Probably a mix of factors.
Work ideas, obviously, I won’t discuss because of ethics reasons, but also because we’re generally a pretty secretive shop - we publish our letters to investors and detail a few of our ideas in there, but that’s the extent of our disclosure, usually. We’re not the kind of firm that chats with other analysts at conferences and does the whole, “Whattareyalikin’thesedays?” conversation.
Personal portfolio ideas, I don’t discuss mainly for two reasons. It’s probably about 80% selfishness, 20% looking-like-an-idiot avoidance.
80% Selfishness: When I find ideas for my personal portfolio, I treat it like srs bsns and I am not interested in sharing the love, so to speak. I look at stuff that typically takes me somewhere between a few weeks and a few months to decide to buy. I try to do as much due diligence as possible, commensurate with the amount of money I’m [considering] putting into the idea. Most people, including investment professionals (working with their personal portfolios), seem to do more research on what kind of air conditioner they should buy ($200?) than on a company that they might put $500 or $1,000 into. That has always seemed bizarro to me. If I’m going to put $1,000 plus into a stock of my own money, I figure I should really do my homework, and that means going through a serious research effort as if the stock was one we were considering for the ‘real’ portfolio at work.
20% looking-like-an-idiot avoidance: A certain amount of trades will always go bad. Just like in poker, even if you play nothing but Ace-ace as your starting hand, you’ll still lose a percentage of hands where things just don’t happen to go your way. The problem is, if I share ideas [selectively] with people, my track record is no longer based on the actual returns that my portfolio gets. Instead, my portfolio is now (as far as other people are concerned) equal weight whatever-stocks-they’ve-heard-me-mention. So if I’ve mentioned 3 stinkers in a row on AF as “buys” and they all drop 30%+, even if they’re only a combined 5% of my portfolio, as far as AF is concerned, I’m basically an idiot. So it’s easier to just not name names.
With that said, I love talking about investment ideas and valuation concepts. Even if no one ends up putting any money into the ideas discussed, it’s a great thing to do. Debating how you’d approach valuing a business, what kind of data you’d try to get, and how you’d go about making educated guesses about the company’s future - these things are always worth doing for the sake of learning.