Respecting Your Readers, Pt. 2: Failed FEEs
When and how do FEEs fail? Predictably, when they demonstrate some degree of writerly hubris.
By Robert Walker Cohen
Find “Respecting Your Readers Part 1: Time,” at this link.
In our last post, we introduced Warren Buffett’s famed use of the FEE device — the Friendly Everyday Example — throughout much of his career and his most successful corporate communications. For more on the FEE, I recommend reading “The Buffett Letters, Pt. 3: Enter The FEE,” as it both clearly defines the term and explores Buffett’s recurring use of a particular FEE over several decades.
As discussed in yesterday’s post, FEEs are not simply analogies. They are teaching tools that leverage the average reader’s everyday experience in order to help them grasp a new or more esoteric subject. At their best, they can make the abstract concrete, lighten the heavy, and soften the sharp.
Although Buffett has used them frequently, they aren’t foolproof.
When a FEE backfires, it can distract readers from the intended message and aggravate existing brand weaknesses.
When and how do FEEs fail? Predictably, when they demonstrate some degree of writerly hubris.
FEEs that reflect writerly hubris typically manifest in three ways: Pride, Overreach, and Recklessness.
Let’s expand —
1. Pride. Serves the writer instead of the reader, reaching to make something graspable but making it about the writer instead. An example that exists to demonstrate range, wit, or cultural literacy has stopped explaining anything. The abstraction stays abstract; only the author comes into focus. The tell is that the writer seems smug or overly self-satisfied by their own intelligence.
Example: On May 11, 2017, discussing Macy's on CNBC's Mad Money, Jim Cramer reached for the Second World War. "Macy's is like the Polish Army in WWII" — which, he explained, fielded cavalry against German tanks, with predictable results. The point underneath was ordinary: a retailer bringing obsolete tools to a fight it can't win. It needed no help.
What the FEE added was Cramer, visibly enjoying his own range. It did not survive contact with people who knew the history. The Polish Embassy in Washington issued a statement calling the comparison inaccurate and insensitive, noting that Polish cavalry never charged German tanks — a small number of 1939 charges were directed against infantry, artillery and supplies — and that the image is Nazi and Communist propaganda still circulating in Western media. The embassy demanded a retraction and got one, with Cramer replying that he was sorry and it would not happen again.
That is the specific risk of Pride. A FEE reached for to demonstrate cultural literacy gets judged by people who have it.
2. Overreach. Needs more explaining than the original concept did, trying to teach while adding only another thing to learn. This can make the heavy even heavier. If you have to unpack the analogy, you have swapped one obscure thing for another and charged the reader for the trip. Aesthetically clunky, distracting, and disrespectful of your reader's time.
Example: On June 28, 2006, chairing a Senate Commerce Committee session, Ted Stevens set out to explain why internet providers should be able to prioritize some traffic:
"And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."
Note the sequence. He opens by denying an analogy about trucks that nobody offered. He replaces it with a second one about tubes. Then he spends three clauses explaining how the second one works. The concept underneath was congestion — shared capacity, finite, slower when crowded. Anyone who has sat in traffic already had it. The metaphor wasn't even wrong. Push more data through a node and it does become congested. It simply cost more to explain than the thing it was explaining. What survived was the phrase, not the argument: the speech spawned remixes and a Jon Stewart takedown, and is still described as one of this century's least persuasive examples of political rhetoric.
Overreach rarely ends this loudly. Stevens is remembered because he was a senator on camera. In writing, the same failure just closes the tab.
3. Recklessness. Tonally deaf with respect to the context, attempting to soften an uncomfortable truth but revealing only a lack of sincerity or integrity. When leadership tries to handwave away a major crisis by way of a FEE, it can attract more negative attention and press than the original crisis, betraying a lack of seriousness, incompetence, contempt, or worse. Rather than soften the sharp, a poorly handled FEE pushes the pointy end of the truth further against leadership.
Example: In July 2007, with credit markets already wobbling, Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince told the Financial Times: "As long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance. We're still dancing." He was out by November.
Three years later he explained to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission what he had actually meant: no single bank could withdraw from leveraged lending on its own and expect to still be in the business afterward.
That argument was defensible. The dance floor FEE wasn't — and it’s that image of gleeful “dancing,” amidst the great unraveling of 2007, that remains.
The Writerly Test
To avoid any of the above, I recommend a simple test.
First, state the core message — without the FEE — in a plain sentence. Then, ask yourself the following:
Is there anything the FEE does that the plain truth can’t on its own?
If the FEE does not help enhance the audience’s understanding in any way, nor sincerely soften or lighten a difficult message, then you should remove it. Otherwise, you risk writerly hubris.
