The Future of Financial Publishing

There’s a lot of discussion in the Finpub world about whether the best days for investment newsletters have passed.

Even as a relative newcomer with only a few promo packages under my belt, I can unequivocally say: No, they haven’t.

The reason is simple:

We’re at an inflection point in world affairs.?

I refer to it as “the return of history.”

I’ll explain more in just a moment.

Clearly, we don’t have clarity.

Far from it.

Promos that SHOULD work are tanking…

Promos no one saw coming are suddenly breaking out and selling like hotcakes.

No one knows what will work.

And that’s actually a good place to be.

The last three years since the pandemic has seen otherwise unthinkable things in a record span of time.

A worldwide pandemic.

A catastrophic land war in Europe.

The return of inflation at nearly 10% - at least for a little while.

The threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

The rise of artificial intelligence,

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

If you’ve been saving up for retirement, the world looks like a very iffy place to you.

Here’s what this means for finpub.

The battle for the future will be won and lost in editorial.?

Above all things, investors are looking for security. They want their publications to be on top of it and help them understand and process the insecurity as it unfolds.

Editorial doesn’t have to give answers, but it does have to create an open discussion with readers and clear up the fog of war readers are experiencing.

And here’s what I mean by the return of history.

From 1945 onwards, the US guaranteed world security, free naval passage for all nations, and a world economy where everyone had access to opportunities that had NEVER existed before.

A Europe with no potential conflict besides a decades-long stand-off with the Soviet Union?

Sure. Why not.

China supplying limitless cheap labor for anything the Western world wanted to manufacture for cents on the dollar?

Don’t mind if I do.

Endless oil supplies from the Middle East with no threat of interruption.

Isn’t that a given?

This was unthinkable in the world we understood for most of recorded history. If a nation wanted secure supply routes, it had to sail out with a blue water fleet and guarantee it by force.??

Throughout history, countries competed for everything.?

Food. Energy. Opportunity. Security.

History is the story of nations battling each other for those very things.?

Until…the second world war and the rise of a unipolar world with a democratic guarantor who didn’t want to colonize the rest of the world but rather rebuild the world in its own image.

That world has been eroding for years now, and the chaos we see is the world returning to its natural warring state.

I have strong opinions on who will come out on top.

But I’ve been thinking and reading about this for years.?

For most people, it’s just frightening.?

They want to understand, news story per news story, what’s is happening.

And in a world where the world has returned to competition, whoever understands this will win the war for customers one editorial piece at a time.

I’m going to write a series on what will happen as the dominos fall and what you can do to take advantage.

Follow me here on LinkedIn for more.