start testing this setup with FMP's Free plan, which gives a maximum of 10 responses per API Call. But if you're running this daily across dozens of tickers — the Starter tier provides higher call limits - 100 responses per API call.

Scaling Analyst Rating Tracking Across Teams

While individual analysts can scan Stock Grade Latest News API and piece together catalyst tags from Search Stock News API, the real advantage appears when this is institutionalized. By piping these endpoints into your research dashboards and portfolio monitors, your firm gets a consistent, automated feed of rating actions—centrally tagged by catalyst —so PMs, research, and risk see these shifts the same day without hunting through emails or ad-hoc spreadsheets.

For larger teams and enterprise workflows, FMP's enterprise plan ensures compliance and repeatability. Risk teams can archive rating changes with timestamps and firm attribution for committee reviews, PMs can screen by sector or portfolio exposure to prioritize follow-ups, and research leads can set house rules (e.g., alert on ≥3 downgrades within 72 hours) across their coverage. What starts as a time-saver for one analyst becomes a scalable, firm-wide signal layer that shortens decision cycles and improves auditability.

To explore more powerful market data, APIs, and analytics tools, visit the Financial Modeling Prep.

Putting Analyst Activity to Work

Analyst rating changes are powerful signals of shifting market sentiment. In just the past week, companies like IAS, CarMax, PROS Holdings, Freeport-McMoRan, and CoreWeave saw multiple upgrades or downgrades — all tied to significant corporate events.

By combining FMP's Stock Grade Latest News API with the Search Stock News API, you can automate the process of spotting which companies are under the heaviest analyst scrutiny — and quickly understand why.