经过多年的谈话，Mifid II活着。这是它已经改变了研究业务的方式。

大约十年前，当Ryan Shea担任主权财富基金的研究负责人时，买方代表经常植入与一家大银行的特定战略家会晤。

This had nothing to do with the strategist being a star, Shea recalls: "It was because he was terrible at predicting markets." Schadenfreude explained a good part of the buy-siders' interest; meetings with the analyst were something like the fixed-income world's answer to the dîner de cons. But there was also valuable information to be gleaned from the hapless strategist's views, however misguided they were. "We flipped him," Shea says. "We always took the other side of the trade. His research was terrible, but it was very valuable because we could invert his calls."

想法的价值是什么？当然，答案取决于想法，以及设置它的上下文。为国家媒体出口写一次热卖，您可以预期大约200美元;专利是一个科学研究的开创性的科学研究或建立一个人类虚荣的社交网络，你可以看数十亿。

在金融业中，评估思路长期以来一直通过交易台的镜头完成：一个好主意是赚钱的。但许多因素影响了思想组成的链条 - 一般新闻，市场色彩，普遍的政治背景，传统股票研究，愚​​蠢的行为。弄清楚如何为远离交易台产生的所有这些信息分配一个值，这一直是棘手的，或完全忽略。这主要是因为投资研究已经在内部生产，由买方完成，或免费卖出卖方。

那是改变的。

1月3日投资研究进入了新的时代。经纪人和银行用于占据研究成本的执行费;在实践中，这意味着他们没有为它收取任何费用，将其视为吸引交易的营销广告物。一个新的欧盟法律 - 金融工具指令的市场，或者Mifid II - 被视为全球预兆，自今年年初以来，要求卖方机构明确收取研究，而不是将其转化为经纪费用。在曾经没有定价的研究市场，突然存在一个。对更透明和更公平的市场的渴望推动了欧盟实施Mifid II。目的是提出一个系统，其中买方在最佳执行的基础上与经纪商交易，而不是换取免费赠品和诱因，如研究和公司访问。

But despite this noble aspiration, uncertainty has been the predictable result. Sell-side institutions are scrambling to figure out the right price for their content — and which asset classes and sectors it makes the most sense for them to cover. Buy-side firms, long drowning in a never-ending stream of (often ignored) sell-side analysis, are facing the question of how much outside information — and what kind of information - they really need to generate market-beating returns. And into the confusion has rushed an opportunistic new host of independent analysts and tech-savvy content aggregators, buoyed by the belief that finance is about to undergo a disruption every bit as meaningful and industry-redefining as those seen in recent decades in music, media, and television.

与U.K.的财务行为授权委员会为一些合规leeway提供了一些符合要求的lee，以获得他们的mifid II房屋，大部分市场参与者亚博赞助欧冠spoke to for this story feel that it will not be until the middle of the year that the true shape of change materializes. Yet three things seem certain. First, independent analysts put the size of the global investment research industry, once it is broken out, at anywhere from $16 billion to $20 billion per year. Second, when the effects of MiFID II are felt, the buy-side's annual spend on research will likely be much smaller than that, although the market for research will remain inefficiently priced for months, perhaps years, to come. And third, amid the inefficiency — of both pricing and coverage — pockets of opportunity will open up for investors in a way that did not exist under the old regime.

金融内容行业是否会netflixify或yssify？

卖侧产生的内容量令人惊叹。J.P. Morgan Chase＆Co.表示，它于2017年出版了131,000名研究报告，包括研究说明，电子邮件，模型更新和客户端警报;其他大银行和经纪房屋在类似水平报告产出。作为一个比较，纽约时报出版约80,000件内容 - 故事，图形，互动，博客帖子 - 每年。

但最多的是投资研究，特别是在股票中，这是读取的几点。

根据行业的内部人士，客户只开设了2％至5％的研究电子邮件。购买侧公司在免费收到信息时没有动力，但分析师对自己的事业做点不了。研究报告 - 通常在1999年的最热新技术中交付，PDF文件 - 通常彼此相似。呈现，风格或，采用硅谷灵孔，“用户体验”几乎没有思想。投资房屋覆盖的重复是猖獗的。据彭博会，有45分析人员单独发布苹果公司。

