Thousands of high ranking corporate executives are fired every year, yet Andrew Mason may be the only one to ever actually admit it. Most executive turnover press releases are nothing but lies and propaganda that would make Stalin proud. They left to “spend more time with their family”, “pursue other opportunities” or are “taking an extended sabbatical” – from which they will never return.

Contrast Mason’s frankness

“From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that’s hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.”

to the very public pronouncements of another well known CEO, Ron Johnson of JC Penney. Upon informing Wall Street that JC Penney’s sales were down an astonishing 32%, he went into politician mode. “This is my third transformation,” he said. “I told you this would be a multiyear effort, and it will be, I told you transformations are unpredictable and can be bumpy, and this one has been.” he said. Unpredictable and bumpy? Those are rather vague terms to describe a strategy that reduced JC Penney’s sales by over $4 billion, or almost twice the size of Groupon.

Andrew Mason may not have been the most successful CEO we’ve ever seen, but he was definitely one of the most honest and for that he deserves credit.

If you care about investing at all, I implore you to read the 2013 Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook.

The section on “low-return world” deserve special attention and should be required reading for anyone who ever mentions “asset allocation”, “expected rate of return” or “retirement planning”.  I fear there are far too many firms/advisors/products still basing future estimates off US bond/equity returns from the past 70 years, an environment that is not only very different from where we are today, but was also one of best investing environments ever recorded.

Also make sure to read the section on “Mean reversion” and the results of their walk-forward testing on mean reversion of valuation ratios.  Their conclusions may change the way you react the next time you are presented with an extremely well written and researched piece discussing a market’s extreme over/under valuation.

On the day that Dell announced it is becoming a private company, the SEC is holding a roundtable to discuss tick sizes in the securities markets. This discussion is mandated by the JOBS act passed last year and is based on the theory that the substantial reduction in the number of public companies and IPOs is due to SEC changes to the securities markets microstructure.

In 2011 the Treasury Department created an IPO “Task Force” to generate recommendations on how to generate more IPOs. There primary results were summarized as (quoting from the report):

According to the IPO Task Force Report, the impact of decimalization has been twofold.  First, market structure changes associated with decimalization favor short-term trading strategies over long-term fundamental strategies.  For smaller public company stocks with lower liquidity, the lack of fundamental strategies results in trading volume that is too low “to make money for the investment bank’s trading desk.”  The IPO Task Force Report argues that this lack of profitability undermines the incentive for underwriters to take smaller companies public.”

Translation - Investment banks are not making as much money trading small cap stocks due to lower spreads so they do not want to facilitate an IPO and collect 6% of the dollar amount raised.

If this were the case, why wouldn’t investment banks just raise their IPO fee to a level that made it worthwhile to facilitate an IPO?

“Second, the IPO Task Force Report states that “decimalization . . . put the economic sustainability of sell-side research departments under stress by reducing the spreads and trading commissions that formerly helped to fund research analyst coverage.”  The IPO Task Force Report also argues that analyst coverage has significantly shifted away from smaller capitalization stocks towards highly liquid, larger capitalization stocks, reflecting the change in financial institution focus.  In particular, the IPO Task Force Report suggests that analyst coverage of smaller public companies has become unprofitable both because of the Global Analyst Research Settlement in 2003, which prohibited the direct compensation of research analysts through investment banking revenue, and the advent of decimalization, which reduced spreads that formerly helped fund analyst coverage.
Thus, the IPO Task Force Report concludes, less analyst coverage of smaller capitalization companies means that less information on these stocks is generated, which, in turn, reduces market interest in these stocks.”

Translation – Investment banks are not making enough money trading small cap stocks to pay analyst to publish research on these companies.  No one outside of Wall Street analysts has any economic incentive to do any independent analysis on these now inefficently priced assets, so no one wants to trade the stocks.

It is difficult to imagine that the thousands of hedge funds, mutual funds and other buy-side institutions that collectively employe tens of thousands and analysts and quantitative researches striving to maximize performance are ignoring a large percentage of potential investments due to a lack of Wall Street provided research.

“Prior to the IPO Task Force Report, in a paper released in June 2010, Grant Thornton also concluded that decimalization has had a negative effect on the equity markets, and characterized decimalization as a “death star.”  The paper argues that decimalization almost eliminated the economic incentive to trade in small capitalization stocks, taking “96 percent of the economics from the trading spread of most small cap stocks – from $0.25 per share to $0.01 per share.” The paper also asserts that decimalization, combined with other innovations such as an increase in online brokerage, was significantly more damaging to the IPO market than oft-criticized provisions from the SarbanesOxley Act of 2002. As with the IPO Task Force Report, the Grant Thornton paper argues that increasing the tick size for smaller capitalization stocks will encourage financial institutions to spend more resources to analyze these stocks.”

