From the great timing department: Banc of America Securities financial services analyst Michael Hecht slashed his rating of TD Ameritrade and trimmed his earnings expectations this month--less than a week later, Bank of America announced its free trading push. The online stocks are still struggling. Now, no one thinks the analyst had advance information. He issued his TD Ameritrade downgrade based mainly on the huge run-up in the stock. Seems pretty astute. Will his winning streak hold? Well, he has informed clients that the sell-off may be overdone. This may be of little comfort to the likes of E*Trade and Charles Schwab, which have also been caught up in the selling. All in all, this is how reputations are made.

For more on Hecht:
- Here's an article from TheStreet.com