reluctantQuant

Citi Proves That Contrary Opinion Works More than We Thought

The aggregation process for large, multi contributor databases is always akin to making sausage.

Some "clean up" entries are legit, some are not. The person who gives the data to the colletor / aggregator is not always the sharpest tool in the shed, and don't expect that the head of research is watching that outflow too closely,

If a firm left Bill's name on a recommendation six months after Bill left by mistake, should that be corrected post-facto?

If the firm fired the lowly admin who sends that data to Bloomberg/Ibes/ThomReut six months ago and no one sent any data since, should that be corrected post-facto? The vendors don't "blank it out" just because there's no update.

The article here is quite valid - I'm not defending any of these goofballs, but the stats utilized here are a little squirrelly.

Whether data is good or bad, at the end of the day, at least half of the analysts are below average anyway. Take it all with a very large grain of salt...

--rq