At The Motley Fool, we poke plenty of fun at Wall Street
analysts and their endless cycle of upgrades, downgrades, and
"initiating coverage at neutral." So you might think we'd be
the last people to give virtual ink to such "news." And we
would be -- if that were all we were doing.
But in "This Just In," we don't simply tell you what the
analysts said. We'll also show you whether they know what
they're talking about. To help, we've enlisted
Motley Fool CAPS, our tool for rating stocks and analysts
alike. With CAPS, we track the long-term performance of Wall
Street's best and brightest -- and its worst and sorriest,
too.
And speaking of the best ...
What a difference an analyst makes. Two weeks ago, we
watched in wonder as an upgrade on
MasterCard (NYSE: MA) from
Susquehanna Financial
had zero effecton the stock's price. Today, we see the
same kind of upgrade (a tick up to "outperform") send both
MasterCard and archrival
Visa (NYSE: V) up sharply ahead of the
market.
What's changed in two weeks? The name of the analyst doing
the upgrade:
Credit Suisse.
In contrast to Susquehanna's less-than-stellar reputation,
Credit Suisse is a stockpicking star, rated in the top 10% of
investors we track. Problem is... I'm not certain it deserves
all the credit it's being given -- at least not in credit
cards. Consider the analyst's record in the global payments
processing industry:
Stock
Credit Suisse Says:
CAPS says:
Credit Suisse's Picks Beating
(Lagging) S&P By:
Global Payments
Underperform
****
(24 points)
Western Union (NYSE: WU)
Outperform
*****
(4 points)
MoneyGram Int'l
Underperform
*****
28 points
Two-for-three -- hardly encouraging. And now check out its
record on banking in general:
Stock
Credit Suisse Says:
CAPS says:
Credit Suisse's Picks Beating
(Lagging) S&P By:
US Bancorp (Nasdaq: USB)
Outperform
**** Continued... |