The Analyst's Path

Glossary

Communication toolkit

M10.03

Also called analyst writing, research communication.

The forms an analyst's work has to take: a one-page memo, a five-minute verbal case, a chart that carries one idea, and a model somebody else can open.

The constraint is always the reader's attention. A decision-maker gives a memo ninety seconds, so the recommendation goes first and the evidence follows in descending order of importance.

Numbers in prose need units, periods and a source. A figure without those three is an assertion.

Write the conclusion first. If it will not fit in a sentence, keep working.

Ninety seconds is the budget. Plan for it.

The one-page memo has a shape that works across every institution that produces them. Recommendation and position size at the top. The variant perception in two sentences: what the market believes, and what you believe instead. Three pieces of evidence, strongest first, each with a number and a source. The bear case, stated as specifically as the bull case. And the monitoring conditions, which are the facts that would end the position. Anything that does not fit one of those five slots belongs in the appendix, and most of it belongs nowhere.