Why so few Matt Levines?

by iNic • 2 years ago

263 140 2 years ago

majikaja2• 2 years ago

I barely read his articles these days. Most of it is irrelevant to my work/obvious to professionals. A lot of it is just summarizing other articles in his own words.

Deep insights in finance are typically not useful once everyone knows about them.

NoboruWataya2• 2 years ago

Were you actually using Levine's insights in your work previously (like, trading on them)? That is interesting if so. Some of Levine's stuff is relevant to my work and most of it is not, but I never really considered it particularly useful, just entertaining. I suppose it can be useful for its educational value as the article explains.

I do also read his stuff less nowadays. I still enjoy it, but it's not as high a priority for me as it used to be. I think it's the repetition. After 100 "everything is securities fraud" stories, number 101 is less entertaining.

Still a big fan though.

majikaja2• 2 years ago

I never found it useful for trading (he's never been involved in that as far as I know) but I found it useful for gaining general knowledge when I was new to finance.

47282847• 2 years ago

I am not in finance and I’m not interested in investing because I’m rational and simply use world ETFs and don’t see why I would ever want to do anything else. I really enjoy Levine because I learn a lot from it about how the world works. I do not read anything else from finance so really appreciate his summaries.

paulpauper2• 2 years ago

It's more about explaining why something happened, not so useful at predicting

julianeon• 2 years ago

Deep insights in finance are typically not useful once everyone knows about them.

By that logic, it is right and good for the American public to be financially illiterate.

readthenotes1• 2 years ago

I wonder if more people know about Mr Money Mustache than Matt Levine?

tyleo• 2 years ago

That’s a great question. I was really hooked on Mr. Money Mustache for awhile but his content got old. Levine is harder for me to read. He feels more complex feels more relevant.

ghaff3• 2 years ago

The lean FIRE stuff really seems like schtick to me pretty quickly. Yeah, some of it is worth reading and thinking about, but a lot is pretty alien to my personal objectives. I'm not going to panic about going out to dinner or taking, what he would probably consider in print, a moderately comfortable vacation, if not an extravagant one.

nl• 2 years ago

Mr Money Mustasche, slightly: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...

Makes sense - Mr Money Mustasche is about personal finance, whereas Matt Levin is commentary on the financial industry.

petesergeant• 2 years ago

Particularly in economic matters, people believe many intuitive folk economics like eg. building new houses cannot lower prices, or that businesses raise prices simply “when they feel greedy”, or that voluntary transactions must have a loser & a winner when other people transact (but not themselves personally), or that a policy will have only intended effects because everyone will just do what they are ordered to (even though they personally work around policies or rules all the time for doubtless noble reasons).

Pretty skeptical of this assertion in an otherwise great read

kbelder• 2 years ago

You're skeptical that many people believe those things?

modeless• 2 years ago

Seems obviously true to me. Spend time on Reddit r/all and you'll see these beliefs repeated over and over.

JumpCrisscross9• 2 years ago

Hell, supply and demand are regularly called out as fake on HN, where you'd expect people to know better.

davidclark• 2 years ago

Skeptical in what way - that people believe these things or that these things are folk economics?

rsynnott2• 2 years ago

Plenty of people definitely believe all of those things.

vlovich1233• 2 years ago

Matt Levines of, say, chemistry or drug development

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sabine Hossenfelder, Brian Greene and many others cover astrophysics, quantum mechanics, particle physics, and other science topics.

I think the challenge is that the sciences are hard and developments there are fairly slow as compared with financial stuff which moves a bit more quickly.

bmitc2• 2 years ago

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sabine Hossenfelder, Brian Greene

None of those three "cover" any topics. They push their own topics and agenda, which can often be fringe or counterculture and highly personal pet preferences or topics. Tyson, in particular, just likes to hear himself talk above all else, took 11 years to get his PhD, was kicked out of the UT Austin PhD program, is often wrong, and is a living breathing example of "well, actually".

These three are about as far from journalism as you can get and are actively hurtful, at least in the case of Greene and Tyson due to their popularity, to science.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 2 years ago

I don't want to pile on here, because Neil did do some good in popularizing science. He did not really manage to make it cool, but he did become a popular mainstream figure that the public was now allowed to associate with a mental image of a science nerd ( a big step given that previous media iterations were invariably a caricature straight from revenge of the nerds ).

