Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Goldman's Abby Joseph Cohen is Bullish

In other news water is wet.

On Mayday 2009 we posted "Goldman Sachs’s Cohen Says S&P 500 May Surge to 1,050":
Back in January I had a comment at MarketBeat:

S&P estimates of $71 might be a tad high.
I’ve seen a credible case made for $45 trough EPS for this year.
So what kind of multiple do we put on that?
Why oh why won’t GS let Abby Cohen out of her undisclosed location to tell us S&P 1600 by June ‘10?
Or a reprise of her Barron’s Roundtable 2008 DJIA, 14750?
Like the old joke says:
“Two Irishmen walk out of a bar,
Hey, it COULD happen.”
An anonymous commenter replied:
Abby Cohen has one view: 20% upside. No matter where the market is.
At least she is polite.
But then there was 2008, when in January she said the S&P 500 would end at 1,675; it closed the year at 903.25.*

Anyhoo, here's the headline story:

From Guru Investor:
Goldman Sachs partner Abby Joseph Cohen says she expects U.S. stocks’ bull run to continue, and says she thinks the next recession won’t happen anytime soon. Cohen tells Bloomberg that she thinks the “next recession is some significant distance off into the future”, and that growth doesn’t need to be spectacular for U.S. equities to continue to rise — though the gains likely won’t be as dramatic as they were in the first quarter....MORE, including video.

* In January CXO Advisory updated their test of Cohen's market calls and concluded:
...Sample sizes are very small, so confidence in relative accuracies is very low. There is stronger indication (11 out of 13 years) that Abby Joseph Cohen’s forecasts tend to be too high rather than too low.

In summary, very limited evidence suggests that Abby Joseph Cohen is a little better as a stock market forecaster than her average peer, and about the same as a simple algorithm.