Investors are bombarded by hundreds of emails each day, mostly from sell-side. Survival and sanity require me to ignore rather than process most of them. Here’s a semi-serious look at my algorithm for this.

Delete, if subject line says:

·       Result preview (reminds me of half-hour preview before IPL game)

·       Quick-take, first-cut (I haven’t given this any thought, but what the heck)

·       5 stocks contributed to 53% of Nifty gains (good for them)

·       Exciting company: 2x PAT in 3 years (good for them too)

·       Nifty takes a break at 200 SMA (very good for him, well-deserved)

·       High-conviction ideas (Dei, appo all your other ideas …)

·       Actionable ideas (best ideas entail inaction)

·       Zoom meeting with McKinsey (will they charge me?)

·       Monsoon tracker (I am not a farmer, not even for tax purposes)

·       Webinar with renowned economist (if only Zoom would let me mute others)

·       Morning buzz (I got coffee already)

·       Macro brief (wait, isn’t that an underwear brand?)

·       High frequency indicators (too screechy)

·       Will rural recovery sustain? Will 1Q mark the trough? Will recovery be U, V or L shaped? How will local lockdowns impact recovery? (The Unknowables)

·       Crossing the Rubicon. Waiting for Godot. Liquidity vs Gravity. Chasing the vector of growth. (too flowery)

·       House views (unless you live by the sea, no thanks)

·       Beat and raise (how kids used to be brought up, before this whole parenting thingy)

·       Alternative research (WTF is “overbought PCR on the option open interest”)

·       India Strategy (I didn’t know we had one)

·       What will Supreme Court do? (something that leaves no one happy)

·       COVID tracker (aiyyo podhum, f&*k off da)

·       Commodity weekly (wonder if Palladium’s holding up)

·       Macro matters (nope)

·       Themes to play (this is not a game)

·       What we are hearing from investors (now, you’ve just given up)

[PS. My point isn’t to dump on sell-side. They’re fine people doing good research. I carefully read their reports on annual report analysis, initiating coverage, primary research etc. Aforementioned silliness is entirely due to us buy-side clients, our short-termism, and a distorted revenue model linked to activity.]