Crowdsourcing Forecasts: competition for sell-side analysts?

Recent research has begun to question the importance of forecasts to sell-side analysts. Prior research established the co-existence of longer horizon optimism and short-term pessimism in sell-side forecasts. These factors motivate us to explore a new phenomenon – crowdsourcing, as an alternative source of forecasts. We obtain revenue and earnings forecasts from estimize, an entity which crowdsources and distributes these forecasts online. We find the estimize forecasts are, on average, as accurate as the sell-side. Further, although our results show the estimize forecasts to be relatively more optimistic, on average, and particularly in short horizons, our analysis suggest it is at least partially explained by the extreme pessimism of the sell-side’s final forecasts. Our market test confirms support for the superiority of estimize’s short-term forecasts. Our results provide support for the value of crowdsourced forecasts. JEL Classification: G28; G29; M41; M43