IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-02108565.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Analysts' consensus forecast: A social construct

Author

Listed:
  • Isabelle Chambost

    (LIRSA - Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de recherche en sciences de l'action - CNAM - Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers [CNAM] - HESAM - HESAM Université - Communauté d'universités et d'établissements Hautes écoles Sorbonne Arts et métiers université)

Abstract

While it is often asserted that "the financial markets think…", the markets, a chain or network with unclear boundaries, remain difficult to grasp as a reality. This fleeting view is nonetheless materialised in an eminently tangible way in stock market prices, and also through the "analyst consensus". Intended primarily for investors, the consensus provides an overview of the opinions issued by securities analysts in the form of figures. This objective of this paper is to analyse how this representation in figures fulfils a role as a "cognitive artefact" for the analysts themselves, and is part of the "management tools". The dialectic of these tools is underlined, as the creation of the consensus results from interactions between actors, who "model" it, each in their own way. But once rolled out, the consensus produces a representation in itself, presenting objectivised characteristics and disciplining behaviours. As an information instrument, a benchmark, a standard, these "management tools" lead the analyst to pay attention to ‘what the market thinks", "why it thinks so", and also "what the analyst himself should think".

Suggested Citation

  • Isabelle Chambost, 2013. "Analysts' consensus forecast: A social construct," Post-Print hal-02108565, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02108565
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02108565. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.