(FORTUNE Magazine) – These days everyone wants his own "e." People want to work for an e-company doing e-business making piles of e-money just like all their e-friends from back at Princeton. Equity research analysts are no exception. And in a fit of e-envy, these market watchers are changing their titles and job descriptions faster than you can say, "E-nough already!"

Take Christopher Vroom, a seasoned retail analyst at San Francisco's Thomas Weisel Partners. He's now an "e-tailing and hard-line retailing" specialist. Lehman Brothers Internet guru Brian Oakes used to follow the newspaper industry. But he parlayed his understanding of media into coverage of America Online and recently eBay. He hardly pays attention to old media anymore. Chuck Hill, the oft-quoted research director for First Call in Boston, was once an analyst covering the electronics industry. Such a classification seems quaint today.

Creative job descriptions are nothing new, of course. Garbage collectors figured out a long time ago that waste-management expert or sanitation engineer is a more palatable title. Companies also play the game--except with higher stakes. "Categorization in this business can help or it can kill," says Raymond Lane, president of software maker Oracle. Indeed, Oracle is desperate to be known for its software applications that help businesses adapt to the Web rather than for just its traditional database business. "We're changing our value proposition," Lane says. And how: Oracle's stock has more than tripled since investors picked up on its "e-business" message.

Similarly, when equity analysts change their titles, it's often about more than mere wordplay. Like chameleons facing a new environment, analysts respond quickly to major market trends. "Analysts have to adapt to changing markets," says John Marren, an investment banker with Morgan Stanley's Menlo Park, Calif., office.

And that means alert stock pickers should pay attention. Watching analysts change their focus is one way to catch emerging sectors. A prime example: enterprise software analysts who are remaking themselves as e-business experts. That's because big companies have stopped buying so much enterprise software and are instead focusing on e-commerce platforms. Enterprise software, yesterday's hot sector, is now yesterday's news.

Rick Sherlund, a Goldman Sachs software analyst, points out that while established enterprise software companies he follows, like Oracle and PeopleSoft, may have price/earnings ratios of 50 to 60 when times are good, younger business-to-business e-commerce companies can fetch multiples of as much as 20 to 30 times revenues. The difference is stark when you consider that many B2B companies simply are enterprise software companies wrapped in an e-package. Sherlund, who knows many software companies are eager to talk to his Internet-oriented colleagues, is trying to pitch software companies the idea that "we're Internet analysts too."

The labels raise the question of just what it is that research analysts do and why the classifications are so important. There was a time when analysts followed specific sectors so that they could advise individual or institutional clients on which stocks to buy and which to avoid. Today, with most analysts maintaining "buy"--or, at worst, "hold"--recommendations on stocks, the real game is attracting and supporting companies that can be good investment- banking clients for their firms. So if an analyst is to be successful at recruiting the hot company du jour as a client, the coverage area must fit the buzzword of the moment.

The best analysts are always on the lookout for ways to extend their coverage. For example, I was surprised last summer to bump into Morgan Stanley's Chuck Phillips--one of the top enterprise software analysts in the land--at a Microsoft analyst day in Seattle. Everyone knows Mary Meeker follows Microsoft for Morgan Stanley, so I asked Phillips what he was doing there. "Many of my companies compete against Microsoft," he said, explaining that keeping tabs on the software giant helps him keep abreast of the marketplace. Looks as if Phillips has his "e."

ADAM LASHINSKY is the Silicon Valley columnist for TheStreet.com. You can browse his Wired Investor columns at www.fortune.com/investor/wired or e-mail him at alashinsky@thestreet.com.