AReviewOrTwo Profile picture
Dec 21, 2019 13 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Good analysts don’t just consume a lot of detail in an academic fashion. They build knowledge in a purposeful, strategic way... some of the things they do include:
- Identify critical biz drivers & pressure points / risks
- Weight the most important information correctly
- Understand how management think, what they want & what they are motivated by
- Always benchmark their views to the expectations they believe are discounted in the price
- Form independent views from a variety of sources
- Are creative in how they think (both in how they think about research & how they think about a company or industry)
- Filter out ideas quickly (eg based on risk / downside, circle of competence or lack of an expectation gap)
- Come up with long term ideas where the upside is significant
- Are comfortable in saying ‘I don’t know’
- Always understand the short thesis on something they think is a buy
- Have identified, in advance, signposts that could indicate they are wrong
- Understand time is a scarce resource and prioritise well
- Realise when they have come across a potentially unique or exceptional investment and drop everything to work on it
- Question / interview well: eg ask pertinent and short questions, use silence and do not interrupt
- Focus their work on areas that are likely to provide mispricings
- Develop mutually beneficial relationships with people who can help them
- Understand their biases & weaknesses
- Happy to change mind when they get new evidence
- Honesty when they think they have made a mistake
- Carefully observe real world trends, eg they think about how consumer behaviour is shifting based on what they, their friends & family are doing... they seek opportunities on the right side of the big tailwinds
- Where possible, ask every business they are a customer of what services they use & what do they enjoy using, eg where do they advertise, who does payments, which productivity tools they use, who does website, who does payroll, who does banking etc... analysts are curious
- Dig deeper to seek to understand things that ‘don’t make sense’
https://t.co/o9TBkbiB2b
- Look for win-win situations:
https://t.co/YvWWbPRU9E
- Quickly identify red flags:
https://t.co/4e9oR90T27
- Build a diverse set of primary information sources:
https://t.co/7rchOiyEay
- Use checklists (appropriately and not at the expense of creativity):
https://t.co/c0YZtyUhnZ

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More from @AReviewOrTwo1

Feb 17
A dozen takeaways from the interview with Win Murray, Director of Research at Diamond Hill on the JRo Show with @JRogrow

This is a thread for analysts, directors of research and portfolio managers:
1. Do not constrain the best investors / analysts

As a director of research, Win is good at identifying talent. When he identifies great talent, he doesn’t seek to train them. He empowers them. If you have a team of great analysts, pushing them into formality and bureaucracy might break what they are good at.

Great investment ideas are often non-consensus. There are many ways to win. Standardisation and formality in processing ideas can be frictions on the path to finding great ideas.

2. Identify the key drivers

“I think the outstanding ones do a wonderful job of isolating the critical component of each differentiated investment idea. The less outstanding ones will throw a lot of facts at you, but will require you to discover the real core of the investment… the best ones will quickly see the only thing that matters is X and a little bit of Y. And some of the others are going to equal weight every letter of the alphabet and present it to you that way.”

This idea of isolating the critical drivers and the key research questions is a constant theme in analyst feedback. An analyst will likely still need to trawl through all the facts, experts and reading, but should be looking to constantly simplify and distill. Don’t be afraid to ask experts and sell side analysts what the critical variables are. You might disagree, but at least you start to build up an idea of what others think are important.

Search for simplicity the other side of complexity.
3. Sizing an investment team

To size an investment team, think about turnover and the required idea velocity.

“So let's do an exercise here. Let's say you have a 50-stock portfolio and that you have 30% annual turnover. So you are going to need 15 new stock ideas over the course of a year. Let's also say that you only purchase half of the ideas that your analysts present to you. You're not forced to buy everything that you're shown, but you consider them. And on average, you buy about half of them. You're going to need to see 30 ideas to properly run your portfolio at its current level of turnover. If the typical analyst produces three ideas a year, then we've defined your capacity needs as 10 people for that fund.”

4. On pitching an investment idea

The goal is for analysts to 1) find a mispriced idea and 2) convince others that the idea is mispriced.

“At its core, the output that you're producing has to be able to show that the equity is mispriced. The only way to show an equity is mispriced is to understand the business well enough to convince us that your valuation, which is different than what the market is applying to this stock, is correct.”

Consistent with the theme of high talent density and then freedom to operate, Win is hesitant to dictate a checklist to analysts when they present their ideas:

“I'm very hesitant to prescribe a checklist of things that I want to make sure you've done because that's going to make us worse. It's going to take our very best people and force them into a process that might not be right for them. And it's going to take every idea and treat it as if it's a tax audit or something like that.”
Read 7 tweets
Apr 8, 2024
Analysts should review their research process to see if it is producing good output. Some might prefer a continuous effort or something for team away days. A useful approach is value analysis a concept from lean principles.

It’s about working on the process vs the work itself.
Investors are different, but I generally separate out idea generation from the research process. Research is about idea validation / testing and building conviction.

Research has to be timely and actionable otherwise in competitive public markets the opportunity might be gone.
Understand how each part of your research process adds value to the end outcome - getting a good idea in the portfolio. Try to think about activities in the context of value-added, essential non-value-added and non-essential non-value-added.
Read 16 tweets
Mar 25, 2022
Excellent 1991 HBR article on learning by Chris Argyris

The dilemma: “…success in the marketplace increasingly depends on learning, yet most people don’t know how to learn…those members of the organization that many assume to be the best at learning are…not very good at it.”
A few highlights for me…
1/ Don’t just think about ‘problem solving’ with a focus on the external environment. Look inward - reflect on your own behaviour. Hold yourself accountable for how you contribute to an organization’s problems.
Read 12 tweets
Feb 10, 2022
This is a key point for an analyst / PM to learn / fight against:

“People too often do their best work at the start and then get lazy or anchored.”

It’s easy to say, but have to think from first principles every day. It is easy for an analyst to get stuck in the weeds so one…
…way a PM / team can help is by asking good qus. Eg:
- How are you thinking about this new datapoint?
- Why is the co going down this strategic path?
- Are results & strategies of competitors consistent with what mgmt are saying?
- How does this expert view impact our thinking?
Has to be done in a kind, supportive, collaborative but intense way with full buy-in from everyone that that is how it works. If it is aggressive, it burns people out & makes for a less durable culture over time. What should be deep conversations about ideas just become fights.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 15, 2021
Valve’s new employee handbook is a fantastic read. Most companies should aspire to have a document like this which is specific to their own context.

Source: cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/apps/valve/Val…

Some ideas that resonated include…
1/ Give people the freedom to innovate: hierarchy helps predictability & control, but when you seek to “recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people on Earth, telling them to sit at a desk and do what they’re told obliterates 99 percent of their value.”
2/ The customer is first: “Every company will tell you that “the customer is boss,” but here that statement has weight. There’s no red tape stopping you from figuring out for yourself what our customers want, and then giving it to them.”
Read 11 tweets
Sep 2, 2021
Douglas H. Bellemore’s six characteristics for success as aggressive investors…

Source: The Strategic Investor, 1963
Patience

“The aggressive investor should not expect quick results… Success depends, in large measure, on the ability to select undervalued situations not presently recognised by the majority of investors and to wait for expected developments to provide capital gains…”
Courage

“The investor must have solid convictions and the courage and confidence emanating from them - that is, courage, at times, to ignore those who disagree…Decision-making ability…is vital to success in investing…[this] assumes judgments are right more often than wrong.”
Read 9 tweets

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