Run the test on Prince’s “we’re still dancing” during 2007, and the result is instructive. His plain sentence — no bank can walk away from this business alone and expect to still have it — is clear, defensible, and considerably harder to argue with than a dance floor.
The FEE added nothing the truth couldn't carry. It only added a picture of a man enjoying himself while the building came down.
That is the whole cost of a failed FEE: hubris in the writer causes disrespect to arrive at the reader.
The plain sentence is usually the more respectful one. Use the FEE when you have a message that the plain truth can’t carry.
The Buffett Letters, Pt. 3: Enter The FEE
In 1979, Warren Buffett explained why he writes his own annual report by way of take-out chicken.
He was still running the same analogy thirty-three years later. And it wasn't his to begin with.
By Robert Walker Cohen
In 1979, Warren Buffett explained why he writes his own annual report by way of take-out chicken.
He was still running the same analogy thirty-three years later. And it wasn't his to begin with.
Most writers spend a good image once and throw it away.
Defining the move
Buffett is known for using the mundane and the everyday to explain complex topics to ordinary people. I call this move the Friendly Everyday Example, or "FEE" for short.
He reaches for them constantly. Baseball, in the 1997 letter, to explain why Berkshire declines most of what it's offered. A Nebraska farm and a New York retail property, in 2013, to explain what actually matters in an investment. A chronically leaking boat, in 1985, to explain why changing vessels beats patching leaks. A few have escaped the letters entirely — the cigar butt is now standard vocabulary for people who have never opened a Berkshire report.
The reason isn't decoration. Capital allocation, opportunity cost, intrinsic value, shareholder constituency — none of these have anything you can look at. The reader has no direct experience of them, and no instincts to draw on.
But every reader has been a restaurant customer. Everyone has watched a hitter swing at a bad pitch. Everyone knows the difference between bailing out a boat and getting off it.
That is what a FEE can do. They are most often used as teaching tools, though they also soften difficult truths and carry humor. At their best, they trade a subject the reader has no experience of for a situation they've already lived through — so the reader isn't acquiring a new judgment, but recognizing one they already hold.
The FEE helps the reader to arrive at their own conclusion, rather than simply to receive one from the writer.
1979: the deployment
The passage many quote comes from a section of the 1979 letter about financial reporting — specifically, about why Berkshire's annual report is written by Buffett rather than handed to a staff specialist or a public relations consultant. His argument is that owners are entitled to hear directly from the person running the business.
Then he makes the turn: companies largely obtain the shareholder constituency they seek and deserve, and a company that talks about short-term results will collect shareholders who care about short-term results.
Enter the restaurant FEE:
"Phil Fisher, a respected investor and author, once likened the policies of the corporation in attracting shareholders to those of a restaurant attracting potential customers. A restaurant could seek a given clientele—patrons of fast foods, elegant dining, [...] etc.—and eventually obtain an appropriate group of devotees. If the job were expertly done, that clientele, pleased with the service, menu, and price level offered, would return consistently. But the restaurant could not change its character constantly and end up with a happy and stable clientele. If the business vacillated between French cuisine and take-out chicken, the result would be a revolving door of confused and dissatisfied customers.
So it is with corporations and the shareholder constituency they seek. You can't be all things to all men, simultaneously seeking different owners whose primary interests run from high current yield to long-term capital growth to stock market pyrotechnics, etc...
We much prefer owners who like our service and menu and who return year after year."
What's brilliant here isn't the simplicity. It's what he does with the borrowed image in four moves.
He credits Fisher by name. He borrows the analogy intact. He applies it to Berkshire specifically. Then he pivots — closing on a statement of preference that doubles as a compliment and a reassurance to the shareholders already holding the stock.
Notice what the restaurant lets him get away with. The message underneath is that some of his readers may be the wrong shareholders, and that if they want something else they should go get it elsewhere. Said straight, that insults the person holding the letter. Said through a restaurant, nobody feels accused — of course the French place isn't for the man who walked in wanting fried chicken.
The FEE itself is also a sound choice of a “bundle of things,” definitionally.
Restaurants are ubiquitous, yes. But so are movies, books, and clothes, and none of those would have worked as well. A restaurant customer, on the other hand, isn't just an object within a category. "Restaurant customer" is a state of being that rests entirely on preference — exactly like "shareholder of Berkshire."
That definitional match is why the analogy runs smoother than other bundles of things would.
1996: the reprint
Seventeen years later, Berkshire issued 517,500 Class B shares, bringing thousands of new shareholders onto the rolls at once — most of them with no idea how the company thought about itself.
Buffett wrote them a booklet. "An Owner's Manual," issued that June, collected the thirteen owner-related business principles he had set down in 1983, with commentary around them.
He did not write anything new about shareholder constituency. He reached back seventeen years, lifted the restaurant passage out of the 1979 letter, changed "You can't be all things to all men" to "You can't be all things to all people," and printed it.
