Sense on Cents

The New Year brings us the traditional economic and market outlooks from Wall Street firms. High five to a loyal Sense on Cents reader for sharing this recap collated by Birinyi Associates. (Click on image to access full report)

>> LD’s SUMMARY
The overall average calls across the economic and market landscape are as follows:

GDP: +3.1% increase
S&P 500 close at year end 2010: 1222, a 9.6% increase
S&P 500 earnings: $76/share
Oil: $80/barrel, effectively flat on the year
Dollar/Euro: 1.45, effectively flat on the year

The overall outlook does project that analysts believe better opportunities for growth lie outside the United States.

With all due respect to the analysts making these calls, there are no major market calls and especially outliers in this report. Why? Analysts know they have more downside in being bold and wrong. Additionally, the analysts are ultimately a public face for Wall Street salespeople trying to collect assets and sell products. What environment characteristics are most conducive for those pursuits? Low volatility with positive bias and trend. What have the analysts provided? Exactly that.

Wall Street is truly an oligopoly. Group think and coordinated — if not collusive — pricing and projections are simply how the game is played.

LD

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 12:06 PM and is filed under General, markets, Wall Street. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.