Might be a bit stream-of-consciousness, but I thought a "How to Succeed on the Sell Side" thread might be of interest. I'll leave it pinned, and add to it as warranted.

Please feel free to comment or disagree. This is stuff that has worked for me, YMMV.

In no particular order:

This is first and foremost a client service job. Everything you do should tie back to this.

Everyone on the team, from the senior analyst to the junior associate, should work at building client relationships.

Always strive to do good work. But If your clients don’t like you, they will not vote for you no matter how good your work is.

Not everyone will like you.

Meeting and talking with clients is the fun part of the job.

It is especially fun after you get to know your clients. You have to really enjoy this from your heart, it is tough to fake if you don’t.

To that end f you don’t like interacting with clients, your clients will know, and it will show. So make sure you like this part of the job.

If you don’t like people and cannot succeed in building relationships you will fail on the sell side, no matter how good your stock picks are.

Answer every email, return every phone call, do every favor. Feel GOOD when the phone rings. It means someone is taking time out of their busy day to call you. Respect that.

Don’t ever forget that your clients’ job is (MUCH) harder than yours. They have to be right. You only have to be interesting.

So be interesting! Have provocative ideas. Remember that your clients get a hundred VMs and a thousand emails every day from the sell side. Give them a reason to look at yours.

Be memorable. Have a personality. Wear suspenders or a bow tie. Grow a beard.

Let your personality come across in your writing. Develop a voice.

Don't be afraid to make a call.

While your clients’ job is harder than yours, they suffer in secret. Your pain (and there will be much pain over a career) is public, sometimes VERY public. You will need to develop a thick skin.

Good company does not necessarily equal good stock.

Bad company does not necessarily equal bad stock.

NEVER FORGET THIS.

Talk with management teams but don’t trust them, and for God's sake don’t base a call on “The CEO told me X.” You will be led astray if you aren’t careful.

Don’t let management teams get away with anything. Dig. If they say something, follow up on the line of questioning.

No mercy.

Ask good questions!

Earnings call Q&A is the most underutilized tool in a sell-sider’s toolkit. I am continually amazed at how few analysts get this point. https://twitter.com/Srasgon/status/987463130816053248

Don’t let management teams get away with anything, especially on an earnings call.

When doing channel checks know where they are coming from. Otherwise you will find that they’re wrong half the time, and you won’t know which half.

Make your models complex enough to do the job, but simple enough to update at 2am on an earnings night (I have broken this commandment to my everlasting detriment)

This is a competitive career. There are 40 other people out there trying to do the same thing as you. You have to do it better than them, and thrill to that fact.

Be productive.

At the same time, creative repetition is your friend. The job gets easier over time as you build a library of material that can be updated, recycled, and respun in new ways.

For any Larry Niven fans our there, Niven's Law states "Anything worth doing is worth selling repeatedly"

But don't just report the news. Anything you put out should have some thing incremental to it. Some insight, some tidbit, something.

Don't rehash the press release.

When news breaks, your clients have time to make 3 calls. Make sure one of them is you.

It sounds trite, but it's true. Own the biggest controversies on the biggest names in your space.

If a call goes against you, don’t hide from it. Use it. Controversy is your friend on the sell side, it gives you a reason to talk to clients!

At the same time, own your mistakes. Admit when you are wrong.

It’s easier to own a controversy with an active rating.

This is the primary reason clients value the rating/target price. They don't care about your buy/hold/sell rating. But they do care how much conviction you have in the controversy.

Most of your best ideas for pieces will come from client conversations. If you get the same question from 3 clients, you should probably write a note about it.

Be prepared for anything to happen on any given day. Flexibility is a must.

Be willing to toss your agenda out the window if needed. When key news breaks be first.

Don’t kill your team when it’s not necessary. Don’t have them work late or on weekends regularly. This way when you ask them to (and it will happen) they will know its necessary rather than arbitrary.

The exception to the rule - kill yourself when M&A happens. Clients will want to talk RIGHT NOW. Oblige them.

If you are the senior, you should be the last one to leave on earnings. Don’t be the asshole who leaves the team to finish up while you go to sleep.

When writing a piece or doing analysis, always ask yourself “what’s the ‘so-what’?” What does it mean for your stock, or your industry, or whatever.

Why should people care? So What?

Learn how to tell a story. People don’t want to read your research, they want you to tell them a story.

The worst meetings are when everyone agrees (there's no reason to talk!) Have an opinion, and be willing and able to defend it.