That is the argument of this post, happening on the page. The image had already proved it could carry weight. So it stayed in inventory, and when a new audience turned up, he shipped it again.
2012: the re-cut
Then, in the 2012 letter, Buffett re-cuts his FEE — and tells us, finally, exactly where it came from:
"Above all, dividend policy should always be clear, consistent and rational. A capricious policy will confuse owners and drive away would-be investors. Phil Fisher put it wonderfully 54 years ago in Chapter 7 of his Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, a book that ranks behind only The Intelligent Investor and the 1940 edition of Security Analysis in the all-time-best list for the serious investor. Phil explained that you can successfully run a restaurant that serves hamburgers or, alternatively, one that features Chinese food. But you can't switch capriciously between the two and retain the fans of either.
Most companies pay consistent dividends, generally trying to increase them annually and cutting them very reluctantly...
At Berkshire, however, we have consistently followed a different approach that we know has been sensible and that we hope has been made understandable by the paragraphs you have just read."
The original was never about shareholder constituency at all.
Fisher used it in his book in 1958, about dividend policy. Buffett had borrowed it, widened it, and run it for thirty-three years — and here he returns it to the subject it started on, with a new menu and a different message.
—
Same borrowed image. Three different jobs. Fifty-four years.
This is the lesson buried inside the technique. A FEE is not an ornament you produce once and discard. It is a durable asset — an image that has already proven it can carry weight, kept in inventory and re-cut to fit whatever argument is in front of you.
Which means the useful question is rarely what fresh analogy an argument needs. More often, it's this:
Of the images you already trust, which can be re-cut to carry today’s message?
What Buffett does not charge in fees, he more than makes up in FEEs — so often as to nearly parody himself.
But the leeway isn't granted by the returns. It's earned in the construction. He credits his sources, keeps the good images in inventory, and re-cuts them for new arguments decades later.
That is a method, not a personality.
The Buffett Letters, Pt. 2: “A Plain English Handbook”
Did you know that the SEC once recruited Warren Buffett to help CEOs stop writing terrible jargon?
I didn’t, until recently. I’m glad they did.
By Robert Walker Cohen
Did you know that the SEC once recruited Warren Buffett to help CEOs stop writing terrible jargon?
I didn’t, until recently. I’m glad they did.
Let’s set the scene —
Jargon plagued corporate filings throughout the 1980’s and 90’s. Over time, the jargon both worsened and became more prevalent, akin to a progressive disease.
Corporate annual reports, quarterly reports, and other such filings — where the CEO was supposed to be updating his less-sophisticated shareholders on the state of the company — had become completely unreadable. Not only to shareholders, but even to executives, professional investors, and regulators.
Here’s an exhibit from a corporate filing from 1997. I advise the reader that they not read much of it, to best enjoy their day.
Unfortunately, this jargon was often used to obfuscate poor results or bad business practices. This created problems for the public markets and danger for investors and shareholders.
The SEC, fed up, established the “Plain English” rules to compel executives to write more clearly and understandably.
To accompany the rules, they chose to publish “A Plain English Handbook,” a guide to help executives write in a way that would comply with the new rules and benefit markets, regulators, and perhaps most importantly, shareholders.
The SEC invited Warren Buffett, the master of the annual letter, to write the preface for this handbook.
At a single page, it’s short and to the point. Given the mission of the handbook, the form matches the function. Perfectly.
From the perspective of a commercial writer, the document is gold. It’s tight, perfectly constructed, and rhetorically powerful.
Enter, an analysis —
Opening paragraph:
”This handbook, and Chairman Levitt’s whole drive to encourage “plain English” in disclosure documents, are good news for me. For more than forty years, I’ve studied the documents that public companies file. Too often, I’ve been unable to decipher just what is being said or, worse yet, had to conclude that nothing was being said. If corporate lawyers and their clients follow the advice in this handbook, my life is going to become much easier.”
Often, key stakeholders would rather stay silent than admit they don’t understand something, so as not to appear foolish.
Buffett’s opening is effectively “saying the quiet part out loud.” Its strength is addressing the problem head-on. He is implicitly stating that if even one of the greatest professional investors of all time can’t understand modern corporate filings, the problem must lie with the writer rather than the reader.
Second paragraph:
“There are several possible explanations as to why I and others sometimes stumble over an accounting note or indenture description. Maybe we simply don’t have the technical knowledge to grasp what the writer wishes to convey. Or perhaps the writer doesn’t understand what he or she is talking about. In some cases, moreover, I suspect that a less-than scrupulous issuer doesn’t want us to understand a subject it feels legally obligated to touch upon.”
Self-consciously, Buffett admits that sometimes the problem is, in fact, the reader. Other times, the problem may be a lack of understanding on the part of the writer. In the striking closing sentence of the paragraph, he decides to open the question of jargoneer mal intent.