和分析师不只是涵盖同样的事情;他们经常说同样的事情。牧群思考是愤怒的，这是一个透视的单调，当您认为分析师通常来自类似的教育背景时，可以说是可谓是不可避免的：

博士经济学家成为固定收入分析师，其中有企业融资弯曲的人在股票研究中找到了工作。分析师经常分享一个前景，这是一种建模预测的方法 - 所有分析工作的面包和黄油 - 以及在试图分析其直接专业领域之外的市场移动事件时的平息。（尝试在政治上消费新古典训练有素的经济学家的观点;结果很少漂亮。）

Until MiFID II came along, these analysts also shared a readership. That is already beginning to change. "Sell-side research is completely inefficient," says a senior portfolio manager, who wishes to remain anonymous, at an asset management firm with more than $150 billion under management. "There's too much of it, and most of it is no good." Before MiFID II, he adds, "we didn't really care about research — we didn't track it, we didn't know whether it was useful. It was just there. Now that fund managers have to pay for it themselves, they're saying, 'Actually, no, fuck it — it's not worth it.'"

Most buy-side firms have announced they will absorb the cost of sell-side research themselves rather than pass it on to their customers. Fidelity, one of the few holdouts, said in late February that it would reverse course and do the same. Last November the CFA Institute, a body of investment professionals, released a survey in which buy-side participants said they expected to pay between 3.5 and 20 basis points for research — €350,000 to €2 million for every billion euros in assets managed, in other words.

现在，Mifid II生效，看起来很多基金经理高估了自己的慷慨。适用于投资于资产课程的桌面的高级投资组合经理表示，他的团队将在外部研究中几乎没有超过500,000美元;固定收入的桌子完全使用卖方内容。他的公司股票经理对研究有更大的需求，但总体而言，他估计1500亿美元的公司将花费不到500万美元的研究。“我可以在卖方中感觉到一些恐慌，”他补充了拱门。

这项减少的研究会花费较差的信息流量和更糟糕的投资决策吗？许多买边房屋已经表明，他们将成为自己的研究书桌，因为从卖方跑得干燥的内容河流，但高级PM承认一些不确定性。“我们可能开玩笑，我们可以在没有卖方的研究的情况下做这项工作。但如果一切都变得梨形，那将为空间中的智能新进入者创造一个机会。”

卖方的回应既迅速又可预测：良好的老式价格战。内容，旧陈词滥调有它，想要自由 - 金融内容没有任何不同。J.P. Morgan在去年年底踢出了诚恳地，当客户提供所有资产课程的所有书面研究时，每年10,000美元;许多大型银行在此后纷纷遵循西装，并且价格切割显示没有减少的迹象。“大银行的赌注是他们将获得市场份额并挤出较小的竞争对手，然后逐渐提高价格一旦该领域被清除，”北部信托资本市场经纪公司北方信托资本市场的业务发展负责人Gerard Walsh说。

预计收入曲线急剧下降the immediate aftermath of January's big regulatory bang, followed by a steady climb back to levels that make financial research sustainable, not to say profitable — is familiar from the music and media industries. In the past five years, the dollars from music streaming services have offset the decline in physical-album sales and one-off digital downloads; streaming revenues are expected to double between now and 2020. Thanks to Spotify and its imitators, overall revenue in the global music industry is poised to grow for the first time since Sean Parker and Napster went toe-to-toe with Metallica and Dr. Dre, almost 20 years ago.

But easy analogies with the financial industry should be resisted. Investment research is not music, whatever top-ranked equity analysts might tell you, and change imposed by regulation is different from the type of proactive change wrought by shifts in consumer behavior. The music industry had only one unit of production to price efficiently — the song — but took more than a decade to figure out a viable pricing model. Research is considerably more difficult to price in a consistent way; a one-page equity research note previewing a big public company's quarterly earnings report usually involves far less digging, proprietary knowledge, and analysis than, say, a single page of analysis by a risk arbitrage specialist. The idea that the economics of financial content will be worked out quickly seems like so much sell-side wishful thinking.

