The Future(s) of Finance, v1.2
You know when you write something, publish it, and then have a look at it again and think, "you know what, I can do much better, much sharper, much cleaner", and then you sort of edit everything all over again? That was me this morning.
I'm not even complaining. I think there's a bit of pride in my tone here. Why? Because after spending years treating my writing as something I simply do, drop, and then move on, I'm trying something a little bit different in 2026.
You see, the best definition of slop I've recently heard (I forget if it was Joe Burns or Jon Crowley, or probably a mix of two in a recent Salmon Crew discussion) was something along the lines of: the act of doing something becomes more important than what's being done, and whether it's any good.
In other words, slop isn't simply something that AI does, it's something we all do to some extent. When we do things to fill a quota ("One post a day!" "One newsletter a week!" "10 comments before 10am!"), we're potentially sloppening our own work. It's a false sense of control. So I've decided to stop doing it.
What does that mean? A few things:
Posts, words, newsletters, they drop when they're ready and I'm proud
I will happily revisit my own work and aim to make it 10x sharper in round 2
It's perfectly ok to drop something and later realise how it can be sharpened
Which speaks to yet another thing: the importance of reach but more importantly frequency in our writing. We do so much net new work because we think that's what you're supposed to do, when in fact re-posting improved versions of your past work tends to yield much better bang for buck. Michael Corcoran talks about a bank of bangers, and we all need a version of this.
I've done experiments over the months (Christopher Owens will know what I'm talking about) where I re-post old stuff, and guess what: it still slaps. Which presents an interesting reframe: from posting slop, to reposting updated versions of your thinking until it slaps. It sounds silly, but I'm running with it.
Anyway. All this to say, if you want an updated and 10x sharper version of the report I wrote with Hemal V Gill on The Future(s) of Finance, you can check this link and get it for free.
It includes a bunch of quantitative evidence, and the questions it helped us think of, but in a much more concise way. Less fluff or weird segues, and far more direct questions on what brands in finance should be thinking about.
This doesn't mean I will aim to write with any less personality. If anything, it means I'd much rather post fewer, more polished things that feel like a sharp version of a thought, than to simply drop words for the sake of dropping words in the hope I can finally win the algorithmic engagement game. It's not worth it.