“Opening the question,” rather than directly accusing them, is a classy, generous, and slightly passive-aggressive move on his part.
His passive-aggression is more than justified, in my opinion. Regardless, I appreciate the gentlemanliness of it.
The turn-around:
"Perhaps the most common problem, however, is that a well-intentioned and informed writer simply fails to get the message across to an intelligent, interested reader. In that case, stilted jargon and complex constructions are usually the villains.
This handbook tells you how to free yourself of those impediments to effective communication. Write as this handbook instructs you and you will be amazed at how much smarter your readers will think you have become.”After the cliffhanger of the previous section — where Buffett implied the jargoneers may have nefarious intentions — he offers a sort of rhetorical pardon. In effect, he’s stating that all of his may just be a misunderstanding and now we can move forward in a better direction.
The sting of the prior paragraph’s “open question” makes the following points of “perhaps this is all just a misunderstanding” and “here’s a path forward” appear as a kind of soothing balm.
Or, perhaps, a fresh glass of water.
This may especially be the case for anxious or guilty jargoneer readers, given the context of the SEC Plain English rules and that the publisher of the handbook is none other than the SEC.
His gentlemanly charm, in this particular context, is even subtly threatening. Given the amount of bad behavior the jargon was successfully obfuscating, I find this to be justified.
The folksy conclusion:
One unoriginal but useful tip: Write with a specific person in mind. When writing Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report, I pretend that I’m talking to my sisters. I have no trouble picturing them: Though highly intelligent, they are not experts in accounting or finance. They will understand plain English, but jargon may puzzle them. My goal is simply to give them the information I would wish them to supply me if our positions were reversed. To succeed, I don’t need to be Shakespeare; I must, though, have a sincere desire to inform.
No siblings to write to? Borrow mine: Just begin with “Dear Doris and Bertie.”Buffett’s folksy midwestern rhetoric is integral to his success, especially as a communicator. It has a way of pacifying readers and grounding subjects that can be abstract or challenging.
This final passage is more profound than it may seem. He is embedding a point about business ethics within a rather mundane piece of writerly advice.
“Write with a specific person in mind,” such as a sibling, is not only solid advice. It brings the human element into the conversation and points directly at those who are most affected by negligent jargoneering.
The real victims of corporate jargoneers, regardless of the nature of jargoneer intentions, are everyday shareholders. That would be Doris and Bertie, in this case. Normal people that have invested their savings into stocks and bonds, or their retirement, or their grandchildren’s college fund. Or all of the above.
Of all the different basic writing advice that he could have given, it’s clear that he chose this particular point to underscore the real-world impact of corporate obfuscation.
The final line proves the point. He insists on the advice as being so critical such that he humorously offers his own sisters for those without siblings to write to.
Given the economy of the essay and Buffett’s style, he would not insist if he did not have a reason.
Unsurprisingly, there is more to the prose of Buffett than meets the eye.
Effective Writing = Effective Prompting
Everyone has access to AI. Only a handful know how to speak to the ghost in the machine.
By Robert Walker Cohen
Everyone has access to AI. Only a handful know how to speak to the ghost in the machine.
Writers are members of this exclusive club. Here’s why.
1. Writing is thinking, realized. The task is cognitively demanding, recruiting multiple brain networks simultaneously — from higher cognitive reasoning and language processing to emotional regulation and memory. The neuroscience is fascinating. Developing proficiency requires years of training, discipline, and study.
2.For the moment, machines require masters. Leading AI models require language-based inputs. Because they are probability engines rather than human reasoners, the specific verbiage a user provides is the primary constraint for the output.
3. The verbiage constraint. Imprecise language yields generic, average results. However, deliberate tone, exact word choice, and structural clarity force the model to narrow its focus and generate tailored, high-value insight. The quality of the output is strictly bound by the precision of the input.
4. Enter, the language maestros. Those who have trained deeply in the discipline of writing — and are sufficiently AI-savvy — possess a natural talent for today’s landscape. They intuitively understand the exact inputs required to feed the machine, and they possess the refined judgment necessary to recognize an ideal output.
In a language-driven computing climate, those best trained in the art of its effective use — and, therefore, in the architecture of thought — are uniquely prepared for the road ahead.
How to Write for an Enigma
“Know your audience,” goes the old quip.
When you can’t know your audience? Take a risk.
By Robert Walker Cohen
“Know your audience,” goes the old quip.
When you can’t know your audience? Take a risk.
This challenge most often arises in specialized projects targeting small, exclusive, and/or emergent sets of readers. The problem extends to writing-related contexts, such as direct sales or legal work.
