Wall Street analysts: Accuracy is the least of their concerns

“As someone who has been tracking the forecasts of Apple (AAPL) analysts for nearly five years, I was not entirely surprised to learn that when 365 sell-side analysts (not just covering Apple) were asked what factors affected their compensation, the accuracy and timeliness of their earnings forecasts came in dead last,” Phillip Elmer-Dewitt reports for Fortune.

“This revelation comes from a survey conducted by a team of business school academics and posted online last month by Social Science Electronic Publishing,” P.E.D. reports. “Among its other findings: 81.5% named hedge funds as their employer’s most important clients; 13% named retail clients.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: As we wondered on April 9th:

“Who’s got less accountability, TV weathermen, Wall Street ‘analysts,’ or ‘upstream component suppliers’ cited by DigiTimes?'”

Related article:
Do Apple analysts serve the broker or investor? – April 23, 2013

8 Comments

  1. And these guys have more influence over Apple’s stock price than the performance of the company! Something is wrong with this system. If you’d like to know what it is, see who benefits from these ridiculous movement in Apple’s stock price.. Oh, and see how much these beneficiaries contribute to campaign committees.

  2. And they wonder why people sat and complained about Wall Street and the 1%.

    So here is what’s going to happen. Companies will eventually go belly up, or private. Wall Street will die a slow agonizing death. And many Americans will be come poorer than snot.

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