The problem.. as it often tends to be in instances such as this.. is that he did become a faux celebrity with all the benefits and drawbacks it brings. Unlike another celebrity in that realm however ( Hawking ), he did not manage to get the same level of recognition.

The_Colonel• 2 years ago

Sabine Hossenfelder

Check her YT channel - full of clickbait content outside of her expertise. Quite sad actually. https://www.youtube.com/user/peppermint78

Sean Carroll would be a better example, although his reach is limited.

NoboruWataya2• 2 years ago

I suspect the sciences also aren't as "juicy" for want of a better word. Finance is a very human field and there is huge scope for interpersonal conflict and drama, which people love to read about.

vlovich1233• 2 years ago

If you think there isn't interpersonal conflict & drama, you're not listening to the arguments between the proponents of string theory, quantum gravity, and people like Roger Penrose who are somewhat skeptical of both.

More likely that because finance involves money, and huge amounts of it, and a lot of people are interested about things that involve huge amounts of money, especially if there's drama.

ozzydave• 2 years ago

I’d say Matt O’Dowd of PBS Space Time is the closest to Levine’s role?

nabla9• 2 years ago

Derek Lowe is the Matt Levine of chemistry and drug development. https://www.science.org/blogs/pipeline His "Things I Won't Work With" series is legendary even in HN.

Ann Lipton is the Matt Levine of business law. https://www.businesslawprofessors.com/author/alipton/

loeg• 2 years ago

See footnote 1.

While I enjoy Derek Lowe, the extent to which his posts are inside-baseball and do not repeat themes, or only repeat many years apart, emphasize the contrast with Levine.

aftbit2• 2 years ago

I disagree with both points. I would say he is indeed a Matt Levine of his field. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the author's argument though.

1. His posts are inside-baseball - this is true for some posts, but many are written to be approachable to all audiences, especially during the coronavirus. This is similar for Matt Levine's posts, but as a finance nerd, not a drug discovery one, the author does not see this.

2. [His posts] do not repeat themes - he has many examples of repeated themes, including the whole science-over-money aspect of the Aducanumab saga, various times he has touched on "AI" drug discovery, and the whole Things I Won't Work With series.

mech422• 2 years ago

Gotta Love Derek... "Things I won't work with" actually got me to read some of his other stuff about how drug development and trials work.

hn_throwaway_992• 2 years ago

I just started watching some of his videos, but the 3Blue1Brown guy seems to fit in this bucket, and he's got a ton of HN fans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41818779

JumpCrisscross9• 2 years ago

Does Lowe have a newsletter?

_2d30• 2 years ago

You can subscribe to his blog with RSS: https://www.science.org/blogs/pipeline/feed

_bin_2• 2 years ago

One more for the pile: Mark Brown’s Industry News Update for alcoholic beverages. It’s a little less explain-everything-easily than Levine but it’s also a less jargon-deep area.

gradschoolfail• 2 years ago

If you dont find his humor grating (I do, but YMMV — its hard to hit the sweet spot as Mr. Levine does)

Scott Aaronson might be the ML of quantum computing.

(i also find the field slow, but i really think im the odd one out!)

ioblomov2• 2 years ago

To Hossenfelder, I'd add Ben Thompson on "the business, strategy, and impact of technology" and the Financial Samurai on personal finance...

https://stratechery.com/2024/elon-dreams-and-bitter-lessons/

https://www.financialsamurai.com/minimum-investment-threshol...

the_gastropod• 2 years ago

Man. I couldn't really disagree more re: Financial Samurai. That dude strikes me as a complete troll. His older articles aren't too bad, but the past several years, he's pivoted to a Get Rich or Die Tryin' mentality, and publishes endlessly repetitive takes. I think he's more an SEO expert than a financial one, at this point. If you can't figure out how to live on ~$380k of passive income, you have no business giving the general public financial advice.

ioblomov2• 2 years ago

I hear you; I just think he's far more risk averse than most people. He sets a high, conservative bar for his readers and himself that, at the risk of being overkill, almost guarantees success. Given finance, like tech, is not a field you can easily return to after leaving, I think the conservatism is merited.

Suppafly2• 2 years ago

If you can't figure out how to live on ~$380k of passive income, you have no business giving the general public financial advice.

