I don’t know if Philip Fisher coined the term scuttlebutt, or the term has just attached itself to him, because I haven’t read his classic investment book Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits. Perhaps I should.

One correspondent reminds me, by example, that scuttlebutt, along with improving portfolio management, knowledge of accounting, law, and business, and proficiency at valuation, is one of the countless ways I could become a better investor.

Scuttlebutt is similar to what Peter Lynch called kicking the tyres: Asking questions about a company of its employees and customers, and metaphorically speaking, its products or services by trying them out, to get a fuller picture of a business, it’s strengths and weaknesses.

But @theredcorner has reminded me you don’t always need to get your hands dirty to answer questions about a business you can’t find in the usual places, its website, and its annual report. Sometimes you just need to think laterally.

In a comment on MS International, a company that reveals very little about itself and so beguiles value investors who like nothing more than an information vacuum, he asked whether I knew, because I had managed to get my hands on the annual report, whether the company had given any indication of the scale of its business with supermarket chain Morrisons.

If Morrisons is beginning a forecourt upgrade cycle, he speculated:

MSI might be the beneficiary of a tremendous revenue growth opportunity…

What interested me even more than the speculation, was what he’d already done to substantiate it. He’d looked at Morrison’s sustainability reports, and Philips Lighting’s annual reports, to see if he could find an answer. Philips supplies lighting to Morrisons.

He couldn’t, but I hadn’t even thought of doing it.

Needless to say @theredcorner’s blog, the red corner, is educational, insightful and occasionally beautiful and I’ve belatedly added it to the blogroll in the right-hand menu of this blog.