Is stock blogging the next Berkshire? Absolutely.

Rapper Shock G once instructed millions of white suburban idiots on how to do the Humpty Dance.  

I, Henley Frey, was one of them.

 As you may recall, the song itself doesn't give a lot of clear clues as to how exactly one does the Humpty - yet, everyone seemed to just know.   My version was Elaine Benes crossed with Frankenstein, which was always the dopest.   I would pause and make a suggestive hip thrust toward a frightened, huddled, group of seventh graders when Shock proclaimed he once got busy in a Burger King bathroom.  

After going through the six millionth SeekingAlpha.com post in the last hour, I realized the much like doing the humpty, every stock blogger seems to innately understand the rules for financial blogging.  Even Shock G's vague suggestion that "ya got it down when ya appear to be in pain" makes perfect sense when thinking about stock blogging (take a good look at that picture Masters, find Waldo?).

"They say you write like MC Hammer on crack, Henley!"

Ahhhh yeah.  So here's a few tips for doing the Financial Humpty...

The Title -   Has to be dramatic, cute, ridiculous in scope, intentionally misleading, and for search purposes contain the ticker symbol.   Here's a few examples, hypothetically of course:  
"Riding the mean reversion with GOOG and the world is going to end tomorrow..."
"GEe, we would like some more buybacks, Nooooooge!"
"Why Oil Prices will lead your mother into prostitution...in Q4!"
"Oscar Goldman's Sacks of Cash, Johnny"
"99 Cents Only...The Next Berkshire? Here's why it doesn't matter. Or does it?"

The key is to bring them in.  You know they're out there, sipping Starbucks at 2 PM after a massive 2 hour lunch, procrastinating doing the monthly reconciliation - you gotta grab hold of their imagination, and then rub awkwardly up against it until the chaperones hit you with the cattle prod or a bucket of cold water.

The Premise -   Who cares. It could be anything.  Just pick a stock, tie in some crappy song references, possibly a movie or two, maybe an obscure Cramer-esque reference to Greek Philosophy.   A financial blog posting!?! It's like Pizza baby!  You can't lose!

The Language -   Always make certain to speak like some kind of coked up hedge fund analyst at McSorley's on a Tuesday night:   "...XYZ needs to loosen the strings, ease the float, put some coal back in the margin bucket, and get back to the core business without spilling the damn thing on the way to the register."  Better yet, litter your article with technical, possibly made up (who's watching anyway!!?!), chartist phrases:  "When you look at XYZ's 68 day moving average, smoothed quadraticallly, we find some resistance at the exterior bands, most notably at this red keg cup formation made by the drop shadow I made in Photoshop."  If things get rough, you can always go back to the stock blogging equivalent of "the lawnmower" - reminding everyone out there that "cash flow is how a business is valued, nothing more, nothing less."  Once you've laid down that move, you can get right back to your sweet spot.   Remember, the key is to never blink.  

The Prestige -  Sorry.

The Guru Worship -   You can never lose dropping hedge fund manager names all over the reader like some kind of pin-striped blizzard.  "Sam Hedginton has just picked up a half million shares of XYZ, and he's so successful that he once bought an entire obscure South American rainforest tribe and forced them into extinction just to win a bet with Walt Disney's head!  And now you can too..."  Or if you can't do it directly, make sure to indirectly name drop, implying that funds are run like Cobra Kai dojo, where even the lamest Valley cracker shows no mercy and owns sweet Halloween costumes.

(We're talking to you, Zabka):   "Hedginton trained under Eddie Lampert, so it should be no surprise that he will use this sketched out retailer of old-ass speaker wire's inconsistent cash flows to financially engineer a massive amount of shareholder wealth, as well as break three cinder blocks by simply deriving the CAPM on them in Sharpie."   Nobody sitting in Accounts Payable in Cleveland is going to call you on it, so rock on!  No Mercy!

The Hidden Upside -  Perhaps the sweetest of all.  If you truly want to go after the reader, you just assign concrete value to intangible items.   Voila, Hidden Upside!  "The true value of XYZ is in its intellectual capital, we are conservatively talking about 2, possibly 3 billion dollars worth of value there that the market has yet to pick up on."  You ever think of that, steve282 from Iowa?  That's right, you didn't.  That's why you sit, read, and comment, and I sit, type, and gloat.  The true champion boldly goes intangible where others fear, and then even provides growth rate estimates to intangible ideas.   "What the market is forgetting is Serendipity.  XYZ's management will grow serendipity to the tune of a 34% CAGR until 2010."  

Hey, its easy, just relax.   If you make the ladies think you want them to click on your Google ads, they never will.  Like Shock G said in the Humpty Dance:

I get stoopid, I shoot an arrow like Cupid,
I use a word that don't mean nothin', like looptid
I sang on Doowhutchalike, and if ya missed it,
I'm the one who said just grab 'em in the biscuits
Also told ya that I like to bite
Well, yeah, I guess it's obvious, I also like to write.

Rap on, financial blogosphere, Rap on!

Article written by: Henley Frey
Article posted on: February 23rd, 2007

Disclaimer: The Author does not own any stock or long/short positions of the securities mentioned in this publication. However, Henley Frey's positions in Burger King range from the most gentle to the most sink shatterin'.