Why do you hold an Analyst Day?
Traders and investors, these are what Joel Elconin on Benzinga Premarket Prep this past Monday called “the dog and pony show.”
For the investor-relations profession, the liaison to Wall Street, it’s a big deal, ton of work. We choreograph, prepare, script, rehearse, plan. We’re laying out Management’s strategic vision.
And it’s successful if…what? The stock jumps?
Analyst Days: Productive, or just busy? Illustration 130957015 © Turqutvali | Dreamstime.com
Before Regulation National Market System in 2007 transformed the stock market into the pursuit of average prices, triggering an avalanche of assets into index funds and ETFs, you could say that.
Even more so before decimalization in 2001 transformed “the spread,” the difference between the prices to buy and sell, into the pursuit of pennies. It’s now devolved to tenths of pennies in microseconds.
The point is, a good Analyst Day meant investors bought the stock. Same with earnings. News.
Let me take a moment here. In addition to ModernIR, the planet’s IR market-structure experts and the biggest provider of serious data for serious IR professionals at US-listed companies, Karen and I run a trading decision-support platform called Market Structure EDGE.
Using data from that platform, I bought 200 shares of a known Consumer Discretionary stock this week using an algorithm from my online firm, Interactive Brokers. The order was split into three trades for 188 shares, 4 shares, and 8 shares, all executed at BATS, owned by CBOE, the last trade at a half-penny spread.
Why is this germane to an Analyst Day? Stick with me, and you’ll see.
Would you go to a store looking for carrots and buy 10 of them at one, then drive to another for 2, and a third for 4? Idiocy. Confusing busy with productive. So, why is that okay in a market worth $50 trillion of FIDUCIARY assets?
The stock I bought is a household name. Ranks 463rd by dollars/trade among the 3,000 largest stocks traded in the US market, which are 99.9% of market capitalization. It’s among the 500 most liquid stocks.
Your Analyst Day is a massive target. And over 90% of volume in the market has a purpose other than investment in mind. My trade in three pieces meant the purpose for the other side was to profit by splitting an order into tiny parts. That’s not investment. It’s arbitrage.
Investor-relations people, you are the market maestros. Your executives and Board count on you to know what matters. Did it occur to you that your Analyst Day is a giant plume of smoke attracting miscreants? Does your executive team understand that your Analyst Day could produce a vast plume of arbitrage, and not what they expect? If not, why not?
Look, you say. I run an Analyst Day. Are you saying I shouldn’t?
I’m saying that whether you do or not should be data-driven. And evaluating the outcome should be data-driven too. As should be the planning and preparation.
As should the understanding from internal audiences that at least 70% of the volume around it will be profiteers chasing your smoke plume, just like they gamed me for about 2.5 cents.
It’s not the 2.5 cents that matters. It’s the not knowing supply or demand. It’s the absence of connection between price and reality.
By the way, Rockwell Medical is the current least liquid stock in the National Market System. You can trade $250 of it at a time on average, without rocking the price. Most liquid? AMZN, at $65,000 per trade (price $3,275, trades 190,000 times per day, 18 shares at a time).
IR does not derive its value from telling the story. Its value lies in serving as trusted advisor for navigating the equity market. Making the best use of shareholder resources. Understanding the money driving price and volume. You are not a storyteller. You are the Chief Market Intelligence Officer.
Think of the gonzo state of things. I know what revenue every customer generates in our businesses, and what the trends are, the engagement is, the use of our data, what people click or don’t. Yet too many public companies are spewing information to the market with NO IDEA what creates volume, why they’re traded, what sets price.
Is that wise?
So, what SHOULD we be doing? The same thing we do in every other business discipline. Use software and analytics that power your capacity to understand what drives returns. Do you understand what creates your price and volume?
Back to the Analyst Day. Don’t hold one because tradition says so. Do it if you benefit from it! If your investors are fully engaged, you’re wasting their time and yours. That’s measurable. You should know it well beforehand.
If they aren’t, set a goal and measure market reactions. Realize that arbitragers will game your smoke plume. That’s measurable too. Know what Active stock-pickers pay. Know when Passives wax and wane. Know what’s happening with derivatives, and why.
Everything is measurable. But not with 1995 tools. Don’t do things just because you always have. Do them because they count.
That’s the IR profession’s opportunity, the same as it is everywhere else.
