Research Editors

What makes a good editor?

Here are some of the qualities and skills that make a good editor:

Native English. Far more people in the world speak English as a second language than as a first.

It is tempting therefore to think that simply having a high level of English is sufficient for an editor.

However, the English language has a richness and depth that can only be fully grasped if steeped in it since infancy.

This means that editors for whom English is not their native language will lack the proficiency and instinctive grasp of the language that native English speakers possess.

Love of language. Natural editors have a deep appreciation and love of language. They love to read, often speak a second or third language and may have writing experience themselves.

This affection manifests itself in their editing.

They highly value accuracy, clarity and integrity in the written word and derive great satisfaction from improving and crafting it, drawing out the intended meaning with skill and care and delivering clean, clear copy.

Editing is not just something that they do; it’s who they are.

Reliability. High-quality editors are able to turn around copy at pace consistently to a high standard. In high-volume departments, stamina is essential to be able to work long hours.

Attention to detail. The best editors are adept at both spotting howlers on the front page and saving your blushes at the bottom of page 19.

Commercial approach. Financial research editors understand the pressures analysts are under and that delivering a clear message is the most important function of the note.

They therefore don’t enforce rules for rules’ sake, they appreciate analysts and firms have their own styles and understand that sometimes research just has to get to market immediately.

The best editors are able to do what it takes to get research to market under pressure without sacrificing quality.

Specialist vs generalist. Financial research is highly specialised and can be very technical. It is preferable therefore to choose specialist financial research editors over generalists (who also edit say science or general finance) as they will understand the content much better.

Specialists are more likely to add value in the questions they ask of the analyst and in the changes they make. They are also less likely to subtract value by asking irrelevant questions or changing the meaning. Often they possess financial qualifications, eg a FINRA licence.

For more information visit: https://researcheditors.co.uk/

Original Source: https://bit.ly/3Ra8hT2

What makes a good editor?

Here are some of the qualities and skills that make a good editor:

Native English. Far more people in the world speak English as a second language than as a first.

It is tempting therefore to think that simply having a high level of English is sufficient for an editor.

However, the English language has a richness and depth that can only be fully grasped if steeped in it since infancy.

This means that editors for whom English is not their native language will lack the proficiency and instinctive grasp of the language that native English speakers possess.

Love of language. Natural editors have a deep appreciation and love of language. They love to read, often speak a second or third language and may have writing experience themselves.

This affection manifests itself in their editing.

They highly value accuracy, clarity and integrity in the written word and derive great satisfaction from improving and crafting it, drawing out the intended meaning with skill and care and delivering clean, clear copy.

Editing is not just something that they do; it’s who they are.

Reliability. High-quality editors are able to turn around copy at pace consistently to a high standard. In high-volume departments, stamina is essential to be able to work long hours.

Attention to detail. The best editors are adept at both spotting howlers on the front page and saving your blushes at the bottom of page 19.

Commercial approach. Financial research editors understand the pressures analysts are under and that delivering a clear message is the most important function of the note.

They therefore don’t enforce rules for rules’ sake, they appreciate analysts and firms have their own styles and understand that sometimes research just has to get to market immediately.

The best editors are able to do what it takes to get research to market under pressure without sacrificing quality.

Specialist vs generalist. Financial research is highly specialised and can be very technical. It is preferable therefore to choose specialist financial research editors over generalists (who also edit say science or general finance) as they will understand the content much better.

Specialists are more likely to add value in the questions they ask of the analyst and in the changes they make. They are also less likely to subtract value by asking irrelevant questions or changing the meaning. Often they possess financial qualifications, eg a FINRA licence.

For more information visit: https://researcheditors.co.uk/

Original Source: https://bit.ly/3Ra8hT2

If your editor has resigned out of the blue, it’s only natural to feel under pressure.

With competing deadlines and large volumes of research to get through, the loss of an editor can cause major problems – including scheduling gaps that need to be quickly filled.

In this piece, we look at the options available to you when an editor resigns.

1) Redistribute the work

Redistributing the previous editor’s workload is the quickest and lowest-cost option. You don’t need to recruit anyone new and the problem is solved quickly. If you have the resources to cope with the workload, this is the most feasible option.

However, this might affect your team. Given that most reports are time-sensitive, it could increase pressure on your other editors, especially in results season. If your team is already struggling to devote enough time and attention to their own work, the quality of the output overall could suffer.

2) Hire a new editor

On paper, hiring a new editor sounds like the most sensible option, as you will be replacing like with like. There is a logic to this: You hired the original editor for a reason, whether to cope with workload or as a strategic decision, and that reason is likely to remain relevant.

If recruiting a replacement editor is an attractive option, you will need to consider whether your firm is at a time-critical juncture, and if it can afford to wait for the recruitment process to run its course.

