My simple theory as to why the "analysts" are always rooting for Sony.

[bbsin]

@ Deeds - I don't think you have an idea of how Sony makes money in the first place. I don't know how long you've been investing but I've been trading stocks for quite a while and believe me when I say this: Sony is not the only company in "debt" and still continue to run their business at a high level, ESPECIALLY in their industry. There is a reason why Sony has an enormous finance department (probably bigger than all of the electronics manufactures in the world), if Sony really wanted to get rid of all their debt (like America) they would. The only problem is that it's not on the top of their CFO's "to do" list, there are better ways to put money in their pocket's (unfortunately the majority of their pocket's are those pesky execs) given the large revenue Sony can create. Razor thin profits, debt, crap equity returns, are all too common in the industries that Sony participates, the majority of investors know this. If Sony were a micro corporation without a history and did not have many many different ways to generate returns then yes, Debt would handcuff them. But saying that Sony is actually in bad shape or handcuffed because of the 3 billion in debt (last time i checked) is pretty ignorant. Now this doesn't mean I'm saying that Sony is in a carefree great situation and every is dandy for them, but they sure as hell aren't handcuffed, espeicially given the point that they could get a financial backing from many sources.

With that said, you are right about one thing. Analyst are bias and do get paid for their reports, but assuming that Sony are the only ones that do this stuff is stupid.