This part is pretty amazing. > From the time that I mailed my letters, the compound annual return of the respondent group is 8.97% greater than the non-respond

This part is pretty amazing. > From the time that I mailed my letters, the compound annual return of the respondent group is 8.97% greater than the non-respondent companies. If anything, I would have expected the opposite. "Successful companies are more busy, and have less time to write letters to strangers. Failing companies love to spend all their time justifying themselves." Glad to see that hypothesis disproven. If the above correlation does hold across larger sample sizes, I wonder if hedge funds will start using it to identify profitable trades. Send anonymous letters to the executives of public companies, and weight your investments in favor of those who reply. At some point, the executives will wise up and start replying to everyone. But you could make a nice pile of money before that happens.