Financial Analyst Characteristics and Herding Behavior in Forecasting

This study classifies analysts' earnings forecasts as "herding" or "bold" and finds that (1) boldness likelihood increases with the analyst's prior accuracy, brokerage size, and experience and declines with the number of industries the analyst follows, consistent with theory linking boldness with career concerns and ability; (2) bold forecasts are more accurate than herding forecasts; and (3) herding forecast revisions are more strongly associated with analysts' earnings forecast errors (actual earnings-forecast) than are bold forecast revisions. Thus, bold forecasts incorporate analysts' private information more completely and provide more relevant information to investors than herding forecasts. Copyright 2005 by The American Finance Association.