tagged. this thread has been a fascinating read overall. kiu

Or you could look at BoA where most of them were head of the curve  or in general the dozens of times they are right.  

Analysts can be wrong, but it's a lot less often then your portraying.  If analysts were behind the curve more often then not they wouldn't be analysts.

The whole point of an analyst is to analyze stuff to be ahead of the curve.  If Analysts are wrong it tends not to be because of publically known data.

Yen is continuing its slide now that abe has been officially sworn in.

Seems different Japanese broakage houses are starting to upgrade different sectors of the japanese economy with autos first. Hopefully consumer electronics are next (even though their problems are drastically different)

Noruma:
The research house calculates that every one yen softening the Japanese currency against the U.S. dollar improves the operating profit at Honda by $187.4 million, while Mazda’s rises by $41 million. At Toyota the effect is even bigger, jumping $410 million

so going from 75-85 yen, toyota's operating income is up by 4 billion dollars, crazy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324669104578206200876482218.html

Yep the new government is already doing the work it seems

http://www.dowjones.com/newstoprofitby/stories/WSJScoresExclusiveOnSonysForeignExchangeExposure.asp

If a company has hedged cost to revenue, then only the profit component will benefit via traslation. For Nintendo, whose projections were based on 80 yen to the dollar, this recent JPYUSD movement might greatly enhance buttomline assuming the weakness persists for 12/31/12 and more importantly 3/31/13. The way Japanese companies report their income, the entire currency gain or loss is caught up at year end, so if Quarters 1 and 2 were based on 75-80 yen, but year end was actually 88-90 yen, there exisits a huge translation correction at year end, assuming no actual repatriation of dollars and euros happened.

For Sony if the 2011 article reflects their approach, a 100% cost hedged company stands to neither gain nor lose from currency fluctuations. However, any contribution margin from abroad could still be boosted in Yen terms due to corporate yen based costs and overhead. But that difference would be very small due to the small profit margins.

Easier way to see is, for a company 50% hedged on cost. A 20% windfall from foreign revenue translation, assuming 20% profit margin on 100 dollars of revenue would be, original 100-80=20, now 120 - 88 = 32 or a nearly 60% boost to profit margin, or a much greater % boost to net income as all of that drops straight to buttom line.

For a 100% hedged operation though....100-80 =20, now 120-96= 24, or just 20% boost . Sohere's hoping that Sony's treasurer was merely boasting and that Sony didnt commit itself to "locking" in the weak dollar. :(

Now if that treasurer was a nutcase and actually did achieve 100% hedge literally, that meant Sony took a 20% position of cost so that even anticipated profit contribution was financially hedged.  Then this recent trend in yen reversal would result in a loss on that hedge and cancel out the small boost on profit margin.    

A new week a new run for the dollar and Euro against the Yen closing in on 87/115

87 now!

both are at the highest in 2 years

in almost 3 days the eurjpy went from 113 to 118

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=EURJPY=X
up to 120 getting close to an almost 3 year high!