, Columnist
Research Conflicts and Hedge-Fund Troubles
Also Ellevest, bribe allegations, blue flames, etc.
Research.
As someone who writes my opinions on the internet, I am fascinated and horrified by sell-side equity research. If you are a research analyst, your job is to have opinions and write about them. But my opinions are my personal property, I can tell anyone I want about them, I can change them whenever I feel like it, and the government never checks up on me to see who I'm talking to about my opinions or whether, deep down, I really believe them. But if you are a research analyst, none of this is true. Your opinions -- at least, your Buy/Hold/Sell recommendations on the stocks you cover -- are material nonpublic information until they are published, on the theory, I suppose, that an analyst's opinion is itself enough to move a stock.