2026 Sell-Side Outlooks: Which Analysts and Desks IR Teams Should Watch

Why 2026’s Outlook Season Is a Signal for Corporate Access, Not Just Markets

Every November and December, the major sell-side research franchises publish their outlook decks for the coming year. Corporate-access and IR teams tend to treat these as background reading. That’s a mistake. Outlook season is the clearest public signal of where analyst attention, and therefore investor demand for management access, is about to concentrate.

When Goldman Sachs Research, J.P. Morgan Global Research, and other major desks converge on the same three or four macro themes, buy-side allocators reorganize their research consumption around those themes almost immediately. Conference invitations, NDR requests, and teach-in scheduling follow the same pattern within weeks, not months.

The 2026 outlook cycle points to four convergent themes: a broadening but decelerating equity bull market, an AI capex supercycle, a probable U.S. IPO and ECM revival, and diverging global monetary policy. Each theme maps to a specific coverage vertical. That mapping is the practical output of this article: not stock calls, but a target list of research franchises and coverage areas worth prioritizing in 2026 outreach planning.

The Macro Strategists Setting the Table: Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan

Goldman Sachs Research and J.P. Morgan Global Research have published the two most-referenced macro frameworks for 2026, and their views will anchor nearly every investor call scheduled between January and March. Corporate-access teams should expect management questions to echo these frameworks almost verbatim.

Goldman Sachs forecasts global GDP growth of 2.8% in 2026, above the 2.5% consensus, with U.S. growth at 2.6% versus a 2.0% consensus figure. Goldman attributes the upside to reduced tariff drag, tax cuts, and easier financial conditions. On equities, Goldman stays constructive but expects lower index returns than 2025 as the bull market broadens across sectors rather than concentrating gains in a narrow leadership group. That broadening implies rising dispersion between winners and laggards within the same sector, which is exactly the condition that increases investor appetite for differentiated, company-specific access rather than index-level exposure.

J.P. Morgan Global Research takes a similarly constructive but more cautious stance: double-digit equity gains forecast across both developed and emerging markets, alongside a 35% probability assigned to a U.S. and global recession in 2026. J.P. Morgan frames sticky inflation as a defining theme and identifies three forces shaping markets next year: uneven monetary policy, the relentless expansion of AI, and intensifying market polarization. The bank also expects one additional 25 basis point Fed cut in January 2026.

Goldman and J.P. Morgan disagree on where the risk sits, growth upside versus recession probability, but they agree on the mechanism: dispersion is rising, and investors will want more granular, sector- and name-specific research to navigate it. That’s the operational cue for corporate-access teams: build 2026 roadshow and NDR calendars around companies and sectors where this dispersion is expected to be widest, and prioritize relationships with the macro desks whose frameworks investors are actively quoting on earnings calls.

AI/TMT Coverage Is the Center of Gravity for 2026 Investor Demand

AI capex is the single theme referenced across nearly every 2026 outlook reviewed, from sell-side macro strategy to buy-side asset allocation. Corporate-access teams covering technology, semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, and power/utilities names tied to data-center buildouts should treat AI/TMT coverage teams as the highest-priority access category for 2026.

J.P. Morgan Global Research names “the relentless expansion of AI” as one of three structural forces shaping markets next year, alongside monetary policy and market polarization. That framing isn’t confined to J.P. Morgan’s sell-side research: J.P. Morgan Asset Management and J.P. Morgan Private Bank echo the same AI-capex narrative in their own 2026 outlook materials, which tells corporate-access teams something important. The AI theme isn’t a single desk’s house view; it’s a cross-franchise consensus spanning sell-side research, asset management, and private banking distribution. When a theme shows up consistently across a bank’s research, asset-management, and private-wealth arms, investor demand for access to companies inside that theme tends to be broader and more sustained than a single-desk call.

Practically, this means IR teams in AI-exposed sectors should expect NDR and conference-invite volume from AI/TMT coverage analysts to run well above the volume they saw in 2024 and early 2025. Building a standing cadence of teach-ins and sector deep-dives, rather than one-off calls, will be the more efficient way to absorb that demand without overloading management bandwidth.

