Those Amazing Analysts

You may find this hard to believe, but when I was in college, I had aspirations of becoming a professional stock analyst. I had a strong interest in stocks, and the little bit I knew about analysts suggested to me they (a) were highly paid; (b) were very intelligent; (c) got to apply rigorous criteria to the universe of stocks to carefully select a handful of winners.

Little did I realize that analysts are little more than shills for the investment bank division; paid lackeys to puff up virtually all stocks so that more services could be sold to them. I also fell in love with technical analysis in my late teens, and that was enough to dissuade me from fundamental analysis, which these folks purportedly use as the basis for their decisions.

When I saw CROX got zapped on Friday, I didn't even have to look at the historical recommendations of the analysts - - I already knew what I would see. Something like this:

Buy, buy, buy. The world is full of bulls, and it's also full of analysts to prop up their hopes. What a bunch of crap.

So if we look at any given rating vis a vis the chart, particularly when the stock gets wiped out and they change their rating, it resembles this:

Gosh, D.A. Davidson. I guess you mean the really long run.

And don't assume these geniuses only screw up in the eyes of bears. They can be just as inept the other direction.

So you wanna know a secret? I don't want to do what they do for a living.