[utunga]

By way of contrast I work for a financial company who provide research and recommendations to wall street and whose main 'unique point of difference' is that we don't take positions ourselves.

The downside of the idea "you can believe someone who back themselves enough to put their own money in" is that your recommendations are then, of course, not truly independent or unbiased.

Most big sell side broker dealers claim there is a chinese wall between their research analysts and their actual trading arm, but sometimes that chinese wall can be suprisingly thin. For example, when a merger is in the early offings, or other large deals about to happen, 'the street' can just go quiet on the subject. Only the (very few) truly independent research firms are still talking at that point.

Having previously been close to non-financial journalism it was a bit of a shock to me when I first realised how little truly independent (in the sense of not trading on their own opinion) news or research there was. But, I now understand why that is.

The optimum situation is probably to have a mix of approaches.