Special Announcement: Humble Student of the Markets will cease publishing a year from now, on March 31, 2026. (This is being published on March 31, 2025 and it is not an April Fools joke).
Here’s some history. I began writing Humble Student of the Markets in 2007. I had left Merrill Lynch to begin my semi-retirement after starting an investment career in 1985, and personally involved in the stock market since 1980. At the time, I made a decision to slow down and spend more time with my family. In the intervening years, I saw my daughter grow up from a child to a young woman. I was fortunate that life offers such a trade-offs, and I don’t regret a minute of that decision.
But I was restless and I still had a passion for the markets. So I started blogging in 2007, and writing regularly was a way of expressing my investment process on paper. It was a labour of love. The blog gained a following and eventually turned into a pay-site in 2015. After 17 years of writing, the labour of love has turned into a grind of producing content three times a week. The game is changing and I am running out of things to say.
I have seen two major shifts of investing paradigm during my investing career. In the early 2000s, I changed my focus from a bottom-up to a top-down quantitative equity investor. By that time, the barriers to entry to bottom-up quant investing had dropped dramatically. When once quant managers had to devote resources to integrate and manage their own databases, services like FactSet offered an all-in-one integrated database. Quant managers were crowding into the same trade. Virtually everyone were building bottom-up sector or industry neutral stock picking models. While your industry mapping may be different from mine, and our estimate revision models may differ, we were all crowding into the same trade. When it cost millions a year of data support to become an equity quant, you could build a quant department for under 500K. I decided that it was time to shift to something uncomfortable for equity quantitative investing. Instead of trying to find alpha in sector/industry neutral modeling, it was time to add value by rotating among top-down factors such as market timing, and sector and factor rotation.
Today, the game is changing once more. A recent
Bloomberg article entitled “How Analyst Job Cuts on Wall Street Are Shaping Equity Research” tells the story of how investment banks are forcing analysts to do more with less. Consequently, company coverage is shrinking and some analysts have quit to become content creators on platforms like Substack. This will have the effect of raising stock picking alpha potential among smaller neglected names, and raising small cap volatility, both on an index and individual stock level. The degree of value-added in top-down analysis like what I offer is gradually losing to bottom-up approaches.
From a top-down perspective, see my recent
post, “Uncharted investor waters: From soft to hard power”. This is truly a time when “past performance is no guarantee of future returns”. We are on the cusp of a tectonic shift in asset return expectations with unknown consequences.
As old athletes might say, “It’s time to hang them up.”
Here is what this means for the site going forward.
For existing subscribers
If you are an existing monthly subscriber, nothing will change until March 31, 2026. If you are an annual subscriber, your subscription will be pro-rated on a monthly basis to March 31, 2026.
For new subscribers
Only monthly subscriptions will be available. Annual subscriptions will cease.
For free notifications
I have a long standing policy of opening content that’s four weeks old to the public. That policy will not change. You could sign up for free email notifications of free content.
Going forward, free email notifications will cease operation immediately, but the embargo on content will continue to lift after four weeks.
Legacy plans
I have secured an agreement with Fred Meissner, of The Fred Report, to continue publishing a monthly commentary on my Trend Asset Allocation Model at his site. Fred is an experienced ex-Merrill Lynch colleague and seasoned technical analyst who focuses on global markets with a particular emphasis on the U.S.. Existing subscribers will receive a free trial to Fred’s service for three months starting January 1, 2026.
You can also sign up for a subscription today at Fred Meissner’s
site and receive a discounted rate with the code CamTrial. His basic subscription is written service listed at $40/month or $400/year. His premium subscription includes the written service and a weekly conference call where subscribers can ask specific questions is $100/month or $1000/year.
The website, its archived content, and my email address will remain in existence for at least a year.
For subscribers who are focused on macro style market commentary, here are some other people whose analysis that I have a lot of respect for that you may consider following. (I receive no compensation for these recommendations).
Callum Thomas,
Topdown Charts: A big picture macro thinker whose investment process aligns with mine.
Jurrien Timmer, director of macro at Fidelity: You can follow him on X/Twitter here. He also has a weekly newsletter that you can sign up for on LinkedIn.
Thank you for your past support
Thank you to all. It’s been a terrific journey together. This will be a long goodbye, but I think a lot about Bill Watterson, the cartoonist who published Calvin & Hobbs, who quit after he ran out of things to say. This was his final comic strip on December 31, 2015.
Source:
http://humblestudentofthemarkets.blogspot.com/2025/03/its-time-to-hang-them-up-or-long-goodbye.html
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