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 ...
Stock market investors rejoiced as markets turned green again yesterday, and Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) owners were even happier than most. For this, they can thank Wells Fargo, which yesterday declared Halliburton "the most attractive risk-reward of the Big 4" oil servicers, and initiated coverage on the company with an "outperform" rating. Buoyed by the megabanker's encouraging words, Hal's stock went on a 4% tear.

But should it have?

Let's go to the tape
The question is a bit more complicated than it ought to be today, but let me walk you through it. Once upon a time, there was a bank named Wachovia. It made some "poor choices," however -- as my mother might put it -- and wound up getting 'et by a bigger, smarter bank by the name of Wells Fargo.

But Wells wasn't just smarter than Wachovia. It was also more reticent about reporting its stock guesses to Briefing.com. Hence, it hasn't amassed much of a paper trail on CAPS yet. Worse, what record it doeshave on Oil, Gas and Consumable Fuels(OGC) stocks is less than impressive. Several months of picks in the sector have left Wells Fargo with an anemic record of 30% accuracyin the oil field, based on a very small sample size.

To get a better picture of the analytical team that now inhabits Wells, though, I traveled back in time (did I mention that CAPS has a time machine?) to examine how " Wachovia" used to fare in the oil patch. The news was both bad and good. Good, in that Wachovia scored a respectable 55% for accuracy in OGC stocks ...

"Wachovia" Says

CAPS Says

"Wachovia's" Picks Beating (Lagging) S&P by

Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK)

Outperform

*****

(14 points) (two picks)

Williams Companies (NYSE: WMB)

Outperform

****

(1 point)

XTO Energy (NYSE: XTO)

Outperform

*****

56 points

... and bad in that Halliburton is not technically an OGC stock -- it's a servicer of such stocks. And when you drill down to Wachovia's record in thissector, termed Energy Equipment and Services, it appears that Wachovia historically has about a 46% accuracy in this sector:

"Wachovia" Said

CAPS Says

"Wachovia's" Picks Beat (Lagged) S&P by

Weatherford Int'l (NYSE: WFT) Continued...