Lousy headline, provocative first sentence

I nearly didn't read an interesting article about stocks in The New York Times.

Why?

Because of the bland headline: "An Ear to the Ground on Stocks." The article could have been about anything. Perhaps college students who pick stocks for a class. An investment club. A well-known equity portfolio manager. But the real topic was more intriguing.

The first sentence of this article by Mark Hulbert grabbed my attention. It said, "Investor sentiment suggests that the bulk of the stock market’s decline is now behind us." Now that's provocative. The author takes issue with what most people think.

I also like how Hulbert summarized his argument--and set up the structure for the rest of his article--in his next paragraph:

This conclusion is based on an analysis of two very different groups. The first is investment newsletter editors, who, on average, are usually wrong about the market’s direction; they are currently bearish. The second is corporate insiders, who usually get it right, and they are mostly bullish

From there, Hulbert discussed the behavior of newsletter editors, and then of corporate insiders. He spent four paragraphs on editors and five on insiders. The equal weighting between the two topics reflected his good organization. If he'd had six on editors vs. one on insiders, he probably should have emphasized the editors more in his summary.

Lessons for writers:

• It isn't enough for your headline to be accurate, it has got to attract attention.
• State your main idea--and your main supporting points--clearly at the beginning of your article.
• The body of your article should follow the organization that you set up in your introduction.
• Compare the number of paragraphs you allocate to each main point from your introduction. If they're roughly the same, then your introduction probably gives the right weight to each point. If not, you may need to tweak your introduction or the body of your article.

_________________
Susan B. Weiner, CFA
Investment Writing
Writing that's an investment in your success

Check out my website at www.InvestmentWriting.com or sign up for my free monthly e-newsletter.

“Better writing without parentheses” by Harriett Magee

Here’s a guest article by Harriett Magee, a writer-editor who specializes in alternative investments.

Parentheses (like all punctuation) can hurt (and help) most writers (maybe even all) in getting their point across to readers. Readers may find such marks annoying, like in the previous sentence, because they interrupt the flow and weaken the message with irrelevancies. And while most readers don’t count words in sentences, parentheses often result in long sentences, which tire and confuse readers. (The ideal sentence length is 15–20 words.) To get your message across, use parentheses sparingly.

For writers, parentheses can seem like a lifesaver because they offer a home to data and show you’ve done your homework. They’re ubiquitous in research reports. Writers may also use them as a way to repeat information to drive the point home. For example, “The $750 million Big Ideas Venture Fund II was allocated roughly half to early- and to late-stage life science investments (49% and 51%, respectively). Fund III, however, had only about a tenth of capital ($75 million) invested in one early-stage investment.” But readers will get the point faster if you leave out numbers.

When writing about investments, often the urge to insert alternative metrics can be satisfied by putting the data in a graph. For example, give the prospective investors in the $2 billion Big Ideas Fund IV a bar graph showing the shift in allocations to young vs. more-established companies. A bar graph would accomplish two things: provide variety by breaking up the text with a picture, resulting in more white space to give the eyes a rest, and provide alternative metrics for people, especially those who want more detail.

Hedge Funds in High Net Worth Portfolios

There’s more than one way to invest responsibly in hedge funds.

That’s a lesson from RINET Company, LLC and The Colony Group, LLC, two Boston-based wealth management firms. RINET typically puts its clients in hedge funds of funds. Although it sometimes relies on its own due diligence, The Colony Group prefers direct investment in hedge funds in which its wholly owned subsidiary, Colony Funds, LLC, serves as general partner. Yet RINET’s and Colony’s approaches to due diligence overlap. Both delve deep into the quantitative and qualitative details. Without extensive due diligence, clients could lose everything to fraud, deviation from strategy, or reckless investing.

Read more about these two firms' strategies for hedge fund investing in my article published in Advisor Perspectives.

_________________
Susan B. Weiner, CFA
Investment Writing
Writing that's an investment in your success

Check out my website at www.InvestmentWriting.com or sign up for my free monthly e-newsletter.

Five writing lessons from New York Times economic article

If you want your clients and prospects to actually read your investment commentary, you can learn some lessons from "No Quick Fix to Downturn: Some Fear Stimulus Is Already Too Late," an article on the front page of The New York Times (January 13).

1. Create a headline that blares your main message.
In this case, it's "No Quick Fix to Downturn." I'd prefer "No Quick Fix to Economic Downturn," which is the title the Times uses on the website version of this article. I think that column width constraints squeezed out "economic" in the print version of the newspaper.

2. Get more specific in your sub-headline.
That's "Some Fear Stimulus Is Already Too Late."

3. Deliver your main message quickly in the body of your article.
Co-authors Peter S. Goodman and Floyd Norris lead with "As leaders in Washington turn their attention to efforts to avert a looming downturn, many economists suggest that it may already be too late to change the course of the economy over the first half of the year, if not longer."

4. Keep your paragraphs short.
Like many newspaper stories, this one begins with a one-sentence paragraph. You needn't be as brief. However, an occasional one-sentence can provide a welcome change of pace.

5. Quickly answer the "So what?" question.
Most readers will ask "Why should I care about what you're telling me?" I found my answer within the first 130 words of this 1400-word article. The authors write that the answer to "how much the economy can be expected to fall before it stabilizes.... could be a defining factor in the outcome of the fiercely contested presidential election."

Your readers face competing demands on their attention. If you make easy for them to understand what you're discussing and why, they're more likely to stick with you. Also, they're more likely to go away understanding the main thrust of your article.

If you saw the Goodman-Norris article, did these writing techniques help snag your attention?

_____________________________
Susan B. Weiner, CFA
Investment Writing
Writing that's an investment in your success

Check out my website at www.InvestmentWriting.com or sign up for my free monthly e-newsletter.

Strong analogy for Federal Reserve policy

Clean writing will make your investment commentary writing easy to read. Strong analogies will make it memorable.

I like this analogy for Federal Reserve policy from "Larry, Curly, Moe and the Economy" in Ben Stein's Jan. 13 column for The New York Times (note: free registration may be required to access the article).

...punishing the United States economy because oil prices are high is attacking the wrong culprit. It’s sort of like a Three Stooges movie in which the wrong person keeps getting hit on the head.

The Three Stooges image will make Stein's point last longer in the minds of many readers.

_____________________________
Susan B. Weiner, CFA
Investment Writing
Writing that's an investment in your success

Check out my website at www.InvestmentWriting.com or sign up for my free monthly e-newsletter.

For better investment commentary, read it out loud

Your investment commentary will pack more pop with a conversational tone. Individual investors will find it more intelligible and intriguing.

How do you know if your writing sounds conversational? Read it out loud.

When you read out loud, you'll also:

• Discover typos that you might have overlooked
• Become more aware of your writing's rhythm--The right rhythm can help keep your reader on track
  

_____________________________
Susan B. Weiner, CFA
Investment Writing
Writing that's an investment in your success

Check out my website at www.InvestmentWriting.com or sign up for my free monthly e-newsletter.