Equity Research sell side: how do you think the buyside should do better to interact with you?
going to be starting in equity research at a mutual fund. i'll be be covering companies and so wanted to ask the wso community (specifically those working on the sell side) what are the characteristics of buyside analysts that you like to work the most with? what is your ideal relationship with buyside clients? what do you wish was different? what do buyside analysts do that annoy you most?
Just an intern, but I've heard that when buyside analysts really just string sell-side analysts along and use them just for their research - with no intention of trading with the firm - is super annoying. At some point, the sell-side analyst will just cut the buy-side folks off if they don't end up doing any business with the bank.
The most obnoxious thing I've noticed is some guy straight out of school who is on buy side being condescending to a senior analyst with like 20 years of experience.
Can guess whether the sell side analyst picked up the phone the next time. Also can guess how long it took before the buy side dude got pushed out (hint: less than 6 months).
This is an interesting spin given the question is most often asked in reverse (e.g. how can the sellside analyst be more helpful?). Buyside after all is the client in this relationship. I do think we're at the cusp of a huge shift in the sellside research model, and there will probably be 1/3rd to half as many firms in this business in the next five years.
I personally couldn't care less whether the conversation is "two-way". Frankly the Street has no business knowing what my true views are on a business, industry, etc. I'm paid to develop and share those views with my firm, not the broader market. They ultimately will be able to interpret things and make an educated guess based on the names that we own and what we are actively trading, but usually they aren't going to know in real time. There are a few sellside analysts that I know well, have traveled extensively with, and have a great relationship who will obviously be more familiar with where we are actually spending time, but the goal is for these guys to not be force feeding information about our positioning to their long/short clients.
But yeah, generally try to be respectful, don't pretend to know everything, and take care of them in the vote and you should get good service.
No one really cares about a long only's (or l/s even) positioning. The exception being activist funds.
Interesting but i'm gonna have to respectfully disagree. I have friends on the long-short side who cover the same industries and they'll jump at any chance to discuss how I'm actually thinking about a name, what we own and in which portfolios, are we "active" anywhere etc. I've even had guys keep tabs on which 1x1's i'm going into at conferences by spotting me in the hotel hallways (which is a terrible strategy btw because we tend to meet with everyone.) I work for a large AM complex so perhaps it's asset dependent? But for example, I am certainly keeping tabs at what my peers at Capital/Fido/TRowe etc are doing on the names I care about. That's the shit that actually moves stocks in the medium term, not the quarterly noise out of the pods.