Whom can you trust?

If you paid somebody to look after your financial interests, could you trust them? Here is a sampling of professional stock analysts in action, providing advice on Countrywide Financial Corporation stock, excerpted from Yahoo! Finance:

CFC Analyst Ratings
Month......: Jun Jul Aug Sep
Stock Price: 38. 37. 27. 18
Strong Buy.: 4.. 3.. 3.. 2
Buy........: 3.. 3.. 3.. 4
Hold.......: 4.. 5.. 5.. 5
Sell.......: 3.. 2.. 2.. 1
Strong Sell: 2.. 2.. 2.. 4
Sell or SS.: 31% 27% 27% 31%

So, in no case do more than 1/3 of the analysts tell you to reduce your exposure to CFC while the stock has already lost half its value in three months. Does that mean that your chances of finding a good analyst are less than 1/3, or does that mean that this is random and unknowable, so a prudent population of analysts would distribute itself in a gaussian distribution about the zero change case?

There has been some data showing that the general public cannot perform well at picking their own investments, and that it is best for them to have professional guidance. One example is traditional pensions versus IRAs, with pensions managed professionally, and IRAs managed individually. At least one study have shown that less money-savvy worker bees perform much worse than the more highly paid executives. I found this Frontline piece fascinating and frightening.