After a year or so away (more or less), I am dusting off the cleats and returning to the blog, for a few interlocking reasons. The first is that, having stepped away, I came to appreciate just how much the writing process itself sharpened my investment thinking: there is something about being forced to lay out a thesis, cogently and cohesively, for public consumption, that is very difficult to replicate without the discipline of regular writing. Secondly, I came to realize that I missed the interaction with smart investors in a long-form setting (Twitter simply isn’t cutting it in this regard and really there is no short-form substitute for this). Third – and perhaps most importantly – the opportunity set in my chosen ponds (small-cap Australian event-driven/special sits/activist names) is, in my view, quite massive at the moment, and since I am giving much more serious thought to raising a dedicated fund around this strategy in the next 12 months, I want to keep demonstrating my bona fides in this area, in the public domain. Fourth, the main constraint on my writing previously – the need to conform ideas, and cadence, to the demands of a paid blog – no longer applies, since I am no longer charging; this frees me up to experiment with different styles, formats, and the like. And finally, the simplest reason of all: I realized how much I enjoy writing and, in its absence, missed it!
What should you expect going forward? A bit of a hodge-podge, frankly: some fully-formed, deep-dive investment theses (much like what I used to write previously, including one I that should be coming down the pike in a few weeks); some much smaller, note-form type memos; and plenty in between. In general the more detailed work will be matched by position sizing/conviction – ie, the longer and more detailed the writeup, the larger my position – but not always. I will occasionally write about names that are simply intellectual curiosities, where I have no current position (or no ability to even get one, eg if it is super illiquid). No promises here, but essentially, you will get what you pay for 🙂
Also, a word re AI – I am increasingly using AI tools in my investment work and consider it extremely value-additive in a wide variety of ways to the investment process. You will likely notice this in one particular area – formatting/graphics/etc which as you all know were never a strength of mine – but I have decided to keep the writing piece essentially as much ‘me’ as possible.
So, look forward to an intermittent stream of Aussie-related special-sits, beginning probably in the very near future…