Do stock market analysts take creative writing or are they the ultimate bandwagon guys? The lame information provided by stock market analysts keep providing more fodder for my rants. Last Friday -- Lehman raised Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE: APC) to Overweight from Equal Weight citing relative valuation and strong U.S. gas exposure....well duh!

I have ranted and raved about the poor performance of most analysts for almost the entire time I have been writing for BloggingStocks but the wonders never cease. The stock is at a 52 week high and now they take notice. I don't have their "training" yet I was pushing APC at $40, its low. It closed at $78.15 near its all time high and now Lehman makes the call. To quote a 90 year old Wall Streeter when asked to share what he had learned from his 70 years in the market "Nobody knows nuttin". The following is the two year chart for APC.

The Motley Fool ranted in a similar vain when they discussed a study by Patrick Cusatis and J. Randall Woolridge of Pennsylvania State University that studied 20 years' worth of published earnings estimates made by Wall Street industry analysts. They discovered that analysts were consistently overly optimitsic and that practically speaking, you should ratchet them down to the tune of around 40%; or you'll be sorry.