Buy-Side Equity Analyst
The final opinion an analyst gives after researching whether a stock is attractive or unattractive.
What is a buy/sell recommendation?
The main pool of money PMs are responsible for growing and protecting.
What is client capital?
The costs traders try to reduce when buying or selling securities.
What are transaction costs?
The comparison that shows whether a portfolio beat or lagged its benchmark.
What is relative performance?
Data-driven indicators quants create to identify potential future returns or risks.
What are investment signals?
The detailed tool analysts use to forecast earnings, cash flows, and valuation.
What is a financial model?
This is the standard PMs try to outperform while managing risk.
What is a benchmark?
The price movement caused when a large order affects supply and demand during execution.
What is market impact?
The analysis used to explain whether returns came from allocation, selection, currency, or other effects.
What is attribution analysis?
The process of testing how a strategy would have performed historically.
What is backtesting?
This FactSet product gives analysts financial history, earnings estimates, valuation metrics, and company fundamentals.
What is Company/Security tab?
This FactSet product gives PMs a real-time view of holdings, prices, news, research notes, and risk analytics.
What is PM Hub / Portfolio Management Platform?
The FactSet product used to route PM orders and manage single-name or basket trades.
What is FactSet EMS?
The securities, sectors, or asset classes that helped or hurt portfolio returns the most.
What are contributors and detractors?
The FactSet environment that lets quants code directly with FactSet datasets for research, modeling, and visualization.
What is FactSet Programmatic Environment / FPE?
This skill helps analysts defend investment ideas to PMs and explain their conclusions clearly.
What is communication?
This PM responsibility involves deciding how much capital to allocate across securities, sectors, and strategies.
What is portfolio construction?
The FactSet product that provides a chronological record of trades and quotes throughout the day.
What is Time and Sales?
The FactSet product used to analyze returns, exposures, benchmark-relative performance, and attribution.
What is Portfolio Analysis?
The tool quants use to convert signals into portfolio weights while managing risk, turnover, liquidity, and constraints.
What is Axioma Portfolio Optimizer?
The sell-side output that buy-side analysts use as a starting point, but must challenge to form their own independent view.
What is sell-side research?
The PM responsibility of turning analyst research, quant signals, market data, and client objectives into an actual portfolio.
What is capital allocation?
The FactSet tool that shows the full limit order book across multiple bid and offer price levels.
What is Trading Depth?
The Norway Sovereign Wealth Fund example showed this distinction: the fund made a large positive return but still lagged the benchmark.
What is absolute return vs. relative return?
The Renaissance meme-stock example showed this risk, where historical model patterns struggled in a new market environment.
What is model risk / regime-change risk?