Understanding my interests and professional goals in the
financial industry narrowed my decision on what discourse community to
research. When looking at the fundamentals of investing, there is a foundation
that decisions are rooted to; analysis of information. The professional career
title for this is called sell-side analyst.
As a finance major I’m passionate about investing and the
aspects that encompass being a successful analyst. The analyst will typically
build models to project the firms’ financial results, as well as speak with
customers, suppliers, competitors, and other sources with knowledge of the
industry – Simpson CFA. This may be unappealing to some people, but I’ve always
enjoyed networking and not having to sit at the same office cubical day in and
out. Also, the fact this job requires one to constantly keep up with current
and future trends makes no two days the same.
To truly determine sell-side analysts as a discourse
community, I broke it down by John Swale’s Six characteristics:
1. [It has] a broadly agreed set
of common public goals.
-In practice
the job of an analyst is to convince institutional account to direct their
trading through
the trading desk of the analyst’s firm. The analyst must be
seen by the buy-side as providing
valuable services. Crucial factor of an
analyst is to be the first to the client with new and
different information.
2. [It has] mechanisms of intercommunication among its members (such as newsletters or journals).
-Internal:
Direct contact with management, meetings, conference calls,
-External:
Reports, News Appearances, Corporate Access Events
3. [It] utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.
- news appearances, websites, magazine
articles, journal articles, blogs, etc
4. [It] uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.
- News letters
or FAQ webpage
5. In addition to owning genres, [it] has acquired some specific lexis.
-consensus estimates, investment
rating and reporting vs. revised, “whisper number”
6. [It has] a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and expertise.
- associate,
senior associate, assistant vice president, senior analyst, managing director.
After
analyzing the six characteristics, I can see a slight degree to which sell-side
analysts are a discourse community. To further see the extent and support my
niche stance I will be interviewing people who work in this field on Wall
Street both by telephone and via email.
After reading Mirabelli
description of multiple literacies, not just reading… but things such as
reading people, I have developed questions to uncover how this is present in
the role of a sell-side analyst. For example, quantitative, qualitative, and
trends are known aspects applied by analyst, but how are they essential and
accomplished? How do you read the market? What motivates investors / buy-side?
From a situational standpoint, how do you react to pre-market vs open-market vs
closed-market? Also how much does current events in the news affect your
day-to-day operations? These are potential questions to understand the
significance of multiple literacies in this discourse community.
Continuing
the structure of my research, Wardle’s breakdown of identity, authority, and
learning to write in the new workplace opened my mind to find out what its
really like to enter this discourse community. Although I have relatives and
friends in this field, applying detailed questions about their career will help
me mentally prepare for this profession. For example, what licenses to acquire;
Series 7, Series 86/87, Series 63? How do you keep a work life balance? What
are the best ways to advance career path? How did you or still do build your
identity through engagement, imagination, and alignment?
“Authority,
then, is an intangible quality granted to a persons through institutions, which
renders their pronouncements as accepted by those in that institution’s
communities of practice, but which must be maintained through individuals’
speech and actions” –Wardle’s (526). This essential aspect is priceless in the
analyst world. The reports, projections, actions, and speeches can make or
break the reputation of an analyst. Therefore, I’m very interested in
understanding how an analyst protects and builds their authority within this
discourse community.
Looking forward, I am still not sure on the niche of my
paper. I know there is much controversy on the value or how people overlook the
sell-side of equity research, so one stance I developed is: The public often
overlooks the value of the sell-side analysts, yet their role has many
behind-the-scenes aspects that are directly related to success of the buy-side
investment managers.
By the end of next class I hope to have my niche established
and then be able to start my primary research.
