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Oops! Even the best of them can get it wrong in the stock market. Just ask Goldman Sachs which had a sell rating on BP ahead of yesterday's bumper third-quarter numbers which drove the shares 5% higher to a year's high of 597.4p.
The broker, often referred to as Golden Stacks, because of its Midas touch has now dropped BP's shares from its influential conviction sell list and has raised its rating from sell to neutral. The oil giant post a 60% rise in net profits which the company attributed to cost cuts and increased production. BP came in for profit-taking today with the price losing 3p at 592p as did the rest of the market.
The FTSE 100 index was left nursing a loss of 32.02 to 5168.95. The FTSE 250 also slumped 65.20 to 9076.08. It was the target of a large programme trade yesterday which saw institutional investors switch into defensive stocks.
Department stores group Debenhams was a tad softer at 84.3p as the dust settled on yesterday's sale by venture capitalist Texas Pacific of its near 10% stake. One story doing the rounds claimed Arcadia retailer and billionaire Sir Philip Green had bought the stake but he denied it. It now looks as if the 120.2 million shares have been snapped-up by the New York-based private equity operator Och Ziff Capital Management.
Elsewhere in the retail sector, Marks & Spencer followed other blue chips lower, losing 2p at 346½, despite Seymour Pierce raising its rating on the shares from hold to buy.
Bid target Cadbury firmed a penny to 777p. The confectioner has already rejected an offer of 745p a share from US food giant Kraft, with most speculators saying it will have to pay more than 800p to win the day. But Investec has a hold rating on the shares and has cut its target from 875p to 840p.
Housebuilder Taylor Wimpey traded a bit better at 40.8p despite UBS repeating its neutral rating on the shares and slashing its target price from 57p to 43p. Taylor Wimpey made losses of almost £70 million during the first six months of the year and, at the last count, had debts of almost £2 billion.
Leading shares in New York ended the session with modest gains overnight on Wall Street. But it was a frantic affair, at one stage, with shares looking to post their third consecutive day of losses. As it was, the Dow Jones closed 14.21 higher at 9882.17. Investors have begun to worry again about the pace of economic recovery after disappointing consumer confidence data. This also prompted strong demand for the latest US Treasury auction.
The Dow was kept from ending lower by the resilient performance from the likes of ExxonMobil and IBM and a firmer oil price which is again nudging towards $80 a barrel.
Shares in Asia continued to lose ground this morning.
In Tokyo, leading shares slumped to their lowest close in two weeks as technology stocks fell after the weaker-than-expected US consumer data. But Honda Motor climbed more than 3% after it surprised with a near tripling of its annual profit forecasts. The Nikkei 225 shed 137.41 points to 10,075.05, the lowest close since 14 October.
Over in Hong Kong shares also suffered steep falls as property companies struggled with concerns about a possible shift toward a tighter monetary policy by Beijing. The Hang Seng index fell 368.64 points to end the morning session at 21,800.95. Turnover was HK$40 billion (£3.2 billion).
