Buy, Strong Buy, Accumulate, Underperform, blah, blah, blah.
Everyday analysts initiate or change ratings on specific stocks.
When the dot-coms crashed and the markets went south, a lot of people lost money. Besides the huge sums of money lost, the most frightening thing about the demise of dot-com stocks is how very few analysts on Wall Street predicted the sharp decline. Wall Street analysts should have the knowledge and resources to forecast when problems are coming. Lets look at what the analysts do, and some likely reasons why they often can't protect us from bad stocks. An opinionated thesis on why the analyst believes the company will succeed or fail.