What is Absolute Return?
StarMine's Absolute Return metric rewards analysts with a good sense for the overall direction of the individual stocks in their portfolios. Absolute Return assumes that a "Buy" recommendation corresponds to an analyst expectation that the stock will have a positive absolute return and a "Sell" recommendation a negative absolute return; that is, cash is the benchmark. StarMine measures how much investors would have made had they built a portfolio around the analyst's picks by investing 2 units of local currency in each Strong Buy recommendation, 1 unit in each Buy, 1 unit in cash for each Hold, short selling 1 unit in each Sell, and short selling 2 units in each Strong Sell. Each portfolio is rebalanced at the end of every month and each time the analyst adds or drops coverage or changes a recommendation within the portfolio. What is "Covg" (Coverage)? (Summary by Stock section)
Coverage is the percentage of the displayed time interval (e.g., T12M) that the analyst had a recommendation on the stock. What are Coverage-Relative Rating and Coverage-Relative Score?
Suppose there are two analysts, one covering biotechnology and one paper. Suppose for the period under consideration, ▒ of the biotechnology analyst's stocks were up 10% and ▒ were down 10%. Meanwhile, ▒ of the paper analyst's stocks were up 5% and ▒ were down 5%. If both analysts recommended the stocks they cover perfectly, the Excess Return generated by the biotechnology analyst would be twice that of the paper analyst. If both analysts recommended the stocks they cover perfectly wrong, the Excess Return generated by both analysts would be negative, and that of the biotechnology analyst would again be twice that of the paper analyst. Thus the biotechnology analyst has the opportunity to generate twice the Excess Return that the paper analyst can generate.

In order to fairly compare analyst skill across industries with returns with more or less dispersion, StarMine calculates the Coverage-Relative Score and Coverage-Relative Rating. First StarMine divides the Excess Return by the cross-sectional standard deviation of the returns of the stocks the analyst covers. StarMine then sorts all analysts in its database according to the resulting ratio for the given time period and assigns the analyst the corresponding Coverage-Relative Score, which ranges from 1-100. The Coverage-Relative Score is a percentile: 50 means the analyst out-performed 50% of all analysts, 75 means the analyst outperformed 75% of all analysts, etc. The resulting measure isolates the skill of the analyst in distinguishing among the stocks he covers, and is independent of the direction of the market and the variance across the particular stocks. StarMine awards the Coverage-Relative Rating by awarding 5 stars to analysts with Coverage-Relative Scores 91-100, 4 stars for 68-90, 3 stars for 34-67, 2 stars for 11-33, and 1 star for 1-10. What is Coverage Return?
A benchmark portfolio return based on holding the universe of stocks covered by the analyst. For the time period indicated (e.g., T12M), a portfolio is constructed by investing equal amounts in each of the stocks on which the analyst had a recommendation. Each stock is included in the portfolio for the time that the analyst had a recommendation on it. The portfolio is rebalanced at the end of every month and each time the analyst adds or drops coverage. What is Excess Return?
StarMine's Excess Return measures how well analyst recommendations distinguish among the stocks in the analyst's coverage universe. For example, do the Strong Buys outperform the Buys, and so on? It is computed as the difference between an analyst's Recommendation-Weighted Return and his Coverage Return. Because the Recommendation-Weighted Return and the Coverage Return are always fully invested, the difference between them, Excess Return, is not subject to the overall direction of the market. What is Industry Excess Return?
StarMine ranks analysts on their recommendation performance within an industry according to their Industry Excess Return. The benchmark for this portfolio is the market-cap weighted return of all stocks in the industry. For each Buy recommendation, the portfolio is one unit long the stock and simultaneously one unit short the benchmark. The result gives the analyst credit for the amount the stock outperformed the benchmark. Strong Buys get a larger investment of two units long the stock and two units short the benchmark. Holds invest one unit in the benchmark (i.e., for an excess return of zero). Sells are the reverse: long the benchmark and short the stock. Strong Sells get a larger investment of two units long the benchmark and short the stock. The resulting portfolio is rebalanced each month and whenever the analyst adds coverage, drops coverage, or changes a rating. What are the icons in the "Mkt Cap" column?
Market Capitalization is the total value of all shares of this security on the market. This is calculated by multiplying the number of shares outstanding by the share price on the "Data Through" date, which is displayed on the page. Depending on the market cap. (converted if necessary into U.S. dollars), the relevant icon is shown:
Large Cap. - US $5 billion and greater
Mid Cap. - US $1 billion to US $5 billion
Small Cap. - US $500 million to US $1 billion
Micro Cap. - Less than US $500 million
By holding your mouse over the Market Cap. icon you can see the approximate market cap. in US dollars.