Let the data drive the story, not the other way around.

Be careful with your numbers. Do not tolerate careless errors, clients will find them and it will detract from your message.

I mean this. My pet peeve is careless errors. I tell my team that I can forgive PROFOUND errors. But careless errors have no excuse.

Get off the deck in the meeting. Remember, it’s supposed to be fun. Enjoy it! Make sure your client enjoys it too!

Know every number.

Make sure your salesforce knows your call. My biggest issues up front mostly stemmed from the fact that my salesforce had no idea what I was talking about.

Sales should be your first client. They are your amplifier. On a good day you can make 20 calls on your own. But every salesperson can also make 20 calls. Make sure one of them is yours.

Spoonfeed the story to sales. Make sure they know what you want them to say. Otherwise they will decide what to say on their own, or worse yet, decide to make someone esle's call instead.

Everyone adds value in a different way. Find out what works best for you. Differentiate from the pack, however you can. Don't spend time on stuff where you can't differentiate.

Have good pattern recognition.

Don’t be afraid to be the bear. My favorite calls are usually the negative ones, and they get more attention too.

The buck stops with you. It's your name on the top of the report. It's your face on TV, your name in the WSJ. If you screw up it's your fault. If your team screws up, it's your fault.

Own it.

Your associates will get good. And then they may leave.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Carve out opportunities for your associates to grow. Make sure they have their own client call lists. Make sure the salesforce knows who they are.

Don't just use them as exhibit factories.

Titles are important https://twitter.com/Srasgon/status/1246459861098835969

Don't read other sell-side reports.

One day your role might be analyst.

On another day your role might be therapist.

Sometimes clients just want to talk.

(too bad I can't go back and number these, maybe I'll start going forward from here)

59 so far...

60/ The stock is your objective function.

61/ For god's sake, don't ignore a client all year long and then have the balls to beg for an II vote.

It just makes you look pitiful.

In fact I will go further - don't ask for II votes. Clients know who has been helpful and who hasn't, and generally know who they are going to vote for.

In other words, clients know who deserves a vote without you asking for it.

(I know this one is potentially controversial, most of the sell side has a long and illustrious history of begging for II votes in June...)

62/ It never ceases to amaze me what dreams of a big TAM can do

63/ Sometimes stocks are cheap for a reason.

64/ Don't get emotionally involved. My biggest mistakes and missed calls have been in situations where my emotions prevented me from seeing what was in front of my nose.

This is not easy. I've been doing this job for more than a dozen years and I still struggle with it.

65/ Some days I am not sure if I work in the financial services industry or in the entertainment industry. I think there are elements of both in a successful sell-side career.

But that's OK. Give the people what they want!

66/ Love your industry, be continually amazed by it. You will be living and breathing it, day in and day out. It will fill your thoughts. It will fill your dreams.

If you don't like your industry this job will make you miserable.

(For the record, I LOVE semiconductors)

67/ While you do need an ego to do this job, don’t start believing your own bullshit.

68/ Learn how to sleep on a plane

(less relevant for now but someday...)

69/ “Street estimates” and “consensus” are NOT the same thing.

Part of your job as a sell side analyst is to figure out what “consensus” actually is.

70/ No one actually knows why the stock is underperforming.

But clients will still ask. And you had better have an answer :-)

71/ It feels dangerous to stick your neck out. No one does it enough (myself included).

But my first big call was a negative, counter-consensus, differentiated negative call on the biggest company in my coverage.

It eventually blew up.

But it also got me ranked.

So don’t be afraid to stick your neck out if you have conviction. It may go wrong of course (there are no certainties here). But clients will still appreciate it if it is grounded in facts, and differentiated.

And it might go right. Those are the calls that can make a career.

72/ If at all possible, finish the note before the dinner starts. Drunk analysis is often not the best analysis.

(If you have the capacity to ignore this rule, more power to you. I do not!)

73/ You will have clients who know your sector and stocks far better than you do.

Treasure these clients.

74/ You will also have clients who know nothing about your sector. Treasure them as well. Give them extra attention.

If you win over clients when they start the relationship can span an entire career. I have big PM clients today who I’ve known since they were jr analysts.

75/ Cultivate relationships with reporters. Media appearances can be great marketing, and knowledgeable reporters make great contacts https://twitter.com/Srasgon/status/1280266772722016256

76/ When the note is ready to go, publish it!

Nothing worse than holding something for some reason and having events overtake it (it happens!)