Chief Bagel Economist

Studying Bagels unveils a lot about a company. If a company has a box of bagels and a locked box to pay for them charting the number of bagels stolen in the executive floor (aka. not paid for by putting money in the locked box) tells you everything you need to know about that state of ethics in that company. You don't need expensive reports on governance -- you just know by the bagels.

Some companies provide each Friday free bagels and donuts to their employees. The ratio of donuts to bagels might give you an idea how serious health issues are taking at that company but this is a topic for another post -- so just monitoring closely the number of bagels will tell you about the economic outlook for that company. It's pretty easy to call up the bagel man and say " we are trying to cut back, so from now on bring only two boxes each week". Given that any decline in bagels willt ell you if the recession hit your company or not -- and getting that information from friends at other companies might be useful investment information. Jut be careful to not be caught with insider trading because bagel number are very confidential.

In a professional setting the Chief Bagel Economist employed by some investment bank will monitor closely the amount of bagels ordered/stolen to give advise to institutional clients...