NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - There was a time when Abby Joseph Cohen could move markets. Investors could be deep in the grips of fear, but one reassuring word from the Goldman Sachs market strategist to her firm's sales force and, like magic, stocks would lift.

After three years of bullish calls in a bear market, those days are gone. Wednesday, Cohen cut her 12 to 18 month target on the S&P 500 to 1,150 from 1,300 and said that she still thinks stocks are undervalued. Now the market needs to rise only a scant 47 percent to hit her target, rather than the 67 percent implied by the old mark.

Wall Street traders weren't exactly hanging on Cohen's every word.

"You look at the Abby Joseph Cohen stuff and you wonder why Goldman doesn't just stop it already," said Larry Rice, a vice president at Janney Montgomery Scott. "Guys, it's been three years of bad predictions. You're being ridiculed."

To be fair, Cohen isn't alone. In general, the strategists at Wall Street's big firms have spent the bear market being bullish and wrong. At the beginning of 2002 only one, J.P. Morgan's Doug Cliggott, forecast a third down year for the market.

A few thought that stocks would idle; the rest thought stocks would end the year solidly in the green. Cohen wasn't even the most bullish of the bunch. At the beginning of the year she had an S&P target of 1,300 to 1,425 -- split the difference and call it 1,363. Credit Suisse First Boston's Tom Galvin had an S&P target of 1,375, while UBS Warburg's Ed Kerschner thought it would hit 1,570.

Off target The S&P 500 began 2002 at 1148, and nearly every strategist on the Street forecast it would be higher at the end of the year. (It closed at 777 Wednesday.) Here's what their forecasts were at the start of 2002. Strategist  Firm  S&P Target  Jeff Applegate  Lehman Brothers  1350  Rich Bernstein  Merrill Lynch  1200  Abby Joseph Cohen  Goldman Sachs  1300-1425  Doug Cliggott  J.P. Morgan  950  Steve Galbraith  Morgan Stanley  1225  Tom Galvin  Credit Suisse First Boston  1375  Ed Kerschner  UBS Warburg  1570  Tobias Levkovich  Salomon Smith Barney  1350  Tom McManus  Banc of America Securities  1200  Ed Yardeni  Prudential Securities  1300

Of course almost all the strategists thought stocks would be up in 2001, too. Ditto, 2000. Get it wrong that often, and people stop caring about what you say.

"Look at some of the targets these people had," said Seth Tobias, who co-manages the hedge fund Circle T Partners. "They don't carry any weight anymore."

Tobias also can't see why someone who really understands the market wouldn't want a hand at running money themselves, rather than tell other people how to do it. And as it turns out, Cliggott, the one strategist that forecast a down year, made that switch. He left J.P. Morgan early this year to work for a hedge fund.

But even the strategists who have for the most part had it right on stocks haven't attracted the same kind of following that people like Cohen did in days past. Though his initial forecast this year was for a slight gain in stocks, Merrill Lynch's Rich Bernstein has consistently recommended investors to lighten up on stocks.

For more active investors, Banc of America Securities' Tom McManus (who also had forecast a slight gain) has called the twists and turns of the market remarkably well. But neither have made the cover of BusinessWeek.

"McManus has been right, but so what?" said Tobias. "You have forces at work that don't have anything to do with strategy. In an environment where everybody is losing money, this directional stuff isn't that important. People are playing a lot of defense."

But Wall Street has found bearish strategists to fawn over in the past, like Joe Granville in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That one hasn't emerged yet, thinks Fleckenstein Capital president Bill Fleckenstein, is one more sign that the bear market has further to go.

"People still want the bullish story," he said. "They don't want to talk to someone who was correct in his analysis. They want to hear from someone who will tell them it will be over soon."