What’s the Difference Between Buy-Side and Sell-Side Analysts?

By Mathew Auto, AnaChart research desk. Updated October 25, 2026 with figures from AnaChart’s records.

A sell-side analyst works for a bank or broker and publishes research that many clients read.

A buy-side analyst works for a fund and researches stocks for that fund alone. Both study the same companies. They write for different readers and are judged in different ways.

The sell-side analyst’s ratings and price targets are public, which means they can be checked. That is the record AnaChart keeps, for more than 4,000 analysts.

Buy-side vs sell-side analysts at a glance

What a sell-side analyst does

A sell-side analyst covers a group of companies in one industry. The work runs in a cycle around each company’s quarterly results: update the earnings model, speak with management, publish a note, and host calls for clients.

The note usually ends with a rating such as Buy, Hold or Sell and a 12-month price target.

Estimates from all the analysts on a stock are averaged into the consensus. When a company reports, the market compares the results with that consensus. Price targets are averaged the same way into a consensus target, which is the number most finance sites show.

AnaChart compared the consensus price target with the share price 12 months later on 8,537 stock-and-date pairs. The median miss was 23.8%.

The consensus landed within 10% of the price only 22.4% of the time, and it sat above the price a year later in 56.3% of cases.

Key takeaway: The consensus target missed the price a year later by a median 23.8% and landed within 10% only 22.4% of the time.

The rating tells clients whether the analyst likes the stock. Each firm uses its own words, such as Outperform or Equal Weight, and AnaChart maps them onto those three labels so ratings compare across firms.

Of 729,921 rated calls in AnaChart records, 63.4% are Buy, 31.7% are Hold and 4.9% are Sell. About one call in twenty is a Sell.

Key takeaway: Sell ratings make up 4.9% of 729,921 rated calls, against 63.4% for Buy.

Sell-side research is regulated. Under FINRA Rule 2241, investment bankers at the same firm may not review or approve research before it is published, and analyst pay may not be tied to specific banking deals.

Under SEC Regulation AC, the analyst certifies in each report that the views in it are his or her own.

What a buy-side analyst does

A buy-side analyst works inside a fund. The job is to find ideas that make the fund money, and to say when to sell what it already owns.

The analyst reads sell-side notes, joins the calls the sell side hosts with company management, and then forms a separate view. The output goes to a portfolio manager who decides what the fund buys.

Because the buy-side analyst’s work is never published, there is no public record of it. What the buy-side analyst can check is the sell side.

A note from an analyst who has called a stock well for years is worth more weight than one from an analyst who has not.

How a buy-side analyst reads a sell-side note

The headline rating is the least useful part of a note on its own. A buy-side reader looks at four things together: the price target, how far it sits from today’s price, the date it was set, and the analyst’s record on that stock.

What sits behind each rating a buy-side analyst reads

The rating and the target do not always say the same thing. In AnaChart records the median Buy target sits 23.1% above the share price, the median Hold target 6.1% above it and the median Sell target 10.5% below it.

33.9% of Hold targets sit more than 10% above the price, and 20.6% of Sell targets are still above it.

Key takeaway: A Sell target sat a median 10.5% below the price, yet 20.6% of Sell targets were still above it.

Published research tends to move prices. Asquith, Mikhail and Au (2005) found that the market reacts to changes in price targets more strongly than to changes in earnings forecasts. They also found that analysts’ targets were reached slightly over half of the time.

Brav and Lehavy (2003) found that targets carry information on the day they are published, and that over longer periods targets track the share price, with the one-year target about 28% above it on average.

Three days the consensus moved together

On 24 July 2025, 24 analysts raised their Alphabet targets on one day, to a median $225 with the stock at $192.17. A year later the stock was $317.69.

On 31 July 2025, 20 analysts raised their Microsoft targets to a median $640 with the stock at $533.50. The stock did not reach that median and was $451.10 a year later.

On 30 July 2026, 19 of 20 Meta analysts cut their targets with the stock at $539.03. Ken Gawrelski of Wells Fargo cut from $835 to $640. By 24 Sep 2026 the stock was $777.59, past 12 of the 20 new targets.

Same stock, same day, different calls

A buy-side analyst rarely reads one note on a stock. On a busy day there can be more than ten.

Here are two such days, with the prices at the time and what followed. The record column is each analyst’s reached targets on that stock, from our stock pages on 22 October 2026.

