What keeps sell-side analysts busy?
Wait, they don't just do research?!
Last time, we discussed the gap between what equity research offers and what public investors expect from the sell-side. Though the hours are more manageable than investment banking, equity research is a demanding job and the hours exceed those on the buy-side.
So, what keeps research analysts so busy? What are they spending their time on?
Adding value to investors
Earnings season is a major part of the equity research life. During those periods, research teams are intensely analyzing results, updating numbers quickly, re-forecasting, and producing new target prices while writing earnings notes. Things all have to be finished right away because tomorrow fast-money clients want to “talk numbers.” (ie. what can they trade on)
Beyond earnings, analysts also create long-term reports to educate clients on emerging trends or address frequently asked questions.
Analysts also need to do calls with clients on stocks or trends, often repeating the same published views to multiple clients. This repetition can be monotonous and limits time for deeper analysis.
Client calls also involve fulfilling analytical requests, such as providing a decade-long time series of earnings beats or misses or comparing key financial ratios across competitors.
On top of that, analysts need to attend company and industry conferences, which typically contain an investor day. Since clients can't attend every conference, the sell-side steps in to attend and report back, adding value for clients. These events also help build relationships with company management, customers, and industry experts.
Cultivating management access
A typical senior equity research analyst covers 15-20 stocks, juggling relationships with 30-40 CEOs and CFOs. The goal? To secure C-suite’s participation in one-on-one access to investor clients or keynotes at conferences. Managing these relationships takes preparation and persuasion, dealing with arrays of personalities, which leaves less time for deep stock analysis.
You may have noticed the decline in question quality on earnings calls (by the tenth analyst, questions around tax rates or that 5% profit segment start coming up). So why do analysts still congratulate management on a "great quarter"? Sometimes, it’s just to stay visible in front of C-suite when face-to-face isn't possible. A brief moment on an earnings call helps maintain the connection.
After the public call, most management teams host "earnings callbacks" for Wall Street analysts. These sessions often turn into schmoozing. While these callbacks are useful for relationship-building, they are a waste of time, especially for junior analysts.
Unfortunately, building relationships is not just for an analyst’s career success, it directly impacts revenue for the bank, which leads to the next point.
Deal sourcing
Although regulations prevent research analysts from directly participating in deal-making, sell-side analysts still play a key role in influencing private companies toward selecting their banks for capital market activities like IPOs. This is why star analysts still earn millions, particularly in sectors like biotech and tech, where capital market activity is heavy. They build relationships, attend private company events, and wine and dine key contacts to secure executive meetings.
Productive conversations with these companies require meticulous preparation, which consumes time that could be spent analyzing their current stock coverage. In hot sectors like biotech, analysts likely dedicate at least half of the year pre-IPO sourcing, and I might still be conservative.
Why can equity research analysts have such influence? Analysts offer valuable insights into the market pulse—what stories investors will likely buy into, how a stock might trade, and the current sentiment. Constantly talking to various market participants, analysts often have a better sense of investor appetite than investment bankers, who focus more on deal execution.
For companies with complex or challenging stories, influential analysts can help investors understand the narrative, ensuring post-IPO coverage and boosting visibility in public markets. That’s how an analyst with a strong following can tip the scales in favor of a particular bank for IPO.
Cultivating ecosystem relationships'
One way to establish a strong brand as a Wall Street analyst is to be the one who knows what other market participants are thinking and relay that information. Being the "in-the-know" analyst is highly valued by investors who rely on understanding market sentiment to make money. These analysts help investors gauge the broader market mood and grasp what key players are thinking. It’s a meta argument: others must believe what you believe for the stock to move to the price you think it should reach. The technical jargon for this is “catalyst.” Sell-side analysts can help a lot.
To maintain this reputation, "in-the-know" analysts need to build relationships with major investors who can move stock prices and understand their thought processes. They also connect with industry experts who offer unique, non-Googleable insights—often faster than alternative data can capture. These insights help identify market inflection points before anyone else.
However, building these relationships is time-consuming and requires face-to-face interactions at industry or social events, as lasting trust is established through in-person connections and mutual reciprocity. These activities again take time away from conducting deep research on their coverage.