Translation – the 96% reduction in the cost of trading small cap stocks has made them less attractive to investors.  Everyone would be better off if it cost 20x as much to purchase a small cap stock and that extra money was used to subsidize Wall Street “research” – without which no one will trade these stocks anyway.

I wonder if any of the subsidized “research” that there is no longer money for ever tried to make the argument that a company’s product would be less attractive to potential customers if it’s cost was reduced 96%?

The underlying theme of all these arguments is they are solely looking at the world from Wall Street’s perspective.  Every major argument centers around the lack of trading profits for Investment Banks and Market Makers on the secondary market and the lack of extra profits to subsidize research.  The report goes on to do an exhaustive analysis of other secondary market statistics such as effective spread, market vs limit orders, volatility and market maker participation / profitability.  Again, all things Wall Street cares about.

Nowhere in this report or in any of the agendas for the roundtable discussion does anyone look at this issue from the perspective of either a public company or a private company considering an IPO.  Everything is around increasing trading profits and subsidized research, to the benefit of Wall Street.  This model may have worked well when companies did not have other options, but since the late 90′s the rise of private equity, private secondary markets and other forms of private capital have given companies many alternatives to Wall Street.

For Wall Street to attract companies back to the public markets it needs to stop focusing on the minutiae of secondary market tick sizes and start asking the hard questions about what benefits the public markets provide a company versus the private finance alternatives.

Last night my daughter’s elementary school had parent’s night and announced a new technology program for grades 3-5. Students now have the option of bringing their iPad or iPhone with them to school. A mere 12 hours after this announcement the school’s Facebook group is being flooded with the usual complaints that the kids are too young for this level of responsibility, what if the device gets damaged stolen, etc. This of course is accompanied by the omnipresent modern protestation device, a plea to email a high placed executive asking them to “to reconsider this program or at least hold a community forum to get input from parents”.

The most frustrating part to me of these knee-jerk protests to any change is the overreaction. The school is not considering allowing students to carry concealed handguns or eliminating teachers completely. Instead they are trying a new program to take advantage of tools the majority of students already own. Will the program be a success? I have no idea. Will some devices be broken or stolen? Very possibly. If the program turns out to be a disaster will the school cancel it? Very likely. But I believe it would be far better for the school to try this and other new programs and have them fail miserably than not try at all.

We move to neighborhoods like ours for the quality of the schools. Everyone always says they want our public schools to be more innovative and take advantage of new technology. Yet here is a school trying to do exactly that and facing resistance from the very parents who’s children would be the primary beneficiary if the new program is a success. And why? Because a few devices might get broken or stolen while being used to try provide a better education to your child? Have we become so risk averse that we’re no longer willing to try to improve the world around us because of the risks to completely replaceable inanimate objects that are already halfway obsolete?

I understand how people have legitimate concerns about the frailty and costs of these devices and worry about entrusting them to an 8 year old. But there’s a flip side as well, the act of trusting what is obviously a very valued possession to an 8 year old provides an incredible opportunity for success and growth as well. Our children are not incompetent, our schools are not crazy, our iPads are not sacrosanct. Combining the three is extremely unlikely to have a severe negative impact on any of the involved parties and may even do some good. But we will never know unless we override our default reaction of risk aversion and give new things a try before pronouncing them to be without value.

Being a professional investor is the hardest profession on the planet.

Not because the financial markets are global and 24/7.  Not because the markets are full of extremely driven and intelligent competitors.  Not because the emotional highs and lows can be soul crushing.  It is because of the constant and measurable competition against passive benchmarks.

Each day, month, quarter and year a professional investor’s performance is measured against both the benchmark and their peers.  Outside of professional sports, I’m not sure there is any other industry that generates such objective and continuous measurements. And even in sports, there is no equivalent of a “passive benchmark”.  If a player is struggling, teams do not have the option to replace that player with a benchmark that guarantees them the averaged production of every player at that position.

Benchmarks are the most ferocious of competitors.  They show up for work everyday. They never get sick.  They don’t take vacation.  They are always 100% invested so their results are continuously compounding.  Most importantly, they’re not aware of their own performance.  The S&P 500 will never enter the 4th quarter feeling it needs to really press to have good numbers for the year.  Nor will it take December off to “lock in” a good year.

Not only is the pressure unrelenting, but your failures are public on a scale that again only professional athletes can relate to.  If you do become a successful professional investor and overcome all of the above, there is always the question of skill versus luck.

