The article How to Read Financial News Redux: Process Determines Priorities by Robert J. Martorana in the CFA publication Enterprising Investor – Practical analysis for investment professionals attracted my attention because learning how to consume news is critical for effective analysis. One the greatest challenges for an analyst is to learn how to filter through the noise to identify the important signals that help make good investment decisions.

When analyzing stocks it can be helpful to organize your assessment of the key stock drivers by category: macro economic or political, secular trends, industry, or company specific. As analysts, we add the most value through our analysis of company specific and industry drivers and for some stocks, the industry drivers dominate. Often these industries are capital intensive and operate in cycles that may even be somewhat independent of the broader economic cycle (but not always and rarely completely). In the attached note, McAlidon Research Partners describes key drivers in the trucking industry that will have an out-sized effect on trucking companies. The note includes links to many of the sources of the data used in the analysis and offers a good example of industry analysis.

Chris Brightman, Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Research Affiliates discusses Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the monetary policy approach that is receiving much attention from progressive politicians. Brightman provides some historical perspective and a prediction that mainstream stocks and bonds will perform poorly in the volatile inflation and interest rate environment that would likely accompany adoption of MMT. An awareness and understanding of the MMT debate will impress in interviews…

Aswath Damodaran updates his Tesla valuation on his terrific Musings on Markets blog. Damodaran is a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at NYU and teaches classes in corporate finance and valuation. Damodaran uses his blog to demonstrate how he values companies with a discounted cash flow framework connecting his model assumptions to a narrative about how the business will evolve.