File this column under: Why It Pays to Read the Footnotes.

On Tuesday, Longbow Research, an independent institutional research and brokerage firm with offices in New York, San Francisco and Independence, Ohio, published a report recommending that its clients buy shares in Tempur Sealy International, the mattress maker.

That’s not unusual. Wall Street research analysts put out buy recommendations every day. Probably too often, in fact.

But Longbow’s report was atypical in one way: Mark Rupe, the analyst who wrote it, recently left Tempur Sealy as head of its investor relations unit. Investors didn’t learn that, though, unless they read a disclosure on the penultimate page of the 17-page report, which said that Mr. Rupe or a member of his family owned stock and options in Tempur Sealy.

The amount of the holding wasn’t disclosed, but it appears to have resulted from Mr. Rupe’s employment at the bedding maker. The report also noted that Mr. Rupe stood to receive additional incentive compensation from Tempur Sealy over the next two years if the company met certain performance hurdles.