许多银行希望通过纯粹的文本访问权限，但为一对一的分析师呼叫和分析师介绍公司管理团队和政策制定者的分析师介绍，收取高额美元的资金。可以从这些高级服务骑多少钱仍有许多待观察，以及销售侧房屋是否能够容忍作为成本中心运营的研究书桌，在优质服务未能起飞同样不清楚。更肯定的是销售方面的痛苦前景，特别是在未来两年内小到中等大小的经纪房屋。“如果你是意大利的第八次最佳经纪人，那就艰难了，”伦敦的研究市场的联合创始人Jeremy Davies说，伦敦的研究市场希望利用席卷行业的变化。“在第八个地方没有人会回电话。”

Sell-side research teams will be cut or decommissioned altogether; coverage in equities will concentrate on the most liquid, popular stocks; and analysts will be forced to become more original, according to Walsh. At the end of this quarter or the next, adds Vicky Sanders, Davies's co-founder at RSRCHXchange, "the navel-gazing will begin" as the early results roll in from the broker voting system used across the industry to evaluate analysts and as buy-side clients complete their research assessments. Banks and brokerage firms will start to see which of their analysts have the most traction with a newly alert buy-side. Then, once that's clear, the head count cuts will begin.

直到发生这种情况，桑德斯预测，“大多数卖方分析师将留在其付出良好的工作岗位，金色手铐上。”然而，一些勇敢的灵魂看到了改变，并决定自己罢工。

For analysts, going independent现在是一个比在MIFID II时代的更远的可行路径，当他们被困扰着询问买方的丢失的音高，以便免费获得这些公司已经获得的内容的内容类型，免费。

Philip Rush was the chief U.K. economist at Nomura for six years before launching his own macro research consulting firm in late 2016. MiFID II was a major factor in the decision: "The approach most banks have taken — charging a blanket subscription for everything — doesn't suit many clients, who just want to pay for the analysts they like," he explains. Going independent allows for that flexibility and gives Rush space to be more creative in the way he generates and presents his insights. "A lot of the analysis you do on the sell-side is a bit throwaway," he says. "It's short-term, superficial stuff, over Bloomberg chat. There's not much value-add."

作为一个独立的，现在匆忙的自由只有在他认为他有值得说的时候。使用基于代理的模型和所谓的“替代”数据来自基于云的服务，例如Quandl，独立数据提供商和Simudyne，仿真建设工具，现在是他工作的远远大于他的工作被雇用在一个大银行。遵守和文化限制 - 更不用说客户营销和牧群思维的压力 - 意味着当他在卖方工作时，以这种方式拓宽了他的工作。(Recently, a client wanted to know the effect of potential tariffs between the U.K. and the European Union. Rush parsed a database of 9.5 million U.K. revenue and customs metrics against the full World Trade Organization tariff schedule and mapped out the different scenarios in a dynamic, granular simulation. "At the bank I would have just taken the average tariff rate and applied it to the numbers before running off to some marketing event," he notes. "Now I can take the time and the care to be different.")

Many predicted that the start of MiFID II would be a disaster for independent analysts, as banks moved to slash prices and squeeze out smaller, less well-resourced competitors. Rush, who offers his research at a flat rate of 3,000 per user per year, has found the opposite to be true. He's seen more inbound interest since the beginning of the year than at any other point in his 18 months as a sole operator, and his revenues have grown 47 percent since last year's final quarter. Much of this interest has come not only from large asset management firms, but also from sovereign wealth funds, central banks, and — most surprisingly to Rush — the trading desks of banks, which find themselves underserved as their own research groups are forced to court external business.

Other independent analysts, even those who charge far more for their services, report the same thing. Rod Manalo worked for more than a decade as a risk arbitrage analyst before striking out as an independent three years ago. He charges more than $10,000 for a report on a single M&A deal but says the high cost of his research has been no barrier to getting business. "Going independent, you're not a cost center and you can provide independent analysis, free of influence from trading and sales desks," he explains. "That's extremely valuable to the buy-side."

