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Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1998 Short Picks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (18587)	4/15/2000 8:49:00 PM
From: Druss	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18691

Roger--My vote is that 99.1% of analysts ratings are meaningless. I have seen some analysts that were doing their job and downgraded stocks based on the actual performance they were expecting from the company. Perhaps a few of the upgrades I have seen were real also though I never take them seriously. Most analysts to my mind are whores. They start a company their brokerage has underwritten as a buy, they then upgrade this IPO to a strong buy, then they reiterate the strong buy when realism starts to creep in on the stock. The doublespeak around the term hold is very indicative of what analysts are about. Hold means sell, as is common knowledge in the market. Why don't the analysts use sell or strong sell? Because then the companies won't have anything to do with them. And analysts want to stay in bed with the companies. All the Best Druss

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (18587)	4/16/2000 3:40:00 AM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 18691

Sell-side analyst ratings are like that white goop that used car lots have on the windshields of the lemons they are trying to push on unsuspecting buyers - GREAT DEAL! $3000 OFF TODAY ONLY! MINT CONDITION! Sell-side prostitutes (I agree with Druss' characterization) have no responsibility for what they say. They don't have to buy the shares they recommend themselves. And as long as their calls generate trading actviity for the firm, no one grades them on whether they are right. I get a weekly Robbie Stephens report on Web stocks. The way they have touted worthless POS dot.com's is a disgrace. Never any discussion about which might be vulnerable to a pullback. No talk about which have business models to last more than six months. Just XXYZ reported $1.8 million in revenue, a 30% jump over our estimates, yada, yada, yada. If analysts were any good you would have seen a ton of sell recommendations a month ago. But all they do is use the code word for general allocations. Drop stocks from 70% to 65% means get out now because we think a correction is coming. It looks like a scummy way to make a living.