For years, the best, most sought-after money managers and hedge funds shrouded their investment picks in secret, especially their shorts.
The all-out promotion of stock picks was reserved for the late-night infomercial crowd hawking currencies, commodities and “guaranteed” real estate schemes.
But when a guy like Bill Ackman, a billionaire and one of the more successful money managers today, puts on a 3.5-hour talk show — essentially an all-out, two-day media campaign to expose why Herbalife, his billion-dollar short, is going to “collapse” — it’s time to wonder whether the game has changed too much.
All his investors should care about is performance, and for the rest of us, it just feels like too much information.
Today’s brash crop of money men — the women are too smart to talk this much — clearly lack the understated class of the old guard. While it would be hard to match the class and dignity of a Julian Robertson, George Soros, Stanley Druckenmiller or Leon Cooperman, the new crew doesn’t even come close.
There is something disenfranchising about an investment manager being completely proficient at projector-based PowerPoint pitches lecturing the public to make its case on its portfolios’ own positions.
On every trade, someone is right and someone is wrong. So, why the need for the three-ring circuses and the marching bands?
Wall Street is one of the best arbiters of winners and losers — you get your report card every day, and there’s no subjectivity; the closing price is the closing price.
Megaphone-mouth investing and super-emotional investment presentations may change the outcome in the short term. But in Mr. Ackman’s case, it actually worked against him, as the show wasn’t as good as the trailer released the day before.
One thing is for sure: The dog-and-pony show won’t determine who is right or wrong.