Published December 29, 2025
Rylie and I found ourselves in conversation with a well-known, major American financial news and market trading company. Their website has several hundred thousand subscribers. Think Yahoo Finance for context, but it wasn’t Yahoo Finance.
They were interested in having me write a periodic piece for them on investment/markets, and we were interested in the obvious exposure that would give to Working Profit. A symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationship.
Not to keep you in suspense, we decided to pass. But in that refusal, a lesson in how financial media works and why you have to be vigilant about your consumption of the output you seen and read.
A basic problem many media companies have, in regard to market commentaries, is the experience of the writing staff. It is very typical to have a relatively inexperienced writer, perhaps 5 or so years of engagement, writing opinion pieces and penning investment advice.
So, someone like me offers a slot to buttress the average years of experience in markets. Some multi-decade gravitas.
Now I will tell you that the contract itself was problematic to us. Essentially, they would own anything I wrote. Yet, we were saddled with any liabilities for it. You get it…someone sues over something and they point to me and put it on me to defend. More, when you cede ownership you also cede control over your image and brand. Just not where we wanted to be. But even if the legalities lined up, here was the basic issue.
I told the editor in charge (very nice person actually) that I tended to have a more measured and value-oriented view of investment. That, as an example, if a reader wanted to get involved in quantum computing, IBM would be my choice. And the editor said, “People want to hear about Nvidia, you know.” And I said, “That’s just not my thing but you already have people willing to write about that.”
So, it became clear that eyeball counts were the thing (can’t blame them, that drives advertising rates). And in my imagination, I had the feeling that at some point, I was going to run into some corporate thing that might try to wag our dog for content. Just didn’t feel comfortable.
I mean, we want to make a profit (its in our name!), but we already have the rent paid each month so we can be a bit fussy about what we do. And for sure, what we do want to do is stay true to our colors and do what we do best.
The only eyeball count I’m currently concerned about is when Rylie rolls hers in response to some goofy idea I have.