The ECM/IPO Renaissance: Why RBC’s Capital Markets Desk Belongs on Your Radar

RBC Capital Markets projects a U.S. IPO and ECM issuance range of $80 billion to $100 billion for 2026, pointing to a growing backlog of private companies preparing to go public after a multiyear issuance drought. For corporate-access teams, an ECM revival changes the calculus for who needs to be in the room during roadshows, follow-on offerings, and post-IPO investor education.

An issuance renaissance means ECM research desks, not just equity strategy or sector research teams, become critical relationship holders. ECM analysts and capital-markets bankers shape which institutional investors get early access to new issuance, how roadshow schedules get built, and which follow-on offerings get prioritized once a company is trading. If RBC’s issuance forecast holds, corporate-access teams should expect 2026 to bring a meaningfully heavier roadshow calendar than the previous two years, concentrated in sectors that have been waiting on the sidelines for better market conditions.

For companies that already went public in the 2021 IPO wave and have been underfollowed since, a busier ECM environment is also an opportunity: renewed issuance activity tends to pull more sell-side initiation coverage into adjacent, already-public names as banks compete for follow-on mandates. IR teams at recently public companies should proactively reach out to ECM desks now, before the 2026 issuance calendar fills, to make sure their name is part of that adjacent-coverage conversation.

What the Earnings Data Is Telling Sector Analysts

FactSet’s consensus data shows S&P 500 earnings growth forecast at 15.0% for the coming period, well above the 8.6% 10-year average. That gap tells corporate-access teams which sector analysts are about to get busiest, and busiest analysts generate the most investor-access requests.

An earnings growth forecast nearly double the historical average almost always reflects a small number of sectors carrying a disproportionate share of the estimate revisions, typically the same AI-infrastructure and technology names driving the capex theme covered above. When consensus earnings growth runs this far above trend, sell-side sector teams tend to increase both the frequency of company updates and the volume of investor events they host around results season, because the gap between consensus and reality becomes the most tradable story of the quarter.

The action item for IR teams: if your sector is among those driving the above-trend estimate, expect analyst update frequency, and investor requests for management access, to rise materially around each earnings print in 2026. Build buffer capacity into your IR calendar around results weeks rather than assuming a standard quarterly cadence will hold.

How Buy-Side Positioning Is Shaping Sell-Side Demand

J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s 2026 outlook, alongside broader buy-side sentiment captured in a Reuters investor survey, points to a consistent set of investor priorities heading into next year: inflation persistence, AI capex durability, Fed succession dynamics, and rates/FX positioning. These are the questions institutional investors are actually bringing to calls right now, and they should shape which analyst types corporate-access teams prioritize for outreach.

This matters because sell-side coverage categories don’t map one-to-one onto buy-side questions. An investor asking about Fed succession isn’t looking for a sector analyst; they need a rates/FX strategist or macro economist on the call. An investor asking about AI capex durability wants a TMT analyst with supply-chain visibility, not a generalist. Corporate-access teams that keep inviting the same relationship-coverage analyst to every event, regardless of the topic investors are actually asking about, will see declining attendance quality even if headline registration numbers hold steady.

The calibration point: match the analyst type to the buy-side question of the moment. If inflation stickiness and Fed policy dominate investor conversation in Q1 2026, prioritize rates/FX strategists and macro economists for that window. As the AI capex conversation intensifies around earnings season, shift priority to TMT and sector-specific coverage. Static, one-size-fits-all coverage lists are the most common reason corporate-access programs underperform relative to the demand actually sitting in the market.

A Practical Watch-List Framework for IR and Corporate-Access Teams

The four 2026 themes above translate into four coverage verticals worth building a standing outreach plan around: macro/equity strategy, AI/TMT research, ECM/capital-markets desks, and rates/FX strategy. Each vertical requires a different access format and a different outreach cadence, summarized below.

Use this table as a planning input, not a rigid schedule. Revisit it quarterly as consensus shifts, since the whole premise of outlook-season signal-reading is that the themes, and the analysts behind them, move faster than annual planning cycles typically account for.

advertising@topicintelligence.ai

See Full Bio