Imperial Oil (AMEX:IMO) was upgraded from Hold to Buy at TD Securities today. The stock closed yesterday at $43.80 on volume of 318,000 shares, above average daily volume of 214,000.

Potential upside of 15.5% exists for Imperial Oil, based on a current level of $43.80 and analysts' average consensus price target of $50.60. The stock should find resistance at its 200-day moving average (MA) of $44.06, as well as support at its 50-day MA of $43.69.

Imperial Oil Ltd. produces and refines natural gas and petroleum products and manufactures petrochemicals. The Company's oil and gas operations are concentrated in Canada.

In the past 52 weeks, Imperial Oil share prices have been bracketed by a low of $38.16 and a high of $50.00 and closed yesterday at $43.80, 15% above that low price. Over the past week, the 200-day moving average (MA) has remained constant while the 50-day MA has declined 0.3%.

SmarTrend recommended that its subscribers protect gains by selling shares of Imperial Oil on September 26th, 2012 by issuing a Downtrend alert when the shares were trading at $46.48. Since that call, shares of Imperial Oil have fallen 5.8%. We are now looking for when a new Uptrend will commence and will alert SmarTrend subscribers in real time.