Back in the day, way back in the day, I used to be a fund manager. The stock market was an unimaginably different place then, no tech behemoths, not much tech since R&D spending was widely regarded as a waste of money.
What was noticeable was the staggering amount of in-depth analysis carried out by analysts. On a big company like GEC or ICI the reports coming in were like not so small books. Nobody read them. We invariably went straight to the summary or the conclusion.
A problem with this type of analysis, as well as being mind-numbingly boring, is that it doesn't give you any insight into whether the shares are cheap or dear or should be bought or sold. So why do it? It was partly done to try and establish a stockbroker as the right firm for that company so they could participate in lucrative corporate activity like fund raising and mergers and acquisitions.
The other reason was to establish themselves in the eyes of fund managers as the expert in a particular share so that large orders to buy or sell would come their way. There was not really any particularly effective decision process for deciding whether shares were a buy or a sell.
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