Investor relations, fundraising, cutting-edge tech, high-ticket B2B sales, grant writing, and court memos all may include a component of writing for an enigmatic reader. Degrees of obscurity will vary.
When engaging with a mystery, you’ll first want to manage your risk. Here’s how I think about this:
Find out what you can. If other writers have written to this audience before, even if only very few (common with emerging tech) — study their work, study the audience reaction, and study any data points in the exchange that may be revealing.
Make plausible assumptions. Once you’ve gathered the available data, you can begin to make assumptions about the intended reader, their level of sophistication, the type of tone or voice they may appreciate, etc.
Check with reliable sources. Typically — though not always — you will want to verify your assumptions with team members, leadership, or others with a degree of experience engaging with the intended audience. This can save you a lot of time, and crucially, is an easy way to prevent errors or faux pas.
Decide a plan. You will want to collate the results from the above steps into an action plan. This internal synthesis does not need to be highly polished or presentable; it only needs to make sense and be actionable. Raw notes that only you can decipher are sufficient at this stage, though in team-oriented or longer-term projects, some legibility will be appreciated by your colleagues (or even future-you). I personally prefer nicely arranged pre-project notes, but the reality is that your pursuit of polished clarity and precision can be saved for your draft.
Concluding caveat — I’ve found that unless the client specifically asks otherwise, or you’re working on a personal creative project, it’s best to hedge conservatively with your first attempt at speaking to an obscure audience. You can save your more unconventional ideas for when you are more familiar with them. That is, if you discover your mystery audience is receptive to the unconventional to begin with.
The reality is that while we can manage our risk, we can’t know an enigma until they read what we have to say.
You must take a leap.
Manage your risk poorly: Shark-infested waters.
Manage your risk well: Silk luxury linens.
The Buffett Letters, Part 1: Introduction
Warren Buffett does more than move markets with his capital. He moves them with his words.
By Robert Walker Cohen
Warren Buffett does more than move markets with his capital. He moves them with his words.
When Buffett has something to say, the world’s market movers do more than listen. They take note and they take action.
Markets may move. Valuations may change. Fortunes may rise or fall.
Today’s blog is the first of a series examining Buffett’s communication strategies and tactics, leveraging the vehicle of his essays and thought leadership. Buffett’s famous — and famously anticipated — annual shareholder letters have been nothing less than the beating heart of his communication strategy, and will be central to this series.
Buffett’s annual letters are more than thought leadership. They are industry leadership. They are often considered market and even macroeconomic bellwethers.
For those of us in the field, they serve as a kind of “gold standard” as to what the best thought leadership and executive communications can accomplish.
Buffett’s impact, longevity, and consistency make him a contender for one of the greatest corporate communicators of all time. While his investing record (alongside his inextricable partner, Charlie Munger) is undisputed, there is equally much to learn from how he manages thought leadership, investor relations, and public perception.
From a branding and messaging perspective, he has ingeniously incorporated his communication strategy into his investing strategy such that they are mutually supportive and holistically intertwined.
At times, it can be hard to tell where the communication strategy ends and the investing strategy begins. This is part of its genius. It feels natural, authentic, and trustworthy. In a highly complex industry, which most do not understand at best or are highly suspicious of at worst, Buffett appears to exemplify honesty, sincerity, and conscientiousness.
His persona and brand identity are conscious, intentional, and have been refined over the decades, and crucially, appear nearly interchangeable with his results and his product, as he once remarked —
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
To extract the best lessons from decades of his writing, we have to look at his work holistically. There is an equal amount to learn from Charlie Munger, of course — and much from the broader Berkshire Hathaway ecosystem supporting Buffett and Munger — but I believe Munger and Berkshire deserve their own separate analyses and I plan to do so in time.
In terms of how I plan to approach this series, my primary source will be “The Essays of Warren Buffett,” an arrangement of Buffett’s best essays that have been curated by Lawrence Cunningham.
Buffett himself has remarked of the collection —
“The best book representing our views. If I were to pick one book to read, this would be the one.”
Cunningham’s arrangement organizes Buffett’s writings by subject rather than chronology so as to convey the most essential components of Buffett’s approach and to be organized for readers to peruse the topics they are most interested in learning about. For my purposes, this is both convenient and functional as it provides a great field guide to the vast Buffett corpus and allows the readers that join me on this journey to examine Buffett’s communication strategy, style, and tactics across a diverse range of critical subjects in finance and corporate life.
While Cunningham’s arrangement will be my primary source, I may also choose to review and analyze certain shareholder letters or other essays that are especially relevant for the purposes of this series.
The next post in this series will cover a lesser-known short essay of Buffett’s concerning the art of writing, published as the preface to “A Plain English Handbook,” the SEC’s writing manual. Stay tuned.
Respecting Your Readers, Pt. 1: Time
Time is finite. Attention, more so.
