Robert Sutherland Smith is again proving that he is still alive with another guest post. Robert started his City career the year before I was born and is, I think, 157 years old. Fear not. He is very much alive and kicking. He and I have worked together for almost eight years at t1ps.com . He is my friend and he is a very funny and intelligent chap. He is now branching out to celebrate his 158th by doing some freelance writing over at various places ( including Shareprophets.com naturally) on FTSE 350 Income stocks. Robert is a speaker at the UKInvestor Show on April 5th 2014. He is a great one for focussing on yield. RSS today looks at Standard Chartered. RSS writes:
Standard Chartered Bank’s (STAN) Q1 statement has brought the thing that markets most particularly dislike; the fog of uncertainty. And most particularly, the un-quantified (and thus unquantifiable) kind that the analytical mind must abhor. The Q1 statement informs us in the most general way without figures or percentages (the closest we get to arithmetic, are vague references to such thing as “low/high digit” changes etc) which mean as good as nothing to the numerate, calculating analyst and reporter. For someone like the reporter and commentator on the Financial Times trying to put objective copy together, it is about as insufferably and frustrating a thing as could be imagined.
It creates the impression that either the company did not know exactly what had gone on (the least likely explanation) or knew too well and did not wish to give it more precise substance? Whatever the reason, it left commentators without scope for analytical exploration and explanation?