Does the data include analysts estimates?
No. StockCentral will eventually publish its own Community Consensus Estimates(TM) based on the stock studies contributed to the site by members. Analysts Consensus Estimates (ACE) of long-term EPS growth have been pretty thoroughly discredited by the financial industry as being next to meaningless. David Dreman, author of “Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Next Generation” (Simon and Schuster, 1998), offers some statistics taken from a study of all companies followed by a minimum of four analysts–about 1,000 companies–over a 23-year period. Dreman suggests that analysts’ estimates of earnings four quarters out were off by at least 5 percent 124 out of 125 times. And when the analysts were estimating five years out, the odds against their being right were 30 billion to one!
