O'Laughlin: Traditional sell-side equity research is a broken business model on its last legs
Doug O'Laughlin · Claude Code for Finance + The Global Memory Shortage: Doug O'Laughlin, SemiAnalysis · Feb 24, 2026 · at 18:01
Doug O'Laughlin, analyst at SemiAnalysis, discusses why traditional Wall Street sell-side research tied to investment banking has deteriorated.
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“Sell side as a concept is very broken. If you're talking about waves and things that are changing sell side in a lot of ways is this hereditary child of like, let's say, 30 or 40 years of banking. Where you had you know, a company go public, so you needed someone to talk about it, to issue securities, and- You're literally selling the stock, but you have to be independent-ish, so your ratings, buy, sell, hold. One of the biggest sales you could do is like, when your company IPOs will talk about you so people know who you are. That's the core original part of the sell side, right? And the problem is like, all the research kind of has this like, really kind of It's just fallen apart. It's just not different. A lot of banking regulations has changed. And so like the primary information process, it's like a 40 year old business model on its last legs.”
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