The INQUIRER Guide to financial analysts

CALL US CYNICAL if you like - after all we've been called far worse. But has anyone else noticed that certain stocks can be downgraded or upgraded on a Wednesday or a Thursday and then all hell breaks loose on the Friday?

This is the world that financial analysts of chip stocks seem to occupy, caught solely between a rock and a very hard plaice. There's something fishy about it, to our way of thinking.

First of all a total disclosure. No INQ journo buys and sells stocks and shares in companies we write about. Mostly that's because we don't pay our writers very much. If you have information that contradicts this disclosure, wing it the Ed's way, and such freelancers will be fired, or become "brown bread" in the vernacular.

And so to financial analysts. These are very different from industry analysts because the cut of the cloth of the former is obviously more pukka than the weave and weft of the latter. That is, if pukka means more expensive.

These financial analysts are the folks who work for major Wall Street firms and their agenda is far, far different from industry analysts or us bottom-feeders, the hacks.

It is a financial analyst's job to advise his or her corporate customer to make trades up or down, in or out. It is her or his job to compile the best facts available, in a fiduciary manner, to his or her customer. In short, to trade.

But where do the financial analysts get their information from, dear readers? Do they call up major distributors and corporate chip dealers? We doubt it. Instead, we suspect, they are briefed by the vendors concerned, and do the best they can do by reading the hacks who are so very much closer to the supply chain.

There. It's not absurdly cynical at all. Unless, that is, you consider cynicism to be close to the truth. µ

See Also
The INQUIRER Guide series
The INQUIRER Guide to different Inquirers
The INQUIRER Guide to spin doctors