His response to the Credit Suisse analyst report serves as our segue into the world of Wall Street research tonight. I was stunned by it. While I know nothing about the analyst in question, I can only surmise that she's doing a great job for Credit Suisse, but perhaps not so great for their clients . Well, Freep, given your tone and the opening comment in your e-mail, I think you've perfectly anticipated where tonight's column is going on the problems of stock research today on Wall Street. The answer is in the Street's business model.
Opinions create trades.
When the Credit Suisse analyst calls Gap an incredible company but downgrades it from buy to hold based on valuation, you can bet that Credit Suisse First Boston brokers are on the phone lines trying to get clients to move shares around in their accounts. And the answer would be plain to all of us if Wall Street firms held their analysts publicly accountable for their recommendations. Fools, until we get a public account of these recommendations, analyst by analyst, how can we be expected NOT to believe that a primary reason for their being research analysts is to generate more transaction events and trading commissions for their firms. Mr. Kurlak made a point not once, but twice, of sharing negative thoughts on Intel stock earlier this spring, citing increased competition from Advanced Micro Devices and pressure on the CPU side of the computer business in general. And let me make it clear, we're not being critical because he was wrong.