Sticking with US markets, which I know something about, you want to look at two things: track record of the analyst and public profile of the target.
To take one widely known name, Wedbush's Michael Pachter get smacked a lot for what seem to be excessively bullish or excessively negative pronouncements but year over year he tends to be in the top 10 performers. It's easy to model this stuff with fake money before you risk your own.
The target profile is more or less how much they're in the news and the volatility of their stock. Frankly I don't think anyone who's predicting Apple or Google has a clue what they'll be at in six months. But you can get a pretty decent consensus on a number of well-traded mid-caps and use those as a way to gauge how your chosen mouthpiece is running with or against the flow.
(Disclosure: I used to work for a company that Wedbush bought. I had no contact with Pachter nor any of the other analysts, nor do I have a financial stake in this discussion.)
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Date: 2013-07-22 03:29 pm (UTC)To take one widely known name, Wedbush's Michael Pachter get smacked a lot for what seem to be excessively bullish or excessively negative pronouncements but year over year he tends to be in the top 10 performers. It's easy to model this stuff with fake money before you risk your own.
The target profile is more or less how much they're in the news and the volatility of their stock. Frankly I don't think anyone who's predicting Apple or Google has a clue what they'll be at in six months. But you can get a pretty decent consensus on a number of well-traded mid-caps and use those as a way to gauge how your chosen mouthpiece is running with or against the flow.
(Disclosure: I used to work for a company that Wedbush bought. I had no contact with Pachter nor any of the other analysts, nor do I have a financial stake in this discussion.)