Can you believe them?

Day in and day out, when the stock market is in an upward direction, we have predictors, forecasters and oraclers telling us their supposedly hindsight 20-20 vision of what target prices a stock should be.

They could be fundamentalists or they could be those chaps operating from waves,candles and charts.

All the same, the have their share of predictions. Could they be believed?

Let us look at some of the stocks they are looking at today and what are their forecasted price in days to come. We must tell ourselves that they are all giving us their forecasts with the grand assumption that the global economic trends remain intact.

Let us look at three investment banks and their forecasts. The banks are Hwang-DBS Vickers,RHB Research and Am Research.

Let us look how they perceived one of South-east Asia's bluest of the blue shares-Sime Darby.

This stock is trading 25 sen up today at RM9.96.

Hwang opines that it will likely go up to RM11.25; RHB Research, being less optimistic, gives it a RM10.55 while Am Research gives it a 5 sen better at RM10.60. If a majority count is made, then Sime should move up to RM10-55-RM10.60. This will be a fair price projection.

Two investment houses recommend Sunway Holdings.

This stock is currently trading at RM2.62. Hwang believes that it can move up to RM3.30 while RHB cautiously reckon it can reach RM3.15.

One other stock is Digi. One investment house(I cannot recall-it could have been CIMB) said it will move up to RM4.40, It is currently settling down at RM4.06. A push of 34 sen and it will have arrived.

Meanwhile, do not expect all these shares to go up like an arrow.

There will be fits and starts, digestion issues, warts and all.

So, be patient!