Reminds me of Mr Money Mustache, dude has some good takes, but a lot of his advice is predicated on having a huge nest egg.

gkanai• 2 years ago

Levine being at Bloomberg (which is a central org in finance media) is important. That finance media can support a Levine and his salary is also important.

hrpnk• 2 years ago

Marc Rubinstein also has great educational articles on history and inner workings of the finance industry: https://www.netinterest.co/

dzonga• 2 years ago

But this isn't free, though compared to Matt Levine's newsletter.

richardw2• 2 years ago

I’ve seen his stuff referenced many times but it’s paywalled, right? Is there an email sub without the paywall?

jcdavis• 2 years ago

Yes: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/money-stuff?so...

richardw2• 2 years ago

Thank you!

ForHackernews• 2 years ago

What a silly question. Being an excellent writer is hard! Why is there only one Joan Didion?

hn_throwaway_992• 2 years ago

I agree. While there was a depth to the analysis in this post that I somewhat enjoyed (though at times it felt a bit like a "why the joke is funny" explanation...) to me the primary reason that I like Matt Levine is just that I find his writing to be amazingly great. And not just his overall content and analysis (which I'm still often awed by), but I find his knack for putting words together in uniquely insightful, clear and often hilarious ways to be uniquely brilliant.

Some people are just really, really good.

giraffe_lady2• 2 years ago

There's also just... how many words has he written? He's been doing a multiple-times-a-week newsletter on the same subject for like two decades. The man is honed, dialed in to his craft. Even among the extremely extremely small group of professional writers who make their living from their writing, he must be an outlier on volume.

Jun8• 2 years ago

“So you have a filter with many layers: you need areas which fulfill a stringent set of conditions for such an educational newsletter, and you need a very unusual sort of individual, someone who is expert in the area and has preferably gotten their hands dirty, who is good enough to work professionally in it, but who also is capable of explaining it well, at a beginner level, many times, endlessly without burning out or getting bored, because of their intense interest in the area (but again, not quite intense enough to make them go do it instead of write about it).”

I think the first filter is a much bigger factor, but for a reason that’s not mentioned in the post: $$$s to be gained. A large number of people read finance blogs because they think they themselves make money with the knowledge therein.

This is hard to replicate with other examples given: for purely abstract topics, eg Greco-Roman philosophy, the prize is purely intellectual. For others, eg fracking and drug discovery, you can make tons of money but pool of interested people is much smaller.

The only combination of general appeal and personal gain that could be interesting, I think, would be dating. You have recurrent patterns, clear outcomes, and pretty much everyone is interested and want to learn how to get better at it.

JumpCrisscross9• 2 years ago

$$$s to be gained. A large number of people read finance blogs because they think they themselves make money with the knowledge therein

Levine's blogs aren't geared to this audience. The pitch is simpler: people in finance have money and the people with the most money in finance tend to enjoy (or at least spending way too much time) thinking about finance. (I'm in finance and I'm good at it.)

If I could pay for Matt Levine separately from Bloomberg, I would. Not because I expect to profit off it. But because it's fun, informative and once in a while helps me explain something to someone else (usually a friend) more concisely.

kelnos• 2 years ago

I think Levine is probably doing fine money-wise. I assume he's paid a salary (or has some other financial arrangement) with Bloomberg.

As for Bloomberg itself, you can subscribe to Money Stuff (via email) without paying for Bloomberg.

(Perhaps you just want to throw some cash his way because you get value from his writing, and want to show your appreciation; ignore me in that case.)

morgante• 2 years ago

A large number of people read finance blogs because they think they themselves make money with the knowledge therein.

Do you actually read his work?

I certainly don't expect to make money from reading it. I'd be surprised if a significant number of subscribers had that reason.

It's entertaining and informative about the overall world, not something I expect to make money from.

kevinmchugh• 2 years ago

I was always a boring passive investor and reading Money Stuff has made me more boring and more passive. Every day it's stories of people smarter than me getting hosed in ways I wouldn't have thought of

3eb7988a1663• 2 years ago

If you were to commit a financial crime, he points out the numerous blunders that lead to someone getting caught. So, you could use his blog as a What-Not-To-Do guide. Most of which comes down to: 1) keep your mouth shut, no matter how much you want to brag about your great scam 2) one play only, repeats at bat is how you get greedy and sloppy 3) no huge options trades because of your one-time insider information

bostik• 2 years ago

Money Stuff is a weathervane and a lightning rod. Things show up in Matt's writing sometimes months before they make a splash in the rest of the world.

