Analyzing Body Language: Implications for Investment Decisions

Smirlee Montero is a fixed income analyst at a small investment firm. She has been studying the subject of "Body Language" in order to gauge the effectiveness of reading into the dispositions of people. Based on her own empirical tests carried out over the past two years involving 64 different subjects, she has concluded that during the meetings with analysts, a senior management official is usually more excited and waves hands quite often when the information like earnings report

(which is released a couple of days later) is very favorable. On the other hand, if the earnings are short of expectations, the official tends to be sober and appears more introspective. There are other body signs which she uses to evaluate possible signals about the quality of information that is pending. In a recent meeting with Chronotron, Inc.'s quarterly analyst meeting, she concluded using her technique that Chronotron's earnings are very likely much lower than projected earlier.

This information was not actually released in the meeting whose main focus was on the company's plans for the next quarter. In her report, Smirlee presented a detailed analysis of the publicly available information which supported her hunch and wrote, "Based on this and certain other observations, it is my opinion that

Chronotron's is not doing as well as we earlier estimated. Therefore, I would recommend selling this stock before the firm releases its earnings numbers." Smirlee has: