Today, we’re revisiting a piece we’ve shared before. Reason being, the themes from this article kept coming up across several sessions at the NIRI 2026 conference in Chicago in June. The biggest one was this: investors don’t want more creativity in their equity story. They want the basics done well.
Led by Karen Bodner, Head of Market Insights and Initiatives at BNY, the study surveyed 40 institutional investors across investor types and regions. Collectively, their firms manage more than $2 trillion in assets. It distills what they consistently say they value in an equity story.
Here’s what stood out from the BNY study:
Here’s how Karen explained why simplicity matters:
“Investors told us they wanted simplicity. They wanted to see the strategy, the vision, and the competitive landscape, and that came up over and over again.”
Investors are asking for the basics first, not a fancy or polished narrative. They want to understand where the company plays, how it competes, and what advantage it can sustain. This is not about dumbing down complexity. It is about establishing a clear frame of reference that investors can test against peers, industry research, and their own analysis.
“Investors want to see a segment-by-segment breakdown…(and / or by) geography, division, asset class. However you actually run the business – that’s how they want to see it.”
Karen goes deeper and shares why segment structure matters:
Here’s how Karen explained what investors really meant by “innovation”:
“When we asked investors what was innovative that they wanted to see, no one mentioned anything innovative. Nothing. They wanted honest, clear, and transparent financials, presented simply, the same way, quarter after quarter.”
Investors continue to prioritize clarity, consistency, and transparency over novel communication approaches. They were clear about what matters to them: financial information that’s easy to understand, comparable over time, and presented consistently quarter after quarter.
Karen illustrated this with a simple example:
“Company A thinks that my market’s going to grow by 5%. Their direct peer says it’s going to grow by 10%. And the research analyst I trust says it’s going to grow by 2%. Who’s right?” (In other words, investors are cross-checking your projections across multiple sources)
Investors do not accept market assumptions at face value. They triangulate across peers and analysts. If your view differs meaningfully, that gap becomes a focal point. You need to explain why your perspective is different, and that explanation needs to be defensible. Just like my daughter’s math teacher says, “always show your work.”
(When addressing macro factors and market challenges,) “it’s not just ‘this is my market and this is what’s happening.’ It’s ‘this is my strategy and how I plan to meet those challenges: if A happens, we’ll do B.” (In short, Investors want to see your playbook, not just the landscape)
Investors are already up to speed on macro. In fact, 63% of the investors Karen’s team surveyed said macro factors shaped their decisions. What they want to know is your response plan, and these are some approaches that work.
The companies that earn trust are not the ones with the best predictions. They are the ones with the clearest plans accounting for various scenarios.
On Investor Days specifically, she didn’t hold back:
“You can’t communicate a strategic shift in the quarterly results. You need to do an Investor Day (to convey big shifts). You have to spend the time, bring people together, and have the business line managers present it directly. Not allocating enough time to strategic shifts and just incorporating it into quarterly earnings is a big mistake.”
An earnings call can’t do justice to a strategic shift. Investor Days provide the space investors need:
At NIRI 2026, we ran a working session on building a one-page investment thesis and using it to structure your full investor presentation. We built one live for an IRO in the room, and she rated it 8 out of 10. If you couldn’t make it, the offer still stands. Book a 30-minute call with me and we’ll build your investor presentation outline live.
Do you have a major event or a high-stakes meeting coming up? Do you need a sharp narrative and bold design?
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