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End of an Era. Come Join Me on the Other Side
After a 6 month period as Substacker, I am now taking my musings over to my own Slack Channel to provide outsourced macro consulting services and trade ideas to the masses at LaDuc Trading.
When I started writing about financial markets in the beginning of 2022, after 20+ years of buyside experience trading for some of the largest hedge funds in the world, I didn’t exactly know where this journey would take me. I was going to be trading my own personal capital for a living but I also wanted to figure out a way to help people make better informed decisions about their own investments. Since I am not a financial advisor, I wanted to a way to give people insight to my research, investing and risk management processes while also providing plain-spoken analysis about what drives financial markets to an audience that I felt could benefit from my thoughts and writings. Friends of mine suggested writing a free Substack as a way to get started quickly and see where things went. Dozens of posts and thousands of subscribers later, I believe the start of my journey has been a success. I have been able to provide content about my positions, my trading, my risk management, key macro drivers, the Fed, Russia/Ukraine, China, inflation and a variety of other topics without an editor, without a risk manager and without anyone looking over my shoulder. I wrote what I thought was interesting, when I thought it was interesting to do so. If I had nothing to say, I didn’t force content out. I wrote what I did when I did because I am trading my own capital daily based on this research that I am doing. If the research was good enough for me to invest my own capital, I was happy to share it with those who were interested. The reaction has been incredibly favorable and I am extremely grateful to those who have came along for the ride.
Six months into this journey, I am at a cross-roads. I have been approached by various hedge funds, family offices, private client advisors and research providers to come work for them and provide my content exclusively to them or their clients. While I have thought about these offers, the truth is that what I love to do most is trade and invest my own money and to do so in an unincumbered way. I like to take risks. I know how to invest and consistently generate strong risk-adjusted returns. I don’t need another set of eyes on my ideas, my trading, my risk management or my writing. The buck stops with me. Working for most of these other institutions would force me to sacrifice in some way which at this point in my career, I simply am not willing to do anymore. That being said, the interactions with my Substack community and Twitter followers tell me that I am providing a very valuable service to many small investors and I enjoy helping these folks with their investment processes. Since there exists solid demand for my writing services, I wanted to see if there was a way to be compensated for my writing but also continue to trade my personal account without restriction. So how do I do that? Is it possible to have the best of both worlds?
Thankfully, early in this process, I was asked by Samantha LaDuc, CIO of LaDuc Trading, to come over to start consulting and writing for her and her clients. I had been a subscriber to Samantha’s Fishing Club (www.laductrading.com) for the last few years and developed a strong working relationship with her, where we constantly bounced ideas off each other in her Slack room and on Twitter. She has had an incredible track record over the last several years, nailing countless key inflection points in the markets both up and down. Her cross-asset investment process meshes incredibly well with my own and she has been immensely helpful assisting with me various money-making ideas over the last few years. When I told her I was going to start writing, she asked me to provide content to her Slack room and growing client base whenever I saw fit. I have been her Macro Advisor now for the last few months and together, we have helped clients successfully navigate this choppy market environment all year. And during this period of time, I have been trading my own account as well where I am off to the best start to a year in my career.
Currently, Samantha and I are collectively advising a few family offices, private client advisors and high net worth investors with a collaborative research product called Macro Advisor Edge, where I act as an outsourced macro consultant providing customizable content and a daily presence during market hours. This has been a great success and hopefully this will continue to grow. However, since I really enjoy speaking with retail investors who can benefit directly from my ideas and services, I wanted to provide a more affordable service for them. I wanted to build a community of my ideas and writings together with investors on Slack, similar to what Samantha has done with her community, and be able to provide more direct content to more investors than what I have been providing on my Substack and do it in a manner that was more interactive where I could communicate with subscribers in real time about market movements and provide more color on what I am trading as well. So with Samantha’s help, I have created a product called MacroADVISOR which provides individuals a unique opportunity to access my investment process, portfolio construction framework, risk management philosophy as well as trading ideas in real time via my Slack Channel which exists exclusively in the LaDucTrading Slack workspace. In here, you will find my Macro Trading Map which is a trade-driven market strategy that highlights inflection points in market direction across global equities, commodities, FX and fixed income. This will also include curated trade set-ups with updates on sector rotation, durable trends and volatility hedges. I will be your outsourced macro consultant for your investment process where you can have direct access to my thoughts as well as be in community with other like-minded subscribers who are speaking throughout the day about financial markets and trade ideas. This is a chance for individual investors to have real-time help from someone who is trading the markets day in/day out and has been doing so for a long time.
Starting today, I will be exclusively providing my content on my MacroADVISOR Slack Channel in the LaDucTrading workspace. I will be moving away from Substack as the primary vehicle for my content distribution. While Substack was a good place to start, all good things must come to an end. In the links below, you will find more information about the product and pricing.
https://laductrading.com/product/macro-advisor-monthly-subscription/
https://laductrading.com/product/macro-advisor-annual-subscription/
And for the first 25 subscribers that sign on and use the code MacroLAUNCH100, the pricing of $99/month for these services will be locked in for the life of the subscription.
Feel free to reach me at craig@laductrading.com if you have any questions. I am extremely excited about this new venture. I hope you will join me.
Thanks,
Craig Shapiro
*Important Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only. I am not a financial advisor and nothing I post is investment advice. The securities I discuss are considered highly risky so do your own due diligence.