Pitching stocks from Seeking Alpha/VIC/SumZero?
Besides ethics, what are the downsides of using a great idea from online, making tweaks and adding on to it, and using it for interviews, stock pitch competitions, etc? For stock pitch competitions, you may get exposed. But for interviews?
Same risk for interviews. You know how easy it is to google a pitch someone just did and see if it was “borrowed” from another site? I have been in interviews where people are feeding me wrong answers to questions, but the same one, and I realized that someone had posted the “answer” on several sites, but unfortunately it wasn’t right.
In one form or another, great ideas do borrow (not in quotes) from many others. Research is the process of trying to make sense of all the information out there, including views others have, in order to add value. The key here is being able to aggregate all of this into a view that makes sense and has differentiated value. So from that perspective you should be understanding and learning what others think.
Just taking an idea outright though runs the risk of getting dinged. It isn’t your idea, firms don’t want someone who can’t independently think, and it is just wrong.
Assuming we're talking about vanilla L/S, I haven't seen that many truly differentiated pitches on the sites listed anyways (If I'm wrong, please send me some). Mostly just a summary of things that can be found in the filings/transcripts, maybe info from a management call. In that case, I don't think it's that bad to use some of the thought processes articulated in the pitch... but if that's your only source of info (ie. you haven't done the work yourself to supplement), it would probably come out as you're talking about it to your interviewer
For interviews, aren't you also kinda fooling yourself?
Say you're "successful", i.e. not exposed, and you get an offer based on your awesome but unoriginal idea. Then you start working there, and it becomes quickly apparent you're incapable of sourcing your own ideas. You get fired soon after. What is the point?
If you don't have the ability or intellectual interest to source ideas on your own, why do you want to work in this field anyway?
It's okay to borrow ideas (there is honestly no extra alpha for original ideas) - but you need to do the work to get the same level of conviction. Getting the job is about crushing it in the Q&A, not about pitching a stock. If you know the name well and internalized the thesis, I don't see why not.
I actually think adding to it is actually more dishonest - like it's overdoing it. Just say "yeah, I like this XYZ name, it's been posted on VIC as well it seems, here is what I like about it and how I think about it ... "
1. A lot of interviews give you the company to look at, and we're all aware of the write-ups (if any) on that name on VIC and Sumzero and Seekingalpha.
2. Most stock pitches suck and a good interview process should be around asking you deeper questions to see how you think, and less about the company itself. Doesn't really help to just plagiarize since you have no idea what else is going on.
I don't see any problem with ethics, since people take other people's ideas all of the time. The problem is that people usually pitch the idea but don't know the name well because they just regurgitate the write-up and maybe read a handful of sellside reports. So they get screwed in the Q&A because they only have surface level knowledge of the name. But if you did a deep dive, actually tried to understand the business, and still think it's a compelling idea, then there is nothing wrong with that.
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