Talking about SEC reform....I would like to see they dis-allow brokerage houses up grade and down grade. Upgrade & down grade give too much manipulation to the people who's in the loop. I don't mind brokerage houses do the research report and estimate the quarterly earning, but, just do not upgrade and down grade!! Look at IBM!! Two days ago Citi down graded it, today, UBS up graded it. You can have lot of imagination as who got in before these announcement. C'mom!! Ban these up grade down grade bull sh*t!!!!!
people should learn to ignore upgrades/downgrades. i realize this won't happen overnight, though...if ever.
Does anyone know if these huge firms get in long the day before they upgrade the stock or get short before the downgrade?Sounds like an easy way to makes loads of money,if not for the analyst's personal account,perhaps telling family members or friends who tell their friends who in turn give kickbacks to the analyst.Does anyone know if these kinds of things occur?
Nooooo... these large institutions are the bastions of ethics and integrity..... so they never front-run anything!. After all Mr. Bill..... THAT would be, uh... dishonest to most rational, law-abiding, hard-working, fair-minded human beings outside of Wall Street! ICe p.s. I twice reported MS/DW for front running options (IMHO) in PVN a couple of years ago. And the SEC "opened" an investigation. Of course... one can never monitor it's progress or know if they whitewashed it, swept it under the rug, etc. The ironic part is that when I observed the large blocks go off... I added the same contract, and they moved from 1.20 to 10+ the NEXT couple of days. The difference was: I used info available to all market participants whereas they likely had inside info on PVN... judging by the "timing" of their HUGGEE buys!
I'm sure that it is much trickier to do now with all of the watchdogs out there, but I GUARANTEE it used to be done quite often. From my floor days I remember seeing the oh-so admirable Salomon buying large amounts of puts/calls late in the afternoon, only to have Citi, Smith Barney, or Salomon themselves make an upgrade/downgrade in the direction of their option plays the day before. Are there some really smart guys that are traders for these houses, absolutely, but they make/made a ton of dough on these kind of lay-ups. The only thing worse than the whole buy calls on Tuesday afternoon, upgrade the stock Wednesday morning would be when the broker would be bitching Wednesday morning about the price of the trades and trying to squeeze the floor guys for better prices on a trade they were already getting killed on. As you can tell, I have ZERO respect for the big houses and the games they continue to play. Vega
Talking about IBM....it got stucked between $80 to $84 from July 20's to end of August. On Sep. 1st, I think was Dan Nile (the so called respectable analyst) up graded it, and it ran from $82's to $86, next few sessions it gradually drifted further up to the well known resistance of $90, so, at $90 the Smith Barney guy down graded it, citing the valuation concern. Tell me if these ain't manipulation??!! I know the season investors not suppose to listen to these analyst, but, each of these up grade and down grade moved market, innocent get hurt, while people in the loop get dough.
Very interesting story.I personally have never had an account with a big broker.Do these brokers make these upgrade/downgrade plays known to their clients the day before?I would imagine just to their biggest clients while their small retail clients are taking the opposite side after the stock has already been upgraded/downgraded.
hell ya, they do, legally they shouldn't, but if you have the big accounts, you get all of the tips, kind of like buying ipo's, if you're the little acct, you're not going to get in at the offering price, you'll have to wait until it runs up, then the rest of the public can get in, just in time for the big acct holders to sell off all of what they had, so basically you are stuck w/a high flying p.o.s. i've always been a firm believer that one seperate company should do upgrades/downgrades. something monitored by the sec, like that would ever happen, and even if it did, people would manipulate it,