Factset: what Wall Street thinks
Last week I got a press release from Factset, a financial data collection and analysis service, on the topic of where the S&P 500 is headed over the coming twelve months. The short answer from Factset: brokerage house analysts think the market is going up a little bit, strategists think the market is going down–again by just a touch.
I’m going to write about this over the next few days. My short answer: if history is any guide, neither outcome is likely. The market seldom drifts along. It either goes up a lot, or down a lot.
strategists vs. analysts
Who are these people?
First of all, they’re both sets of “researchers” who work for brokerage houses. Now, they don’t call brokers the “sell-side” for nothing. The number-one job of any sell-side researcher–analyst or strategist–is to persuade customers to do their trading business with their firm. In other words, they’re primarily salespeople. That’s important because it means that at least to some degree they both tailor what they say to fit what their buy-side audience wants to hear.
strategists
Strategists are typically economists or statisticians by training, although they are also sometimes former portfolio managers (snide pms would probably say failed portfolio managers).
Strategists normally work “top down.” That is, they use data about the macroeconomy to make forecasts about GDP growth and the course of interest rates. They then derive expected future earnings growth for the overall stock market and the price earnings multiple at which they think the market will trade. That gives them a forecast of the future stock market price. For the S&P over the next year, Factset says the strategists’ consensus is down, but my less than 10%.
Based on their analysis, strategists also recommend sector- and industry-based portfolio structure. In conjunction with analysts, the may also suggecst individual stock holdings. They may also help set policy–like the official forecast of the oil price–that analysts more or less adhere to in making their company earnings forecasts.
Strategists are normally much more conservative than sell-side analysts. Their earnings growth projections are almost always lower than analysts’. Clients occasionally permit strategists to be bearish, and–as is the case now–to say the market is headed south. But a prolonged bearish tilt is almost like buying a ticket for the unemployment line.
analysts
Analysts are specialists in specific industries or economic sectors. They may have academic training in engineering or other subjects pertinent to the industry they cover. They may have worked in the industry, often in strategic planning or M&A. They’re invariably deeply knowledgeable about company financials and about the competitive dynamics of their coverage. They often also have privileged access to the top management of the firms they analyze.
That access usually comes at a price. Analysts can come under considerable pressure not to deviate–either up or down–from the official earnings guidance announced by these firms. A “sell” recommendation can sometimes trigger a violent reaction from the company in question.
Many investors–childishly–don’t like to hear bad news about the companies they own. At the same time, the analyst won’t earn much if he doesn’t have good things to say about at lease some firms in his industry. As a result, analysts tend to err very substantially on the side of optimism. They turn bearish, even for a short time, at their peril.
year-ago predictions
Industry analysts make projections of earnings growth and set stock price targets for the companies they cover. They don’t make projections for the S&P. Factset gets an implicit analyst forecast for the market by aggregating the analyst projections for each company in the S&P 500.
Getting a strategist forecast is much more straightforward. Factset just takes a median.
Anyway, in April 2012 the implied analysts’ forecast for the S&P was much more bullish than the strategists–at +11.9% vs. +2.6%.
No surprise there.
What is a surprise (“shock” may be a better word), however, is that the analysts were a lot closer to the actual S&P 500 results of +13.8% (capital changes only).
year-ahead projections for the S&P
That’s tomorrow’s topic.
