New Rules of Investing is always looking for advisors/investors using new media tools to help market themselves or their firms. Jeff Borack is one of those people.
Jeff recently launched an investing blog, A Ship in the Harbor, to help capture his research ideas and cement his positioning as a smart, qualified research analyst. An intern at a top hedge fund, Jeff agreed to talk about the mindset and process behind establishing an investment blog/newsletter. I met Jeff via an inbound email he sent me about my free course on starting an investment newsletter and this interview is the culmination of that exchange.
Tell us a bit about yourself.
Jeff Borack, Analyst, A Ship in the Harbor: I’ve been an intern at Marathon Partners, LP for about two years now, splitting my time between working on projects they give me and researching companies I myself find interesting. Researching companies from beginning to end has taken up a greater portion of my time as I’ve gotten more comfortable identifying what’s important. Taking the first two levels of CFA exams has helped a lot too. I kind of viewed it as a formal training program since I was working at a small shop that didn’t have the time or resources to hold my hand through the initial stages of the learning process.
Why did you launch a newsletter/investment blog?
JB: I started publishing some of my research online for two main reasons. First, I felt like a lot of my work was going to waste. I would write a report, one or two people would read it, and that was it. If I’ve already done the work and it isn’t being used, I may as well share it for free. Worst case scenario, no one reads it. Best case scenario, I get some valuable feedback.
Second, I want a full-time job, and I realize that my resume alone isn’t going to open any doors for me. Especially in a weak economy that rocked the finance world, employers are getting more resumes than they have time to sift through. If there’s 1000 applicants for every position, the chances of getting a job are 0.1%. Not odds I like. And in my case, I don’t believe that my background speaks for me in the same way as a work sample. Two years as an intern, two CFA levels, and an MBA tells employers that I probably don’t have a lot of experience, and I probably will demand a high salary.
A work sample tells an employer exactly how much experience I have, they don’t have to use my education or number of years working as a proxy. Here’s my analysis, here’s my excel model. Does my logic seem reasonable, are my assumption reasonable? And as far as the salary half of the equation is concerned, I’ve been working as an intern for two years since graduating. I was able to do this partly because I find the work interesting, and partly because I really like the people I work with. This demonstrates my commitment in a more tangible way than any other job applicant ever could.
Tell us a bit about your blog, A Ship in the Harbor.
JB: When I was maybe ten years old, my parents bought me two of those cheesy motivational posters. One is a picture of a skier bouncing over moguls, and it says “CHALLENGES: A bump in the road is either an obstacle to be fought or an opportunity to be enjoyed… it’s all up to you”. The other is a picture of a sailboat navigating between icebergs, and it says “RISK: A ship in the harbor is safe… but that’s not what ships were made for”. And that’s where my blog gets its unusual name.
A Ship in the Harbor is a fundamental analysis blog. I’ve been posting in-depth research on companies that I believe to be undervalued. In the future, I plan on including some option plays and short ideas, but with high implied volatility and an indiscriminate fall in share prices, long ideas seem to be bleeping across my radar more frequently. I’ve also posted a few book reviews, and I plan on continuing to do this. I read a huge number of non-fiction books, usually two at a time, and many of them are relevant to my analysis or at least my philosophy.
What tools are you using? Have you encountered any problems along the way?
JB: My blog is hosted on Typepad. I’m not sure why I chose that, but I think I might have been going off a “New Rules of Investing” recommendation! So far the process of creating the blog has been straightforward and simple, and I can’t really imagine what problems I’ll have in the future. I don’t have any knowledge of HTML, and so sometimes my widgets come out looking sloppy and there’s really nothing I can do about that. But I believe part of that is because Mozilla has an add-blocker that separates out frames for removal.
Next steps for the blog/newsletter?
JB: For me, the blog is a tool, a means to an end. I use it to distribute my work. I have no plans to monetize it in any way. I posted some book reviews with links to Amazon that pays me a 4% commission or something… so far I’ve sold 0 books and I expect it to stay that way. My plan for now is just to continue expanding readership and to integrate myself into the online community a little more. I realize that the type of work I’m publishing has a limited appeal to the general public. It seems like the best strategy for attracting viewers is to produce superficial analysis that looks at a large number of companies at the same time, like “Top 10 investments in a secular downturn with commodity inflation”. If you reference 15 companies in that report and publish it on Seeking Alpha, you’re sure to find a large readership. But for those writers, the content is the means and the blog is the end. I have no interest in that, I want to produce work I’ll be proud of in 10 years.
Thanks for participating, Jeff.
JB: Thanks for the interview Zack. I appreciate the opportunity to have my voice heard and to get my work out there.
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Additional Resources:
- Jeff Borack’s blog: A Ship in the Harbor
- Jeff’s LinkedIn profile
- Our free e-course on starting and managing an investment newsletter
