Wall Street analysts

This is all you need to know about Wall Street "experts", "pundits", "analysts", ad nauseum.

Shares of Lehman Brothers were trading at $12.69 on August 20, 2008, already down 87% from its 2007 peak.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/586ed412-6ee6-11dd-a80a-0000779fd18c.html#axzz1OdXYUmPU

On August 21, 2008, banking analyst Dick Bove upgraded Lehman Brothers shares to a Buy recommendation. 

http://www.cnbc.com/id/26332773

Not to be outdone, on September 5, 2008, CNBC's Mad Money host Jim Cramer, went a step further and declared Lehman a "Screaming Buy", causing the shares to be bid up to $16.21, up $1.03 for the day.  It was due to the "Cramer effect", as he had a large following of retail investors (and probably closet institutional investors).

http://seekingalpha.com/article/94165-worst-downgrades-cramer-s-stop-trading-9-5-08

In fact, Cramer was going out on a limb here, he named Lehman his “screaming buy” for the last couple of hours of Friday trading. It “can’t get any worse there,” he said.

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers was forced into bankruptcy, and shares plummeted to $0.  Investors in Lehman Brothers shares lost everything.