News

I remember having a conversation with a portfolio manager at a big mutual fund and when asking him why he owned XYZ Insurance Corp. in his fund he casually responded that it was “filler.” He went on to describe that term as a company whose stock was reasonably priced but whose prospects were ‘Mehh,’ yet he needed something to fill out his portfolio to get to 25-30 different stocks. Filler is also how I would describe a lot of local news, whereby instead of stocks we get stories of little consequence, or about somewhere other than LIC, in order to make print. I try to avoid filler amap, even if it means posting inconsistently and getting dinged for it by Google’s SEO algorithm. My readers and their valuable time are more important than AI generated adulation.