December 2024 - Navexa Blog

December 17, 2024

🎄 Happy returns 🎄

Dear Reader,

Just two weeks of 2024 remain.

A year in which the S&P 500 has climbed almost 30% — about triple its annual return:

A year in which central banks began slashing interest rates having battled the highest inflation of the past 25 years:

A year in which a resurgent Donald Trump led the Republican Party back to power in the U.S.:

A year in which NVIDIA surpassed Apple to become the most valuable company on the planet:

In which Bitcoin hit a six-figure valuation for the first time:

And in which Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy both became the first ‘Bitcoin treasury’ company, and the first such company to enter the NASDAQ 100.

You could say that the theme of this year for investors has been up and/or to the right.

How much further this bull market runs, as always, we must wait to see.

For The Benchmark, however, it doesn’t matter whether prices are rising or falling.

There’s stories and insights everywhere.

After writing nearly 40 of these emails this year, as I take a pause before writing at least that many next year, here’s five of the most-read Benchmark stories from 2024.

The 0.00000001% investing mindset: This is the investing email I promised I’d never write, and the one worth breaking that promise for. It’s about the obvious things all around us that we ignore.

The other Great Depression: Most people think the Great Depression started with Wall Street’s notorious 1929 crash. As you’ll see though, people are all too easily tricked by their short memories.

Unskilled 24-year-olds running Wall Street: Never before have so many unskilled twenty-four-year-olds made so much money in so little time as the characters you’ll read about in this one.

The stock market vs. the ‘real’ world: Behold the stark reality of working for money, versus putting money to work in the markets — and a stack of other confronting charts about the markets and economy.

Why this elite ex-trader ditched Wall St for fast food: The ultimate arbitrage trade? Taking your earnings from seven years trading for ‘the hedge fund king’ and investing it into a Mexican takeaway empire on the other side of the planet.

These are some of the stories subscribers enjoyed most this year.

As for next year? Here’s what 20 of Wall Street’s top firms would have us believe.

That’s it for The Benchmark in 2024.

Thank you for reading my emails — it’s been a pleasure and privilege to research and share these ideas with you this year.

I always appreciate the replied and feedback.

We’ll be back in January with fresh stories, ideas and insights into the stock market and the broader financial world.

In the meantime, I wish you a happy, safe, and restful festive season.

Merry Christmas,

Thom
The Benchmark

P.S. Here’s my prediction on where BTC goes in 2025. You’re welcome.

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All information contained in The Benchmark and on navexa.io is for education and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional financial or tax advice. The Benchmark and any contributors to The Benchmark are not financial professionals, and are not aware of your personal financial circumstances.

December 2, 2024

The truth about writing investing emails

Dear Reader,

Something different this week.

I’ve been writing in the financial world for more than a decade.

I was a copywriter and a financial research business for many years.

Before that I was a news editor and print journalist.

This isn’t to brag. Just to say I’m not some random dude who decided to start writing an investing email with zero experience.

Anyway, here’s one thing I’ve learned about writing this type of stuff:

You don’t need to have any original ideas.

You need to synthesize publicly available information in order to offer a fresh insight or perspective.

So here’s my confession about The Benchmark, which I’ve now been writing for about seven months:

I don’t really ‘write’ these emails.

I collate them.

I do that by maintaining a diet of high-quality financial journalism and content.

I subscribe to a selection of the top finance and investing publications on the planet.

The Wall Street Journal.

Bloomberg.

Shortly, I’ll probably add The Economist into the mix.

Big stories and ideas are all around us; sources like these make it quick and easy to plug into what’s going on, and how the markets are feeling about what’s going on.

It was a WSJ headline that led me down the Arabian peninsula oil discovery rabbit hole (the one where I found out the guy who discovered all that oil went to the same high school as me in New Zealand).

Morgan Housel’s excellent book The Psychology Of Money got me thinking about the 0.00000001% investing mindset and the extent to which our subjective experiences bias our view of the world around us.

And Bloomberg’s various pieces of hard news and opinion helped me make sense of how Norway has managed to tax itself poorer by driving their wealthiest out of the country.

So yeah, a lot of what I do in this email is zoom in on a story or idea that’s captured my attention amid the daily financial media and content noise.

And there is a lot of noise. More than ever.

But I don’t only use big-name publications and books like those above to find the stories I want to write to you about.

There’s a host of ‘new media’ sources I’ve come to value just as highly.

While several Benchmark readers have written to me telling me they like these weekly emails, and often don’t enjoy the overwhelming volume of news and opinion than can all-too-easily clog an inbox…

Today I want to make a case for adding a few more things into your financial media diet.

The Opening Bell Daily

Phil Rosen is a former senior reporter at Business Insider, where he found his voice writing a popular daily financial newsletter.

Now, he’s doing this under his own steam with his new email.

I read The Opening Bell Daily most days.

It’s among the best free financial emails you’ll find anywhere on the internet.

According to Phil, the mission is to give readers ‘access to Wall Street through original reporting and exclusive interviews — all delivered with more nuance and even-handed analysis than what’s typically found behind paywalls at mainstream outlets’.

Phil’s an exceptionally experienced and credentialed writer. This shines through in his work, which I highly recommend you check out if you value a pithy, insight-rich daily take on the stories moving the markets.

One of Phil’s insights helped me explore the idea of whether or not the current bull market in stocks could expire in less than 200 days.

The Opening Bell Daily has a co-founder, who happens to be my second recommendation for you…

If, that is, you have the stomach for Bitcoin and crypto news.

If you don’t, best skip to my third recommendation.

The Pomp Letter

Anthony Pompliano is well worth reading and listening to — even if you share Warren Buffett’s views on crypto.

An entrepreneur and investor who’s founded, scaled and sold multiple businesses, Pomp helped Phil Rosen launch The Opening Bell Daily.

But he also has his own daily email — The Pomp Letter.

I read this most days. Why? Not only because I’ve been following the crypto story about a decade, but because Pomp gives you an insight into that world through an institutional investor and businessman’s lens.

This, in my opinion, is a far better way to keep up with crypto — and more specifically Wall Street’s relationship with crypto — than by sifting through an X feed full of pump-and-dump crypto bros.

There’s a bigger story here. And Pomp’s is one of the more rational, calmer voices in the conversation.

Check it out here if you’re interested.

The Daily Spark

Another fine addition to your financial email diet would be The Daily Spark, by Dr. Torsten Slok.

Dr. Slok is Partner and Chief Economist at Apollo Global Management.

His daily email covers a wide range of economic and financial topics.

They are very short, and very insightful.

Here’s an example:

Dr. Slok joined Apollo in 2020. Before that, his team was the top-ranked Institutional Investor in fixed income and equities for ten years.

He’s worked at the OECD and IMF.

The Daily Spark leverages Dr. Slok’s extensive experience and knowledge to provide timely and insightful economic commentary for its readers.

Sample the emails and subscribe here.

So there you have it. This is how I write The Benchmark — by regularly reading exceptionally good financial and investing writing from people with an exceptional talent for finding signals in the noise.

I’d love to know what you read or recommend — feel free to reply to this email and let me know.

Quote of the Week

‘In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.’

— Oscar Wilde

That’s it for The Benchmark this week.

Forward this to someone you know who’d enjoy reading.

And if one of our dear readers forwarded this to you, welcome.

Invest in knowledge,

Thom
Editor, The Benchmark

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