(FORTUNE Magazine) – Buy. Sell. Or hold. If you're a Wall Street analyst, those are the three legs of your stock-recommendation stool. Of course, we all know it doesn't really work that way. Almost every stock, from Juniper Networks to Junkyard Inc., is given some sort of variant of a buy. As in "strong buy." Or "focus buy." Or "accumulate buy." (A real table-pounder, that one!) You see "holds" out there, but almost never a "sell."

It's all part of one of the great games of Wall Street: Analysts covering their butts by suggesting they like and dislike a stock at the same time. You know what I'm talking about. Say an analyst rates a stock "accumulate." (I love it. When? Now?) If the stock does poorly he can say, "Well, after all, it was only an accumulate." On the other hand, if the stock does well, he can say, "Well, after all, we had an accumulate on it." (Nice work if you can get it, right?)

Analysts are afraid of bashing a company because they believe (rightfully so) that if they do, they will be shut out of that company's information flow, or even blackballed. So sometimes an analyst will simply lower an earnings estimate without changing the rating. ("Why are you mad at me? You're still a strong hold!") Or they will change a stock's rating from an extremely positive one (on the firm's "ultraselect ultra list") to an ever so slightly less positive one ("extremely strong buy"), so as not to offend. Nowadays, if you really want to dis a stock, you give it a "long-term hold." Rarely, ever so rarely, you see an out-and-out "sell." When I see one, I sit up and take notice.

So, I wondered, just how many sells are out there right now? I phoned up First Call and put it to 'em. So get this: Right now First Call is tracking some 27,000 recommendations on stocks. And only 35 of them--35--are sells!! For the year? First Call counts 139 sells this year to date. Pretty amazing, huh?

Rare birds like that are worth checking out. So I began to search through this year's sells, and a couple of interesting points stand out. As you might expect, some sells were spectacular calls, others were just unbelievably horrible. (Probably not much different from stocks on those "ultraselect ultra lists," I bet, right?) Also, the analysts making sell calls were mostly from second- and third- (and fourth-!) tier brokerages. Guess how many sells were put on by analysts at Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and Goldman Sachs this year? One! That's right, one! (Cozy world, huh?) Michael Hughes of Merrill put a sell on Contifinancial, a financial services firm, on June 30. Since then the stock is down 70%. (See, they work! You guys should put out sells more often!)

One large firm that doesn't seem too shy about shelling out sells is Credit Suisse First Boston. Over the past 12 months its analysts have put sells on stalwarts like Coke (down 30% since the call) and Kellogg (it's up but has trailed the market). The most high-profile seller at CSFB is Michael Mayo, the firm's bank analyst. On May 24, he put out sells on Chase, Citi, J.P. Morgan, and Bank One. (In June he put a sell on Bank of New York.) And? Chase and Citi are about flat. JPM and BONY are down. But Bank One has fallen off a cliff, down 41%. (It admitted it had problems in its credit card biz.) Mayo still has sells on these guys and says so far the banks have been polite.

Other sells of note: Midway Games, by Paul Noglows of Hambrecht & Quist. This one didn't work at all--the stock has nearly doubled since Paul's call in April. And Micron Tech by Peter Wolff at ING Barings in May. (It's a double plus since then.) Oops!

And some success stories: Congrats to Paul Merenbloom at the Pru for flagging AOL on March 31 (just about the top!). The stock has fallen 22% since. And Netbank by First Securities Van Kampen (down 58%).

Interestingly, the stock with far and away the most sells on it--nine brokers, including CSFB--is Echo Bay Mines. The long-term slump in the gold business took this stock from the low teens in 1996 to a buck and change this year. But with the recent pop in the price of gold, ECO jumped to more than $2.50. Well, the good thing about ratings is you can always change 'em! And it's nice when you make the change in plain English, without obfuscation. Like from Sell to Buy!

CANDIDATES

Yes folks, we are gearing up for Campaign 2000. Time for the candidates to begin lining up support from CEOs and other business bigwigs. Here, then, is a list of candidates and some of their hardest-shaking moneymakers, according to their campaign managers:

George W. Bush

MICHAEL DELL CHARLES SCHWAB HENRY KRAVIS (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) ROGER ENRICO (CEO, PepsiCo) MAURICE GREENBERG (CEO, AIG)

Al Gore

SUMNER REDSTONE (CEO, Viacom) JOHN DOERR (Partner, Kleiner Perkins) KIM POLESE (CEO, Marimba) ROBERT JOHNSON (CEO, Black Entertainment Television) BRUCE WASSERSTEIN (Wasserstein Perella)

Bill Bradley

LEONARD RIGGIO (CEO, Barnes & Noble) HOWARD SCHULTZ (CEO, Starbucks) TOMMY HILFIGER PAUL VOLCKER (former Fed chairman) JOHN BRYAN (CEO, Sara Lee)

Elizabeth Dole

WAYNE ANGELL (Chief Economist, Bear Stearns) PHILIP ANSCHUTZ (CEO, Anschutz Corp.) JULIAN ROBERTSON (Tiger Fund) JON HUNTSMAN (Huntsman Corp.)

John McCain

JERRY REINSDORF (Owner, Chicago Bulls) RUPERT MURDOCH JERRY COLANGELO (Owner, Arizona Diamondbacks) JOHN THAIN (President, Goldman Sachs)

Word on the Street

Last issue I pointed out that there are more than 120 online brokers. How many will there be in five years? Fewer than that is a good bet. Growth in this business has already started to cool, and these stocks have gotten killed--Charles Schwab, surely one of the survivors, included. What was a $77 stock in April is now at $33--down 57%. So is it time to buy SCH? "Not quite yet," says one trader.