“…Financial analysts are sophisticated intermediaries between the firms and markets, who use all available information to form their earnings forecasts (Allini, Aria, Macchioni, & Zagaria, 2018;Barniv, Hope, Myring, & Thomas, 2009;Bratten, Gleason, Larocque, & Mills, 2017;Du & Budescu, 2018;Mauler, 2019;Zhou, 2016). Analysts' main objective is to release earnings forecasts that are input for stock recommendations (Friesen & Weller, 2006).…”