Our Journey
Brave enough to explore and guide through market challenges
Where We Started
The Analyst started life as a blog, run by buy-side analysts who were obsessed with stock picking and discovering fresh investment ideas, as well as hunting down bad governance, bad accounting and potential frauds.
Back in 2010, our main goal was to dig deep into stocks that weren’t being covered properly. We wanted to call out corporate fraud, spot accounting tricks, and catch inflection points ahead of the rest of the market.
Fast forward to today, and not much has changed at our core. We’ve expanded our coverage, gained more clients, grown our research team, and fine-tuned our processes; but we’re still on the hunt for the best ideas out there.
We’ve come a long way since our blog days, but one thing we’ve never compromised on is our independence. We believe in the power of having a strong, conflict-free voice in the equity research world, and we’re determined to make sure our voice is heard.
What Is Important To Us?
Finding Ideas
Every day, we wake up with one mission: to find the best ideas that can have the highest impact for our clients. We take those ideas and turn them into differentiated content for our digital platform – whether it’s videos, notes, deep dives, updates, or models. Our goal? To consistently add value for our subscribers and align with their processes.
We aim to be trusted advisors to some of the world’s top asset managers, complementing their in-house teams and providing a fresh source of conflict-free ideas and insights.
We believe stock picking is both a science and an art. The science covers the numbers, the investing theories, and the understanding of business models and valuations. The art involves understanding human psychology, stock perceptions, what makes a business great or terrible, and what the share price reflects. We operate at the crossroads between listed companies and our clients’ interests, and we think our business model puts us in a unique position to dig deep to find new ideas.
Our business thrives on generating alpha and finding the most interesting ideas in the market. We’re open to sourcing our ideas from anywhere – be it objective accounting screens or on-the-ground fieldwork. We cover any stock, in any sector; all depending on the commercial interests of our clients.
Integrity and Independence
You can’t talk about our business without mentioning our commitment to integrity and independence. The Analyst operates in an industry where independence is rare, and the lines between integrity and commercial interests are often blurred. Many of our competitors rely on selling research at a loss to benefit investment banking businesses. This leads to an overwhelming number of sell-side buy recommendations, and the risk that analysts could be influenced by corporate clients. Regulators have tried to shift this balance, most notably with MiFID2; but over time, research pricing has fallen and the quality of research has suffered – we believe, to the detriment of market function.
We love big upside Long ideas, but we’re not afraid to issue well-supported Short recommendations – and sometimes, we even set price targets at zero. This is only possible because of our independence and commitment to good research practices.
Challenging Stories
Our Short recommendations are a source of pride for us. They reflect our commitment to integrity and fierce independence. Questioning corporate disclosures, scrutinising accounts, and asking tough questions requires dedication, professionalism and integrity.
Since 2010, we’ve faced bullying, threats, and even hacking because of our short recommendations.
For example, when Jack landed in the Middle East only to find a building site where a modern hospital was supposed to be. He made sure to let our clients know, protecting investors and helping them avoid losses. And when we were followed by hired muscle in rickshaws in India, we stayed focused on researching potential fraud in one of Germany’s largest companies.
Nowadays, new pressures are shaping the equity markets. There’s a shift from active to passive management, active money is heading towards multi-strategy risk management firms, small and mid-cap coverage is dwindling, and clients often lack the resources for thorough due diligence. We believe this creates a prime environment for stock picking; where research with integrity and independence at its core adds more value than ever before.
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