Here's an idea. Don't listen to ANY investment advice from Wall Street.
Agreed. Any settlement, short of complete divestment of the research unit (not saying I advocate the government forcing this) will fail to remove the conflict of interest problem. I suspect that all these settlements will have the unintended consequence of making investors rely even more on the research which will still be biased and still be no more useful than randonly thowing darts at the Wall Street Journal.
Why would anyone expect unbiased advice from an investment bank? When these investors buy a car, do they expect a Cadillac dealer to give them unbiased opinions on the Cadillac vs. a Lexus?
Exactly. Anybody who does a little research and backtesting can figure out that listening to sell-side analysts is a bad idea. This is a case of the government spending millions of our dollars to make it look like it is doing something, under the assumption that all investors are incredibly stupid.