2023 Renewal of Finance Fools
A renewed focus on raising the literacy of financial and economic concepts.
Dear readers here on Finance Fools,
I started this newsletter a little over a year ago because I wanted to help eradicate the fear of Finance that exists among so many. While I have worked hard to create over a dozen informative pieces that will stand the test of time value of money (see what I did there?) … the number of people reading Finance Fools has been quite low.
It’s time to change that.
As of 2023, I am focusing 95% of my writing time on this very blog, writing here on Substack. I am not doing this for money, I am doing it because I have a need to write and a desire to continue waging my war against ignorance and mind control.
“Did you just say mind control?“
Yes, I did, but I don’t mean the conspiracy-fueled type or the consciously coordinated sort - I am referring to the subliminal and culturally-infused mind control that comes from mass media, popular music, social platforms, and most of all, educational institutions. All of these things are guilty of perpetuating the great lie that Finance is hard, and that it is math.
In truth, Finance is neither hard nor is it math.
Finance is a language, a code, kind of like French or Python, but less tangible and far more subjective.
Finance is also a lot easier to learn than either French or Python.
Finance is also a lot more important.
A note of purpose
My personal journey with Finance started early, but it took a really long time to come to professional fruition. I was probably about 9 years old when I first read the financial markets section of the Detroit Free Press, back when there were few enough publically traded companies to actually publish their daily prices on just a couple of pages, and a few years before the first time a dial-up modem (2400 baud baby) pulled stock information from Prodigy or America Online (AOL).
Despite my interest, the concepts which unpinned all of this Bull and Bear activity eluded me - meanwhile, most of the no-nonsense Detroiters around me conditioned me to think of Finance as lofty and unreachable.
Wall Street and London, far away places which were reserved for people with a special knowledge of the world - not for us.
About 15 years later I was living in New York, and a solid street hustler from the neighbourhood, with whom I had shared several mutual acquaintances, had weaselled his way into an SRO to sponsor him for the Series 7, and so he went from trading “whatever” on the street to slanging stocks and options contracts to cash saturated middle-aged professionals.
His approach to investing was measured speculation at best, and underground gambling at worst. His entire approach was based upon reading charts that visualized complex statistical models aimed at predicting the next moves in asset prices based solely upon forecasting a trend.
He called this “TA” which at first I thought meant tits and ass, and so I asked a couple of stupid questions. Then, he handed me an old chart-laden and impressively heavy hardcover book written by a man named John J. Murphy.
The title was Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets.
I would spend the next few years making hundreds of trades across stocks, currencies and commodities, most of which broke even, some of which were very profitable, and a few which were mentally and emotionally ruinous.
However, all of this was always a side hustle, and a couple of times an excuse to quit (or get fired from) a series of soul-sucking corporate marketing or operations jobs.
In reality, the TA side of investing was never anything more than a workaround for not being able to understand what truly drives business and government, and society. Using charts to make trades was a cop out and an excuse for being ignorant. At the end of the day, I had to keep my day job.
When the great recession hit in 2008, I walked away from the financial markets. Bloodied and beaten, I made the same mistake as many and assumed that finance was for the rich and elite, and blamed them for my misfortune. I helped perpetuate the myth that the rest of us just snapped up crumbs that happened to fall from the lofty silver platters of the elite.
I had come to believe that there were people who were able to “be good at Finance” because they were excellent at math, had gone to top schools, and had some mysterious knowledge and wisdom that the rest of us lacked.
I was wrong, and ultimately I learned the world is actually a lot scarier and chaotic - yet, there was a peace that came with that knowledge.
I also learned to be very grateful that my technical trading experience occurred before blockchain tech emerged. Little did I know, but I had been a small but willing participant in sewing the seeds of crypto bro culture which prove to be disastrous for many.
My newfound love
After several years of focusing on other things, my interest in Finance was renewed by four really incredible teachers in business school. This time, however, no one was talking about RSI, MACD, or Stochastic oscillators - rather, the way of making financial decisions for these gentlemen was something they called “Fundamental Analysis.”
Now, I had known this concept from my father, so of course, in my youthful idiocy I had dismissed it as old and conservative thinking, however, my teachers were able to smash my mental institutions of ignorance and my cognitive reluctance, and thus came the great unravelling of the grand riddle of Finance.
The result was that I would go back to work for corporations, but this time as a Finance person - someone who actually understood in inner machinations of board room decision-making.
Once I understood Finance, and how easy and interesting it was, I wanted to reach others who struggled as I had. Several years later, I moved to Europe, and it was my knowledge of Finance and Accounting that made me economically viable. I was able to delve into subjects that others were not, and teach classes on subjects that were in high demand.
What I learned from teaching in higher educational institutions was that things were way worse than I had imagined. The resistance and fear of Finance knowledge were not geographically exclusive, nor was it American-made.
This was a global problem with global implications.
The bottom line
I don’t claim to offer insight on how to get rich, or even on how to stay rich - I offer insight into what the heck is going in the world and an understanding of the workings of the financial institutions and government agencies that profoundly affect our everyday lives.
I try to accomplish this through the use of humour, sarcasm, and the occasional obscenity.
Simply put, Finance is the language used for explaining investment-focused decision-making and is useful for absolutely everyone.
We invest every day when we decide what to purchase, what to focus on, and who to spend our hours with. Investing isn’t about getting rich, it’s about maximizing the value of our assets - all types of assets.
After reading my articles, some of you may be better at making money, most of you will change how you see politics and government, but all of you will be better investors of our most precious asset - time.
Thank you for your continued support, and to those of you just joining up, I look forward to meaningful engagement and a take-no-prisoners approach to tearing down the walls of financial illiteracy.
Looking forward to it! I'd say for many of us, we simply need an education in not getting poorer. Here in the U.S., as you well know, a couple of bad decisions can send a person right over the cliff.
Question--how did you 'sow the seeds of crypto bro culture?' Just by participating in trading?
Hi, Josh, you need a proofreader. I would be happy to do this for you at no charge IF you are producing one a week. For a daily proofread, I would need to charge a fee. Here's what I'll do for this first issue I have just read: I will print it off and mark it up. Then I will send you an email with notes on what I found that needed correction. Hope this is OK with you... you need to be an accurate writer to gain credibility about any topic. I'll get back to you tonight or tomorrow am with my notes. Carol Shetler, Editor and Proofreader.