What software is used for making/formatting Equity Research Reports in BB and Boutique banks?

I've read a lot of equity research reports from many BB banks (JP Morgan, Goldman etc..) and boutique banks, they all seem to follow the same format when it comes to these reports.

I've always wondered whether these reports are made in PowerPoint/excel or special software that autofills data and assists them in making ERR reports.

I tried to find discussions on this forum but there's barely any coverage on it. It would be nice to know what are the technical standards for an ERR (like formatting, font size etc..) so I could practice writing them on my own.

13 Comments
 

If there are any students looking at this and they want to create a professional looking presentation; the solutions you see banks using like the ones mentioned above are specialized alternatives to more comprehensive professional design tools.

A combination of Adobe InDesign and Illustrator will be the easiest to find, there is a learning curve but there is a wide variety of tutorials online for you to follow and you'll have far more flexibility. However, you'll need to make your charts and graphs in excel or word.

You can also try using a combination of tools like LaTeX, Overleaf, and LibreOffice if you need something free.

 
Funniest

For example, CFA organizes a global equity research competition, where you’re assigned an industry mentor and end product is an ER report (so you need to do all the analysis and writing along with the formatting) followed by presentation to industry judges. And you keep presenting from local to global if you win.

You not hearing about something doesn’t mean anything. Have you heard of Santa? Cause guess what, he doesn’t exist.

 

As already mentioned, we use BlueMatrix, which does the heavy lifting for uploading and managing financials, disclosures, regulatory stuff. For longer notes we do the work in Word and BM allows you to import it in. Excel addins let you upload estimates and charts.

When I was going through the CFA Research Challenge and taking classes that required reports similar to this, I just used word and formatted it nicely to look professional, sort of mimicking the reports I had access to.

I wouldnt focus too much on this stuff. If you’re doing this for school or to have some stock pitches to send around, focus on the content and just make it look nice. No one is going to ask you about formatting a note in an interview, ever.

 

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