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GUIDE TO THE SECTIONS OF THE WALL STREET CONSENSUS MONITOR
METHODOLOGY
The Wall Street Consensus Monitor tracks ideas from top stock market publications. The WSCM seeks to reveal the concurrence of affirmative buy opinions existing among the most successful investment newsletters. WSCM monitors the performance of approximately 140 well established stock investment newsletters. The newsletters are judged on their total return during a selected trailing period of time, leading up to the current market phase at the time of selection. Reexamination takes place after a period of additional market activity warrants confirming achievement. The trailing length of time examined will be long enough so that the newsletters would have had to outperform their peers during different market climates.
The current criteria can be found on our website:
WallStreetConsensusMonitor.com
Under the section "Sources/NEWSLETTERS CURRENTLY TRACKED BY WSCM."
SECTIONS OF THE WALL STREET CONSENSUS MONITOR
ROSTER OF TOP PERFORMING NEWSLETTERS
ADDITIONS TO TOP CONSENSUS BUY RECOMMENDATIONS
DELETIONS FROM TOP CONSENSUS BUY RECOMMENDATIONS
INCREASES IN NUMBER OF RECOMMENDATIONS
DECREASES IN NUMBER OF RECOMMENDATIONS
TOP CONSENSUS BUY RECOMMENDATIONS
CONCURRENT CONSENSUS RECOMMENDATION BY NEWSLETTER
ADDITIONAL NEWSLETTER LISTINGS AND RESEARCH RATINGS
NEWS BRIEFS
NEWSLETTER CONTACT INFORMATION
ROSTER OF TOP PERFORMING NEWSLETTERS
The twenty newsletters deemed to have the best current stream of success are selected for closer monitoring. The names of these newsletters will be found under the heading "Roster of Top Performing Newsletters." The newsletters are presented in alphabetical order.
Newsletter performance information can be found on our website WallStreetConsensusMonitor.com under the section "Sources/NEWSLETTERS CURRENTLY TRACKED BY WSCM."
CONSENSUS TABLE CHANGES
ADDITIONS TO TOP CONSENSUS BUY RECOMMENDATIONS – Listed here are stocks that have been added to the manifest of recommended stocks, since the previous issue of the Wall Street Consensus Monitor. A stock is added to the manifest when it receives a buy recommendation from two or more of the newsletters currently selected.
DELETIONS FROM TOP CONSENSUS BUY RECOMMENDATIONS - When a stock fails to gain a buy recommendation from at least two of the selected newsletters, it is removed from the manifest. Stocks removed from the list since the previous edition of the WSCM are listed here.
INCREASES IN NUMBER OF RECOMMENDATIONS / DECREASES IN NUMBER OF RECOMMENDATIONS - If the number of newsletters giving a stock a buy changes since the last published issue of WSCM, and it still receives a minimum of two recommendations, it is listed here. The symbol and company name are listed, followed by the recording of the movement and count of buy recommendations.
TOP CONSENSUS BUY RECOMMENDATIONS
Only stocks that receive two or more buy recommendations from the selected newsletters are presented here. In this section the stocks are grouped by the number of buy recommendations they have received in descending order. A very few issues with two or more recommendations will not be listed. These will usually be either foreign stocks not traded in any form on a U.S. based exchange or "pink sheet" stocks.
Some mutual funds will be listed here if they have a near equivalent Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).
CONCURRENT CONSENSUS RECOMMENDATION BY NEWSLETTER
In this section the consensus recommendations are listed and grouped by newsletter in twenty sections. One section for each newsletter. A buy recommended stock will only be listed under a newsletter's heading if at least one additional newsletter gives that stock a buy recommendation. Sometimes a newsletter will not have any recommendations that are shared by any of the other newsletters. In this case "None Applicable" will be listed under the newsletter's heading.
ADDITIONAL NEWSLETTER LISTINGS AND RESEARCH RATINGS OF HIGHEST CONSENSUS STOCKS
The stocks with the most recommendations will receive additional coverage in this section. Additional newsletters that currently give the stock a buy recommendation will be listed. These buy recommendations will be shown without regard to any assessment of the performance of these additional newsletters.
Also included in this section are samplings of analyst ratings from investment research departments. These blanket recommendation ratings will include the full range of rating terms used by sell-side and independent institutions. There are many different rating terms used by analysts, but they generally always either have the meaning buy, hold or sell. Each firm's ratings array will usually range from 3 to 5 different terms. A.G. Edwards has Buy, Hold, Sell. Goldman Sachs has Recommended List, Trading Buy, Market Outperformer, Market Performer, and Market Underperformer.
A few firms go exotic. BMO Capital Markets has Outperform, Market Perform, Underperform, Speculative Investment, and “No Rating at Time.”
Some are Cryptic. ThinkEquity has both “Source of Funds” and “Sell.” Rodman & Renshaw's lowest rating is "Under Review."
Buy Terms
Buy, Strong Buy, Outperform, Moderate Buy, Accumulate, Overweight, Focus List, Recommended List, Add, and Market Perform can all be generally interpreted as meaning buy. An analyst will use these terms when they expect share price to increase.
Hold Terms
Hold, Neutral, Inline, Perform, and Equalweight can generally be interpreted as meaning hold. These neutral ratings mean that the analyst does not expect any significant change in share price.
Sell Terms
Sell, Strong Sell, Underperform, Moderate Sell, Weak Hold, Underweight, and Reduce can generally be interpreted to mean sell. An analyst issues these ratings when they believe share price will decline, or seriously lag behind a sector or the market as a whole.
However, sometimes the action of a rating change can be the actual intended recommendation. For example if an analyst lowers the rating on a company from strong buy to hold, this can generally be interpreted as meaning sell.
Ratings changes that predict a change in the direction of share price, e.g., Sell to Buy, Hold to Sell, generally have more influence than recommendations based on anticipated continuation, e.g., Buy to Strong Buy, or Reduce to Sell.
A consumer of analysts’ ratings should be aware of where a term is positioned among the issuing firm’s arrangement of terms.
For a list of firms and their individual recommendation terms see: WSCM Listing of Brokerage/Research Listing Terms:
http://www.WallStreetConsensusMonitor/broker_ratings_guide.html
For more information on analyst ratings see FINRA's Guide to Understanding Securities Analyst Recommendations:
http://www.finra.org/Investors/SmartInvesting/AdvancedInvesting/UnderstandingSecuritiesAnalystRecommendations/
NEWS BRIEFS
This section will contain briefs of some recent opinion news concerning the consensus stocks. Information included here will be:
Analyst rating and price target changes;
Mentions of consensus stocks by advisors and analysts made in the media;
Recent investment newsletter comments on the consensus stocks.
NEWSLETTER CONTACT INFORMATION
The Wall Street Consensus Monitor is not intended to be a replacement for any of the newsletters it covers. It is recommended that the WSCM be used as an information supplement to these newsletters. Each of the newsletters have proven themselves to be worthy of patronage. This section includes website and contact information for each newsletter. Readers are encouraged to subscribe to any newsletter they find to be beneficial to their investment needs.
Wall Street Consensus Monitor: http://www.WallStreetConsensusMonitor.com
Sample Issue of the Wall Street Consensus Monitor: Sample Issue
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