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ReutersBlackBerry Z10 devices. CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (MarketWatch) -- Blackberry Ltd.'s recent ratings from Wall Street analysts are a perfect illustration of how hard it is for analysts to say "sell."

Until Monday's apparent bitter end, when the company announced a deal to go private at $9 a share, the worst that the average analyst could bring himself to say is that Blackberry was a "hold."

For example, Zacks Investment Research, which calculates a rating based on analyst earnings estimates revisions, was still rating the stock a solid "hold" when the company announced its go-private deal on Monday. That, despite the intense Blackberry death watch that had been going on for several days, in which the stock had fallen some 25%.

In fact, on Zacks' five-point scale, with "1" denoting a strong buy and "5" a strong sell, BlackBerry's BBRY) consensus rating Monday afternoon was 3.68. That's only 7 basis points lower than where it stood three months ago.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Many thought that Wall Street's bias towards buying over selling ended a decade ago. That's when the SEC reached an agreement with 10 large Wall Street firms to address the conflicts of interest that previously led them to issue tainted research about individual stocks -- especially during the Internet boom of the late 1990s. In addition to paying a collective $1.4 billion in fines, the firms also agreed to sever their stock market research operations from their investment banking divisions.

Whatever else you might say about that agreement, it clearly hasn't had much overall impact on Wall Street ratings skewing towards the buy side.

Consider the breakdown of buy-hold-sell ratings for companies in the S&P 500 index SPX) , courtesy of data provided by Sam Stovall, Chief Equity Strategist at S&P Capital IQ. The data encompasses the more than 11,000 individual buy-hold-sell ratings that S&P has gathered from Wall Street analysts for the companies in that index.

% of all ratings in this categoryStrong Buy30.2%Buy17.8%Hold45.5%Weak Hold4.3%Sell2.2%

Notice that just 2.2% of the ratings are in the "sell" category, and just 4.3% more are rated a "weak hold." In other words, 93.5% of the ratings are "hold" or higher.

To use an overworked, but nevertheless apt analogy: It's as though Wall Street has decided that publicly traded companies are like the kids of Lake Woebegone, all of whom are above average.

A different perspective that reaches the same overall conclusion comes from focusing on each of the 500 stock's consensus rating, which S&P Capital IQ calculates by averaging all the individual analyst ratings for that particular stock. The lowest consensus rating for any stock right now is 2.67 on a 1-to-5 scale with 5 denoting a "strong buy" and "1" a sell -- which still puts this lowest-rated stock in the "hold" category.

The bottom line? Don't count on Wall Street to tell you when to sell. If you insist on following Wall Street's lead, you probably should interpret "hold" as "sell."

Three ways BlackBerry went wrong

11:00 AM ET 9/24/13

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- For BlackBerry Ltd., the fall from grace has been epic.

The Canadian-based smartphone pioneer appears to have finally found a savior, and, if all the details are worked out, the company will go private in a deal led by its largest shareholder, Fairfax Financial, valued at $4.7 billion, or $9 a share, in November.

Though a nice upside for a stock that got pummeled by last week's whopper of an earnings warning, it's a huge comedown from BlackBerry's BBRY)former status as a company that was revered for its secure network and high-quality handsets. The deal price is less than one-quarter of the market value that the company commanded just three years ago.

BlackBerry may not be dead yet, but its drastic reversal of fortune is probably going to make for some compelling business-school case studies. The company will probably join the ranks of fallen tech stars like Kodak, Digital Equipment Corp. and others who lost their leadership to nimbler rivals, whether due to hubris, inability to change, size or all of the above.

Here are a few guesses as to what the case studies and their experts will say about the fall of BlackBerry:

1.)The company was complacent. And its over complacency meant it failed to see the threat posed by Apple Inc.'s AAPL) iPhone and Google Inc.'s GOOG) Android platform. If you have by now forgotten former co-CEO Jim Balsillie's rambling and even incoherent comments on analyst conference calls, it is worth revisiting some of them.

For example, when asked in June 2008, a year after the iPhone was launched, whether his company was worried about overlap with the customer base for the iPhone, Balsillie initially responded that the question had no relevance to the company's way of thinking.

He went on to add: "Because once you decide to become a BlackBerry user, you kind of stay there for life, and let's not be too penny-wise, pound-foolish when we do get very good absolute margin."

2.) It kept its co-CEO structure in place for far too long. When Balsillie and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis -- significantly, the largest shareholders of what was then Research In Motion -- finally decided to step down in January 2012, they were replaced with another insider, Chief Operating Officer Thorsten Heins, who perpetuated his predecessors' strategy, continuing development of a whole new operating system, BlackBerry 10. Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf said at the time that the changes "appear[ed] more cosmetic than substantive."

This is one case where it seemed obvious to outsiders that the company needed major change, in the manner of IBM Corp.'s IBM) hiring of Lou Gerstner as its CEO, the first CEO to come from outside the Big Blue ranks. That move helped lead to big changes in the IBM culture and ridded it of much of the complacency and arrogance that had taken root in its years of industry dominance.

A further data point as an example of how arrogance has persisted at BlackBerry: In July, despite its recent struggles, the company added a corporate jet, albeit a 2006 Bombardier, to its fleet of corporate aircraft -- all of which are now being sold.

3.)It clung to its own proprietary technology. When the company could easily have licensed the now-dominant Android operating system, it doubled down on its own OS instead.

Even the troubled Nokia Corp. NOK) was at least experimenting with Android and began to consider jumping ship to from Windows Phone, a move that is believed to have cemented Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT) interest in acquiring the handset business of Nokia.

BlackBerry's steadfast adherence to developing its own next-generation operating system, BlackBerry 10, in the face of increased competition from cheaper Android-based devices, looks increasingly like a case of reaching a crossroads and choosing the wrong path.

BlackBerry's biggest investor, though, seems optimistic about its future. Prem Watsa, chairman and CEO of Fairfax, which is spearheading the buyout offer and can be characterized as a sort of Canadian version of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, said that going private will "open an exciting new private chapter for BlackBerry, its customers, carriers and employees." Watsa said BlackBerry can deliver immediate value to shareholders as it executes its longer-term strategy as a private company.

Maybe. But as the company looks to go private and focus on a few devices for corporate users and so-called prosumers, the outcome is anything but clear. The sure bet is that MBA students -- alongside the Kodaks and Digital Equipments and, yes, RIMs of future generations -- will be studying intently and trying to learn well where, and why, the once-mighty BlackBerry went wrong.

附注：这里的很多帖子，更多的是为了自个儿欣赏。如果你喜欢来看看，我欢迎。这里无意为任何人推荐任何物件。只是一个自我学习的场所而已。一块小小的自留地而已。特此声明。