At The Motley Fool, we poke plenty of fun at Wall Street analysts and their endless cycle of upgrades, downgrades, and "initiating coverage at neutral." Today, we'll show you whether those bigwigs actually know what they're talking about. To help, we've enlisted Motley Fool CAPS to track the long-term performance of Wall Street's best and worst.

Analysts gone wild, Part Deux Yesterday, we talked a little bit about the crazy-optimistic predictions Wall Street analysts have begun making for Research In Motion Limited (NASDAQ:RIMM) lately. How the stock's gone from $6 to $18 in virtually a heartbeat. How analysts are promising we'll see 6 million BlackBerry 10 devices sold in 2013. No, wait! 16 million! 29 million! 51 million! ("Sold! To the analyst in the tinfoil hat.")

Today, we should probably talk about the equally crazed negative sentiments now surrounding Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), in the wake of the company's announcement that it beat earnings last quarter, generated a simply astounding $47.4 billion in positive free cash flow for the year -- but yes, failed to measure up on its prediction about next quarter's sales numbers.

The plain truth of the matter, though, is that everybody else is already talking about Apple today, so... I think I'll just talk about Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) instead.

Analysts go mild Shares of the Finnish phone maker got hit by a double whammy yesterday, when StreetInsider.com pointed out that two former fans -- Standpoint Research and Danske Bank -- have cut their ratings on the stock. The shares are taking another 5% hit today, on news that the company is will pay no dividend for 2012, expects to earn negative operating margins on its phones in Q1 2013, and could even (conceivably) lose money at its Nokia Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) telecom equipment joint venture.

Given the news, both downgrading analysts are looking pretty smart today. But here's the thing: While we don't know precisely what Standpoint is thinking about Nokia right now, StreetInsider did lay out Danske's reasoning for downgrading the stock -- and it had little if anything to do with the earnings Nokia just reported.

Turns out, Copenhagen's Danske Bank is looking farther down the road instead, and reasoning that in 2013, Nokia's efforts to sell more mid-range Lumia smartphones will pressure average selling prices across the company's several product lines. At the same time, Danske worries that "demand for Nokia's feature phone are also likely to stall following the fourth-quarter of 2012," according to StreetInsider.

So on the one hand -- slimmer profit margins from smartphones. On the other hand -- less revenue from feature phones. Sounds like a good reason to worry about Nokia's prospects in 2013, doesn't it?

Nokia can't catch a break Actually, no. It doesn't. For one thing, remember that Nokia only just started up the Lumia line a few quarters ago, and up until this past quarter, it was a pretty slow start. Considering that the company wasn't selling a lot of high-end smartphones anyway, an increase in the proportion of mid-range phones making up the whole can't really cannibalize high-end profits much (if at all).

Now, let's slide down the scale and consider feature phones. The main reason Nokia's sales of feature phones are likely to "stall" this year is that more and more people are upgrading to smartphones. Specifically, the same mid-range smartphones that Danske is complaining will dampen Nokia's average selling prices. For example, BGR recently reported that Nokia is making a big push with the aggressively priced Lumia 620 in Asia, launching ahead of the new RIM line and underpricing both rival Windows Phone 8 handset makers, as well as RIM itself.