A study on Financial Analysts'' Forecast Accuracy and Behavior

• Main Authors: Chun-Cian Yu, 余俊憲
• Other Authors: Jinn-Yang Uang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/51739896729286092635

碩士 === 國防管理學院 === 國防財務資源研究所 === 91 === The demand for financial analysts, rising with the rapid growth of capital markets, leads to academicians’ interest in exploring analysts’ behavior. In an attempt to examine this issue, we use data taken from the Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) database, which contains analyst historical earnings estimates. By using a variety of statistical tests, this study reaches some major conclusions. First, analysts’ EPS forecast errors increase over time during our investigation period, which tend to be optimistically biased. Second, evidence indicates that the accuracy of earnings estimates is negatively associated with the span of forecasting time. Third, analyst forecasts of future earnings are more accurate when the predicated company is growth-type or bigger in size, and less when the company is of higher price-earnings ratio or debt-to-equity ratio. Fourth, analysts are more likely to be pessimistic about EPS forecasts in situations of the predicated company that is bigger in size or of higher P/E ratio. Fifth, analysts tend to upwardly adjust their earning estimates when the predicted company is of higher market-to-book ratio or when the stock market is in situations of upturns, and downwardly revise when the company is of higher debt-to-equity ratio. Finally, our results interestingly show that forecasting accuracy can be enhanced when the predicated company issued their financial forecasts in compliance with the related corporate regulatory requirement. Such a finding indirectly points out that the required financial forecasting policy in the present regime is beneficial to the investor.