When considering a stock as a potential investment target, it's typically important to develop a sense of the company's operational strengths and weaknesses, the fundamental aspects of its business that set it apart from competitors. Of course, Wall Street analysts also make these types of assessments for many publicly traded companies, and their evaluations are often classified with a Buy, Hold, or Sell rating.
Trusting analyst ratings above all other factors is usually inadvisable. Still, analyst sentiment can be a helpful tool for identifying possible investments or confirming (or complicating) one's own assessment of a company's health and potential.
