Wall Street analysts: frenemies of both investors and managers

Mark Bradshaw and Andrew C. Call

Chapter 17 in Handbook on the Financial Reporting Environment, 2025, pp 327-345 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Sell-side analysts play an important role in capital markets because they are intermediaries between corporate executives and investors. Analysts conduct both quantitative and qualitative analyses of a company and provide forecasts and opinions about the company's prospects. These opinions are conveyed through written reports, buy recommendations, and forecasts of future accounting metrics like revenues and earnings. Analysts’ forecasts are integral to the flow of information about a firm, and their consensus expectations are representative of those of investors. Because analysts’ research moves stock prices, both corporate executives and investors have considerable interest in analysts’ assessments. At the same time, analysts face various incentives that can affect their research. An understanding of these dynamics is helpful for those who rely on analyst research, hope to identify the most useful analysts, or want to better understand the corporate reporting environment in which companies operate.

Keywords: Analysts; Market expectations; Earnings forecasts; Stock recommendations; Earnings announcements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781800888678
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781800888685.00033 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:20826_18

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().