Why I'm Moving Almost Everything Behind a Paywall

I’m not a big fan of paywalls. Everything is paywalled nowadays, it seems. Every month you have to dole out funds to this thing or that thing, all automated, and if you are in the markets, you probably have more paywalls to pay for than other professions. All those newspapers, magazines and newsletters. I get it.

But after one month of writing this, and with a new understanding and appreciation for just how hard it is, I’ve decided to paywall all the quant stuff. All of it.

First of all, this is my calling. At some point in someone’s life, you discover what it is you were meant to do. And I’m glad I found my thing. There is nothing I want to do more than to research the markets and trade them. I look back at my life now and realize that I really could have done anything with myself but I chose this. It wasn’t even a choice I consciously made, I was like a moth to a flame. I love the markets, and if you are anything like me, then so do you. So you can at least sympathize with my desire to do what I love exclusively. Add a bit of ADHD and it becomes an actual problem for me to try and do something else. My brain won’t produce the necessary chemicals for me to do it, let alone succeed at it. I’m 30 now, so when I say this I really mean it. I’ve tried.

Secondly, I have a very clear vision of what I want to do with this blog/newsletter. There is a lot of bullshit peddled around in our industry. There are many charlatans and conmen, but also, many people who simply do bad research. The thing about this substack is that I really want to bring a lot of value to anyone who sits on a desk and trades. I want to do the kind of research that is timeless, and you’d only need to refresh it every 5-10 years just to see if things have changed. It’s here to enlighten you. Actually, eventually Quant (h)Edge will be a website where some of the models will be live and real-time. I won’t just write anything, or research anything. It has to be things that can bring you edge, and it has to be done at a very high level. If all I wanted to do was write just another finance substack, even for money, I would. But I can’t. It doesn’t align with my values. I’m physically incapable of it.

Thirdly, I only want readers who benefit from my work to read it. I don’t need just anyone reading my blog. If you take the 10-15 minutes to read this, then I sincerely hope it adds some value to your life, especially your trading life. The only way to make that happen is for me to charge you for it, so I can spend that money doing the best possible research. So I can leave no stone unturned. Now I said before that I don’t mind not charging anything for my work, and that is true. A lot of people who find their calling will tell you that they could do it for free, but it is a lot better to be paid for it, and I get it now. Eventually this newsletter will attract the kind of people who would love to read it, and who will enjoy doing so, and paying for it. And when they find it, I hope it is everything they hoped it would be. That’s what I’m going for, and I have no problem turning everyone else away. That’s how it should be. People have a habit of binging on free stuff just because its free, so if I make this blog free, then people will read it just to pass time and the mail list will be full of people who have no real value for my work. No, I don’t want. Those 10 minutes are precious, it is better if they read something else.

Fourth and final reason, there are actual practical considerations if I’m to go ahead with this. Its many hours reading. Its nights fixing bugs in code. Its paying for data. Its buying books. Its talking to experts. All of those cost either time or money, or both. I thought I’d manage to do it by making about 80% of the blog free, and following a kind of ‘tip jar’, pay-if-you-want model, but that isn’t sustainable. Not for the kind of work I want to do. The conventional advice to growing a substack is to keep about 40% behind a paywall, make everything else free, and focus on growth. I think that would work if I was writing about anything else. But for this particular one, I think about 90% should be behind a paywall. If you are going to pay for a subscription, there is no reason that anyone should get what you paid for for free.

It’s really hard to price a newsletter, and I don’t really know what to charge for it. The only thing I know is that whatever I settle on has to be enough. I’ve settled on $30 a month, $299 a year and $999 for institutions, or if you want to pay extra for some reason (Substack calls it a ‘founding member’ tier). Now its a lot, but then again not really. I know from my own experience that I would happily pay that amount or even higher if I valued what I got from the newsletter. There are even writers I would like to pay but they won’t let me. The problem is that if I charge less, say $10 or $20 then the quality of the work could suffer, and then the work wouldn’t be worth doing for me, and worth reading for you. So that price helps both of us get what we want from this.

I’m sure I’ll lose some subscribers from this, and that’s okay. It’s all for the best in the long-run. If you wanted to stick around, but aren’t sure that you’d be getting your money’s worth, I get it, but I don’t know what to tell you. I just know that in the long-run, a subscription will benefit you. Maybe not the ESG thing, or the VIX thing, but somewhere down the line. That’s all I can say really.

So yeah. That’s it.

If you do want to stick around, here is a link to 20% off forever. I’ll scrap it at 50 subscribers.

Until next time,

Brian