In fundamental equities research, one of my secrets was was that I used the "annoying face" method to generate alpha. This method involves meeting management or seeing videos/PR of them, and seeing if their face was annoying or not
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Here's an example, with no comment on whether it's an annoying face or not
scmp.com/property/hong-
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The alpha is that if someone's face is annoying, don't invest in them. They will trick you somehow.
You can get stronger signal by looking at their top lieutenants and whether they have annoying faces or not, too.
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What I learned was that it's specifically *annoying* face that works. Don't look for ugly face, or stupid face, or old face, or young face, or cunning face, or ruthless face, etc. ONLY annoying face works.
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If you get a sense of revulsion looking at their annoying face, and every second you interact with them it's like having your hands in gooey slime, then that's your intuition/subconscious telling you that this counterparty is not reliable.
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Businesspeople know this! Operators/active investors know this! Most passive minority investors do not, or else they think it's too low status of a technique to use.
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Somehow, this applies like 10x more in crypto, where you can get huge alpha just by avoiding all projects where the founder/top people/biggest fans have annoying faces.
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I'm imagining a scene where some analyst is pitching you a stock, let's say BaoDao Feedlots Ltd and you go "we don't invest in that company" and the analyst goes "but the growth is amazing and the financials check out" and you cut him off and go "no the CEO has annoying face."