No fan in their right mind believes they have a chance of beating a Kobe Bryant or LeBron James at basketball.  Yet any investor can now buy a portfolio of index funds and have a good chance to outperform not just a few, but the majority of mutual and hedge fund managers.

This inconvenient truth is like a little voice in the head of every successful investor – “Am I really good at this or have I just been lucky?”.  A voice that never goes away as it only takes a couple bad years to destroy an lifelong track record.

It is 11am on a Saturday and the Time Warner customer service representative is calling out numbers.

51… 51… 51?   52… 52… 52?

I’m number 59 and have been waiting patiently with about 30 other Time Warner customers. The majority of us are holding some variation of a DVR or cable box. This is my second trip to this service center in the last 90 days. Both times because my DVR has ceased to function properly. I am not surprised.

My DVR is a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8240 HDC. A model designed and manufactured by a company that ceased to exist as an independent entity over 6 years ago. When my first one died after 5 years of use, I expected that it would be replaced by whatever the latest and greatest was. The 8240 had only been merely adequate in 2007 when I first got it and I was anticipating significant improvements over the past 5 years. Instead, I was informed that Time Warner was still using the 8240 and I would be issued a “refurbished replacement” – which looked to be in much worse shape than the unit I was returning.

To my dismay, the “new” unit did not include any software improvements either. It still changed channels at a snails pace, it still had trouble allowing you to watch something while it was recording and it still randomly deleted recorded shows. In summary, it was not as good of product as my vintage original Tivo – purchased in 2000.

Do Time Warner’s competitors have better options? I don’t know. I’ve heard mixed reviews about AT&Ts “U-Verse”, but it’s not available in my area. I know DirecTV and Dish have DVR products, but having a technician mount a satellite on my roof, run wires down the side of my house all the while still needing Time Warner for broadband internet seems like overkill for what is essentially a problem with my DVR’s software. I know Time Warner also offers the option of using a “cable card” for the newer Tivo’s, but that entails severe service limitations and eliminates all the on-demand services.

Nor is “cutting the cord” and going solely with internet based TV services an option. I enjoy live sports. I have TVs running solely off a standard coax cable connection. Anything that requires 2500+ word online “guides” describing how to setup the myriad of services and hardware required for an inferior experience is not a viable alternative. I’ve also noticed that much like trying to install Linux on a Mac, people seem to derive more pleasure in describing the myriad of steps they’ve taken to eliminate their cable TV company than in actually using the end result.

This is where Apple comes in. The media has been rife with stories that they may be building either a full blown Apple “iTV” complete with content or a cable box that can be distributed through the current cable providers. I’m open to either but would prefer the latter for the simple reason that I’m content with my HD TV and would prefer to just replace the cable box / dvr instead of the entire TV.

What most concerns me though is even if Apple was to build a cable box, what impetus would Time Warner have to offer it? The cable industry is not like the wireless industry where the vast majority of the US cell phone users were eligible to move to AT&T to get an iPhone. Cable is geography based. I can’t switch to Comcast, Cox, Charter or Cablevision even if they’re offering an Apple based cable box with three years of free programming. The only truly national providers are the satellite providers and they still have all the downsides of the physical dish and not being able to offer high speed internet.

But something has to give, doesn’t it? How long can Time Warner keep offering the same DVR it has since 2007? How long can they support a constant stream of users returning broken ones for “refurbished” ones in a massive game of musical DVRs? Except, if I’m any type of proxy, the answer is a long time. A combination of the reasons I laid out above and not being a demanding TV watcher means that it will take a significant amount of motivation for me to move from Time Warner. An amount that slow DVR channel changes and periodic DVR replacements won’t cover. Which is why I hope the Apple rumors are true.

Mebane Faber and Josh Brown’s posts about how best to fix TheStreet.com ($TST), got me thinking about the different types of financial content and the relative value of each.  I currently see three major types of content generators – Reporters, Observers and Parrots.

Reporters are the easiest to define and the ones we’re most familiar with.  They are the people or organizations that actually do the work of a reporter.  They have contacts, they do research, they break stories.  AP, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg fall into this category.  Their value is simple to define, they are a definitive news source (i.e. their name is often referenced in subsequent summary articles by other organizations) and they are often the first to break or release a specific story.  There is tremendous value generated by this type of content and their sites are updated constantly throughout the day and they have been successful in licensing or charging for their news feeds and content.  Its virtually unfathomable to imagine the financial news industry without the above mentioned companies.

