Elwood, RE: In short, lt buy means zilch.
Actually, it means more than you think.
Compare DELL to MUEI, for example. DELL has a LT buy, MUEI has a LT neutral. When DELL drops in price, it is likely that Merrill will upgrade DELL to a short term buy or short term accumulate, because they like the story long term and only have concerns about the price of the stock. With MUEI, on the other hand, a drop in price won't necessarily cause an upgrade.
Not that any of this matters, though, because analysts' influence on the long term pricing of large cap stocks is pretty close to zero. There are minor exceptions to this rule, but today, Merrill, and DELL is not one of those exceptions. |
