Being a good reporter, I recently noticed a trend: literally everyone else, 100% of my peers, has a “substack.” I like to feel included, so I thought I’d make one too.
Thank you for coming!
who is speaking pls
I’ve written about finance for the past ten years, at Bloomberg News, the Financial Times, and now Barron’s magazine. I’m also writing a book about the bond market and Bill Gross.
This newsletter is an upgraded version of the distribution list I’ve maintained since 2011ish.
What does it mean?
In the mysterious and wild world of bonds, a contract can be either “on the run” or “off the run.” Usually these terms are used in reference to Treasuries or credit-default swaps. “On the run” things are the ones everyone is trading, the most-recently issued, the benchmark ones. An “off the run” contract is older, a little weird, hairier or more weathered, leftover in some way.
That’s this newsletter: it’s my normal work, but it’s more the weird treasures I found, things that aren’t quite stories but aren’t totally not.
My Newsletter Origin Story
One day in the dark ages, I turned around in my swivel chair at Bloomberg News and saw our commercial mortgage-backed securities reporter composing an email to “CMBS professionals:.” She was sending her work out! Insane! She had collected such a following that her email would yield an instant wave of clicks, making her stories immediately among the day’s most-read. Furthermore, people *replied,* which yielded further scoops and stories. It was brilliant.
I was curious — did everyone do this? It turned out that our intrepid R(esidential)MBS correspondent had a similar list. I only had two samples, but they were two of the most ferocious and well-sourced reporters I knew. I copied them at once, and it proved valuable from, like, the second email, as a great way to connect with readers who are also often story subjects, past or future — creating a self-perpetuating virtuous circle where the feedback feeds my work. I get smarter and you get smarter content, like I’m a Spotify recommendation algorithm, but I eat a lot more and make irrational choices.
I’ve had two jobs since then, and everywhere I go I lug with me a cumbersome and disorganized clump of hundreds of email addresses. Those addresses change with everyone’s job changes, so each email I send generates ~200 bounce-backs, and I have to remove the broken addresses manually, and also gmail threads it weird and I lose the replies and it sucks. Which brings us here.
…which is where
So here we are at newsletter 2.0, the runoff from my regular day jobs. Here I will tell you about my work — about people with money and what they do with it. About what went into a story, or why it matters. One week’s newsletter might be a lil window into the class anxieties among the ultra-rich, and another week a meditation on who’s psyched about water investing. I may also highlight rad work by other reporters.
Subscribing gives you access to my newsletter, website, and brain. I want to hear from you — what interests you, what you want to read, what I should write about, stuff I don’t know yet. I want you to feel empowered to reply with your thoughts*.
I also am a Sunday painter, and my partner is a musician, so sometimes you might get some artistic leakage.
Love,
Mary
(Photo: Joel Arbaje) here I am about to lead my troops into battle, or to invent a revolutionary technology that will
*please dont be an asshole, tho; if u choose to do this i will not engage other than maybe to recommend a therapist in ur area. if u creep, i will break ur fingers. thank u.