To me it does not make any sense to trust investment banks' (e.g. Goldman Sachs) so-called "price targets", I don't see how they would profit from actually helping retail investors.
But it is trivial how they could profit at the expense of the poor and gullible retail investors, by manipulating them
Why would they help investors when it is against their interest?
see:
A note from Goldman Sachs auto industry analyst Patrick Archambault Tuesday put a price on Tesla stock of $120 in a best case scenario. In the worst case, Archambault put a value of less than half that on the stock, at $58. Goldman Sachs has a price target of $84 and a neutral rating on Tesla.
I'm currently long on tesla so todays events hurt me badly so far(down 15%), but I still don't trust GS's price target of $85. I tend to believe those guys just want themselves a cheap buy price a few days before Q2 earnings release (22-jul-2013)
If there's indeed no reason to trust GS, i.e. those are just guides then the question is:
Why do investors seem to care? hence today down 15%
Again it makes no sense to me to publicly speculate earnings less then 7 days before the actual earnings release. Not to mention that the price target is quite vague $58-$120