As a general group, investors want to be educated… tempted even, by the tantalizing aspects of a story in order to get interested. They want to hear a good story that reminds them of stocks that have worked for them in the past.

I tell my clients all the time that a quarterly report consists of at least three major things: 1) the published numbers from the quarter, 2) management commentary, and 3) guidance.

Very often, when I'm working with a client to help them simplify their story into easily digestible bullets, they say to me, "our existing investors already know this...why do we need to say this again? It feels so repetitive."

What feels like "annoyingly repetitive" to you, is probably "refreshingly simple" to your investors.

In the late 90s, a really good sell-side analyst might cover 8 or 10 stocks. They would be on every earnings call and would know every detail about every line in the model. Today however, analysts frequently cover 40 or more stocks.

Read on only if you're willing to throw out what they teach you in business school. Namely, that stock prices are simply the market's representation of the discounted present value of a future stream of cash flows.