[230 Words]: Why Keith McCullough Doesn’t Mince Words with One-Man-Know-It-All-Bands

The exchange below is from an interview Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough did back in July 2014. It offers a quick glimpse into why McCullough doesn’t pull punches when it comes to calling out unaccountable market pundits, commentators, etc.

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Q: You have been very vocal about your feelings towards holding stock market commentators accountable for their public recommendations or analysis of stocks. What made you begin speaking up about this?

KM: It all gets back to the founding principles of Hedgeye – Transparency, Accountability, and Trust. If we don’t #timestamp every call we make, how on earth can serious investors evaluate whether or not they should pay for our services? There is an “us vs. them” overtone to this culture war we are waging on Twitter with some of Old Wall’s newsier pundits, because the differences between what we do and what they do are significant.

We spend most of our day producing proprietary research views so that we can debate the sharpest Institutional Investors in the world on our Best Ideas. We are in their offices and in their inboxes and on their phones.

We aren’t trying to be an inch deep and a mile wide across 5,000 securities in hopes of generating advertising revenues. We aren’t trying to spin everything positive for either our own book or banking revenues either.

I probably come off as a threat to the one-man know-it-all-bands out there because I should. I have a big team that’s proving itself at the highest level, each and every market day. In many ways we are the other team, so I don’t expect those we are competing with to support us. We want to stand on the front lines for both individuals and institutions so that the opacity of Old Wall investment recommendations won’t crush their returns again.

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