I work adjacent to finance, but I'd read Money Stuff even without that link. It's a good way to keep myself up to date on happenings in and around finance, and of course, the newsletter is often funny. I don't expect to ever make money from my reading activity, but I have found that being well informed of weird and/or interesting developments within that world makes me more valuable at work.

Being able to predict what kinds of compliance and governance related curveballs may be coming, a few months before they land on our desks? Surprisingly valuable.

rsynnott2• 2 years ago

I think the first filter is a much bigger factor, but for a reason that’s not mentioned in the post: $$$s to be gained. A large number of people read finance blogs because they think they themselves make money with the knowledge therein.

Anyone doing this with Money Stuff is, well, extremely confused.

paulpauper2• 2 years ago

Why don’t we have a Matt Levine for every industry? Where is the Levine of, I don’t know, petroleum refining or fracking, of shipping containers?

this would be a consultant. the market for 'shipping container experts' is tiny . not enough to support a columnist

ghaff3• 2 years ago

Yes. You can be sure that there are deep experts/consultants/analysts on just about any niche that you care to choose. But you're not going to get a lot of subscribers to your newsletter on "this week in plumbing supplies."

carbonguy• 2 years ago

Chiming in with a few of my favorite "Levine-likes":

- For aviation disasters and safety, can't beat Admiral Cloudberg: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/

- For more about the financial sector, Patrick McKenzie is solid gold every time: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/ (and I believe an HN regular as well!)

simonebrunozzi• 2 years ago

Yes, as patio11

nsbshssh2• 2 years ago

Cloudberg is awesome, but her articles are all about disasters and follow the same formula.

The formula is great and covers everything from airline company culture to what the pilot ate for breakfast figuratively speaking to material science.

However you wont get commentry on anything that is still flying.

aftbit2• 2 years ago

first-principles explanations: most people experience an “illusion of depth”, in that they believe they understand the causal mechanics of an area far better than they do. But in fact, they have learned only a superficial model of the area. Levine corrects this.

I've found almost the opposite. Many smart people see a new field and think "ah this can't be too hard if we just approach it from first principles" and then leave behind all of that field's accumulated knowledge. In finance, this is a well known trap for the unwary polymath.

mandevil• 2 years ago

s/smart people/computer programmers/g

I mean, that was his entire point about crypto- how it speed-ran the entire history of finance markets and discovered- in very painful and usually expensive ways- why each bit of market regulations exist.

at_a_remove• 2 years ago

In my personal life, I have found great satisfaction in finding out how different people's jobs work, all of the things I wouldn't expect or know, and so on. I think it's fascinating. Whatever it is I think I can figure out from first principles might have been how the field started, and then there's the other ninety-nine percent that comes with it, the non-obvious stuff. But I am a very curious cat.

paulryanrogers2• 2 years ago

There aren't so few. It's just that most don't have a big following. And every realm has its great teachers and authors.

I had a sixth grade teacher who was a brilliant and certified historian, and a former pilot who served in the Vietnam war. Yet he worked at an ugly, outdated elementary school in an exurb of greater Cleveland. He made school a delight and taught me more world history in one year than all of junior high and high school combined. Few have ever heard of him, yet I doubt any of his students will ever forget him or any of the things he taught us.

selimthegrim• 2 years ago

Inquiring minds want to know which exurb.

paulryanrogers2• 2 years ago

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/news-herald/name/willia...

open-paren2• 2 years ago

I think Derek Guy (@dieworkwear and "the Twitter menswear guy") is a decent "Matt Levine" for the menswear space, as much as there can be one for a subjective subject.

He focuses on the clothes first and never his personal celebrity, although he uses his Twitter platform to promote the desire for affordable housing and respect for immigrants fairly frequently. I don't think there is a picture of him anywhere on the internet. He violently rejects all paid content opportunities. Instead, he focuses on the aspects of good tailoring, "shape and drape", and the history of many menswear items. His bug thing is that "clothing is a cultural language" that all speak.

* putthison.com (he is among the writers, but the big itself is mostly dead now-a-days)

* dieworkwear.com (his personal, infrequent blog)

* styleforum.net (a forum where he used to participate a lot)

I wish his (substantial) Twitter activity was available elsewhere.

mhh__3• 2 years ago

The menswear guy spends a ridiculous amount of time just trying to own people in his replies which honestly seems extremely childish.

e.g. I saw someone say "Don't try to go toe to toe with him, he grew up in [snakepit forum with lots of insults]" — these forums are for morons (for which there is time and a place)

I don't see the similarity with Levine.

crashabr• 2 years ago

I'm pretty sure that everyone who reads him for his knowledge would agree that the research (even if from his own past writings), formatting, illustration of his many threads take him much more time than the one-up replies.

