Prior research on equity analysts focuses almost exclusively on those employed by sell-side investment banks and brokerage houses. Yet investment firms undertake their own buy-side research and their analysts face different stock selection and recommendation incentives than their sell-side...

We address whether retail investors use SEC filings when making trading decisions. We find that retail investor trading, both buying and selling, is significantly related to EDGAR search for 10-K and 10-Q filings, more so than to Google search. This is true for firms with high or low visibility,...