Every analyst will experience stock recommendation failures during their career. Unlike many other professions, these pivotal moments occur in the full glare of clients, colleagues, equity‐sales teams, and the media. This research explores the practices of analysts up to and beyond the point where, faced with a failing recommendation, they contemplate “throwing in the towel” on their recommendation. Based on empirical evidence gathered from interviews with sell‐side analysts and their key interlocutors—equity‐sales specialists, investors, and investor relations officers—this paper uncovers several new empirical insights into the recommendation practices of analysts. The main argument made in the paper is that capitulation practices emerge from the specific contextual framework of individual recommendations and the analyst's conduct as a knowledgeable, emotional human agent. We identify several contextual contingencies of stock recommendations that underpin how a capitulation episode unfolds, including the temporal proximity of the capitulation to the original recommendation; the importance and profile of the stock to the analyst's reputation (“franchise intensity”); the level of interest/reaction from clients, equity‐sales teams and corporates; the nature/cause of recommendation failure; and recommendation boldness. Our study provides evidence that what an analyst does when faced with a failing recommendation cannot be reduced to a predictable, rational process and informs our understanding of observed practices such as the reluctance of analysts to capitulate and why “recommendation paralysis” often follows a recommendation capitulation.

This paper explores the ways in which sell‐side (SS) financial analysts seek to position themselves advantageously within the wider field of investment advice in spite of widespread skepticism over the value that their forecasts and recommendations add to investment decisions. The field of investment advice has been characterized in recent years by a number of regulatory and technological changes that have forced SS analysts to reconstitute the ways in which they influence the investment decisions of buy‐side (BS) actors. Faced with existential threats, SS analysts have responded to the disruptive impact of technology and regulation by struggling hard to ensure that their services are still valued by fund managers. Key to this ongoing process is the recalibration of professional expertise, which previous research has alluded to but not explored in detail. Central to the persistence of SS analysts in processes of investment decision making are activities revolving around the production and use of analyst reports which, our findings indicate, are less valuable for their informational content than their role as “relational devices,” ascribing legitimacy to SS analysts and earning them an entry ticket to more substantive, value‐adding interactions with companies and BS actors. We also show that economic considerations in the area of investment advice are influenced by social ties, the motivations of various actors in the field, and their relative position vis‐à‐vis other actors. More generally, we contribute to the literature on professional projects by showing how professional groups are constantly engaged in attempts to reposition themselves in the social space, but that field‐level changes can restrict the outcomes of these strategies to mitigation rather than advancement for the professionals concerned.