Magic 8-balls and karma games

Remember that dodging article about financial panic and Novell? Not much has happened for Novell to have confidence resorted; au contraire -- it's worse now than ever before. Even Novell's CEO expresses some concern.

High-tech businesses that offer productivity gains or ways to lower costs are hold€­ing their own and even pros€­pering in the U.S. economic downturn.

But Novell Inc.'s CEO said Thursday that Congress must be aware of fragile consumer and business confidence as it considers a $700 billion rescue package for the nation's financial sector.

Here is the Microsoft-friendly Motley Fool (it's right about the "fool" part) commenting on a Novell recommendation that predates yesterday's big collapse. This was said 5 days ago when Novell's value was much, much higher.

Sure, UBS could be right that those growth rates are over-optimistic. But that doesn't explain why the analyst still likes Novell, Oracle, or Microsoft -- none of which boast growth-rate projections superior to their P/FCF ratios. Furthermore, if UBS is going to go and cut growth expectations across the board, I don't see how it can keep these three on its buy list while skipping over Symantec. Lower growth at any of Novell, Oracle, or Microsoft will push them

Funnily enough, earlier today Microsoft (MSFT) roughly approached -- or sank below -- its 10-year low. It just about touched the $22 threshold, despite those massive buybacks. Novell recuperated temporarily.

Overall, it just shows that analysts' work sometimes amounts to guesswork. They are wrong again and again. Witness the following coverage which mentions Novell, as seen some days ago -- a time when hovering above $5 seemed less than decent. Will Novell ever climb above $5 again?

S&P 500 - Risers Symantec Corp. (SYMC) $17.19 +1.42% Cincinnati Financial Corp (NASDAQ: CINF - news) . (CINF) $25.71 +1.06% Novell Inc. (NOVL) $5.05 +1.00%

Had more people listened to the analysts, a lot of personal wealth would have been lost within a day or two. Technology analysts are typically the same. ⬆

“Analysts sell out - that’s their business model… But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.”

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]