Value Library

The following is an excerpt from the ABC Perspective - July 2003 - Pg. 12

One's Passion In Writing

Churchill wrote his own speeches. When a leader does that he becomes emotionally invested with his utterances. If Churchill had had a speech writer in 1940, Britain would be speaking German today. - James Humes

I enjoy writing. It is a labour of love. Writing, moreover, is forever. Unlike a speech, which most people forget after ten minutes, writing, once published, is imprinted for eternity. As a result, a writer is truly accountable for whatever he puts down on paper. After all there are no lapses in memory as in a speech heard, say, 12 weeks earlier.

Writers are tied to their words and can often be subsequently called upon to explain or defend something they wrote six or twelve months before. This fact is not lost upon most writers and so it is understandable that they must take inordinate care to "think out" their viewpoints and review their potential impact and consequences.

From my experiences I have found investment writing to be particularly challenging but also emotionally and monetarily rewarding. With so much at stake, for example money, readers are extremely sensitized to what investment writers conclude. Unlike a speech where an audience will listen to the content only once, a written letter such as our ABC Perspective can be read and reread a hundred times. This ability to review a commentary many times enables the reader to have ample time to critique and second-guess a writer's previous investment conclusions. Once again most investment writers recognize this and often spend extraordinary time to perfect their message. Invariably their labourious efforts will show. This written honing and primping of economic and investment prognostications is all-important. It leads, in the end, toward an unexplainable writer's passion. From my point of view I find that when I prepare a written investment piece I try to strongly identify with my subject or theme. In many cases my passion for investment analysis, performance and the ABC Funds will just grow in crescendo. As earlier stated, I regard these efforts as a labour of love and an intellectual challenge. Moreover, it is not even a question of making money, rather, it is the excitement and the chase of striving for written excellence. In the end I cannot and do not hide my passion for my work or writing; in short, like many writers, I find it an immensely enjoyable and personally satisfying task.

Not surprisingly, these innermost thoughts of mine are probably no different from such successful investment personalities as Sir John Templeton, Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, et al as well as the distinguished Sir Winston Churchill. Their successes, I believe, were largely driven by their passion for their work but, more-importantly, their well-thought-out written commentaries became the conduit for their professional triumphs.

Irwin A. Michael, CFA