Wall Street’s Fading Crush on G.E.

From the New York Times:

USUALLY, it’s easy to find bullish analysts on Wall Street. In fact, the criticism leveled most often at stock pickers at major brokerage firms is that they’re too easy on the companies they cover, explaining away every earnings miss and always finding another reason to slap on a buy rating.

Not in the case of General Electric, though. These days, it’s hard to find much love on the Street for what was once the bluest of blue chips. Shares of the company, which makes everything from light bulbs to jet engines to movies, sank to a five-year low last week after one of the few remaining bulls on the stock finally threw in the towel.

“We have been wrong as G.E. underperformance has continued,” said C. Stephen Tusa, a J. P. Morgan Securities analyst who’d had a buy recommendation on the company for three years before downgrading it to neutral last Monday. “We can no longer recommend the stock with the degree of earnings headwind and uncertainty associated with a necessary change in strategy.”>>>MORE