Excessive Optimism in Company’s Valuations

Abstract

The main aim of the article is an attempt to show the phenomenon of excessive optimism on capital market on the example of recommendations provided by the brokerage houses in Poland. The structure of recommendations indicates that there is more positive recommendations than negative and neutral ones. It would be reasonable statistically in constant market growth conditions, meanwhile, stock market is characterized by bull, bear and horizontal trend periods. The question is, why then, in the changing conjuncture there outweigh of the positive recommendation over the negative and neutral ones is observed. To achieve the research aim, the companies from the Warsaw Stock Exchange were selected and recommendations describing them were compared. Research results indicate that positive recommendations are dominant. The next stage was to compare the stock quotation at recommendation issue date with the price achieved by the company a year after. Research results indicate that despite positive recommendations of the brokerage houses, significant number of recommendations have overestimated the price in relation to real value achieved by the particular company on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. In addition, I compared selected companies’ financial projections with real reports. This analysis also showed the existence of an excessive optimism among analysts.