Stocks On the Move: AutoZone, Inc., Spirit Airlines Incorporated, and Stone Energy Corporation

AZO, SAVE, and SGY are moving sharply in Tuesday's trading

Dec 9, 2014 at 11:14 AM

In late-morning action, three of the top market movers are auto parts dealer AutoZone, Inc. (NYSE:AZO), aviation issue Spirit Airlines Incorporated (NASDAQ:SAVE), and oil-and-gas company Stone Energy Corporation (NYSE:SGY). Here's a quick roundup of how AZO, SAVE, and SGY are performing on the charts so far.

AZO jumped to a record high of $608.11 earlier, and was last seen 2.7% higher at $596.74, following a fiscal first-quarter earnings beat and a price-target hike to $620 at Morgan Stanley (which maintained its "equal weight" rating). Despite this morning's bullish note, the brokerage crowd is generally skeptical of AutoZone, Inc. Fifteen of the 19 analysts covering the shares have doled out "hold" or worse opinions, and the stock's consensus 12-month price target of $571.44 stands at a discount to current trading levels.

SAVE has plunged 13.2% to trade at $73.30, following disappointing November load factor results and a downgrade to "market perform" from "outperform" at Raymond James. On the flip side, Cowen and Company upped the stock's price target by $3 to $75, to go along with a "market perform" rating. Returning to the charts, Spirit Airlines Incorporated's intraday decline is the largest single-day fall in more than two years, according to Reuters -- though the shares remain more than 68% higher year-over-year. At the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), traders have displayed a healthier-than-usual appetite for long calls over puts recently. Specifically, SAVE's 10-day call/put volume ratio across these three exchanges is 6.64, which ranks in the 91st annual percentile.

SGY has rallied 9% to hover near $14.71, thanks to positive results at its Utica shale well -- and despite a steep $21 price-target reduction to $25 at MLV & Co., which nevertheless maintained its "buy" assessment. Even with this strong intraday performance, shares of Stone Energy Corporation are down almost 58% year-to-date. Not surprisingly, traders have been extremely bearish toward the stock. SGY's 10-day ISE/CBOE/PHLX put/call volume ratio of 4.06 rests just 4 percentage points from a 12-month peak.

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