Hello!
I’ve spent much of my career working in sell-side equity research. Just as Josh Brown of CNBC fame was The Reformed Broker, I’m a reformed sell-side analyst. My area of specialty was paper & packaging. That gave me a window into what was happening with respect to goods spending (20%-25% of U.S. GDP), the inflationary pressures that small and large businesses have dealt with, companies’ attempts to raise prices to combat the inflation they’ve experienced, and public and private companies’ access to debt financing.
I was a publishing analyst for over ten years until last year, after which I’ve done consulting work, kept up a mailing list with updates on all things related to consumer spending, and educated myself on the functioning of the U.S. banking system. Despite working for a bank on the sell side, I knew little about that system, but I’ve come to appreciate how critical its health is to the broader economy, and how unhealthy so many banks are, even though the 31 large banks subject to the Federal Reserve’s annual stress test this year passed it at the end of June.
A natural extension of my mailing list would be to publish on Substack, which I’ve decided to do after months of deliberation. I hope that my articles will elicit feedback so that I can continue to learn and meet people with whom I wouldn’t have connected otherwise. I won’t have a set schedule; instead, I’ll write when I have something to say. My articles will be free for the time being, at least until I get the hang of the platform and attract a decent-sized audience! If you find yourself learning from my articles, I’d be grateful if you could share them with friends and colleagues.
My best,
Adam Josephson