Analyst Forecasts: It Pays to Be Off!

October 8, 2013 Leave a comment

Analyst Forecasts: It Pays to Be Off!

Gilles Hilary INSEAD

Charles Hsu Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

August 27, 2013
Journal of Investment Management, Forthcoming
INSEAD Working Paper No. 2013/92/AC

Abstract: 
We show that analysts who display more consistent forecast errors have a greater effect on stock prices than analysts who provide more accurate but less consistent forecasts. This result leads to three implications. First, consistent analysts are less likely to be demoted to a less prestigious brokerage house and are more likely to be named All Star analysts. Second, analysts strategically “lowball” (that is, deliver downward-biased forecasts) to increase their consistency. This is because lowballing gives management an easier target to beat and, in turn, management grants analysts greater access to company information. Finally, the benefits of both consistency and lowballing increase while those of accuracy decrease when institutional/sophisticated investors are more of a presence in the analyst’s audience.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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