For 2, it's not just the effect of the release on prices, but could also be the effect of other things on both releases and prices - imagine great news came out which bumped up the price and also caused analysts to upgrade their ratings.
You should use price data from the day after release.
For top analysts, if you only know who's top after looking at their performance, then it's again not a repeatable strategy. Compare: "you can beat the market just by buying the top 10 stocks!"
It's nice to play with data, I'm just laying out some of the reasons these won't work in the "real world", and pointing towards where a future analysis could be improved.