By Robert Walker Cohen
Time is finite. Attention, more so.
Respect your reader’s time. Consciously or not, they appreciate the gesture.
Write what is necessary. Cut what is extraneous. Concision is an art unto itself.
This post is short — intentionally so.
Fund Commentary Fundamentals
"Read like a detective and write like a conscientious investigative reporter." — David Coleman
By Robert Walker Cohen
Fund commentaries are essential for compliance and investor relations purposes. For financial writers, when creative instincts clash with rigid institutional mandates, they can also be a source of friction.
Here’s a set of fundamentals that portfolio managers have found useful —
1. Don’t stand out. Commentaries are not meant to be bright and shiny objects. They exist for compliance and investor relations purposes. It’s essential to study past commentaries of a given institution and pay careful attention to tone, word count, word choice, and various other hallmarks that are more or less “baked in.” These expectations may be unspoken by management, but you must ensure that your commentary does not deviate much from the protocol. If you do, you may find yourself with an unhappy compliance headache. Financial writers who can set aside their egos and quickly adapt to a fund’s protocols and traditions will save a lot of time in terms of revisions and avoid compliance issues.
Crucially, this also applies to understanding a fund’s spreadsheets—any fund commentator will need to ensure they understand their employer’s particular way of formatting and presenting fund data.
2. The story can be more than meets the eye. For example, a well-known stock may see a sharp drop despite reporting quality earnings, growth projections, and broader industry optimism. In this case, it can help to read past commentaries, media reports, or other analyst reports related to the stock or the broader industry.
A commentary writer may learn something unexpected, such as that the entire industry appears to be going in a certain direction while the seemingly well-performing stock is going against the grain. Or, that the price had been too high to begin with due to analyst hopes for a given initiative—and the initiative was frustrated, for whatever reason, dashing their hopes. Writing fund commentaries can entail a lot of dot-connecting in such cases.
3. Some equities are easy to research, others are not. This is especially the case when completing monthly reports on lesser-known companies that are rarely in the news. They tend to live outside the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq and are often found in the Russell or the Dow. That said, it may surprise many to know that even most S&P and Nasdaq listings are only sporadically covered by industry publications. It’s occasionally necessary to cover the movements of such an equity in a fund commentary due to a dramatic movement.
Often, the most recent quarterly earnings report can provide some guidance. But once in a while—such as in the case of a positive earnings report followed by a sharp dive only two months later—even this does not offer any hints as to why a stock moved as it did. When required to explain such a mystery without much information at hand, keep the following strategies in mind:
A. Research comparable peers: Look closely at similar companies within an industry vertical, or analyze the vertical itself.
B. Zoom out to macro trends: You will likely discover that a broader macroeconomic or sector trend happened to move an entire basket of interrelated stocks.
C. Leverage industry journals: Broad trends are much easier to research than the isolated movements of individual stocks. They can reliably be found reported in industry journals or other outlets, offering an entirely plausible argument as to why a particular stock moved in a strange direction.
The fun part of fund commentary is that it can sometimes feel a bit like uncovering a mystery or piecing together a complicated puzzle.
I conclude with an apt quote from David Coleman, the President of The College Board, that I believe applies well to the art of the fund commentary:
"Read like a detective and write like a conscientious investigative reporter."
When we do this well, we don't only satisfy compliance. We provide investors with the clarity they deserve.
What is “Prompt Engineering,” Really?
The AI-savvy have mostly moved on from prompt engineering and onto agents. For the masses, different story.
By Robert Walker Cohen
The AI-savvy have mostly moved on from prompt engineering and onto agents. For the masses, different story.
According to Google Trends, the term is catching fire. An uptick began over the summer and has only gained steam since, hitting several new peaks — including an all-time high just six weeks ago.
My hypothesis is that this is driven by the rapid, wildfire-like adoption of AI in the workplace. Across global corporate offices, AI is achieving mass adoption and ubiquity. Humans are curious, and like to improve, so they can be expected to naturally wander into prompt engineering. Ever-more curious youth, at university or high school, have likely ventured down their own prompting rabbit holes. It’s hard to imagine a white collar professional or student today not prompting an AI model at some point during the workday, whether for search, ideation, feedback, or some random MacGyver.
I’m not a fan of the term “prompt engineering,” as it makes out a relatively simple activity to be more technical and complicated than it actually is. Often, posts of prompts that gain some measure of virality or widespread use tend to be walls of text that intimidate non-technical or casual AI users. The complexity can be a point unto itself, rather than any real utility.
I’ve written complex AI prompts of my own and found the results to be valuable and useful, so I’m not opposed to the idea of writing a detailed prompt even if I do oppose unnecessary complexity and obscurantism.