They're also pretty easy to ignore (unless you somehow feel offended by them), and mainly appear on people's feeds because of how retweeted they are.

_bin_2• 2 years ago

Yeah second this. Most of Levine’s critique is well-aimed, well-reasoned, and well-directed at significant people. Menswear’s “critique” consists mostly of trying to “own” random hundred-follower anons. Same vibes as Ben Shapiro “owning libs” by “debating” random, unprepared college students.

open-paren2• 2 years ago

He absolutely wastes the bits dunking on dumb people in the comments, but his on topic writing is unparalleled. Take his most recent blog post, American Space Cowboys. It's an indepth discussion on the fashion of the Apollo 11 trainees. That kind of article doesn't happened very often and has lots of fundamental principles and history of workwear dress pieces.

klausa2• 2 years ago

My Levine backlog has grown to the size of multiple novels by now; but I guess I consider Derek's dunking on people in his replies as similar in spirit to Levine's making fun of weird crypto stuff and NFTs?

Sure, one is less personal, but the ~ vibe ~ doesn't seem that much different. That's one of the things that makes reading Money Stuff so fun!

ZephyrBlu• 2 years ago

He does have a lot of good info, but also shits on people very frequently. I would prefer if he was a little more polite.

Ar-Curunir• 2 years ago

The people he shits on are usually people who get offended by the implicit vaguely left-ish politics of his posts. I don't see the harm in him dunking on them, since it doesn't affect the quality of his actual content.

carabiner• 2 years ago

Menswear guy has never shown how he actually dresses and his "critiques" are just political statements. For any political figure, it's left-leaning views == good dress, that's all.

elevatedastalt2• 2 years ago

You are being downvoted but you are exactly right. Whatever redeeming value Derek's fashion statements have has been completely overtaken by his insufferable political avatar.

throwaway19972• 2 years ago

His advice is good; I've found multiple outfits based on his recommendations. Given that he specifies how to select clothes based on form, function, and taste, and not by pimping brands, this is absolute gold.

Who gives a damn how he dresses; I hope he takes his own advice because it'd be pretty weird not to, but he could walk around nude for all I care.

nitwit0053• 2 years ago

It is relatively easy to make money if you create popular financial content. There are plenty of people interested in placing ads next to it.

Occasionally you'll see people joke that they need to change their content from art to home loans to cash in.

JumpCrisscross9• 2 years ago

plenty of people interested in placing ads next to it

Bloomberg is a subscription. It has ads, but they don't complain about ad blocking. Turned it off out of curiosity: these look generic.

nitwit0053• 2 years ago

Yes, but most subjects aren't going to be able to part of Bloomberg.

JumpCrisscross9• 2 years ago

He's also ridiculously accessible. E-mail him with a question and he responds. For a newsletterist with hundreds of thousands of readers, that's exceptional.

insane_dreamer• 2 years ago

Another factor is that there is a very large number of people who don't work in finance who are interested in money and specifically the ability to make money, even if they don't have any money.

edm0nd• 2 years ago

VX Underground for the "Levine" of the cybersecurity space

also a big fan of:

- marcus hutchins

- geohotz

slt2021• 2 years ago

Crebs on security - I think he is the Matt Levine of the cyber security.

Joel Spolsky's blog (Joel on Software) was also very pleasant read on software back in the day

saagarjha2• 2 years ago

While entertaining they aren't really Levines. I don't think any of them give you beyond a superficial understanding of the topics they work on (and, arguably, sometimes they provide inaccurate or exaggerated views).

fragmede• 2 years ago

And "everything is securities fraud" isn't? It's hilarious, but definitely exaggerated. Matt Levine is interesting while also poking fun, which is practically the definition of entertaining.

ac-swe2• 2 years ago

Before he joined Bloomberg, Matt got his start at www.dealbreaker.com. During my stint on wall st (2006~2015), DealBreaker was THE industry rag of choice. Daily news roundups, annual bonus/compensation gossip, rumors of pending layoffs or reorgs, all in one place.

