Time to make like Bertie? Warren Buffett’s sister reckons “pundits should always be ignored”. No one with truly valuable insights would share them, writes her legendary investor brother; doing so would be tantamount to finding a stash of gold and handing your neighbours a map with X marking the spot.
There are obvious riders. First off, some valuable — and invaluable — insights very much benefit from everyone piling in, so long as you beat the rush. That indeed was the defining strategy behind the bulk of initial coin offerings (ICOs) towards the end of the last decade.
Then there are rules and regulations. Chinese walls between, for example, deal makers and equity analysts in investment banks have been fortified over the years by a battery of regulations, including Sarbanes-Oxley in the US. Unbundling research, as required by Europe’s Mifid II regulations, delinked research from trading costs in another bid to erase conflicts of interest.