In fact, I embrace detailed prompt writing. Writing a lengthy and specific prompt can be helpful for the prompter, as it forces clear thinking and articulation of the required outcome. Where I object, is referring to this as “engineering,” as if it is a technical skill that requires a university education.
Nothing is being engineered. Only clarified, to produce a specific and desired output. Anyone can do this.
A better term than prompt engineering, less intimidating and more casual friendly, may simply be — “Detailed prompting.”
Engineering requires a degree. It denotes exclusivity.
Simply being detailed does not. It’s a decision, available to all of us. As with writing, it starts with understanding exactly what it is that you want to say.
“Put it in Writing.”
Writing can be spontaneous. Serious writing cannot.
By Robert Walker Cohen
Writing can be spontaneous. Serious writing cannot.
Serious writing demands clarity of thought. It creates structure for nebulous ideas, vague commentary, and disembodied facts.
There’s something inherently delightful about serious writing, akin to organizing a cluttered office until every item is in its rightful place.
The expression “put it in writing” implies this. A thought is neither tangible nor real, only a fleeting possibility, until it is frozen in the amber of the written word.
The substance of publication dictates the weight of the words. The act of publishing a piece of writing under the title of “author” bears far more meaning than an email does, for example, while both greatly supercede a verbal agreement.
The more substantive the medium, the more real the idea becomes. Even a constitution is nothing more than a structure of ideas.
Authored words, widely accepted, can birth an empire.
What is the Value of an Idea?
Introducing, a perennial debate:
“All great things begin with an idea.” vs. “Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.”
By Robert Walker Cohen
Introducing, a perennial debate:
“All great things begin with an idea.” vs. “Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.”
The rhetorical impasse between the ideators and the executors is far from settled. Anyone that has an opinion on this will insist strongly that they are right, and give little credence to the opposing argument.
AI has introduced a new wrinkle into this contest. Ideas and creativity can now be generated instantaneously, and for those in search of the correct idea it can seem that judgment and taste are more important than imagination.
This modification mostly affects the ideators rather than the executors. Judgment and selection do require imagination and creative insight. The professional needs to be able to imagine the various alternatives and their workability, or to improvise from a presented idea set based on their cultivated expertise and understanding of the bigger-picture.
That said, the essence of the debate remains relevant today and may be presented as:
“Is it more important to ideate or to execute?”
Let’s steel-man each argument, using the metaphor of launching a manned rocket to Pluto.
THE IDEATOR
Steel-man: “If you can execute a long-distance flight to Pluto without any creative ideation beforehand, you may be guaranteed to fly but you are also guaranteed to never have the vision or strategic purpose to leave orbit to begin with. Your perfectly tuned rocket ship, rusting in a hangar.”
THE EXECUTOR
Steel-man: “If you ideate your trip to Pluto and you don’t have a properly engineered rocket, you won’t even be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere. If you can’t execute and operationalize your flight to Pluto, all you have is a fancy idea and a whiteboard, nothing more.”
For me, both steel-men are completely wrong. Each argument has a silent-yet-catastrophic black hole at its center.
They are also both each correct, in their own way.
To explain —
The voyage to Pluto requires both visionary ideation and airtight execution. Ideators are needed to ensure that a strategic creative vision can drive the grand endeavor to liftoff, while the executors are essential to the ship’s bidirectional flight path across vast expanses of empty space.
Therefore, the ideator and executor are each right to insist on their importance to the mission.
Where they are wrong, is to denigrate the contribution of the other.
It is neither true that “great ideas are everything,” nor that “execution is everything.”
Both assumptions are lazy thinking. The reality is that ideas and execution are each inextricable from a broader whole.
To conclude, exiting Pluto’s orbit and applying an Earthly metaphor —
Having a great idea is like planting a healthy seed in a pot of soil on the window sill, where it can receive plenty of sunlight. This, on its own, is not enough.
Executing effectively requires that the seed must be nurtured, with daily watering, monitoring, protecting, and applying of the necessary nutrients, otherwise it will never grow. This, on its own, without a healthy seed, soil, or proper environment, is also not enough.
The value of an idea, then, is equivalent to the value of its execution.
The value of execution, therefore, is also equivalent to the value of the idea.
In other words, “The whole is worth more than the sum of its parts.”
Deciphering the Jargoneer
In the world of professional writing, there are few greater impasses than that of a writer armed with a red pen and a client deeply in love with their own industry jargon.
By Robert Walker Cohen
In the world of professional writing, there are few greater impasses than that of a writer armed with a red pen and a client deeply in love with their own industry jargon.
For professional writers to continue to be their client’s best option, they need to do two things: create differentiated value and ensure a seamless client experience.
Navigating the jargon-heavy client can be the ultimate test of both.
For the skilled writer, an over-reliance on jargon creates linguistic "toxic waste" that suffocates effective prose. But for a very specific type of highly specialized client, jargon is their native tongue.
