The Activist Investor Blog
The Activist Investor Blog
UPDATE: Guide to Activist Investing Information Sources
You know the folks who got rich in the gold rush, right? The ones who sold pickaxes and wheelbarrows to prospectors. Purveyors of activist investor information are like that.
A year ago, we set forth the range of information needs for activist investing, and profiled a number of providers that meet those needs. We have updated the resource guide, in which we summarize what’s available, with links to each service. Here, we comment a bit on what we saw then, and seen since then.
The sources we have in mind allow you to research a specific company or companies. It also allows you to research other shareholders in one of your portfolio companies.
In the year since we first compiled this guide, most of the sources have continued to develop new features and services. One, Activist Insight, expanded its cousin, Proxy Insight, and together have a fairly comprehensive array of data. Both also offer a monthly magazine with a free abbreviated version.
In the past year or so, MSCI sold proxy advisor ISS to private equity. It then bought GMI Ratings, and created a more complete environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating service. The founders and sellers of GMI Ratings (nee The Corporate Library), Monks/Minow/Bennett, also founders of ISS and then Lens, one of the first corp gov activist funds, moved on to their next project, corp gov consultant Value Edge Advisors.
We also added three new sources.
Proxy Mosaic: A specialist proxy advisor, which researches contested elections, M&A votes, and exec comp. Brittany Wederit founded it in late 2013, after many years at Glass Lewis, and built it to what looks like about 10-12 staff as of August 2015. They feature a decent blog and periodic “dialogues” on current subjects, such as the Partner Re - Axis merger.
Cook ESG: A terrific resource for a specific purpose - to figure out how other shareholders might vote on a given issue at your portfolio company. It compiles and analyzes voting information mostly from mutual funds that report on Form N-PX. Jackie Cook founded it several years ago after working with Nell Minow and others at the Corporate Library (something of a successor to ISS), which became GMI Ratings, which MSCI bought last year.
Activist Stocks: This one puzzles us. It first appeared earlier this year, with newsy email and blog updates about Peltz and Dupont. It expanded quickly to provide daily and weekly emails with competent summaries of many current activist situations. It changed its product offerings, schedule, and pricing a few times in the few short months since we first noticed them, so we’re not sure what, exactly, one gets with a subscription. You may know their Twitter feed, with a terrorist mask symbol and snarky comments. Its motto, “Get ya popcorn ready”, betrays a certain lack of seriousness, activist investing as a kind of spectacle rather than an investment approach.
It’s not obvious who is behind Activist Stocks. We cannot find any clear information, on the website, Twitter account, or most of the blogs (more on that below). Perhaps buying a subscription (as much as $2,200 per month) reveals the owners, writers and researchers.
The website hosts seven different blogs, only two of which have identified authors. One, Jason Knapp, has written and blogged various places, and appears to allow Activist Stocks to host his writing. Another, Marshall Hargrave, is more interesting. He writes the Stockpucker blog, also at the Activist Stocks website, and a few others, at Seeking Alpha, Insider Monkey, etc. At Stockpucker, you can purchase various quarterly newsletters, for as much as $720 per quarter.
Hargrave also runs Bridgewater Investments, LLC, an investment research firm in Columbus, OH. (Not to be confused with Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund.) The terms-of-use page for Activist Stocks indicates that subscriptions are billed to Bridgewater Investments. And, the email solicitation we received a couple of months ago to subscribe to Activist Stocks came from Bridgewater Investments. So, it looks like Hargrave puts together at least some of the content there, in addition to the Stockpucker blog. It’s not clear how the Stockpucker paid quarterly newsletters differ from the Activist Stocks subscription.
It’s not bad stuff. We just wish it were more like serious investment research on prospective and emerging activist situations, and less like casual stock tips.
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As always, we welcome comment, elaboration, corrections, and additional sources.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015