How much time are you given to initiate coverage on a company?

You don't need conviction after a week, you just need to know your name very well.

I worked at a place where the PM gave me 1 day. Which is obviously extreme.

But this idea that you need more than a week is silly for most stocks. Not every company needs channel checks, interviews with customers/suppliers etc. In the real world, you need to be efficient with your time.

Also, the stock can move away from you while you spend a full month looking into it. Opportunity doesn't wait for slow people.

A week.

Generally 1 week should be sufficient. Shorter timeframe if you already know the sector.

Also depends on if you’re building models from scratch and how intense your team’s modeling is.

I cover biotech only and typically can do two a week

Be happy that the expectation is just a week. Research is something that has tremendous diminishing returns over time. So a week is long enough where you should be able to formulate a view and know it well enough. It forces you to be efficient and not waste time going down a research rabbit hol that is endless (I can't begin to tell you the amount of my life that I've wasted searching for and "analyzing" data and info that probably made me sound smart but was just not needle moving).