YOU pick the winner: Most reassuring title for investors

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Different folks find different titles reassuring amid the stock market’s ups and downs. This is what I’ve gathered from my call for “Article titles that reassure investors.”

My readers, including connections on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, and I have submitted the titles you’ll find below. They are listed in alphabetical order.

Please vote for your favorite in the poll that appears in the right-hand column of this blog. If you have a better title, you can add it to the poll.

  • 5 triggers that will ignite the next bull market
  • A lost decade, really?
  • Bernanke Replaced by Harry Potter
  • The blessing of balance: A view from Down Under
  • Comfort is rarely rewarded: Maverick Risk and False Benchmarks
  • Downgrade should mean little to long-term investors
  • Has the Downgrade Created a Buying Opportunity?
  • How can I retire after 12 years of range-bound markets?
  • How to invest in a market with a ceiling
  • How to make money whether the market goes up or down
  • I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
  • Intelligent Trading: A Competitive Advantage During Market Plunges
  • It’s Only Money
  • Pray the Course
  • Run, Ride or Buy? What Should Investors Do?
  • Stocks Survive Slumps Time To Buy Soon
  • Stronger Backdrop for Stocks This Time Around
  • These are the times!
  • Volatility does not imply direction – it’s the price we pay for a higher return in the long run.
  • We’re not Greece!
  • _You can also add your own candidate for most reassuring title.

It’ll be interesting to see which title wins. I wonder what it will say about what we find reassuring.

I will announce the winning title in my October e-newsletter.

Article titles that reassure investors–Submit YOUR candidate

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Investors crave reassurance during volatile times. But it’s not easy to choose words that steady their nerves. With that in mind, I’m putting out a call for article titles that reassure investors.

Please comment with your candidate for the most reassuring title

If I get enough good candidates in the comments on this blog post, I’ll run a poll, so you can vote for a winner, as discussed in the following Facebook post:

Tom Brakke of the research puzzle blog, one of the early supporters of this contest,
clearly enjoys playing with titles. You can see this in his tweet suggesting “Pray the Course” as a reassuring title.

What makes a title reassuring?

The suggestions by John and Tom show a sense of humor, so I’m going to throw out some serious candidates for reassuring titles. I hope the following titles spark some conversation.

What makes a title reassuring? Based on the titles above, I seem to find comfort in titles suggesting I can benefit from–or ignore–market volatility. Right or wrong, this is what works for me.

How about you? What wording do YOU find reassuring?

Aug. 30, 2011 update: I am no longer accepting comments on this post as new candidates for this competition.

Writing tip: Pop the balloon or make it your focus

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A stroll along San Antonio’s River Walk inspired this writing tip because an out-of-place detail grabbed my eye.

A white balloon bobbed along the surface of the river. Once I spotted the balloon, I couldn’t see anything else. Not pale gray stone walls. Not the greens or browns of shrubs and trees. Not the pale blue sky.

Something similar happens to your readers when your blog post, article, or white paper includes details that don’t belong there. They get distracted. They can’t grasp your “big picture” message. Just as I couldn’t absorb the River Walk’s beauty. You can help your readers by popping your “white balloon” to remove distractions from your main message.

Alternatively, sometimes your draft’s “white balloon” is a signal that you should shift your focus to center on the balloon, as I have in this piece–and in the photo below.

Note: This post was edited on August 9 and 23.

Information density: Weakness or strength?

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Are you hitting the right level of information density in your writing?

Image by Peter Morville

“Often white papers on technical subjects written for an executive audience have…too much technical detail,” says Robert Bly in The White Paper Marketing Handbook: How to Generate More Leads and Sales with White Papers, Special Reports, Booklets, and CDs (p.16.) Bly’s comment made me think about pieces written by portfolio managers and other financial experts. Their enthusiasm for their topic often gets them bogged down in details.

Benefits first, details later

If you’re a financial professional, remember to focus first on the benefit of your expertise to your readers. Then, you can delve into the details.

Not sure if you have too much detail? Ask an objective member of your target audience for feedback.

Too little data can also hurt

Meanwhile, remember that an absence of detail can also handicap your white paper by undercutting your credibility. As Bly says, often “…white papers written for engineers and scientists have too low an information density (they are too superficial).”

Imagine, for example, you’re trying to sell a new trading system to an investment management system. The president of your prospect company will seek information differently from the company’s head of information technology.

You need to know your audience before you start writing, so you can tailor communications to them.

My process for writing your financial white paper

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How does the process work when you write a white paper? Prospective clients often ask this question.

Here’s a chart that shows how I typically tackle a white paper. Of course, the process can be adapted to your needs.

Questions? Ask away!

No batteries required: My favorite blogging technique

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At LBJ's Texas White House

If you’re a blogger, you’ve probably struggled to find time to write. Me too.

Blogging on vacation

My favorite place to blog – and to develop a warehouse of posts – is on an unplugged vacation. In fact, I’m writing this post in black ink on a steno pad. My boxy printing and black ink are supposed to make my drafts easy for my typist to decipher. I use a spiral-bound steno pad, so I don’t lose pages.

