Banks/brokers give ratings to stocks.
These range across the spectrum:
Strong buy
Buy
Hold
Sell
Strong sell
In practice, anything rated Sell never mind Strong Sell is as rare as the Second Coming*. Essentially, such ratings do not exist.
So when you read a stock rating, consider that:
Strong Buy = Buy
Buy = Hold
Hold = Sell
* I worked at a place doing finance IT. The database of c90,000 stocks that were traded there, did not include a single one with a Sell/Strong Sell rating. In fact we had to create dummy securities with such ratings to test the systems...!
