Short hiatus

Back very soon!

Hi guys! Sorry for going dark, I just realized it’s been several weeks with no post.

I’m working on a couple stocks, one I did alone and one for someone I’m working for. If able, we might go through both. One is a bank but in a very different market position. Despite being yet another bank, I think it might be cool for you guys to see another part of the plumbing of the financial system. This bank is involved in the buy-now-pay-later kind of space, and there’s a whole value chain that goes into making those loans happen.

I think by virtue of how many financials I’ve worked on, this Substack has partly ended up covering how a lot of how the financial system works. Hopefully you find that interesting. I think it’s interesting; I’ve learned a ton about the whole thing in the last 10 years. But yeah, we’ve covered a lot: traditional banking, wealth management and the annuity business, investment banking and trading. We’ve done some trade finance (through Citi). We’ve done the whole alternative investment market and seen how stuff like credit funds operate and are taking lending share away from traditional corporate and investment banking. And we’ve covered some market niches like used car lending through Ally Financial. This other bank is in another niche, which will be fun to explore.

People often forget that the world is really a tale of two economies. There’s the real economy, which is the movement and exchange of goods and services, and then there’s the financial economy which is all the monetary transactions (the flows of cash and credit) for those goods and services, capital investment (debt and equity investments) to create new production and such.

I also have some notes on the Fortrea mistake, which we need to go through. Reviewing mistakes is part of the investment process, too!

So yep, more to come, just a little busy right now.

I hope you are all well!

Chris