The Analysts’ Tone & Questions Matter

Rather than actually listen to the whole conference call, investors can now just gauge the tone of the analysts on the call and listen for what types of questions they ask. You'll end up learning more about what direction the stocks is going than spending hours digging into the stocks financial statements or trying to figure out if that's a head or shoulder in the stock chart. Well, at least that's what Jordan Schoenfeld, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, found out:

He found that when analysts' tone is more upbeat than usual, a company

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Tagged analysts tone, conference calls, downgrades, jordan schoenfeld, types of questions, upgrades

Analysts at BMO Way Ahead of the Rest, Downgrade Two Coal Stocks

While the rest of us talk about coal stocks and their great potential long term, BMO Market Capital analysts are out in front of everybody else saying coals future doesn't look so bright, and it's time to sell Alpha Natural Resources and Arch Coal. BMO downgraded Alpha Natural from a outperform rating to an underperform rating and Arch Coal from market perform rating to an underperform rating. That's two underperform ratings for two coal stocks! The price target for Arch Coal? How about $4. And then Alpha Natural's price target lowered to $5 from $18. You'd think these analysts had a

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Tagged alpha natural resources, arch coal, bmo capital markets, coal stocks, downgrades, wisdom

Analysts Now Have New Terminology for Rating Stocks

Everyday, analysts from Bank of America to Barclay's Capital to Bear Stearns (oops, Bear no longer exists), make stock upgrades and downgrades. These downgrades or upgrades or better stated, stock recommendations, fall into a few categories: from a simple BUY to a NEUTRAL to an OVER WEIGHT to a STRONG BUY. Once in a bloom moon you'll see a SELL rating, but that's extremely rare. This language has become stale, though. It's a bit boring and ineffectual. However, refreshingly, going forward, analysts will now use some new terminology in their stock ratings that investors might glean more insight from. Here's a

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Tagged analyst ratings, downgrades, new terminology, stock recommendations, upgrades

Tempur-Pedic Downgrades Come After the Stock Gets Cut in Half

Tempur-Pedic International, the maker of premium mattresses and pillows, is down nearly 50% today after it cut its sales number in half. Analysts were expecting earnings of 86 cents per share and that's now going to be around 36 cents per share. CEO Mark Sarvary said this cut in sales was do to new competition in the specialty space. What's comical though is how the downgrades and rating changes start coming in once the stocks is chopped in half. What happened to their over weights, market performs, out performs, and strong buys? Amazingly, the stock went from $87 a share

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Tagged crushed, downgrades, keybanc, mattresses, oppenheimer, Tempur-Pedic

The Most Powerful Company in the World

No, the most powerful company in the world isn't Goldman Sachs or Google or Apple or Exxon, it's the company in the picture below. Which is picture the Standard & Poor's building in New York City, otherwise known as the S&P. The S&P is a rating agency that everyone hates right now. Don't let those Christmas lights coming of the streetlamps fool ya, this is the scariest and most feared company in the world, and especially in Europe, which is in fulll crisis mode. The S&P, the ratings agency that missed forecasting the real estate crash in 2007 and all

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Tagged downgrades, european crisis, power, s&p, standard & poor's

Jefferies Cuts Price Target on Jefferies

Perhaps one of the more comical things that takes place in the stock market is how financial companies that are on the brink of bankruptcy or at least going through their own troubles, like to downgrade or cut the estimates of other companies. For instance, just today, the Jefferies Group (JEF), whose own stock was at one point halted after it dropped 20% in a flash, downgraded and or cut the estimates on EZchip, Smith Micro, and Molson Coors. How can a company who is highly leveraged come out and say one company or another has their books in order? How can

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Tagged crash, downgrades, jef, jefferies, upgrades

Someone Please Downgrade Moody’s

It's no surprise there's a Portuguese group on Facebook trying to block or hack into Moody's, it's just a surprise that there's no similar type of Facebook group in Greece, Spain and Ireland, all countries with shaken economies and debit problems. Since Moody's come along and attack, bite and spit at them. If any countries have any pride or fight in them they should direct at it Moody's. Moody's, the all powerful, will come along like some giant fire breathing Godzilla and downgrade their debt rating, only causing the interest rates on their debt to go higher, and push

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Tagged downgrades, moody's, rant