It's not really about where, it's that they do it at all. Are you really going to spend 100 hours researching a company before you make a $1000 investment? If you are going to spend millions dollars on a single company long term you're going to spend hundreds of hours on research before you close the deal.

A CEO will answer Blackrock's phone call, not yours. Hedge funds can afford to hire analysts and buy information because they have many orders of magnitude more under management than you or me.