>>Merrill just re-iterated<< Consider the source. MSNBC on "vagaries of research":
msnbc.com Excerpts:
>>But no firm wants to alienate a potential client by knocking its stock.
That in turn leads to the current state of Wall Street investment research, in which no analyst who wants to keep his job issues a “sell” recommendation on a hot stock. The safer choice is to opt for such meaningless euphemisms as “hold,” “accumulate” or “long-term accumulate.” Then, only after the stock has fallen nearly to zero, does the firm issue the dreaded “sell” — witness, for example, how Merrill Lynch & Co., the underwriter of Boston Chicken Inc., rode the stock down from $40 to nearly $3 before telling its investors to bail out.
Yet rarely does one encounter a more craven flip-flop — or more unconvincing rhetorical waltzing to justify it — than that put on by Merrill on behalf of Amazon.com … a company for which Merrill has now hired back-to-back analysts with diametrically opposed opinions about the stock while all the while insisting that Merrill, as a firm, has no opinion on Amazon.com one way or the other.
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No, I think it is evidence of an investment firm looking to suck up to a company that is clearly going to need debt and equity underwriting support from Wall Street for as far into the future as the eye can see.
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