Blogging offline

I like the slow speed and lack of distractions that come with blogging offline. When I type up a draft, it’s too easy to tinker with my text as I go. Writing in ink – even though I double-space to allow for essential corrections – limits my edits. This is a plus.

Writing offline helps with my focus. It’s just me, my ideas, my steno pad, and my pen. Tough luck for my tweeps. Any brilliant one-liners will be lost to posterity (or obscurity) as I home in on my blog.

Paper fans

I was surprised to learn that I’m not alone. I found more paper fans when I ran a Facebook poll on “Where’s your favorite place to blog?” I suspect that our numbers will decline as technological changes take hold.

P.S. – This was written on a flight to Atlanta, en route to Austin, Texas.

Reader challenge: Rewrite this sentence to make it more powerful

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Are you up for a challenge? Try rewriting the following sentence to make it more powerful.

Our firm has managed money for wealthy investors for 33 years.

Reader challenge: Propose a new title for this commentary

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Titles count. Especially in these days of search engine optimization, better known as SEO. But even without SEO, the quality of your blog post or article title can make a difference in your readership.

Today’s Reader Challenge is coming up with a better title for a piece of published investment commentary: “The ‘Great Recalibration.’ ”

First reactions to “The ‘Great Recalibration’ ” as a title

When I skimmed the title “The ‘Great Recalibration,’ ” I couldn’t tell what it was about. Then I read “Volatility in third-party credit ratings heightens the value of proprietary credit research.” Aha. This told me I was reading about bonds and that there might be some useful information in the article. This prompted the Facebook poll you see below.

However, reader comments (see below) on the poll made me think this title provides good fodder for conversation.

Please give your title suggestions below. You’ll probably want to visit the article–at least briefly. I look forward to hearing from you.

POLL: Which mind mapping solution works best for you?

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Mind mapping is a powerful tool for brainstorming, analysis, and presentations. I know a handful of advisors and investment professionals who feel passionately about the value of mind mapping. I do, too.

You can create mind maps with paper and pencil or on the computer. I prefer the old-fashioned way, so I asked some of my social media friends what they use and why.

MindJet

“I chose Mindjet because it has the most extensive array of templated maps as compared to other systems. For example Mindjet has ready made templeted maps for business plans, story outlines, SWOT analysis, etc. I have found Mindjet to be very useful in this regard and as I have used them for our company strategy sessions and general brainstorming,” says Alex Murguia of McLean Asset Management.

Mindmeister

Jude Boudreaux of Upperline Financial likes Mindmeister.

I’ve used it, too, because the basic version is free and pretty easy to pick up.

Mindomo

Russ Thornton of Wealthcare Capital Management is one of my favorite resources for new technology. Here’s what Russ says:

Xmind

Dave Grant of  Vantage Financial Partners says, “I use xmind as a project management tool. We have monthly meetings and each meeting is its own “spoke” from the main subject, then each discussion in that meeting is its own “sub-spoke.” You can see see a year’s worth of project in a quick glance – great tool.”

Paper and pencil

Like Nathan Gehring of MyFirstFinancialPlanner.com, I like paper and pencil.

I imagine that when children learn mapping in school, as I discussed in “What your kids can teach you about writing,” they use paper and pencil.

If you’re not familiar with mind mapping…

There’s a decent introduction to mind mapping on Wikipedia.

Please answer my poll on mind mapping solutions, which you’ll find in the right-hand column of this blog. If you don’t see your software listed there, you can add it. I also included paper and pencil as an option.

Here are links to the software options listed above:

If none of these options work for you, you’ll find more listed in my 2008 post on “More options for mind mapping.” To learn more about using mind mapping in your blogging, check out my class on “How to Write Blog Posts People Will Read.”

Usage tips for portfolio performance commentary writers

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It’s almost time for quarter-end investment performance reporting. I have some tips for you.

1. Use the past tense.

Why? Because portfolio performance commentary discusses historical performance.

2. Describe benchmarks’ key characteristics, when appropriate.

The general public doesn’t know the difference between the S&P 500 and the S&P 400. They may think one is a subset of the other, like the Fortune 50 and the Fortune 1000. So specify “the mid-cap S&P 400.”

3. Be consistent in how you spell and punctuate terms.

For example, choose between “indexes” and “indices.” Decide whether you’ll use “small cap” exclusively without a hyphen or hyphenate it as “small-cap” when you use it as an adjective.

4. Limit your references to the time period.

Once you establish that you’re writing about the second quarter, don’t repeat that information frequently. However, if you shift between discussing the second quarter and the month of June, name the periods often enough that your reader follows your transitions.

5. Don’t go crazy replacing “returned,” as in “the fund returned 3%.”

There are plenty of other ways to convey the information in the sentence. However, I believe too much variety is counterproductive in a paragraph that consists mainly of returns. Instead, the variety distracts from the reader’s ability to compare returns. If you’re citing many index returns, perhaps you should insert a table.

Do you have grammar, punctuation, or other usage tips for people writing about investment performance? Please leave them as comments below.