My first share tip. Buy Thomson Reuters.

After yesterday’s launch of the new joint company and immediate 14% slump in the shares they are excellent value.

How do I know? I don’t of course. But here is why I believe it.

First I know the Thomson team - or at least the key person/people. They are very clever. Thomson has been hugely successful over recent years. The move out of newspapers was beautifully timed and the focus on professional financial, legal, accounting and health data has been strikingly lucrative. The merger with Reuters will have had some serious strategic brainpower behind it.

Second and more significant, they are onto the right idea.

“Intelligent Information” they are calling it in their marketing.

It’s all based on a very old idea. T.S. Eliot refers to it in The Rock (1934)

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

In other words there is an information pyramid with raw data at the bottom, which once sorted becomes information, which once digested and understood become knowledge, which once tried and tested in the fire of experience can become wisdom.

It has been clear for ages that in the UK - and highly developed markets - value is generally moving up the pyramid from data to wisdom.

(Fascinating how different it is when we are working in Africa. There, accurate data - call it news - is still hard to come by and has huge value. There’s far too much propaganda in the media.)

Papers like the FT and The Economist have cashed in on the hunger for, and value of, knowledge. Now Thomson Reuters want to join them. That’s what they mean by “intelligent information”.

Listen to what they say:

For those who make decisions that matter, information alone is not enough. They require insight, relevance, options………intelligent information begins with data [which once gathered and verified leads to the emergence of] actionable knowledge.

Everyone is overwhelmed and confused. If Thomson Reuters can tell us what it all means then their shares are cheap.

 

 

Entry Filed under: Media