尽管他们认为，他们的大部分业务都继续与买方直接交易，Manalo and Rush都受益于最近的技术驱动，交易所换货研究市场，这些研究市场连接研究生产者和消费者。SmartKarma和Rsrchxchange，两个最受欢迎的平台，报告了一个明显的上涨，因为Mifid II生效以来。根据桑德斯的说法，rsrchxchange已经看到它的用户群在过去的两个月中增长了30％，现在在平台上有1,200家购买侧公司和330个研究商。同时，新加坡的SmartKarma在其平台上有大约500个分析师，并已签署了许多大型买方客户。2016年底，当SociétéGénérale签署Smartkarma为其客户提供亚洲股权研究时，该平台进入了一个主要的政变;最近几个月，Fintech公司在U.K.和美国开设了办事处。平台在其收入模型中不同。RSRChxchange，如iTunes，销售个人研究报告，并在任何销售分析师培训佣金佣金。SmartKarma的型号使用 - 每年为每年提供7,500美元的固定费用，然后根据他们生成的客户端互动的许多收入汇编，并将其余部分划分在个人互动 - 更接近Spotify或Netflix。最好的分析师可以预计每月大约10,000美元，但据该公司的主席Jon Foster，“我们向分析师支付的池正在增加11％的月份。如果你是一个有能力的分析师，您现在会使Midlevel分析师在膨胀括号投资银行支付的钱。“

这些平台的越来越受欢迎程度在替代数据的更广泛的兴趣和传统专家网络提供的洞察中，例如Gerson Lehrman集团，第三座桥和αights，以及他们的初学者，技术驱动的竞争对手，如Globalwonks。小型，创新的金金气店也认为随之而来的风在他们的青睐。Simudyne，伦敦的初创公司急于加入他的研究，评估公司和行业的性能，人工智能驱动的模拟 - 从静态，线性模型中大多数股权分析师的哭泣都使用它来产生他们的预测今天。“任何可以对公司估值完全不同的洞察的公司，或在宏观层面的行业的表现，将在比赛中有一个优势，”Simudyne的首席执行官Justin Lyon说。

Fintech和古怪的数据当然，集不是整个解决方案。由于MIFID II开始咬人咬人，所以重要的是有趣的见解，或者应该提供哪些类型的人，也将改变。

Any fund manager can describe in general terms the characteristics of information that adds value to an investment process: It's anything that's original, challenges one's thinking, and either deepens or attenuates conviction about a thesis. The notion that traditional research analysts are the people best placed to provide this information is increasingly coming into question. An astute observer on the ground in Venezuela might have deeper insight into the Venezuelan debt crisis than an economist sitting high up in a tower on Madison Avenue; a plastics expert could provide sharper color on an individual materials company than a stretched equity analyst attempting to cover 20 names at once.

“老学校，新闻肉体销售和信息收集技巧可能会回到时尚中，”北方信托的沃尔什说明。“这并不一定是关于技术的。”但是技术 - 特别是SmartKarma等平台 - 可以在将先前锁定的财务分析锁定对投资者的洞察力提供者中发挥重要作用。福斯特说Smartkarma每天从有抱负的分析师收到四到五个申请，但每月只接受到平台上的三个;他认为，行业最佳分析师的背景和外形可以随着时间的推移而改变，因为买方需要证明研究支出增加了分析原创性和差异的溢价。“你需要越来越多地忍受，”他断言。

The financial industry today is stuck between two worlds; the old regime is giving way, but the Netflixified future of investment research, in which content is made available as a streaming service and the universe of insight production is opened up to a whole new category of analysts, has not yet arrived.

所有这一切唯一的不变是投资者持久的投资者对可以给予它们优势的新信息。但新的和宝贵的信息不必在交易推荐或转向良好的研究报告的幌子中。在选举活动期间，可以采取许多不同的形式，以期间的社交媒体活动，以常规错误的分析师的有用巧妙，其观点是愚蠢的钱想做的准确代理。弄清楚如何重视这些疯狂对比的信息单元将是困难的，需要数年，并且可能有助于解释为什么幻灯片，按需，一个价格适合的研究将甚至慢慢抵达金融速度较慢它一直在其他内容行业 - 如果它到达。“现在我们知道一切的价格和一无所获的价值，”沃尔什争论。超过150亿美元的资产管理公司的高级投资组合经理同意。"We still don't really have a good mechanism for figuring out value. Until we develop one, it'll be like the old test for pornography," he concludes, referring to Justice Potter Stewart's dictum in the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court case Jacobellis v. Ohio: "We know it when we see it."