My Next Project

We have a number of things in the works over the next few days here at A Second Hand Conjecture. We will let you know more over the next couple of days. I can only say I am extremely excited.

That is my picture, the scruffy 40+ year old, beer drinking, female ogling, punk/alt rock loving, irreverent blogger you have grown to despise, like, hate, love, etc. It was taken just after a pretty fun night (about 6 AM) in New Orleans with my wife.

Now it is time to introduce my more professional side, the one in the suit. One of the things which has been a source of frustration since I began, is that there are a number of topics around which I have had to skate because of legal and regulatory issues surrounding my career. Those have now been largely removed and will allow me to discuss more fully issues which involve economics, finance and investing. Until you are a blogger or writer one doesn’t realize how many areas touch on that, and how it lead to all kinds of self censorship. Try discussing Social Security reform without discussing likely returns in the capital markets!

So expect a lot more from me in the coming months on these and associated topics. For those who do not know, I am the portfolio manager for Peters Wealth Advisors, a team of professionals located in Baton Rouge, La. Which leads to my next project.

I am now starting a new blog devoted to economics, finance and investing, as well as some discussion of news and events related to my hometown and my own interests. It will be part of the Forbes blog network which they are building. Some of the material will appear here as well, some I’ll let you know about, and some you’ll need to visit to see. I have a smattering of interesting stuff up already, though some of it has already appeared here. Comments aren’t enabled at this time except on the introductory post, though maybe they will be sometime down the road. Please feel free to leave comments here, at that post or e-mail me with suggestions, links, questions you would like to see addressed, whatever. I am looking for any feedback I can get to make the site a good one. I have the feed for the site over in the sidebar.

It will give you a chance to chide me, as we will be showing our investment results in general terms at the site. Of course you will have to wait for some future date, because when my review of the year and how things went goes up, you will find we had a fantastic year. In fact, our institutional portfolios were even up in the fourth quarter, and so far this year as well. We have been bearish, as regular readers I am sure divined when I did speak on these matters, even if indirectly, so we built the portfolios to do well regardless of the direction of the overall market. I still am bearish. If you want to know why, or even what I mean by bearish, well, keep on visiting.

I really want to thank everybody who has been visiting here and supporting the site, especially all of you who contribute to, or read, QandO, the site which brought most of us who started this thing together in the first place, Glenn Reynolds and his readers who have been generous in lending us their attention, and all the other bloggers who have supported us. The next year promises to be even better, with a great lineup of contributors here, and it is what I learned here that has allowed me to start this new project.

So please visit Risk and Return and let me know what you think and what you want in the future. Please visit the About Page for some background on what the sites philosophy is, and who I am. I guess my pseudo anonymity will now end, and I’ll need to update the “About Page” here as well.