Wall Street analysts are getting irrelevant 

A RECENT Bloomberg article sounded the alarm on Wall Street research jobs. At the world’s 15 biggest banks, the number of equity analysts has fallen by about 30 per cent from a decade ago, with most cuts in Europe and Asia. Compensation has stagnated as well, forcing many to reinvent themselves. Some are becoming content creators on platforms such as Substack and X.

I went through a similar metamorphosis myself: I came into journalism after the Global Financial Crisis, when my former employer Lehman Brothers went bust. In so many ways, it was a good career move.

Bureaucracy and banking regulations have steadily eroded the value-add that analysts can provide. Sell-side research is a marketing tool. An investment bank can hope to retain and charge clients commissions if their insights are timely and unique. But a lengthy compliance and editing process is slowing that down, especially when there’s breaking news such as an unexpected chief executive change. Often, by the time sell-side research gets published, investors would have already found informed opinions elsewhere. For global banks, the situation is even more dire in China, where regulations are easier, competition is fiercer and local brokerages practically give away their research for free.