Serving somewhat different groups of investors, financial analysts evaluate values of the firm and express their opinion to the investors. Abarbanell et al. (1995) assert that the use of forecasts to proxy for investor beliefs has become a routine methodological practice in accounting and finance research. They construct a model of rational trade that incorporates earnings forecasts. The evidence shows that investor uncertainty can be expressed in terms of the information available to the investor including forecast precision. However, dispersion alone is not sufficient to proxy for investor uncertainty since other forecast properties such as the number of forecasts also affect forecast precision. Dechow et al. (1999) find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that sell-side analysts make overly optimistic long-term earnings growth forecasts for firms issuing equity, which are reflected in stock prices. Das et al. (1998) show results consistent with the hypothesis that analysts have greater incentives to seek and acquire nonpublic information for low predictability firms because firms characterized by low earnings predictability offer greater opportunities to improve upon the market’s earnings expectations. As a result, they tend to issue more optimistic forecasts for the low predictability firms than for high predictability firms.