See also: How can I see performance weighted by market cap? What's a Mine-der?
A Mine-der is StarMine's way of highlighting potential issues with estimates. Mine-ders are not necessarily negative; they are simply a way of flagging potential data issues. Mine-ders that appear on the Current Data pages are triggered in at least one of the following ways:

1. An estimate is older than the most recent RevisionCluster
2. An estimate is greater than two standard deviations away from the mean
3. An estimate is at least 100 days old and at least U.S. $0.02 away from the mean
4. An estimate has been excluded from the mean by Refinitiv

In addition to displaying Mine-ders in StarMine Monitor, StarMine also alerts users by e-mail when Mine-ders are triggered, if the user has chosen to receive such notifications. Other Mine-ders that are sent via e-mail are for estimates or recommendations that have been stopped or picked up by another analyst, or estimates whose primary basis has changed. What are the Portfolio Returns (bottom of Summary by Stock section)?
The "Portfolio" row shows the returns of each of these individual recommendation portfolios. For each recommendation level, a portfolio is constructed by investing equal amounts in each of the stocks assigned to that recommendation level. The portfolios are rebalanced at the end of every month and when an analyst adds coverage, drops coverage, or changes a stock's recommendation level. The value of the portfolio does not change for periods when the analyst has no stocks rated at the recommendation level. As an example, if an analyst rates only stock A a Strong Buy in January, only stock B a Strong Buy in February, and no other stocks as Strong Buys for the remainder of the period, and if A gained 20% in January and B gained 20% in February, then the analyst's Strong Buy portfolio return would be 44%. By contrast, the Simple Average return would be 20%. What is Recommendation-Weighted Return?
Recommendation-Weighted Return is computed as a non-leveraged, long-only portfolio of all stocks in an analyst's coverage using an overweight / equal-weight / underweight strategy. StarMine invests 2 units of local currency in each Strong Buy recommendation, 1▒ units in each Buy, 1 unit in each Hold, ▒ unit in each Sell, and 0 units in each Strong Sell. The portfolio is rebalanced each month and whenever the analyst adds coverage, drops coverage, or changes a rating. Because the portfolio is constructed using relative weights, it is equally effective for analysts who use three recommendation levels (buy, hold, sell) and for analysts who use five recommendation levels (strong buy, buy, hold, sell, strong sell). What is a RevisionCluster™? How are they used?
"Cluster" is short for a cluster of analyst revisions, or the occurrence of a significant number of analysts revising their estimates in a short time period. This often occurs during the release of company news, changes in the industry, earnings releases, and other issues that affect future earnings. We systematically detect RevisionClusters and then use the Cluster's begin date as a filter. Those analysts who have not revised their estimate are then notified there is potentially material company-related news, which could affect company performance. This also helps StarMine's Buy Side clients know which estimates have been updated since the recent news. What is an Estimate Accuracy Score™?
Typically indicated both by a StarRating™ and a numerical score, the Estimate Accuracy Score is a measure that compares analysts against their peers. Estimate Accuracy Scores range from 0 to 100, with 50 representing the average analyst. To get a number larger than 50, an analyst must make estimates that are both different from and more accurate than other analysts' estimates. The Estimate Accuracy Score takes into account many factors including the analyst's absolute forecast error, the analyst's error compared to other analysts, the variance of the analyst's errors, and the absolute value of the stock's actual reported value. StarMine computes Estimate Accuracy Scores daily to provide an overall score for an analyst on a stock or group of stocks. StarMine converts the Estimate Accuracy Score to a StarRating by awarding the top ten percent of analysts a 5-StarRating, the next 22.5% a 4-StarRating, and so on, as detailed in the following chart:

StarMine has worked extensively with its institutional customers to perfect the Estimate Accuracy Score metric. It has proven to be highly predictive of future analyst performance. What is SD, or Standard Deviation?
Standard Deviation (SD) indicates how tightly all the various estimates are clustered around the mean during the fiscal year or fiscal quarter. This is important because it can highlight "outlier" estimates, which might have been made in error or inputted incorrectly into I/B/E/S. The literal definition of Standard Deviation is a statistic used as a measure of the dispersion in a distribution, equal to the square root of the arithmetic mean of the squares of the deviations from the arithmetic mean. What is Stock Return? (Summary by Stock section)?
The total return of the individual stock over the time interval selected. This return is for the full period, even if the analyst did not cover the stock for the full period. What does "Excluded" mean?
Refinitiv screens data for irregularities and old data. If Refinitiv finds an estimate that either varies significantly from the mean or is very old, it may exclude that estimate from its mean.