There is so much boring shit you have to read on a daily basis when working in capital markets. Breaking geopolitical news, WSJ / Financial Times / Economist / Bloomberg articles, endless internally published market commentary, all of it often written by someone who takes themselves too seriously. Matt Levine was a breath of fresh air, someone who was both technical AND irreverent.

Nobody trades off of Matt's articles. Nothing he writes about is secret. His best stuff takes the form of "this weird thing happened" or "XYZ made a dumb mistake." Matt is funny, and funny is VERY underrated in financial commentary.

https://dealbreaker.com/author/mlevine

steveBK1232• 2 years ago

GFC era dealbreaker was incredible stuff.

Bess Levine was great was also great in a different way and its too bad she's left the Wall Street beat.

ac-swe2• 2 years ago

For sure Bess was the GOAT, db wasn’t the same after she left

hardwaresofton• 2 years ago

Just to add to this, but I've interacted with him and he is also very gracious, curious, and terminally online (in maybe the most mentally balanced way I've ever seen before).

I didn't go so far as saving the emails offline but I do know they're in my inbox somewhere.

We don't have more Matt Levines because it's hard to create them.

stogot4• 2 years ago

I know a couple folks who seem to fit his personality and humor, but don’t write

analog31• 2 years ago

Perhaps Rick Beato on the music industry and the inner workings of popular music.

giraffe_lady2• 2 years ago

For classic rock maybe but that's a pretty small segment of music these days. He's got some insight into pop & country but almost none into hip hop and I don't think he's an expert on modern studio work in any genre. He's a little opaque about this but I don't get the sense he's played on or produced anything in the last decade. Things have changed fast.

dumb_as_rocks• 2 years ago

Justin Hawkins is much better... Rick Beato might be popular, but he has no songs. You can learn all the music theory in the world but it won't make you artful.

jmyeet• 2 years ago

Two stories spring to mind.

The first is the propensity for journalists to be in lockstep with US foreign policy. This occasionally gets brought up to them and they generally act offended and might respond with "my views haven't been bought" to which the retort is "you wouldn't have this job if you didn't have these views". The point is that there are filters at every level to produce people who are complicit with the status quo, not just in journalism.

The second is an old Noam Chomsky video talking about Newt Gingrich railing against "welfare queens" when in fact his congressional district (at the time) received something like the third-most (after the Kennedy Space Center and another I forget) most from Congress, which is really the definition of welfare. But we don't often talk about "corporate welfare".

But the point is the Democrats at the time never challenged him on this. Why? Class solidarity. The political elite (regardless of party) are more interested in perpetuating the system than anything else because they directly benefit from it.

A good example of this is so-called "floor privileges". If you've been a Congressperson and leave, almost inevitably to become a lobbyist, you retain, by convention, "floor privileges". That is, you have the right to enter Congress and the chamber of the House of Representatives even though you're a private citizen (worse, a lobbyist). No Congresspeople wants to upset that apple cart because that's their future path to wealth: selling access.

So people like Matt Levine are an outlier basically by design.

personjerry• 2 years ago

Hmm it's kinda crazy how well his main points [on why Matt Levine educates so well] map to ML concepts:

1. cases with known outcomes/answers => data with labels

2. first-principles explanations: most people experience an “illusion of depth” => avoiding local minima

3. spaced repetition enabled by fast turnover => stochastic optimization

therealcamino• 2 years ago

There are so few because he's an incredibly talented writer, able to explain arcane financial concepts with insultingly basic analogies, and toss in hilarious asides on the absurdity of it all.

The only other writer I can think of who elevates their topic in a similar way is Dan Neill, the automotive columnist for the Wall Street Journal, who won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism when he worked at the Los Angeles Times.

steveBK1232• 2 years ago

One reason he is an anomaly is the economics - he walked away from a very high paying job to write about the industry, for what initially had to be a large pay cut and certainly lower future earnings potential. He also has tremendous natural talent for writing with a dry sense of humor.

At this point he's now been writing about the industry longer than he's been in it, and given his prominence and name brand, I am sure he is paid well for it.

Most people at the peak of their professional ascendence, after the gauntlet of the right schools, the right jobs, etc.. are unable to walk away.

renewiltord• 2 years ago

Single individuals are often just single individuals. We might never have had open source without the few people who championed copyleft. No other industry but us does.

It also means you can make a change in the world.

rr808• 2 years ago

Journalists barely exist any more. To be a good journalist you have to know the subject matter well. If journalists are paid so little you might as well work in the industry directly. With AI its only going to get worse.

