Meanwhile, GWPH shares are pulling back
Thanks to strong gains from Caterpillar and Boeing, the Dow is up more than 100 points this afternoon and touched a fresh record high. Three stocks in particular we're watching today are payments processor Square Inc (NYSE:SQ), cloud storage juggernaut Dropbox Inc (NASDAQ:DBX), and cannabinoid medicines specialist GW Pharmaceuticals PLC (NASDAQ:GWPH). We'll take a closer look at what's moving shares of SQ, DBX, and GWPH below.
Square Sellers Survey Impresses KeyBanc
SQ stock has become a regular target of bullish analysts, and just this morning received a price-target increase to $115 from $75 out of KeyBanc. The brokerage firm cited an internal survey that found encouraging trends among Square sellers, including that 70% of them did not even consider a competitor. As such, the shares are trading up 1.5% at $98.78, holding near yesterday's record high of $101.15.
However, not everyone is jumping behind Square stock. Short interest has been rising in recent weeks, including a 6.7% increase in the last two reporting periods. Now, 9.1% of the total float is held by short sellers.
DBX Upgraded at Instinet
Instinet is moving in on DBX shares, saying the company continues to convert hundreds of thousands of users into paying customers, prompting it to upgrade its rating on the stock to "neutral" from "reduce" while lifting its price target to $25 from $21. Still, Dropbox is down slightly today at $26.17, extending the downward trend that's been in place since the June peak near $43.
Options traders at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX) have continued to prefer long calls over puts, though. More than 7,910 calls were bought to open during the past 10 days across these exchanges, compared to just 2,415 puts.
GWPH Shares Sink on Stock Offering
GWPH stock is trading down 3.7% at $161.10, due to news the company is planning a $300 million public offering to fund the commercialization of its drug Epidiolex. Longer term, however, the shares have been excellent, gaining 63% year-over-year and hitting an all-time high of $179.65 on Sept. 27. Nonetheless, this pullback has to string for recent options traders, since call buying on GW Pharmaceuticals has outpaced put buying by a more than 5-to-1 ratio over the past two weeks across the ISE, CBOE, and PHLX.