■ The Big Idea
Stock traders and buyers beware. The talented talking heads of financial news gathering agencies may be part of todays hyped up age of stocks where the talented talkers of the brokerage firms could be increasing their own money, not yours. Just like the children of those poor and unsuspecting folks in the fairy tale, your fortune and future could easily disappear, led away by charismatic pipers called stock analysts. Benjamin Mark Coles argument is brokerage houses have sold out the common investor in favor of bigger corporate interests. He provides us with heavyweight examples of analysts hyping stocks that later went bust.

Coles criticism of Wall Street salesmen is timely. Investors are looking for a villain in the overnight evaporation of billions of dollars in retirement funds. Analysts cant take the blame entirely for the stock-market downturn, but their behavior during the run up deserves closer inspection.