The Pied Pipers of Wall Street

How Analysts Sell You Down the River

by Benjamin Mark Cole

Bloomberg Press, 2001

ISBN: 9781576600832
Pages: 234

Category: Finance

In this summary you will learn

• How to understand the conflict of interest that arises between investors and investment bankers
• Why analysts’ rumors can suddenly increase or decrease the price of a stock
• Why analysts so frequently overestimate stocks and rarely underestimate them

Why you should read The Pied Pipers of Wall Street

The best proof of Benjamin Mark Cole’s premise - that brokerage houses have sold out common investors to curry favor with huge corporate interests - is the ease with which he accumulates examples of analysts hyping stocks that later went bust. Can the combination of self-interest, analyst hype, and subsequent stock price implosion somehow be coincidental? Or is it time to start calling a duck a duck (or, for that matter, a quack a quack)? Cole’s indictment of Wall Street’s most efficient salesmen comes just in time for investors looking for a culprit in the overnight evaporation of billions of dollars in retirement funds. Of course, analysts can’t be blamed for the stock-market downturn, but their behavior during the run up deserves the close scrutiny it receives here. getAbstract recommends this book to any investor who suspects that the true talent of the talking heads they see on CNBC might really be turning your money into theirs.

About the Author

Benjamin Mark Cole  helped launch the daily financial paper Investor’s Daily (now Investor’s Business Daily). For 20 years, he has been a leading financial reporter, writing for U.S. News & World Report, The Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and the Los Angeles Business Journal. He currently writes the "Wall Street West" column in the Los Angeles Business Journal.

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