The Stock Podcast, previously known as ‘Investing with the Buyside’, was founded on the belief that every investor should have the opportunity to hear a CEO or CFO of a public company describe their business, industry, and outlook. The chance to sit down and speak with management is called corporate access. However, you might instead be asking yourself, what is the ‘buy side’, why is corporate access so important, and what’s the difference between the buy side vs sell side? Well, please allow me to grossly oversimplify a very complex industry.
If you’ve stumbled across this website, I’m guessing you’re like me in the sense that you invest money in the stock market. But you and I are very, very small fish in a ginormous pond. The big fishes in the pond are institutional money managers, which include mutual fund companies, hedge funds, pension funds, ETFs, insurance companies…well, you get the picture. Collectively, the big fish in the pond are known as the buy side.
Organizationally, the buy side consists of a chief investment officer (CIO), a director of research (DOR), portfolio managers (PMs), research analysts or equity researchers, associate or junior analysts, and supporting team members. Equity researchers and junior analysts who perform the task of analyzing companies and industries, with the ultimate goal of making buy or sell recommendations to portfolio managers are called buy side analysts, which was my job before I started the Buy Side Podcast.
If there’s a buy side, there must be a sell side, right? There certainly is! The role of a sell-side analyst is very similar to that of a buy-side analyst. However, there are a few key differences between the buy side vs sell side. The biggest difference is that the sell side doesn’t have skin in the game, meaning they don’t own positions in securities on behalf of their clients because their client is the buy side. But don’t get me wrong, a sell-side analyst still has skin in the game in the sense that their reputations are on the line. The easiest way to think about it is that the sell side ‘sells’ equities, research, and other services to the buy side.
The first episode of Investing with the Buyside describes a few things about the institutional money management business and highlights some of my motivations in starting a podcast. If you’re an average investor who would like to learn more about how the industry works, this intro might be exactly what you’re looking for. A few of the things you’ll learn include some industry-specific terms like the buy-side, the sell-side, corporate access, and a few others. The goal of describing a facet of the industry is to highlight what I think the value of a program like this is. That said, the terms are also important to know within the context of future episodes.
If there’s one thing you should walk away with after listening, it’s that the average investor is disadvantaged. People with lots of money have access to management and the average joe does not! The BuySide intends to change that by delivering management team interviews to anyone who wants to listen. The Buyside Podcast is the only investing podcast that is solely focused on delivering interviews with CEOs and CFOs from public companies.