A Day in the Life of a Research Analyst

At its essence a research analyst’s job is to cut through the volatility, rather than be swept along with the tide, and critically examine the underlying fundamentals of a given enterprise, economy or asset class. Markets often succumb to sentiment over reason for technical, rather than fundamental reasons, overshooting one way or the other and it’s the analyst’s job to determine what is reasonable versus irrational. A good research analyst is always proactive, less reactive, forecasting and predicting with the knowledge at hand. It’s about reading a situation before it becomes a situation and communicating one’s ideas to clients -- be they the traders, sales, capital markets or investors in a way that creates as much noise as the market, and in those rare, coveted cases even move it.