Come a rally, all the analysts in the market are saying that its a bear rally, some have even gone ahead to say that the worst is over. So I am just pondering over the analysts calls. Most of the analyst have specialized knowledge in particular domain, lets say, a Pharma analyst. He has to do the most important thing of keeping tabs of the pharma companies he is covering, and from this he gazes into a crystal ball to predict the earnings. I can understand if the prediction levels are generalized but basically all the analyst will try to predict each line-item in the financial statements and then come up with the target price using some of the most sophisticated valuation tool-THE DCF. If you aspire to become an analyst some time in the future, you have to learn the DCF modeling, only then you may treat yourself as an analyst. Coming back to my story of predicting earnings, isnt it futile to predict earnings as its a pretty difficult exercise to do.
Graham insisted to choose "precaution" than "prediction". But then who wants to follow simple techniques, rather analyst try to challenge their intellect by predicting the earnings. To make the matter worst, they try to predict changes in the earnings quarter by quarter, and the statistics tells us that analyst forecast is nothing more than throwing darts blindly. Good analysts try to forsee the company in the ways that even the layman will understand. They see the companies growth by building the decision trees; what is the probability that the company will grow earnings at x% or y%. If the odds provide favorable margin of safety, they will recommend the stock despite the growth rates being below the analysts estimates. And to be frank majority of the analysts know that their forecasting abilities are nothing more than throwing some intelligent numbers, but who will say that the emperor is wearing nothing!!!
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