Check out this headline in the Business Times today: "Buy stocks with good earnings, yields: analysts" Ah, here we go again. That old tradition of shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. Where in the world were the analysts before the US subprime issue blew up in our faces? Remember what happened during the dotcom days, when analysts were among the cheerleaders for overhyped, under-profitable tech stocks. Only after the crash did they say, "oh… um… yeah, it's better that you stick with companies that are actually generating cashflow".
Here are some of the gems from the report this morning.

"…Citigroup's Lim Jit Soon said that feedback from a marketing session in Hong Kong suggested investors are 'generally focusing on markets that have better earnings prospects'."

No kidding!

"Another emerging theme: 'avoiding companies with direct exposure to the US'."

It's like rocket science.
And Carmen Lee from OCBC Securities is quoted as saying:

"'One area we are focusing on now is higher-yielding stocks.'"

Pure genius.
I am sick to the teeth with this sort of stuff. Don't tell me to stick to value stocks after the market has fallen 500 points! The real worth of analysts' calls is to help their clients avoid these big falls in the first place. All the comments are valuable, but they are coming far too late. We needed to have heard these comments when the market was tracking above 3,600 in late July.

Mark Laudi