Sell-Side Research: Buy-Side Still Loves It

Megan Barnett wonders why investors would listen to financial sector analysts given that nobody knows what's really on bank balance sheets:

What's it going to be? Are we nearly out of the woods, or so thick in them still that we can't see our hands in front of our faces?

But it's the even greater feeling of blindness on the part of the buy-siders that seems to keep them sucking from the sell-side tit.

A recent survey of asset managers by Thomson Extel Surveys found that the buy-side most values the one-on-one sessions with company executives that are facilitated by sell-side research analysts -- for all sectors, not just finance. This from the survey's author, Diana Blaney:

"When we say that equity research is going to survive, it's not just the written research reports. I'm talking about all the equity research and all the services."

The survey also reported a rise in the use of broker voting, a process whereby asset managers, traders and analysts at buy-side firms decide which research they value the most.

As for the academic take, Bryan Kelly and Alexander Ljungqvist of New York University found that when a stock lost all analyst coverage, it also lost about 1.1 percent of its market value, indicating that the information that is generated by sell-siders does provide some value.

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