Let's talk about Wall Street analysts

[El Diablo]

OK, we have some finance folks here. And a number of investors.

I have a lot of thoughts on the research side of the investment banking industry. But this news today really says it best.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/08/...eekers-yo.html

Mary Meeker, MD and head of tech research at Morgan Stanley issues a report on YouTube advertising.

Other analysts made projections in the tens to hundreds of millions of revenue impact.

Mary's number? An incredible $4.8 BILLION - nowhere near what anyone else projected.

The article above shows that her team made an incredibly basic error and was 1000x off on their numbers.

This team is supposed to be among the leading experts in analyzing financial information and is 1000x off due to a math error - that part is sloppy, but hey, stupid mistakes happen. But the fact that not a single person on the team has the intuition to say "Hey guys, this just FEELS wrong" is really mind-boggling.