ER or AM: What is the actual difference as a junior?

Hi guys, 


what would be the actual differences in day-to-day work for a junior in a research position on the sell-side (ER) and buy-side (AM)? I guess ER will have more writing in terms of distributable reports, while in AM this might all be done internal and less formalized? Client contact should also be relatively similar right? And lastly, for sector specialization, I know that in ER you become highly specialized from the beginning on which I actually find a huge drawback. How is this in AM? 

 
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Writing is correct. Probably other bullshit admin that goes with writing reports. As a junior in sell-side, you probably start ideating a slower pace than on BS

What clients would you be contacting as a junior buyside ER analyst? I don't really think any. More likely to be talking to people who you are clients of e.g. sell-side.

In sell-side you'd definitely be having client calls in your junior years. Maybe not the first year but yeah.

You can be sector-specialised in AM too, depends how the shop runs. Some are generalist, many are sector specialist.

 

What you mentioned about idea generation might be true. I feel that ER is very restricting into actually learning to invest and generate ideas as you are basically from day 1 forced to focus on just a handful of stocks and more or less just tracking them over time instead of actually finding companies to invest, am I thinking the right way? But then again this will probably be the same for buyside as you wont get to pitch new ideas every week but instead mostly track your fund holdings.

 

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