i wouldn't say that people blindly follow the research at big investment firms, but they take it seriously. i had invested for years and just used company reports, yahoo finance, motley fool, and media articles. when i invested in tesla i ended up getting morgan stanley's research. i couldn't believe how well done it was. the media and the other resources are a joke in comparison. one of the key things is they have models into the future that project sales and profit and have dcf analysis. if you want to bring down income inequality, you should make a napster for financial research.