Price targets are numbers, ratings are labels, and the gap between them is a signal most feeds throw away. A Buy held while the analyst trims the price target is a pattern you can only see if the record keeps every revision in order. In AnaChart’s record, it was followed by a downgrade within a year about twice as often as a Buy with a raised target.
AnaChart’s analyst price target dataset is built for exactly this: 660K+ price targets and 750K+ ratings, point-in-time, across 7K+ analysts and 9K+ tickers, active and delisted, since 2008.
Where the factor comes from
Three fields do most of the work. The rating and the price target give you direction and magnitude. The price at issue lets you compute the implied return the analyst was calling on the day they called it, not with hindsight. Line those up over time and the revision path, not the current level, is the signal.
- A rising target under a steady Buy is momentum an analyst is willing to underwrite.
- A falling target under an unchanged Buy, which preceded a downgrade within a year in 19% of cases in the record, against 10% to 12% after a raise.
- A target set far above the price at issue, which can be weighted by how often that analyst’s targets on the name were reached.
Weight it by who is calling
The reason to keep the accuracy fields next to the ratings is that not every analyst deserves the same weight in a factor. The met ratio and performance score let you scale each contribution by the analyst’s record on the name, so a signal leans on the analysts whose targets reach. That is the difference between an analyst-sentiment factor and a headcount of Buys. See how the accuracy field works for the mechanics.
Built for a backtest
Every row is point-in-time and survivorship-free, including tickers that later delisted, so a factor built on this data sees each call as it stood on its issue date. The full query that assembles the signal is on the use-cases page, and it lands in your stack as a native Snowflake or BigQuery share.
Try it on one name first
The free Apple sample carries the ratings, targets, price-at-issue, and accuracy fields for every analyst on AAPL, enough to prototype the factor on a single name. Request the AAPL sample, or ask about a custom cut.
What happened after a Buy held and the target fell
The pattern can be tested on the record. In the clean set behind the hit-rate studies there are 46,086 actions on 792 stocks where an analyst kept a Buy from one action to the next and published a new target, up to 7 September 2025. For each one, the question is whether the same analyst moved the stock to Hold or Sell within the following twelve months.
| Target change, Buy kept | Actions | Downgraded to Hold or Sell within 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| Cut by 10% or more | 4,598 | 19.1% |
| Cut by less than 10% | 10,777 | 18.6% |
| Raised by less than 10% | 19,187 | 12.0% |
| Raised by 10% or more | 11,044 | 10.0% |
A Buy with a cut target was followed by a downgrade within a year in about one case in five. A Buy with a raised target, in about one in ten. Four of every five cuts under a Buy were not followed by a downgrade within the year, so the column gives a rate to weight, not a rule.
One analyst, one stock, 2022
Brian Nowak of Morgan Stanley on Meta Platforms, as the record holds it:
| Date | Target | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 19 Jan 2022 | $365 to $395 | Overweight (Buy) |
| 3 Feb 2022 | $395 to $360 | Overweight |
| 2 Mar 2022 | $360 to $325 | Overweight |
| 28 Apr 2022 | $325 to $330 | Overweight |
| 1 Jun 2022 | $330 to $300 | Overweight |
| 19 Jul 2022 | $300 to $280 | Overweight |
| 19 Aug 2022 | $280 to $225 | Overweight |
| 10 Oct 2022 | $225 to $205 | Overweight |
| 27 Oct 2022 | $105 | Equal-weight (Hold) |
After the January raise, six cuts and one small raise under the same Overweight took the target from $395 to $205, then came the downgrade. A feed that keeps only the latest target and rating shows none of that path. Each of the Overweight-era targets in the table was reached later, between 157 and 735 days after it was set.
FAQ
What fields do I need to build an analyst-sentiment factor?
Rating, price target, and price at issue give you direction, magnitude, and the implied return on the call date. Add met ratio and performance score to weight each analyst by track record.
Is the data point-in-time?
Yes. Every target and rating is stored as it stood on its issue date, survivorship-free, so a backtest has no look-ahead bias.
How is it delivered?
As a native Snowflake or BigQuery share, or a custom one-time file if you do not run a warehouse.
Does a target cut under a Buy predict a downgrade?
It goes with a higher rate of downgrades, not a certain one. In the record, 19.1% of Buys with a target cut of 10% or more were followed by a downgrade within a year, against 10.0% for raises of 10% or more. Brian Nowak cut his Meta target six times under an Overweight in 2022 before moving to Equal-weight on 27 October.
Get the rows, or ask a question
Every scored target on one stock is a $29 CSV, no subscription: S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 names plus 607 Canadian and 184 German stocks. The Apple file is a 100-row preview with no sign-up, and the full file sent to a work email address on request. The first question you ask is answered free, and further queries start at $149.
Studies from the same data: how often analyst price targets get hit, price target hit rate by bank and analyst price targets by year issued.