Event planning
If you've ever planned an event, you know how quickly it can become a logistical nightmare. Coordinating with mega-cap CEOs, buy-side clients, and internal colleagues to host a polished event in a high-end venue is no easy task. It involves countless moving parts, from scheduling to ensuring everything runs smoothly.
Then there’s the preparation—writing management bios, working with the company’s investor relations team to vet questions (because no, these aren’t improvised).
It’s another months-long process that takes time away from researching.
Marketing
If you think investors will always read your research reports once they're published, think again. As a major buy-side client, your inbox is flooded each morning with emails from 30+ analysts writing on the same topic. Which report you choose often depends on whether you have an existing business relationship with the bank or if the analyst has added value in the past. But here’s the catch—you can’t add value without first building that relationship. And how do you do that? You visit them. That’s marketing.
Each year, equity research analysts travel to major cities where public equity investment firms are concentrated: NY tri-state, Boston, Texas, SF/LA, Chicago, Miami, and often Europe. These trips are far from glamorous—they involve back-to-back 30-minute meetings with mutual funds or hedge funds, packing in 8-10 meetings a day for three days in each city. The time spent on these trips quickly adds up.
II voting
Most big investment banks care deeply about their Institutional Investor (II) rankings. When the II poll opens, analysts go into overdrive, hosting client events and publishing "thought-provoking" notes to stay top of mind to fight for client votes.
Ironically, this period should be focused on delivering strong stock-picking insights. But many analysts instead opt for a high-velocity strategy, churning out numerous notes that may lack depth but keep clients engaged. These reports are often more entertaining than actionable, serving to maintain visibility.
Analysts easily spend another month or two of the year on this II battle—yet again, time taken away from in-depth company analysis.
Special projects
Analysts covering the bank sector face a unique challenge that further eats into their time for actual research—they often get pulled into "special projects" for their firm's executives. These analysts are tapped for their expertise in benchmarking, regulatory capital management, competitive intelligence, M&A, and more, often preparing presentations for the bank’s CFO, CEO, and board of directors.
This responsibility is even more stressful than serving investor clients. Analysts only need to please sufficient number of investors to keep their jobs. But making a bad impression in front of someone like Jamie Dimon can seriously damage career prospects, no matter how skilled the analyst is. These special projects can easily take time away from client service and stock research.
On the upside, exposure to your employer’s executive management is beneficial. During bonus or promotion discussions, internal relationships may tip the scales in the analyst’s favor, benefiting both themselves and their juniors. That's the silver lining.
Conclusion
So, how many analysts truly differentiate themselves by spending time poring over public filings and gathering alpha-generating insights? Not many. Those who focus solely on stock picking may find themselves out of a job, as this approach often doesn’t align with the realities of sell-side research.
These demands highlight just how fitting the term “sell-side” is. It captures the essence of the role, where time is consumed by tasks that often have little to do with investing and much more to do with maintaining relationships and meeting the demands of constituents, many of whom have motives unrelated to generating alpha.
Please let me know if you have comments or insights (as long as you are not being a d*ck.)
Thanks for reading. I will talk to you next time.
If you want to advertise on my newsletter, contact me 👇
Resources for your public equity job search:
Research process and financial modeling (10% off using my code in link)
Check out my other published articles and resources:
📇 Connect with me: Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn
If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe and share it with your friends/colleagues. Sharing is what helps us grow! Thank you. 🙏
Interesting article. Considering a lot of your points seem more focused on a senior analyst position (meaning they are the ones who do most of the ‘salesy’ type work) is there room for junior ER associates to do more of the deep research stock picking conducive activities?
Said differently, if you’re a junior associate, presumably spending less time with clients (although please correct me if I’m wrong in that assumption) and are passionate about stock picking, can you spend that extra non client time to take initiative to perform and suggest analyses that are actually valued by the buy side?
Some honest feedback as a paid sub. First of all love the content. But i feel like a lot of your free posts should be paid and lot of the articles you do paid should be free. It feels like the most value add content you produce (which is gold) is what i was kind of expecting to pay for