- What is a Wall Street Securities Analyst?
- Wall Street Analysts Are Bad at Stock Picking
- Opinion Rating Systems Are Misleading
- When an Opinion Is Lowered from the Peak Rating It Means Sell
- Research Reports Do Not Contain an Analysts Complete Viewpoint
- The Entire Stock Market Is Biased in Favor of Buy Ratings
- Buy and Sell Opinions Are Usually Overstated
- Wall Street Has a Big Company Bias
- Brokerage Emphasis Lists Are Frivolous
- Stock Price Targets Are Specious
- The Street Is Extremely Short-Term in Its Orientation
- Analysts Miss Titanic Secular Shifts
- Street Research Unoriginal, Opinions Similar
- Analyst Research Is Valuable for Background Understanding
- A Lone Wolf Analyst with a Unique Opinion Is Enlightening
- The Best Research Is by Individuals or Small Teams
- Overconfident Analysts Who Exhibit too Much Flair Are All Show
Research Reports Do Not Contain an Analyst’s Complete Viewpoint
Because reports are in the public domain and are read by all the disparate audiences that analysts confront, particularly negative or controversial content is watered down, or modulated. The degree of our skepticism, aspects of a company that are unclear but highly suspect, untrustworthy management, lack of confidence in estimates, anything edgy, doubtful, any wariness—none of this gets put into writing. If it did, legal compliance would edit it out anyway. Reports get such scrutiny that analysts are careful; they hold back and reserve the touchier, conjectural content for direct conversations when they can tailor it to a specific institutional client. An analyst’s body language or subtle leaning on a stock are never revealed in writing. Although analysts are no longer legally able to hold a radically conflicting stance than the one portrayed in the report, there is much left to be read between the lines.