Another Year and a New Venture

It’s been another year, another anniversary for this blog, and what a years it’s been. Eighty-three more posts. Two podcast interviews. Thousands of new readers. Many new friends. A good year, but a very strange year.

At this time last year nobody truly knew what was on our horizon. For many of us, we were just a few days away from going into lockdowns. Some were already in lockdowns.

Here we are a year later, not technically under stay-at-home orders, but most of us still living a very restricted life. I hope all of you have made it through these trying twelve months in good health.

Time to Think

One benefit of spending more time at home (besides getting to spend more time with my family), was having more time to think. Last March as the market was crashing down around us, I decided I wanted to take investing, and the principles on this blog, to another level. The question was how? What else to do?

I’ve had people suggest I start authoring a paid newsletter and post more often. It’s an interesting idea. I thought about it, but it just didn’t feel right for what I wanted with the blog.

Some said I should put Geometric Balancing on an online autotrading service and allow others to pay to follow along. This was very intriguing at first. But ultimately I didn’t like the fee structure.  It didn’t feel right either.

Others said I should start and ETF. I’d do that in a heartbeat, but after much research it’s probably too early. There needs to be a decent amount of demand for the product to cover the costs. Perhaps one day…

The more I thought about it, what I really wanted to do was have my own investing firm.

New Venture

So I spent the rest of the year researching, investigating, studying, testing , filling out paperwork, developing a website, planning, more paperwork, organizing, and collecting resources to properly start an investment management company.

I started this blog as an engineer and amateur investor.  I’m still an engineer. I’ve enjoyed the amateur/outsider persona. I still feel like an outsider, but the amateur investor part isn’t technically true any longer, and I want to be transparent, so you should be aware of that.¹

Grand Vision

Last year I said the grand vision of the blog was:

Some people have realized this is much more than just an investing blog. It certainly is an investment blog, but the portfolio construction aspect is meant to be a conduit towards a larger goal. The grand purpose is to spread unique, world changing philosophies about economics, markets and human behavior which are either unknown or currently lie outside the mainstream.

I like where this blog is right now.  I don’t want to change it.  I might not be able to write with the same hyperbole on certain topics but I’d like to keep the rest unchanged as much as I can. Therefore the company isn’t going to be affiliated with the blog. I’m probably never going to bring it up again. This is my personal blog.

Please don’t ask me a question about the company on here (if you have questions, go here). Don’t leave any comments about it. I received a crazy amount of spam comments this winter, so I switched to pre-approving every comment, and I will continue reviewing comments before they are posted.

Thanks Again for Reading

Ok, back to the blog. I’ve got over 20 drafts started for new posts, and a few left over from last year’s list, so nearly a years worth already planned out. If last year was any indication, I’ll come up with twenty more over that time as well.

Here are some of the topics and titles:

• The Geometric Business Cycle
• To Stay Sharpe, Miss Right
• Roulette Gold and Population growth
• Regeneration Economics
• The Perils of Backfinding
• Investing Doldrums
• Volatilities and their Fleeting Effect on our Mind
• Why has Nobody Made Mean Log Wealth Big in the Past?
• Why Lognormal when its all Laplace?
• The Duality of Market Efficiency
• The Missing Recipe of Hedge Funds
• Torqueing the Geometric Frontier

I’m sure some of the names will change, and a few will morph into multiple posts as well.

Thank You Again for Reading

I want to thank everyone again for taking time out of your day every two weeks or so to read my thoughts on investing, for posting comments, reaching out on twitter and being part of an ever growing community. Many of the topics I’ve written about have been inspired by your questions, comments, and feedback. I’ve grown a lot from conversing with all of you and I thank you for that.

I’m looking forward to exploring another year together.

1-Pronghorn Analytics will not directly copy the strategy on BTM (this is one of the reasons I stopped trading the blog strategy in my personal account last summer), but I will always stay true to the principles of the blog.