Observers are where most bloggers and columnists fall.  They do not break the news, they instead interpret or react to it.  Paul Krugman, Barry Ritholtz, Josh Brown and the majority of the daily links at Abnormal Returns are observers.  The value of their content varies widely based on its actionability and timeframe.   At the top of the list is content that is either actionable in a very short timeframe (e.g. a specific trade idea) or that is non-actionable and not time sensitive (Barry’s Apprenticed Investor series).  The least valuable is non-actionable short term information (e.g. $AAPL is acting strange here) or actionable and not time sensitive (e.g. buy and hold $AAPL for 10 years).  The biggest advantage observers have is they do not have to publish constantly.  If there is nothing interesting happening, there is no need to push out ten new stories.  The downside is that this type of content has proven very challenging to monetize on its own.

Parrots are sites that feel to push out new stories constantly throughout the day, yet do not have the infrastructure or access to “new” stories that the reporters do.  This leads them to generate a ton of content that is either a summarization or articles from one of the big reporting sites or vague non-actionable “advice” without a real timeframe.  All content is generated with a single goal, drive page views.  As Josh mentioned this leads to articles that should have been one page becoming three, ads everywhere and Business Insider style headlines.  This model combines the worst of both Reporters and Observers as it has a relatively high cost structure (many writers pushing out tons of “content”) yet has a monetization value similar to blogs.  It also lacks the “authority” that the traditional news generators enjoy.  Would a hedge fund or quant firm building a system that requires machine readable news would license TheStreet.com or BusinessInsider over Reuters/AP/Bloomberg/WSJ?

The questions about TheStreet.com’s business model raises a much larger issue.  The vast majority of the actual financial news is generated from very few companies that generate substantial profits.  There is a tremendous amount of high quality reaction and interpretation of this news (bloggers, StockTwits, columnists, etc) that is almost all available for free and generates minimal revenue.  Is it even possible to build a sizable business around a group of “Observers” when there is so much quality free competition?

The technology industry used to be full of magicians. Magicians who created amazing things. The original Mac, Nintendo NES, color printers, modems, the Internet, Doom, Mosaic, iPod, Nintendo Wii, Kinect. I can clearly remember the first time I used every one of these and the excitement I felt at seeing what its creators had accomplished. In every case, they were absolute experts in the art of manipulating machines to perform this magic.

Nowadays, the magic is gone. Instead of being experts at mainpulating machines, many companies are focused on manipulating people. In most cases, their own customers. Can I get a user a to create an account? Can I get them to fill out a profile of personal information? Can I get them to email their friends a link to my site? Can I get them to login every single day? Can I get them to let me know everytime I go somewhere? Can I get them to click on the ads I show them? Can I get them to buy things after clicking on the ad?

These are the problems that an entire generation of companies spend their days trying to solve. These problems are very different from those faced by teams trying to fit a GUI operating system in 128k or connect computers via a phone line. These are not “technology” problems, these are “media” problems. Sure they use new terms like funnels, engagement metrics, conversions and click-throughs, but when you strip away the buzzwords we’re in the 1950′s trying to create a TV show that appeals to housewives so we can show them ads for Tide.

This is the same technology industry that continues to call for the “disruption” of other industries steeped with expertise in customer manipulation (credit cards, lending, traditional media) while many of its stars are trading on their ability to convince/cajole/hoodwink users into creating “content” that contains information marketers find valuable. All so that information can be used to convince the user to buy something most likely completely unrelated to the company’s “product”.

The downside to this model is it that the company’s and user’s interests can never be aligned because the user is not the one paying for the product. Contrast this with a company like Apple who generates billions in revenue selling directly to consumers. The iPhone doesn’t come pre-installed with ad-ware from your phone carrier and your iPod doesn’t interrupt your songs every 5 minutes with a Living Social ad. Despite the fact that these tactics could generate more revenue for Apple, they are dismissed because they would make their customer like the product less. This is the same reason Facebook won’t start collecting and storing less personal data, even though their users may enjoy it, their customers would like the product less. Instead, they will use their considerable technical prowess to determine more and more effective ways of manipulating their users to generate additional revenue.

I wonder what a company like Facebook could build if it could treat its users as customers instead of products. What would a Facebook devoid of advertising and not intent on collecting as much marketing information as possible look like? Could they streamline the site so people wouldn’t need to spend as much time each day to keep up with their friends?  Would customer satisfaction increase? Would they get even more users?  Unfortunately, we will never know.

We will continue to have the choice between working on and using products that manipulate machines and those that manipulate people. Fortunately, they’re pretty easy to distinguish. Products that manipulate machines have people lining up to buy them. Products that manipulate people have companies lining up to give them away.