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Well I speak for myself but I think many people most and foremost like the job. I wouldn't see myself working in M&A or in S&T and I like having companies to dissect, doing some micro/macro work and talking about the market with clients.
Also, keep in mind that while new regulation is adversely impacting commissions, it is also transforming the sector into a real business. For newcomers, this is quite motivating. And also, whatever branch of finance you are looking at, it is almost impossible not to see something truly bad happening (robots, passive etc), so just stick to what you like and stay ahead with your skillset.
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Not sure if that's true now but generally you'll have mostly people from target school in AT, same as any FO position. I would also say that by the number of jobs available ER is comparable if not harder to get into then IBD
You clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Don't talk about an industry unless you've been in it/have experience in it.
I would thoroughly disagree. I actually think ER is one of the hardest to break into. Here's why.
1.) Most of ER is filled with people from targets...so idk what you are talking about.
2.) Lets say you wanted to be on an internet team (covering FB, SNAP, etc) at a BB. Lets assume there are 10 BB banks so 10 internet teams. A team is typically composed of 1.) Sr. analyst 2.) Analyst 3.) associate. Since you cant make the jump to analyst before being an associate, you can only fill the associate position. ER there is much less turnover...its not uncommon for guys to stay 3+ years as an associate. That means in a given year, there may be 1,2,3 associate spots that open up on an internet team at a BB..... Most of the time, those positions are being filled by kids lateralling....so good luck getting a spot.
3.) analyst turnover in banking is crazy. simply put, there are probably 100x as many spots in banking as there are in ER. Go on any BB career site and you will find a analyst opening. Not the case with ER.
4.) to be an analyst in banking, you CANT have a MBA. In ER, most associate positions are MBA/CFA preferred. This makes it harder to break in as you can get a wide variety of candidates,
5.) broadly speaking, there are many more shops that offer banking services v. capital markets. Basically every ER shop is tied to an IB, but not ever IB has an ER branch (Lazard, Greenhill, Moelis, all the way down to the M&A shop down the street that has 4 guys running it), This means many more seats.
Point 1: I think for ER positions with non-BB, it is still a lot easier to get into ER vs IBD. With non-BB, IBD positions still requires previous deal experience. However, for ER positions, non-BB takes in all sort of people as long as they can demonstrate that they can do the job. I think that might be the reason why people are saying that it is a lot easier to get into ER than IBD.
Point 2: In term of seats, I do not agree. Similar to IBD, even under the Analyst (MD level), you can easily see about 5 Research Associates (Analyst level) covering just one sector. So I definitely don't agree that the headcount is a lot lower.
Point 3: Not necessarily that ER prefer MBA/CFA. Graduate school might be for Healthcare related sectors. MBA will be seen a higher cost. Most Research Associates are still out of undergraduate school.
Point 4: Standalone ER has been expanding into IBD. For example, New York based Telsey (http://www.telseygroup.com/), is started by a well-known retail analyst. They were mainly a research shop and now has expanded into consulting and investment banking. As long as you can get an investor, there will always be business.