Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Apple 2.0 keeps track of the how well Wall Street analysts -- and amateur Apple watchers -- predict the fortunes of the company. An overzealous estimate of earnings that isn't met by a correspondingly big figure by Apple always seems to result in a hit on share price, so Elmer-DeWitt has been ranking the analysts by accuracy.
In the not-so-distant past, the amateur stock watchers were doing a much better job than the professionals, but that's changed. Now the professionals have taken eight of the top ten positions on Elmer-DeWitt's list. He points out that this doesn't necessarily mean anything, since professionals also filled nine of the bottom ten in his "Top 40."
Based on the
