One of the biggest arms of finance is research. While sales/trading gets more attention, a lot of the value produced in companies is research–investment banks use research to establish an IPO price. Hedge funds use research to buy or sell stocks. Brokers use research to encourage clients to trade. In short, research is the engine of the financial world, even if sales/trading is the grease that helps the machine run.
Research is not boring, even if it may sound like it. Financial research involves talking through a lot of concepts with different people and gathering together facts and information into a coherent report that is then presented to clients/bosses. Research is a lot like investigative research, and some Wall Street researchers have backgrounds as journalists. Another comparison is detective work; researchers are tasked with discovering things no one else knows or is willing to admit. It is a complicated and stimulating job and, when done well, is incredibly rewarding–both intellectually and financially.
Wall Street research typically has three sides to it. There is the buy side–most typified by the hedge fund, which will employ analysts to do the research into companies to determine whether the fund should buy or sell the stock. The buy side will employ the research of the sell side–another group of analysts who conduct research for banks, brokerages, or for their own privately owned research firms who then sell that research to the buy side (hence the terms buy and sell side). In many cases, the sell side will act as a broker to help the buy side buy or sell in response to the sell side’s research report–which obviously can creative conflicting interests which have been the topic of much discussion and regulation over the years.
A third group of researchers are less frequently employed (especially in public markets) and less talked about: the company itself. Take, for instance, a company that is about to list itself as a publicly traded company. It will hire an investment bank to help it create stock and sell that stock to buyers, and that bank will tell the company what it can sell itself for on the market. To fact check that advice, the company will use its own corporate finance team to corroborate or push back on the investment bank’s advice and ultimately give management the insights to determine whether it should go public and at what price. This group is often the one that stops an IPO from happening–hence many IPO rumors never coming true.
As a researcher, you can find any of these roles rewarding and stimulating, and each has their own risks. Buy siders tend to get paid the most, but they also get fired the most often. Corporate finance analysts tend to get paid the least, but they have the most job security. Sell-siders are somewhat in the middle; less fireable, but they depend on client enthusiasm and interest. If that dries up, so too does their income.