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Comment by was_boring | Hacker News Reader

If TipRanks is accurate, how can this person be employed? Especially at a firm like GS.

Somebody whose predictions are 100% wrong all the time would be enormously valuable - you just bet on the opposite outcome of the prediction ;)

More seriously, the TipRanks performance timeline is only over 1 year. Perhaps GS is judging him on a much longer timeline.

Or that GS wants to move the stock in a certain direction. Perhaps they have a big short position and want to cover. They don't have to be right in the long term, just right enough to move the stock down 7% and make money.

Isn't that stock manipulation?

You say that as if they would be punished for that. And its not like they do this all the time...

Research and trading have strong information barriers, to avoid just the sort of thing you're suggesting. Banks enforce this very seriously. Search for "Global Analyst Research Settlement" if you want the history.

Sure.

Next you'll tell us that nobody does insider trading, because, to riff from Richard M Nixon: "we can do that ... but it would be wrong".

By the pigeonhole principle, someone has to be at the bottom.

That someone doesn't have to be at GS though.

Well yes, but one doesn't necessarily expect the same individual to stay on the bottom. Reason dictates that an analyst would either improve or exit the pool instead of continually failing (why would a firm hire a persistently wrong analyst?) So someone has to be at the bottom, true, but I think it's odd for someone to stay at the bottom.

How does the pidgeonhole principle apply to rankings?

I think he means the well-ordering principle

Most analyst's are little more than marketers.

Nobody gives good analysis for free.

Maybe they don't base their hiring on the employee's DCF to the firm.

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