New Statistic On The Stock Market

Posted By on August 30, 2010

Interesting facts we haven’t heard of before!
 
For the first time since at least 1997, fewer than 29 percent of ratings for stocks covered by brokerages worldwide are buys, according to 159,919 recommendations compiled by Bloomberg. Analysts are turning more pessimistic even as they push up estimates for profit growth among Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies to 36 percent, the highest since 1988.

“People are sitting on a fence, said Paul Zemsky, the New York-based head of asset allocation for ING Investment Management, which oversees $550 billion. When I go and talk to our equity analysts, they look at the companies and say, ‘Boy these companies look pretty good, earnings are OK, they have plenty of cash. What if there’s a double dip?’

More than 54 percent of ratings for companies in the U.S., U.K., Japan and Brazil are holds, the highest level since Bloomberg began tracking the data in 1997. While the proportion of sell ratings in the U.S. has fallen to 5.1 percent, half the level of 2003, the total combined with holds reached a record 71 percent last month, the data show.

“A ‘neutral’ usually means historically a ‘sell,’ said Kevin Rendino, a money manager at New York-based BlackRock Inc., which oversees about $3.2 trillion. Ratings chase stock prices. When everyone becomes risk averse, they don’t want to stick their necks out.

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