Analysts providing more accurate earnings forecasts also issue moreprofitable recommendations. We demonstrate how investors can profit fromthis contemporaneous link by differentiating between “able” and “lucky”analysts. In line with previous studies, we find that past track records...

In this study we examine changes in the precision and the commonality of information contained in individual analysts' earnings forecasts, focusing on changes around earnings announcements. Using the empirical proxies suggested by the Barron et al. (1998) model that are based on the...

This study examines how the quality of corporate disclosures impacts the precision of information that financial analysts incorporate into their forecasts of upcoming annual earnings. Our empirical measures distinguish between the precision of individual analysts' common and idiosyncratic...

Amendments to NASD Rule 2711 and NYSE Rule 472, enacted in May 2002, mandate that sell-side analysts disclose the distribution of their security recommendations by category of buy, hold, and sell. This regulation enhances the transparency of analysts' information and mitigates the...

Most existing studies conclude that the accuracy of analysts' target prices is questionable. In forecasting target prices, analysts estimate a future stock price under the constraint of a time frame of usually 12 months. We exclude this source of uncertainty by focusing on valuations in takeover...

How well do All-American analysts identified by Institutional Investor perform? We use 12-month horizon IBES target price data and matching CRSP actual price in analysis of the relative performance of the 2010 All American analysts. Two sample t-tests suggest their target price estimates are...

Analysts cover portfolios of firms. Firms in these analyst portfolios are thus in principle subject to common (integrated) production of information. Nonetheless, this paper documents significant stock return and forecast revision predictability across firms with common analyst coverage. Prices...

This paper studies how security analysts use industry-level and firm-specific information in issuing firms' earnings forecasts. Analysts who use more (less) industry-level (firm-specific) information have less available resources and incentives to allocate effort towards costly firm-specific...

We infer Moody's preference for accurate versus biased ratings using hand-collected data on the internal labor market outcomes of its analysts. We find that accurate analysts are more likely to be promoted and less likely to depart. The opposite is true for analysts who downgrade more...

Abstract This paper shows that analyst coverage networks (ACN) play an important role in explaining stock return commonalities across Latin American stocks. First, pairs of stocks connected by analysts exhibit higher comovement and excess comovement. Second, firms easily traded by foreign...