'Great quarter, guys'

God bless equity analysts.

I make fun of economists all the time here. A great punching-bag is Deutsche Bank's Joe Lavorna, who is always an optimist. On March 29, he was still forecasting 2.4% growth in Q1. A month later, we find out it was just 0.2%.

Today, he also downgraded his Q2 forecast to 2.5% from 4.0%. Overall, that's from 3.2% to 1.35%.

But there's a species of market-participant that's even lower than economists -- the equity analyst.

Bloomberg has a hilarious article today about a phrase that's a punchline in markets. Looking at transcripts of thousands of conference calls, the phrase 'Great quarter, guys' peaked just before the S&P 500 collapsed 53%.

That's the best example of outside-the-box research/analysis I've heard in a long time.