Hold is usually a bad sign. Each company has its own rating systems. At my previous company, hold, neutral or market perform usually meant 0-10% stock appreciation in 12 months. Buy, accumulate or Outperform meant 10-20% in 12 mos while Strong Buy meant 20%+.
However, Hold has very bad connotations in that brokerages don't like to put Sells on stocks. The reason being, investment banking. IBanking is the cash cow of brokerages. If a brokerage pisses off a company by putting a Sell on a company, it could be used as ammunition by another brokerage firm when pitching banking deals. So the politically correct way of saying you don't like a company is by rating them a Hold or MP. I've seen a few Sells in my time and each time the analyst gets very angry calls from the company followed by threats of loss of banking business. In fact, Holds usually get the same reaction if the company happens to be a banking client of the brokerage.