Boaz is back tomorrow. Until then, it falls to me, Nick Hubble, to fill your inbox one last time…
Your parents shouldn’t be proud of what you do. That’s what our business’ founder told writers like me when I first joined.
Bill Bonner has a way with words… The point he was trying to make is a little more specific.
The whole point of newsletters is that they push the envelope of ideas. That we write about the sort of things the Financial Times and Bloomberg won’t. The sorts of things that stop our parents from sharing our articles with their neighbours.
Of course, every event that’s ever happened seemed impossible and shocking at some point. If you were predicting it’d happen, it’s just a question of how far ahead of the curve you had to be to look stupid. And how long you looked stupid for.
Years ago, our management team went to chat with the authorities here in the UK. They didn’t like some of our big claims and outrageous predictions.
According to company legend, Bill asked them what they would think of our predictions if we told our readers in 1938 that the events of World War II were about to unfold.
I’ve seen the original copies that made those predictions. It was my first job at Southbank Investment Research to sit in the vaults of the British Library and photocopy the interesting editions. It took a while to dig through 75 years of history. But it highlighted just how valuable newsletter writers can hope to be.
The trouble with newsletter writing is the economics. Not everyone is willing to entertain ideas out on the fringe. Not many people are Neophiles. Most are Neophiliacs – they don’t like new ideas.
To sell more newsletters, we can slip into the mainstream. The boring stuff everyone agrees with anyway.
But then our predictions no longer shock you. And that ruins the premise of newsletters in the first place.
The surprising thing is, writing and controversial ideas actually go hand in hand historically speaking.
Our publisher Nick O’Connor thumped the fattest book I’ve ever seen on my desk a few weeks ago. Maybe months ago. It’s about how the printing press changed the world. Religious, political and popular change happened thanks to the ability of words to spread fast. Printing was all about spreading controversial ideas when it first boomed.
At least, that’s how printing first became commercially successful. It took printers a while to work out they had to print interesting and controversial things to make any money. Martin Luther helped them along a bit. You can thing of his Flugblaetter, which means flight-pages, as the first newsletters.
At Southbank Investment Research, we don’t try to change the world. We try to help you get ahead of how the world is changing. Usually that means positioning your investment portfolio to profit from the change we see coming.
The most profitable idea in history
My speech was all about how governments create investment trends. Specifically, how the failure of government policies create investment trends.
Now I thought that’d put people right out. That nobody was going to share my scepticism of government policy, let alone take an interest in profiting from it.
But it turns out that, as long as you don’t mention any political party names, everyone hates the government sufficiently to consider my investment strategy.
Our newest hire dug in with an example of my own idea that I barely understood. Our head of marketing had an example too. And my colleague Connor Whitlock followed up the next day.
Apparently, opportunities to profit from government nincompoopery are all around us. There is no shortage of ideas. But we lack a newsletter that makes this an explicit strategy. For now…
Bill will always remain the master of this strategy. Partly because he has a lot of money to invest. But mostly because he is furthest along the curve of ideas. He is willing to invest in assets that even I think are disastrous. And then he waits.
Well, he doesn’t wait. You might read about him falling off the roof he was fixing at his drought stricken cattle ranch in Argentina. Or exploring land for sale by helicopter in war-torn Nicaragua. More recently he bought a run-down Quaker School in Ireland. Apparently an Irish school friend of mine was educated there a long time ago…
The point is, Bill buys things that make even his writers nervous. He puts into practice the idea of investing ahead of the curve of what’s considered “a good idea”. And then he waits to be proven right. Usually a long time.
Although this type of thinking is at the heart of our business, we don’t really have the capacity to write about changes happening ten years from now. Not many people have Bill’s patience.
Our subscribers want ideas much closer to fruition.
Until next time,
Nick Hubble,
Capital & Conflict
Category: Market updates