To affectionately—and a little ironically—refer to these clients, many of whom are brilliant innovators and good friends, I will resurrect an ancient 17th-century jargon artifact: “jargoneers.”
Jargoneers exist in every field. The more specialized the industry, the more obvious they are to outsiders.
Now, let’s begin to untangle this puzzle — the mismatch between the jargoneer client and the professional writer — with Merriam-Webster’s three definitions of “jargon”:
the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group
obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words
confused unintelligible language; a strange, outlandish, or barbarous language or dialect
Merriam-Webster is considered a neutral source, but here, they reveal their writerly biases. You will notice that each definition is progressively more negative. It’s as if the first definition belongs to the jargoneer, the second to the professional writer, and the third to the annoyed outsider.
The disconnect is dramatic. By way of example, here’s an anonymized startup pitch from a classic jargoneer:
“(Anonymous startup) is building vertically-integrated AI infrastructure to unlock the key challenges in DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure) networks today... creating the world's first AI-native blockchain... that effectively coordinates resources such as models, compute, and data across edge devices.”
If you did not enjoy reading this and found it difficult to understand exactly what is being pitched, you aren't alone. The jargoneer who wrote it, tragically, may be entirely enamored.
My theory on the disconnect:
Jargon is undoubtedly useful as an effective shorthand for conveying complex ideas to a niche audience. But that utility alone doesn't explain why jargoneers love jargon as much as they do, far beyond its actual usefulness.
The reality is that jargoneers love jargon because it acts as a social signal. It demonstrates a baseline savvy, hard-won domain expertise, and proud membership in an exclusive tribe of Those In The Know. To outsiders, however, the jargoneer can be uncharitably perceived as someone convinced that the more syllables they use, the higher they will fly—occasionally bordering on unwitting parody.
In defense of the jargoneers, they are right to be proud. It takes a high degree of intelligence and years of hard work to master these complex dialects. Jargon is often a side-effect of true expertise, and that should be commended.
That said, leaning too heavily on insider language actively undermines the messenger, branding their groundbreaking ideas as convoluted and their personalities as pretentious.
Professional writers aim to craft storytelling that is compelling, clear, and precise. Jargon is a threat to this mission, a tool that should be wielded by a skilled writer only when strictly necessary.
To return to the anonymous startup, here is how a writer may remodel their pitch to be punchy, accessible, and jargon-free:
“(Anonymous startup) is building AI infrastructure that coordinates and optimizes existing physical networks.”
Much cleaner, no?
Bridging the Gap
If a jargoneer contracts a writer, how do we untangle the knot?
Here’s my formula:
Study the Client: It’s the writer’s responsibility to understand the client's baseline voice, their industry context, and the "why" behind their communication style.
Address the Friction: Upon discovering the client is a jargoneer, the writer must politely—but firmly—point out where their specialized language is muddying the waters. Advocate for clarity and agree on a style that is natural and resonant.
Navigate the Compromise: If they accept the expert advice, perfect. Problem solved. If a well-meaning jargoneer clings to their jargon, the writer must chart the course on an ad-hoc basis, aware that this engagement will likely require a healthy dose of strategic managing.
While jargoneers and writers may seem like a tragic mismatch, the reality is that they are made for one another. The highly specialized client needs a professional writer more than most, and the professional writer needs reliable and engaging client work.
If a brilliant jargoneer and an expert writer can develop a healthy, honest, and collaborative dynamic, both stand to win big.
Choose Your Words, Carefully.
I once asked a master chef: “What’s your secret?”
By Robert Walker Cohen
I once asked a master chef: “What’s your secret?”
She whispered: “The ingredients are half the battle.”
The same is true of writing. Half the battle is word choice.
Words do more than signify meaning. They convey connotations, aesthetics, affinities, rhythm, and cultural context.
This also applies to speaking. The written word, however, is more fixed, immutable, and self-conscious. It carries greater weight.
Here’s a mundane example —
“Free for dinner tonight?” vs. “Would you like to have dinner tonight?”
Both questions are identical. Person A writes Person B to ask to share a meal. Regardless, the subtle differences are significant.
“Free for dinner tonight?” is casual. It implies familiarity, friendliness, and takes for granted that the responder would be happy to go for dinner with the questioner if they had the time. The lack of 1st/2nd person pronouns — “I,” “You,” etc. — makes the request lower-stakes and, at face value, inconsequential if rejected.
“Would you like to have dinner tonight?” is respectful. The use of “would you like to” establishes the question as a polite request contingent on the desire of the responder. This implies either less familiarity than in the first case, or, at least, a conscientious personality on the part of the questioner.
When you next dash off a quick note to a boss or a coworker — pause, and consider your word choice.