The Best Things in Life are Free

Including my brand new WSJ newsletter!

Dear readers and casual browsers of The Hungarian Contrarian,

As I hope you know, I write this newsletter for fun. I really do appreciate the handful of you who have pledged an annual subscription for it through Substack–a feature I’m not sure how to turn off–but I have no plans to take you up on it while I’m gainfully employed.

And now I have an exciting announcement about that job! After 20 years of penning investing columns for The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and Dow Jones Newswires, and the past 10 mostly editing, I’m going to go back to my roots writing full-time. The new column is daily, just like in my old Ahead of the Tape days, and it’s delivered via a free newsletter.

I do expect my employer to eventually put it behind a paywall, but non-subscribers can read my market thoughts every weekday for now by signing up for Markets A.M. through this link. A newsletter with that name containing links to the day’s most interesting money and investing stories in the WSJ has been up and running for some time already. The new one will have a lot of the same helpful stuff, but there will be two differences: 1. My musings up top; and 2. Links to outside stories as well–anything I read or listened to that I found interesting that day.

Here’s a direct link to the first one that went out today. I hope that you at least check it out and let me know what you think. There’s an email address towards the bottom where you can send feedback or suggestions. I can read it, but it’s there for the benefit of my new WSJ Newsletters overlords to improve the product and to decide how this is all going.

If you love it then I’m sure that’ll go over well. And if you hate it? Well, you know what they say, nobody likes a gossip 😉.

The tone of the newsletter will be a bit simpler since the readership is already very large–several hundred thousand–but I hope you find it worthwhile and also different from the crowded morning investing newsletter scene.

I expect to keep writing this Substack newsletter too and I might even pick up the pace once I’ve settled into a routine. I’ve read a handful of good investing books lately that I’d like to review.

Warmly,

Spencer