It’s the scrutiny. There is a reputation cost for being wrong. Buy-side research is not that kind of competition. It’s different kinds of clients.
—Partha Mohanram, Columbia

The findings raise questions about why investment firms continue to fund buy-side research and do not simply rely on the sell-side. Our evidence on the stock performance of buy-side recommendations is less surprising than the remarkably strong performance of the sell-side.
—Harvard Business School professors Boris Groysberg, Paul Healy, Devin Shanthikumar and George Serafeim, and Yang Gui from the University of North Carolina

The sell-side analysts know the individual companies better than the buy-side analysts or the money managers. When I talk to them, I get useful information.
—Jerome Dodson, who oversees $2.2 billion at Parnassus Investments in San Francisco