Consuming Content

A reader left the following;

A reader asked David Merkel the following: "I’m interested ... in a catalog of what, how, and why for “information sources you get pushed to” you and “information sources you pull/poll” on a daily or weekly basis."

I would love your response to the same question.

This is something that has come up before. I have to believe that a large portion of a portfolio manager's time is spent consuming information. This could include monitoring current events in the world, monitoring current events with portfolio holdings and trying to learn about companies that could be added to the portfolio.

The manner in which people access information is evolving, it has always evolved. Before the internet people could subscribe to things like Valueline, get S&P tearsheets, have annual reports mailed to them and have other types of information mailed. Anyone willing to shell out for a Bloomberg Terminal in the 1980s and early 1990s was getting pretty good information.

The beginning of the internet as a household utility is an obvious turning point for the democratization of accessing information that might have otherwise been available but extremely expensive before the internet. For the most part the information first available on the web was more data oriented with a few content sites like Motley Fool and theStreet.com starting out as web based (as opposed to MSM putting up websites).

Then at some point along the way blogs, aggregators and other more socially oriented content hit the scene in the early to mid 2000. I was not even close to being the first blog but late 2004 I think is fair to say was fairly early.

To the reader's question I get daily content from most of the usual websites like WSJ, the FT, Bloomberg, Reuters and so on. I also get content from Seeking Alpha, the morning must know column is the first thing I read when I turn on the laptop. I have always gotten a lot of content by just coming across it one way or another (linked in other articles, comments left on various things I read and a few other ways.

The biggest change in how I access info is from Twitter. I keep my feed up all day (most of the time) which allows me to let other people find good content to read. I do reciprocate with my Tweets but it is a good leverage of time; letting other people you believe know a thing or three fund stuff for you to read. In Dave Merkel's response is a mention of John Hempton. I doubt I would mention him in a list of a who I read type of post but have linked to him before and people Tweet about his posts without my having to think about it.

As far as stuff getting pushed to me, I get too much of that and I look at very little of it. Even when I unsubscribe I will start getting content from other sources, it really is a lot and again I don't find it very useful.

I'm sure something will come along that will be better than Twitter at leveraging time. Maybe the next Twitter will be Twitter (a joke from back when Alberto Vilar used to say Yahoo will be the next Yahoo).

One of the great aspects of this job is being able to spend time reading and learning but as it has since I started, it will continue to evolve and hopefully make the job a portfolio manager does even more productive.

The first picture was from the Muri Beach Lagoon which is so vast you need a wide angle lens to capture it and the second one is from the Vaima Restaurant which has tables out on the sand of the beach.