There is also the on boarding and training period to factor into the equation. This could be anything from a few weeks to a few months until your new editor is ready to work at the pace of the colleague he or she is replacing.

3) Outsource your editing

The third option is to outsource the editing to a third-party firm. There are several reasons why you might choose to do so:

• Easy to scale: you can contract your outsourced provider for the volumes you require and only those volumes – so you only pay for what you use. This avoids expensive recruitment and redundancies should your research output increase or reduce.
• Speedy, low-cost setup: you can generally reach an agreement and get started with an outsourced editing firm within just a few days, as opposed to the weeks or months it would take to recruit.
• Team of editors: you benefit from the whole resources of the firm and their team of editors. Rather than relying on one editor, you have backup.

When you outsource to a reputable editing firm, you’ll gain an experienced team that will do its utmost to understand your business, plan around your requirements and deliver great results – on time and to your exact specifications.

Outsourcing your financial editing doesn’t need to be an emergency or temporary measure. In fact, you may find that it’s the most convenient and effective long-term solution for your organisation.

For more information visit: https://researcheditors.co.uk/

Original Source: https://bit.ly/462afsA

British government’s reforms will make it easier and cheaper to outsource

Good news amidst the budget noise

The British government’s proposed changes to tax and borrowing have made a stir since they were announced on 22 September.

However, amidst all the noise, there was some good news. The government is proposing to roll back the most recent changes to the off-payroll workers’ rules (also known as IR35).

What is IR35?

The IR35 rules apply to workers providing services to clients through personal service companies or other intermediaries.

The tax authorities “look through” these arrangements to decide whether the workers are actually disguised employees and subject to employee taxes, rather than being genuinely self-employed.

Introduced in 2000, the rules have been amended several times since.

What’s being rolled back

The latest changes, made in 2017 and 2021, put the emphasis on large companies to verify the employment status of such workers, rather than the workers themselves.

This left these large companies potentially on the hook for any taxes that the tax authorities deemed had been avoided.

This made some clients hesitant to outsource to services companies, as they feared the tax authorities might deem the services companies’ workers to be effectively their own employees.

The government is now saying it will repeal these changes with effect from April 2023. This will mean the workers providing the service, not the client, will again be responsible for assessing their tax status and paying the relevant taxes.

Benefits for hiring companies

The repeal of the rules will have two benefits for hiring clients such as investment banks, brokers and fund managers.

First, it will save significant sums in compliance. Some clients have been hiring consulting firms to assess the employment status of outsourced workers, at the cost of thousands of pounds per time.

Second, the chilling effect of the rules meant some clients preferred not to take a risk. Either they didn’t outsource at all or looked to hire abroad. This effect will now be removed.

For companies looking to outsource their editing or supervisory analyst resource, they can now do so with confidence that they do not risk falling foul of the rules.

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Research Editors provides supervisory analyst and financial editing services to banks, brokers and fund managers across the globe.

We can assist you with a range of requirements, whether you just need an extra pair of hands during busy reporting periods, require longer-term cover or are looking to outsource your entire editorial department.

Contact us today to discuss your needs at info@researcheditors.co.uk or via our contact form.

For more information visit: https://researcheditors.co.uk/

Original Source: https://bityl.co/KCjr

In short, no, at least not this version. The best use for it could be as a kind of powerful spellcheck, a belt and braces check on what the SA has done.

Putting ChatGPT through its paces

We tested ChatGPT version 3.5 against FINRA’s rules for research. We wanted to know if this iteration of the software could replace the supervisory analyst. The results were mixed.

For example, we asked if it thought the following statement was balanced: “On the one hand, investment research is great. But on the other, it is brilliant.” ChatGPT thought it was balanced because the sentences did not express any negative feelings about either side.

We then asked it to comment on the Bank of England’s decision to raise rates by 8.5%. It responded that the raise was “…an aggressive move that has the potential to significantly impact the UK economy…” thus failing to pick up the fact that the Bank has never raised rates by 8.5%.

It did not consider a statement that earnings would rise by 23% to be exaggerated, but thought that a 24% increase would be exaggerated.

Sometimes it would get the answer right the first time, but if we asked again, it gave a different answer that was not quite right, or vice versa.

However, it was good at assessing whether statements were a sound basis for evaluating a security and whether a statement was true or false.

Flawed, like a Replicant

The way ChatGPT works is by trawling the web, analysing what words come next in a sentence and what fraction of the time, and assigning probabilities to each word. It then chooses the most likely answer to any prompt. It’s like a very sophisticated version of predictive text messaging, however with a twist, that it can be trained to improve its answers using human input (GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer).

A random element is also introduced so that it doesn’t always choose the most likely option. This is intended to make the responses seem more human – this is why answers to the same prompt can vary.