JadeNB• 2 years ago

Like probably many people here, I enjoy Money Matters, and so enjoy any sensible discussion of it, especially if it might lead to more Money Matters-like content in my life—but an elaborate explanation after the fact of why a circumstance that has so far only happened once, could only have happened the way it did, starts to sound to me a bit like over-fitting theory to limited observation. As others have observed, for example, if Derek Lowe can be discounted, then surely other exceptions can also be discounted, so that the thesis becomes true by defining counterexamples out of existence.

ajkjk• 2 years ago

I think that all of his explanations to do with the content itself are wrong. It's simply that a sufficiently good writer is fun to read every time they write.

There could easily be such a writer about pretty much any field if anyone was good enough at writing and motivated enough to do it. But they're not (yet). There is a requirement that whatever field it is, they understand most of it really well. And there aren't that many people who have gotten to that point.

quuxplusone• 2 years ago

Matt Levine is _funny_, which is a rare talent; to combine that talent with expertise and desire-to-write is even rarer. Also, people like to read about money stuff because even if your mammal brain knows you'll never get rich using anything he tells you, your reptile brain still thinks you might.

A similar market niche: home repairs.

Gwern says Greco-Roman philosophy wouldn't work as a niche; but my one offering to the list of Matt Levine simulacra actually does write about Greek and Roman _stuff_, if rarely philosophy: Bret Devereaux at https://acoup.blog . You might know him from his "historian's analysis of the Battle of Helm's Deep" or his three-parter on war elephants. Even though the people being studied are long dead, the people _doing_ the studying are very busy producing new works — there's no danger that ACOUP will ever run out of new books to review or new theories to evaluate.

rocqua• 2 years ago

I do really think ACOUP is a great comparisson.

It's not a newsletter, but it still hits the spaced repetition point. It doesn't have the advantage of following news, but it makes up for this by having a huge 'backlog' of things to write about. And it still has the 'known outcomes' point, because largely the outcome of history is known. And on the open questions, there isn't much progress, but there are themes to hearken back to. So even there you still have spaced repetition.

AtlasBarfed• 2 years ago

Finance and the stock market are also, fundamentally, just basic math behind a ton of obfuscated terms.

A lot of scientific fields are most definitely not based in such simple foundations, there will be complicated chemistry at a minimum. Engineering and physics quickly careens into calculus at a minimum.

Rastonbury• 2 years ago

On the flip side there are several high quality youtubers whose content fits that bill, focused on their niche, regularly pumping out content (despite a lack of current events sometimes) while being entertaining. Thinking of people like 3blue1brown

Maybe one reason for lack of newsletters is YouTube pays more and video is sometimes a better format, Levine has a bloomberg salary too, not many people are going to employ you to be writing about roman philosophy full time

ghaff3• 2 years ago

Those are some of the key points": focus, regular content, entertaining (and probably at least a little provocative). Can't really speak to the money-making part.

Suppafly2• 2 years ago

not many people are going to employ you to be writing about roman philosophy full time

Yeah sometimes the best content is from people who are in well paid careers that are just researching a topic to scratch their own itch and then sharing it. I like the History of English Language podcast, and the guy who does it is a lawyer or something in his real life.

czhu12• 2 years ago

For me Bret dereveaux is the Matt Levine of classical, Hellenistic, roman, and medieval history.

https://acoup.blog

(Never miss a chance to promote him, when I can!)

runnr_az• 2 years ago

A lot of that energy / expertise went to YouTube. Like Practical Engineering and the like…

DavidPiper• 2 years ago

I would submit that Austin Wintory is the Matt Levine of film and video game music and composition - youtube.com/@awintory

hoseja• 2 years ago

"Why would anyone want to? Well, if you ask someone like Richard Feynman or Andrej Karpathy or Tom Lehrer why they pursued pedagogy instead of the professional pursuits that brought them fame & wealth, the answer would have to be..."

