Hey,

My name is Conor, the one on the left who forgot to rip the label off his scarf. The other guy is Leandro, a friend I was able to meet while travelling in Paris, all because of this newsletter.

Paris, France, January 2023

I’ll tell you a bit about who I am, then I’ll tell you about what I write, and then I’ll conclude with a FAQ section.


Who is “Conor?”

I am a 27-year-old who grew up in Germany & England before migrating back to my homeland of Scotland. I have worked since the age of 14, spent five years as a student of economics, and have served in various roles across the fintech and start-up landscape. I am currently a product manager and head of partnerships at Koyfin, and have been writing consistently since 2020. Investment Talk was my first newsletter, and I later started writing NTS.

Sometime during my studies, I realised that I while I love economics, it wasn’t a career path for me. I had been fascinated by how money and businesses work since a young age, and this transgressed into a love affair with investing. To me, the investment landscape is a living-breathing study of human behaviour, and it’s what I am passionate about. Once Investment Talk began building steam in 2020, I left my role as a data jockey at an investment reporting solutions company and focussed on the newsletter full-time. This was possible due to being selected for the Substack Pro program. I have not looked back since. Here is a memo I wrote in March reflecting on my first three years. Elsewhere, I am immensely passionate about investing, cooking, and travelling.

Investment Talk
Three Years of Investment Talk
Hey, you are reading Investment Talk. If you’d like to join the 20,000 other readers learning about life, the stock market, and the companies within it, subscribe below. You can check out my other articles and follow me on Twitter too. If you enjoy today’s article, then feel free to share it, it helps a lot. Now let’s begin…
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What is Investment Talk?

This is something that took me a few years to answer for myself. Investment Talk is where I write articles about the stock market, the companies within it, and human behaviour. I focus on writing about what I find interesting, in a way that will be both enjoyable and informative to the reader. If you are looking for stock picks or advice, then this isn’t the newsletter for you. If you are looking for alpha, then let me know if you find any, because I am too.

Supporters of the newsletter will receive between 60 to 80 articles each year, monthly issues of ‘The TLDR’ which curates a great selection of reading and charts, and 6 months of Koyfin Plus for annual subscribers, on the house.


What do supporters say about Investment Talk?


What’s the end goal?

The goal for me is to improve the quality of my writing, the value that it brings readers, and how much they enjoy the writing that I share. As a reader, you are always welcome to reach out and say hi.


Frequently Asked Questions

1) What platform do you write on?

I currently write on Substack but have experimented with several others in the past. Truth be told, while there are platforms with greater product depth than Substack, I find that it does everything I need and I am content with it for the time being.

2) Can I advertise on Investment Talk?

Yes, so long as I feel the integrity of the product or service is worthy of showing to my readers. If you’d like to talk advertising, hit me up on Twitter, my DMs are open.

3) What do you enjoy most about writing Investment Talk?

That picture I shared at the beginning of this page? That’s what I enjoy most about writing Investment Talk. Over the years I have been able to talk to investors I’d never dreamed of talking to before; fund managers, tenured professionals, and other analysts. I’ve also been able to connect with hundreds of fellow retail investors, share ideas, make genuine friends, and learn from them. That was the reason I created a Twitter account in the first place; to expand my social circle as it relates to investing. When I was travelling to Paris with my partner, I shared a picture of the Eiffel Tower and received a message from Leandro to the effect of “I’m flying into Paris tomorrow”. We arranged to meet in person for the first time, after having chatted for hours previously on Zoom and in direct messages. My partner and I, as well as Leandro and a few of his close friends all met, had lunch, drank beer, and had a terrific time. It’s wonderfully random moments like that which make me enjoy life so much, and the newsletter facilitates things like that. So, that’s what I enjoy most.

4) How did you scale Investment Talk to 20,000 readers?

The short answer is, through trial and error, consistency, and hundreds of thousands of words. I have written non-stop for over four years. I see many people throw in the towel after six months. I originally started writing about my own portfolio, companies and their reported earnings. I transgressed to writing about companies in a more journalistic approach (because I wanted to get away from any notions of being a “stock picking” service) and incorporating my own musings on the market and life generally. Having your own voice is critical. There are so many investment research, finance, or money blogs out there. Many of them sound the same. The best ones are those where the readers are there to hear what you have to say.

The writing game is full of many wonderful people. Get to know them. Learn from them. Ask them for advice, and feedback, and be open to helping them in any way you can. Don’t view this game as a zero-sum activity (I only scratch your back if you scratch mine). Put good things out there, help people with no expectation of return, and the byproduct is goodwill, friendships, and opportunities you might never have imagined.

5) How did you grow your Twitter to 50,000+ followers?

I don’t optimise for Twitter growth, but it was a pivotal factor in building my newsletter audience early on. Today, I rely more on recommendations and sharing from my existing network of readers. When I say I don’t optimise for growth, I mean that I largely use Twitter in a personal capacity; sharing things I find interesting, picking the brains of others, and occasionally I try to be funny. There are people who really know how to lubricate the Twitter engine. I am too lazy for that personally.


Your feedback is always welcome, and if there’s a topic that you want to hear more about, or you just want to chat about, then reach out to me on Twitter or ask me a question over on Perch.

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Essays about the stock market, finance, and human behaviour.

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