Brokers Suggest Investing in AT&T (T): Read This Before Placing a Bet

Core Viewpoint - The article discusses the reliability of brokerage recommendations, particularly focusing on AT&T (T), and highlights the potential misalignment of interests between brokerage analysts and retail investors [1][10]. Group 1: Brokerage Recommendations for AT&T - AT&T has an average brokerage recommendation (ABR) of 1.71, indicating a consensus between Strong Buy and Buy, based on 29 brokerage firms [2]. - Out of the 29 recommendations, 18 are Strong Buy and 3 are Buy, which represent 62.1% and 10.3% of all recommendations respectively [2]. Group 2: Limitations of Brokerage Recommendations - Studies indicate that brokerage recommendations have limited success in guiding investors towards stocks with the highest price increase potential [5]. - Analysts from brokerage firms tend to exhibit a strong positive bias in their ratings, often issuing five "Strong Buy" recommendations for every "Strong Sell" [6][10]. - The interests of brokerage firms may not align with those of retail investors, leading to misleading recommendations [7][10]. Group 3: Zacks Rank as an Alternative - Zacks Rank categorizes stocks into five groups based on earnings estimate revisions, providing a more effective indicator of a stock's price performance in the near future [8][11]. - The Zacks Rank is distinct from ABR, as it is based on quantitative models and is updated more frequently to reflect changing business trends [9][12]. - For AT&T, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year remains unchanged at $2.03, leading to a Zacks Rank of 3 (Hold) [13][14].