Tailwit Capital: Prologue
So I'm starting a new blog series and newsletter project called Tailwit Capital: Notes on money, by smooth brains, for smooth brains. Posts will go here on my blog and will also get sent out to email subscribers (for free) via Substack, for your reading convenience.
The first post, below, will tell you what it's all about.
These are the notebooks of a normal (in the bell-curve sense) person on a quest to learn how money works in our world.
First, you should know that I am not qualified to write informatively about money, finance, or business, in any way, much less to hand out advice on same. I have never taken a class in any of the above topics, nor worked in any field related to them. I don't make or have enough money to be able to not work. I might have more aptly named this venture "Midwit Capital," but that moniker was taken on Twitter, so I had to go down a tier in intelligence.
I'm a normal American. Like nearly all Americans, I'm above average at everything that I do. But, like some-but-not-all Americans, I love to nerd out about money. I like reading such respectable publications as The Wall Street Journal and The Economist, even though I don't understand any of the words or numbers in them. I like the idea that I'm reading them. My favorite vacation reading is any Michael Lewis book. The Big Short is one of my favorite movies, in large part because I love anything that Ryan Gosling is in.
Up until late 2021, I didn't know almost anything about "macro," as it's called. I didn't even know that's what that was called. I knew just enough about personal finance to have some idea of what to do with my own savings. But I knew zero about the Fed, about inflation and interest rates, about global reserve currencies, about fiat money. A year later, by late 2022, current events, as well as newfound related interests, were my gateway into starting to learn about all of the above.
Now I'm hooked. Not only do I find it addictive to gradually understand more and more of the words that have always been swimming around in our media, I'm continually mind-blown by how much they didn't teach us in school about how the world actually works, specifically the kinds of things that affect every aspect of our lives. I'm also continually mind-blown by how much the experts don't seem to know what's going on, yet how confident they are in saying words about it.
So I've resolved to become more money-literate (and finance-, economics-, business-literate) in 2023 and beyond. One sample concrete goal is that by the end of 2023, I'd like to be able to stumble my way around an SEC filing, like an S-1 or something that's equivalently mystifying to me now. That's just an example; I'm sure I will add more concrete goals as I come up with them, and swap some out for new ones. One less-concrete goal is that I'd like to be informed enough to be able to call bullshit when I see it. But then, that's a lifelong goal, not just a 2023 one.
This is the journey we're about to embark on, dear tailwit, should you choose to keep me company. This newsletter will be my notebook and journal as I learn about the things I want to learn about. For 2023, I could see that list including: the Federal Reserve; money theory; bond markets; crypto; venture capital; IPOs; the SEC and regulation; management consulting; and whatever chaos the new year brings.
We will watch movies and TV together, like Americans. We will read books and blog posts and try to wrap our smooth brains around what the wrinkly-brained ones are saying. We will read "ELI5"-style posts and still not understand them. (But if we do eventually understand them, we'll write better posts, posts that "explain like I'm actually 5.")
You should expect no structure whatsoever (though structure could emerge), nor should you expect topics to be selected to be timely or to benefit or interest YOU. I might write about up-to-the-minute dramas, or I might write about 80s-era coke-fueled hostile takeovers. Come along for the ride, stay for the dank memes.
I certainly promise no helpful insights, in any practical or intellectual sense. All I can promise you is word salad of the most profound order, along with some deeply noob questions that even you could probably answer for me (and I hope you do). I aim to entertain. There may also be swear words.
This newsletter is free (maybe not forever, but I have no plans either way for the moment) and will get sent out irregularly. I'll cross-post it on my own blog (which has an RSS feed) and on Substack so you can follow by email.
Welcome to Tailwit Capital. I hope to be your source for the most basic (in the pumpkin-spice-latte sense), amateur, low-IQ, premium-mediocre insights into the world of money.