Wealth Management Research - How does it compare to other buy-side research shops?

I read a lot of both Wealth Management research and Investment Banking (institutional) research. If I had to choose one to read, I would choose WM research every single day of the week and twice on sundays. First of all, WM research is a lot more accurate and unbiased whereas Institutional research is obscenely bullish to cater to the goal of winning corporate clients. A study (conduced from 1980 till now) have shown that Institutional Research has a "Buy" or "Hold" rating 93% of the time - yikes... Second of all, WMR is a lot more entertaining and interesting to read. It is simply better written and applicable to a wider demographic. I suppose the upside of IR is that there are tons of data and more sophisticated (though often very unnecessary) calculations... If you private message me, I can probably e-mail you a couple pieces of both WM research and Investment Banking (institutional) research.

Neither WMR or IR are good feeds into true investment banking (assuming that IBD means the traditional coverage and product groups). For that, you might need to pursue business school. I will admit that networking will probably be easier on the IR side as long as you work for a top analyst who is respected on the street and has connections on the advisory and capital markets sides...