‘Boy these companies look pretty good, earnings are OK, they have plenty of cash. What if there’s a double dip?’
‘I’m no macroeconomist, but . . .’
Here is an intriguing possibility, one that should make any investor holding 80% cash a tad nervous: The Buy/Sell/Hold crowd of analysts are excessively cautious:
“For the first time since at least 1997, fewer than 29 percent of ratings for stocks covered by brokerages worldwide are “buys,” according to 159,919 recommendations compiled by Bloomberg. Analysts are turning more pessimistic even as they push up estimates for profit growth among Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies to 36 percent, the highest since 1988. . .
More than 54 percent of ratings for companies in the U.S., U.K., Japan and Brazil are “holds,” the highest level since Bloomberg began tracking the data in 1997. While the proportion of “sell” ratings in the U.S. has fallen to 5.1 percent, half the level of 2003, the total combined with “holds” reached a record 71 percent last month, the data show.”
As we have noted so many times previously, following the Wall Street crowd of analysts is rarely the way to make money.
For the rest of the article click here
