Stock Upgrades, Downgrades from TheStreet.com Ratings

Each business day, TheStreet.com Ratings updates its ratings on the stocks it covers. The proprietary ratings model projects a stock's total return potential over a 12-month period, including both price appreciation and dividends. Buy, hold or sell ratings designate how the Ratings group expects these stocks to perform against a general benchmark of the equities market and interest rates.

While the ratings model is quantitative, it uses both subjective and objective elements. For instance, subjective elements include expected equities market returns, future interest rates, implied industry outlook and company earnings forecasts. Objective elements include volatility of past operating revenue, financial strength and company cash flows.

Monster Worldwide(MNST Quote) is the parent company of Monster.com, the online employment Web site. It has been downgraded to a hold from a buy. The company's strengths include its revenue growth of 17.9% in the third quarter when compared with the same period last year, exceeding the industry average of 0.5%. Monster is carrying no debt, implying that there has been very successful management of debt levels. However, its third-quarter earnings fell 19.4% to 25 cents a share from 31 cents a share in the same period last year, continuing recent a pattern of volatile earnings. In addition, the company's stock price has gone down 31.21% in the last 12 months, and based on its current price in relation to its earnings, Monster's stock is still more expensive than most of the other companies in its industry. It had been rated a buy since December 2005.