Financial analysts matter. That’s why you often hear them asking questions at the end of earnings calls, when the CEOs of public companies try to avoid answering them directly. They research, analyze, and make recommendations that the regular person can follow. Too bad they are often so damn wrong. Tracour, co-founded by Brad Sams (Sams is a well-known technology writer, and generally decent human that I have known professionally for some time) aims to vet analyst recommendations to help people avoid lemons. Tracour launched into open beta this morning. The company’s product takes in millions of data points, tracks analyst pronouncements, and then uses a proprietary algorithm to grade them. The company applies what it calls its Market Response Index, or MRI, to see how a stock performs after a particular ranking from an equity guru.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/18/tracour-launches-to-prove-that-some-financial-analysts-are-full-of-it/