Another credit crunch victim: analysts' credibility

A poster on Seeking Alpha takes analysts to task for what he considers really awful performances as of late. There's a been a lot of talk about how inaccurate analysts have been in their forecasts. The post notes that for the second quarter, Wall Street analysts accurately predicted earnings just 6.7 percent of the time. That was the worst showing in 16 years. Merrill Lynch's highly rated Guy Moszkowski was singled out for shifting his stance on Lehman Brothers four times between June 2 and June 11. But these are extraordinary times, especially in financial services, so perhaps we can cut the analysts a break. There were a few who were accurate in some cases, notably Richard Bove and Meredith Whitney. Financial services has always been a tricky industry, in part because the proprietary component was always something of a wild card. As the commercial banking model takes hold, will analysts' performances get better?

For more:
- here's the post

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