Thinking beats downloading

A recent column by Guy Spier in Bloomberg caught my attention. Spier, a well-known value investor, argues that the golden age of value investing is over because artificial intelligence has eliminated the information advantage that dedicated investors once had. His complaint is familiar: as he narrates it, obtaining Warren Buffett's annual report in the 1990s required a phone call to Berkshire's headquarters and days of waiting. Today, you simply ask ChatGPT for a summary of everything publicly known about any company. Suggested read: Overload alert I understand his nostalgia because I lived through the same transformation. When I started as a mutual fund analyst in the early 1990s, obtaining even basic information required real effort. Some mutual funds wouldn't publish their NAVs publicly – you had to visit their offices in person. Getting those NAVs by fax, even a few days late, felt like a technological breakthrough. I recall going through the elaborate process of securing permission to access the parliamentary library, as it was the only place where I could reliably find UTI’s annual reports. However, I believe Spier's conclusion – that this ease of access has eliminated all investing advant