Activist Investors Are Podcasters Now
Also double ETFs, private credit is the new public credit, the block-trade penalty box and adding clients on LinkedIn.
One thing that I have learned, as the writer of a financial newsletter, is that people like podcasts. “You should have a podcast,” people kept telling me, so now I do. I personally prefer to get my information by reading, but different people have different preferences, and in recent years podcasts have been pretty hot.
I am in the media business, but a lot of people are in media-adjacent businesses. Activist investing, for instance, is among other things an indirect way to monetize media: You develop some thesis about a company, you buy some of the company’s stock, you launch a proxy fight to get your nominees on the company’s board so they can carry out your thesis, and you go out and persuade the other shareholders that your thesis is correct. If it works, the other shareholders vote for your candidates, you take over the board, you carry out your thesis, and if it’s right the stock goes up and you make money on your position.