Robot slaps sell rating on Facebook and Google

While human analysts are still overwhelmingly bullish on Alphabet and Facebook, a new robot analyst at Wells Fargo says it’s time to sell. 
 

Late last month, Wells Fargo analyst Ken Sena introduced AIERA, short for artificially intelligent equity research analyst, a bot that does massive automated grunt work to support human analysts as they track stocks and make trade recommendations. And while analysts are known to skew toward buy ratings, the new bot doesn’t seem to share the bias.

“AIERA’s approach this week appears decidedly more conservative (than last week), as she places a ‘hold’ recommendation on 11 names and even going so far as to place Google and Facebook in the ‘sell’ category,” Sena says in a new note sent out to clients.

This is at odds with Wall Street’s outlook. Facebook, a stock that has climbed 48 per cent this year, has 42 buys out of 47 ratings, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Google parent Alphabet, up 24 per cent in 2017, is similarly beloved, with 34 buys out of 41 ratings.

It’s also at odds with its inventors. AIERA’s pessimism isn’t enough to cause Sena and his team to remove their own outperform rating on both stocks.