We rode the Colorado National Monument this week with our good friends from Sun Valley. There’s a lesson in it about life and stocks both.
We would’ve been riding bikes in Puglia with them now, if not for this pandemic. Oh, and part of the lesson learned is in Telluride.
Stay with me. I’ll explain.
So we learned Sun Valley is comprised of four towns. Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey and Bellevue. Each has its own mayor, own government. It could be one united town, but no.
There’s a point. While you ponder that, let me give you some background.
Karen and I wandered from Denver to Glenwood Springs (rode bikes, ate great food, soaked in hot springs, at this energetic little burg favored by Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday), and on to Grand Junction (pedaled the Monument and bunked at the lovely Hotel Maverick on the campus of Colorado Mesa University).
We then migrated to Moab and hiked Canyonlands and cycled the Potash Highway where evidence remains of a civilization once living in paradise on the Colorado River (if your etched recreations of yourselves in sandstone reflect jewelry and wildly stylish hair, you’re well up the actualization hierarchy from basic sustenance).
We next traversed the remote stretch from there to Telluride, a dramatic geological shift. The little city in a box canyon lighted by Nikola Tesla and robbed by Butch Cassidy is a swanky spot at the end of the road. Wow. I get it. Oprah. Tom Cruise. Ralph Lauren. It looks like their town.
Or towns, rather. Because here too as in Idaho there are cities a couple miles apart with two mayors, two governments. There’s Telluride, CO, in the valley. There’s Mountain Village, CO, up above (where no expense has been spared – you cannot find a tool shed that’s a shack).
And that’s the lesson. People talk about coming together. Sun Valley can’t. Telluride can’t. Could it be humans are motivated by their own interests?
And how about money behind stocks?
More on that in a moment.
NIRI, the association for investor-relations professionals, has a 50-year history. I’m on the national board representing service providers. We were blindsided by the SEC this summer, which abruptly proposed changing the threshold for so-called 13Fs, named for the section of the Securities Act creating them.
Our profession depends on those filings to understand shareholdings.
The SEC said funds with less than $5 billion of assets would no longer have to file. There goes insight into 90% of funds. The SEC never asked us.
You’re thinking, “There’s a hammer here, and a nail. Perhaps I’ll just pound it through my hand rather than continue reading.”
Don’t quit! You’re getting close.
Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan made deals. You youngsters, look it up. There were “pork barrel politics,” a pejorative way to describe a quid pro quo. Wait, is that a double negative?
Let me rephrase. Politicians used to do deals. Give me something, I’ll give you something. You can decry it but it’s human nature. We don’t “come together” without a reason.
Sun Valley. Telluride. They haven’t yet found a reason to unite.
NIRI could learn. We can talk for ten years about why we deserve better data. There’s nothing in it for the other side. I bet if we said to the bulge bracket, the Goldman Sachses, the Morgan Stanleys, “You lose your corporate access until you help us get better data.”
Now both have skin in the game. Stuff gets done.
Most of us outside Jesus Christ, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jr and Mahatma Gandhi are motivated by what benefits us.
Shift to stocks. Money with different purposes and time-horizons drives them. The motivation for each is self-interest, not headlines or negotiations between Nancy Pelosi and Steven Mnuchin.
Let’s call it, “What’s In It for Me?” All the money is motivated by that. Humans are similarly animated. For most of the money in the market, what’s in it is a short-term return.
If you want to understand what motivates the money, you must understand self-interest. You can learn it in Sun Valley or Telluride. You can learn it watching politics. And it applies to stocks. Money wants returns. When that opportunity wanes, it leaves.
That’s it. No more complex. And ModernIR measures that motivation. Ask us, and we’ll show you what’s in it for the money behind your shares. Too bad we can’t figure it out in politics. It’s not that hard.