In actuality, probably nubile coeds.

cainxinth• 2 years ago

Newsletters recommended in this thread:

  - Matt Levine - Finance (Bloomberg's Money Stuff)
  - Derek Guy (@dieworkwear) - Menswear
  - Derek Lowe - Chemistry and drug development (In The Pipeline blog)
  - Ann Lipton - Business law
  - 3Blue1Brown (Grant Sanderson) - Mathematics
  - Mark Brown - Alcoholic beverages industry news
  - Bret Devereaux (acoup.blog) - Classical/Roman/Medieval history
  - Admiral Cloudberg - Aviation disasters and safety
  - Patrick McKenzie (patio11) - Financial sector (Bits About Money)
  - Ben Thompson - Technology business and strategy (Stratechery)
  - Financial Samurai - Personal finance
  - Rick Beato - Music industry (classic rock focus)
  - VX Underground - Cybersecurity
  - Brian Krebs (Krebs on Security) - Cybersecurity
  - Joel Spolsky (Joel on Software) - Software development
  - Marc Rubinstein - Finance industry (Net Interest)

matthewdgreen• 2 years ago

One comment on all of these: many of these people used to work in a field, then left that field to pursue writing/content full time. There are thousands of other people actually working in their field who produce great and even more relevant content, but cannot pump it out at the same rate.

throwsec7492• 2 years ago

Would be great to see some of your recommendations (zero sarcasm, am actually looking for more material)

moonscentedslug• 2 years ago

Imo it's because finance is unique. Many arcane sounding things in this field are over-engineered/over-complicated smoke and mirrors. Their underlying ideas are usually unbelievably simple and the implementations are often hilariously sloppy, but many people get paid a lot of money to maintain the illusion of sophistication. This drastic contrast makes it a comedy gold mine for someone who can see these things as they are. It also makes it possible to explain those smart-sounding things in almost jokingly dumb languages while still being pretty accurate. This is much harder to do for a more rigorously structured field where the smoke and mirrors don't take the center stage.

dogmayor• 2 years ago

Levine is a uniquely good writer. And, as mentioned, his choice of subject matter (law + finance) is a major factor. Both are such broad fields that you can always find something interesting happening in one corner or another, and both are relevant to everyone no matter the field they're in personally.

As someone who has a similar background to Levine, I'm a big fan and can say it's uncommon to find someone like him who can write effectively and with levity.

vinner_roy• 2 years ago

- Lenny Rachitsky: startup product and growth - Alex Xu: software/software system design

392• 2 years ago

Everything I've seen from Xu on YouTube is more like Dave Ramsey than Matt Levine.

screye• 2 years ago

In Reddit's wild-west era (pre-2017-ish), it used to house many 'Matt Levines'. They'd be resident greybeards of their respective subreddits.

Reddit 'had' solved the 2 main conundrums of 'Matt Levines'. If you're in demand, you don't have the time to be blogging. If you're in demand, you don't want your public persona to low effort comments. But reddit wasn't a job, it was leisure with a pseudo anon persona. Its status as a pretty-filter-on-4chan meant that greybeards could offload their writing by linking to 4chan. Alas, in trying to make it appeal to the mainstream, Ohanian killed the golden goose and reddit became a sanitized quora-tiktok analogue. Gwern himself runs a couple of niche subreddits which occasionally see such grey-beards stepping in. But, the website is clearly in decline.

IMO, this article comes a little late. Substack is the killer-app for Matt Levines. Substacks by Razib, Asianometry, Sebastian Raschka, Dominic Cummings, etc. rub shoulders with Matt Levine in their respective fields.

I'm not rich enough to be paying $100/month across different substacks. But I occasionally get a 1 month 'binge-subsription' to my favorites. There is a lot of gold there.

____

Since folks are doing recommendations, I'm going to add a few across different platforms.

- Frank Stephenson (Jonny Ive of car design)

- Bill Bishop. (China expert. Stratchery's co-worker)

- Stewart Hicks (Professor of Architecture at UIC)

- Kenji (food. duh)

- Healthcare triage (Distinguished Pediatrics professor. Dumbed down, but still good)

blueyes• 2 years ago

There's a tautological undercurrent to this piece. Matt Levine is rare because he has certain characteristics, which are rare.

It misses a larger point which is that advertisers pay for readers who are interested in financial content, and they tend to pay less in most other areas of coverage. So other industries do not produce Matts as easily, or takes bets on writers to see if they work well driving people into the wide end of the funnel.

In the case of Bloomberg, it's a little more nuanced than ads, since the company treats content as a loss leader to make people aware of the financial data it sells through its terminal.

Matt Levine exists because Bloomberg can charge more than $400k per year to a terminal subscriber, which means they will gladly absorb a really high CAC.

Why so few Matt Levines?

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