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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
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Author: mungofitch 🐝🐝🐝 GOLD
SHREWD
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Number: of 21941 
Subject: Re: OT Gurus Focus Dollar General
Date: 08/21/23 11:44 AM
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No. of Recommendations: 12
How can you tell?

That article is just a quote from their company profile, followed by the output of a program that compares current valuation to historical average, turned into sentences, probably using one of a few templates.
The images, though quite nice, are automatically generated for all the stocks they cover.

It isn't exactly a big reach to guess that it's automatically written. The great majority of financial "news" articles in "news" feeds are written by bots, and have been for some years now. Zacks was an early mover. ("Dollar General (DG) Stock Moves -0.63%: What You Should Know..."). So these days it's better to assume it's written by a bot, but then look for anything at all that seems to show a human thought about it to see if it's an exception. This article has nothing like that. At best, someone gave it a once-over for plausibility before pushing it out.

Some articles have dead giveaways, like "Quarterly revenue rose by 0.003% compared to the same quarter last year". A human would just say revenue was flat.
The templates they use are getting better, though, so you don't see crazy stuff like that quite as often. It's easier to be fooled into thinking there was thinking behind what was written.

An example of a bot-written article.
finance.yahoo.com - Dollar general dg stock moves

From the same template:
CVS Health (CVS) closed at $53.87 in the latest trading session, marking a -1.86% move from the prior day. This change lagged the S&P 500's...
DocuSign (DOCU) closed at $52.06 in the latest trading session, marking a +0.66% move from the prior day...
FedEx (FDX) closed at $226.33 in the latest trading session, marking a -1.01% move from the prior day. This change lagged the S&P 500's...
Palo Alto Networks (PANW) closed at $134.19 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.66% move from the prior day...
Union Pacific (UNP) closed at $202.51 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.69% move from the prior day. This change was narrower than...
Marathon Oil (MRO) closed at $26.80 in the latest trading session, marking a -1.03% move from the prior day. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily loss of...


Jim
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This community has written 21,448 posts about Berkshire Hathaway. The article-length ones it recommended most:
BRK: Why Not XOM? · 62 recs · 2024
Second quarter comments · 60 recs · 2023
Berkshire's Profit Contributors · 57 recs · 2023
Summary of 2Q 2026 · 54 recs · 2026
3Q Summary · 53 recs · 2024
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