Citi Told Some Customers to Buy the Sells

Research.

One way to think about sell-side equity investment research is that it is one product for retail investors and a completely different product for institutional investors, and the dividing line between the two products is right at the top of the report. At the top of an analyst's research report it says "Buy" or "Sell" or "Hold"; that's for retail. Everything below that (the financial modeling, the analysis of news, the industry overviews), and everything outside of the report (phone conversations with analysts, meetings with corporate executives), is for institutions. The institutions make their own buy/sell/hold decisions; they value research for context and nuance and background and access. The retail shareholders have day jobs; they are not reading research reports carefully to inform their own financial models, and they're certainly not getting corporate access. They just want to know what stocks to buy, and for that purpose, the big "Buy" at the top is very helpful.