However, it doesn’t understand what the words it produces mean, it just spits out what is statistically the most likely answer. It’s like the replicants in Blade Runner doing the Voight-Kampf test to see if they are human – they don’t know what emotions are or feel them, they have just been programmed to replicate what they should look like.

Not today, but maybe tomorrow

The nightmare scenario for the Luddite SA is that such tech becomes so powerful one day that you could upload a document and in seconds have it reviewed, with rule violations flagged and sensible queries for the analyst, essentially making supervisory analysts superfluous.

At the time of writing, this is not possible without custom scripting as only text input up to 3,000 characters is allowed. However, this seems like a technical limitation that could be overcome.

If it were possible, some flags would be right but for the wrong reasons, others would be plain wrong and some would be missed altogether. It also couldn’t get a sense of the argument of the document as a whole. This could have serious consequences for firms. Repeated training could weed out these issues however.

The random element is also a source of concern as it means the software could say a sentence was a violation the first time it was asked, but let it go the second time. This would make it hard for compliance departments and department heads to trust it.

It also wouldn’t be able to negotiate with the analyst or liaise with compliance or the DTP department, nor could it check charts or tables or cross-reference them versus the text.

Then there is the regulatory aspect. As of today, FINRA requires a human to approve research. Any change to that rule is likely to happen at a significant lag to developments in the technology.

Conclusion

Based on this version, it is likely that ChatGPT will save SAs time or act as a safeguard in some aspects of SAing in the future, like a far more powerful version of spellcheck does for editing today. How much time it will save is the question. However, a human would still be needed. Who knows what future versions may look like and how it will be trained, but supervisory analysts can sleep easily, for now.

Research Editors provides supervisory analyst and editing services to investment banks, brokers and fund managers across the globe. Call us on +44 20 4551 1051 or email us at info@researcheditors.co.uk to find out what we can do for you.

For more information visit: https://researcheditors.co.uk/

Original Source: https://bityl.co/KCfB

In a competitive market, most financial firms working with equity and investment analysts require financial research editors to check and perfect their products. An experienced editor can efficiently handle the output of around 10 analysts, so working with the right editing partner is crucial.

Research Editors is one such company, offering high-quality financial editing services and editors with experience across equity, fixed income, fund and economics research, with clients including blue-chip investment banks, fund managers and brokers. They can effectively guide non-native speakers and improve the text to make it crisp and fluent as if written by a native speaker.

Method of Working:

The team at Research Editors comprises financial editors, SAs and research principals. They can work remotely and from any location but will gladly come in to meet your team of editors and supervisory analysts and become familiar with your firm. Their team would send a member to spend some time at your offices and efficiently complete the setup period. After that, you can simply email them and receive the edited documents back.

Editing

The Research Editors team has the extensive experience needed to provide you with the best editing services. With their help, you can ensure that your product stands head and shoulders above the rest and reads as if written by a native speaker.

Supervisory Analyst Services

The Research Editors team can also provide you with one of their FINRA Series 16 registered supervisory analysts.

Research Principal Services

You can also employ the services of a FINRA Series 24 registered Research Principal from Research Editors.

If your fixed-income, equity or investment analysts require high-level editing, Supervisory Analyst or Research Principal Services, connect with the Research Editors team today.

To get financial research editing services, visit https://researcheditors.co.uk/

Original Source: https://bityl.co/HZcA

An in-house financial editor can often resign without prior notice. Because financial research editing is a small niche, you may find it challenging to find an editor in this situation. You may be worried about your deadlines and the quality of research your firm needs to produce in order to remain competitive in today’s markets. So, what can you do in this situation?

Divide Their Work

Once an editor leaves your team, you can try distributing their work among the remaining team. This is one of the best options with no additional costs, but is often not a long-term solution, especially if your business is growing. Additional workload can mean missed deadlines for your team and come at the expense of attention to detail, which can cause reputational damage.

Look for the New Editor

You can try looking for a new editor, but the recruitment process can be lengthy as it is a specialist field. If your firm can manage without an editor for the time required to recruit a new one, this is a valid course of action. However, even once hired, you will need to dedicate time to on boarding and training your new editor. It can take a few months for a new editor to become a productive member of your supervisory analyst team.

Outsource the Service

One of the most feasible options is outsourcing the work to a specialist financial editing firm. With the help of such a firm, with editors that are pre-vetted, experienced and available at short notice, you can pay only for the work you need done. You won’t have to go through the expensive and time-consuming recruitment process, nor dedicate resources to training and setup, with editors ready on-demand.

About Research Editors:

Research Editors is one of the leading companies providing financial research editing and supervisory analyst service. They have a team of highly efficient, experienced and reliable editors able to work to your deadlines.

For financial research editing services, visit https://researcheditors.co.uk/

Original Source: https://bityl.co/HZR5