On a phone, swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Broadcom was $418.91 on 4 June 2026. Caterpillar was $889.67 on 1 May 2026.

On 4 June 2026, 18 analysts published Broadcom targets, from $400 to $640, with the stock at $418.91.

Sixteen sat above the price, and four of those are in the table. Three of the four had records of 25 of 28 or better on the stock.

Broadcom then fell to $355.59 at the low, and none of the 16 targets above the price has been reached so far. The two $400 targets, both with a Hold, sat below the price.

On 1 May 2026, with Caterpillar at $889.67, Tami Zakaria of JPMorgan set a $1,125 target with a Buy. Chad Dillard of Bernstein raised his target from $769 to $879 with a Hold, just under the price.

Caterpillar rose to $985.82, then fell back below $879 by the week of 2 August. It was $848.14 on 11 October.

Key takeaway: On both days the targets spanned a wide range, and the analyst with the long record was not always the one whose target was reached.

Neither day had one right answer on the day. Read together, the notes give a range, and the records show whose range has held up on that stock before.

What to do with this

1. Read every note on the stock, not one. The range of targets on one day says more than any single number.
2. Check each analyst’s record on that stock. AnaChart’s stock pages list reached targets and a performance score per analyst, per stock.
3. Look at the target, not only the rating. A Hold can carry a target well above the price, and a Sell can sit above it too.
4. Note the date. A target published before a big move in the stock is out of date the day after.

How we measured this

Calls, ratings and targets come from AnaChart’s records of sell-side analysts through 5 October 2026. The price on the day of a call is the closing price AnaChart recorded that day, adjusted for later stock splits and without dividends.

To judge whether a target in the table was reached, we used the closing prices AnaChart records on days analysts publish, one point a week.

A target counts as reached in the first week such a price was at or past it, so the true date can be a few days earlier.

Each analyst’s record on the stock, counted as targets reached out of targets set, was read from AnaChart’s stock pages on 22 October 2026. Those pages count every trading day, so their figures are the official ones.

Sources

1. FINRA, Regulatory Notice 15-30, Research Analysts and Research Reports (Rule 2241), 2015
2. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Regulation Analyst Certification, Release 33-8193, 2003
3. Asquith, P., Mikhail, M. and Au, A. (2005). Information content of equity analyst reports. Journal of Financial Economics (NBER working paper 9246)
4. Brav, A. and Lehavy, R. (2003). An empirical analysis of analysts’ target prices: short-term informativeness and long-term dynamics. Journal of Finance 58(5), 1933 to 1967

Last Updated: October 2026. This article has been reviewed and updated to reflect current market conditions and the latest analyst data available on AnaChart.

Related Reading

• Sell-Side Equity Research in a Nutshell
• Buy Side and Sell Side: Key Things to Know
• Why Do Firms Hire Sell-Side Analysts?

Buy-Side vs Sell-Side Analysts: FAQ

What is a sell-side analyst?

A sell-side analyst works at a brokerage or investment bank and publishes research, ratings, and price targets for a broad set of investor clients. These public targets are what AnaChart tracks and scores for accuracy.

What is a buy-side analyst?

A buy-side analyst works at an asset manager or hedge fund and researches investments privately to guide their own firm’s decisions, generally without publishing public price targets.

Which analysts’ price targets can I track on AnaChart?

AnaChart tracks sell-side analysts’ published price targets and ratings, with a per-stock accuracy record for each, going back to 2004.

How often do sell-side analysts rate a stock Sell?

In AnaChart records through 5 Oct 2026, 4.9% of 729,921 rated calls are Sell, 31.7% are Hold and 63.4% are Buy.

How close does the consensus price target come to the real price?

Across 8,537 stock-and-date pairs from 2019 to 2024, the consensus target missed the price 12 months later by a median 23.8%.

Do buy-side analysts publish price targets?

No. Their research stays inside the fund. The public ratings and price targets in the news come from sell-side analysts.

Which job pays more, buy side or sell side?

It depends on the firm and the fund’s results, and we do not hold pay data. What differs clearly is how the work is judged: in public for the sell side, by fund returns for the buy side.

Related on AnaChart: browse the top performing analysts by sector, and compare platforms in AnaChart vs TipRanks.

For institutional teams: AnaChart’s full analyst price-target and accuracy dataset, every analyst, every target and revision since 2004, is available warehouse-native through AnaChart Corporate Access, delivered straight into Snowflake or Google BigQuery with no ETL.