Barnes & Noble

Our first stock to try is Barnes and Noble Inc. (BKS) - (chart, analysts, investor relations).

This stock has two characteristics that make it a good first choice. One, people have heard of it. Two, it reports 1st quarter earnings on May 17, 2005. This provides enough time to possibly have enough estimates to be meaningful.

Currently, there are 8 analysts making estimates for the current quarter. This is a higher number than I had hoped for, but we'll take what we can get. The current consensus is for $0.10 per share.

Please, make your best guess as to earnings for the April 2005 quarter in the comment section.

The idea behind this badly named Weblog

The purpose of this experiment is to test whether the collective judgement of the Blogosphere can estimate corporate earnings with a high level, or any level, of accuracy.

According to James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds, a larger group of non-experts can outperform a small group of experts in estimating any number of things. So why not earnings estimates?

I will select a few stocks with limited analyst coverage. Each stock will have its own post, which will include links to what analyst information there is, the Yahoo Financial page for the stock, and, of course, the company's website. Anyone wishing to contribute should simply put their guess in the comments section for that particular stock.

I will average the estimates made and update the post with the current average. When earnings are announced, we will see how the average did compared to the experts.

That's the idea anyway. We'll see if anyone bites.