A good investor is one who can distill the important from all the noise of information. There are literally hundreds of different metrics a knowledgeable investor has at his disposal in evaluating a company. Because of a difference in mandate (from the buy-side), sell-side research reports tend to have their fair share of unnecessary information as well. Depending on the type of investor you are, certain information will be more or less valuable.

To cut through all the clutter, or to avoid succumbing to herd mentality, I invariably find myself thinking “so what?” every time I encounter a new piece of information. The art of “so what?” – I find to be quite nifty. Frequent readers may notice that I’m usually not one for writing nebulous, philosophical articles. Admittedly, the inspiration came from reading one of the many tribute articles on the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew. This one ...