Blogs to watch (part 28): Insecurity Analysis

Learning from great investors, sifting through archives, and taking others along for the ride are all things that I love doing myself. There are many hidden gems in libraries and out-of-print book shops, but I will never have the time to seek them out myself.

Luckily, there is one passionate blogger in New York who is doing exactly that.

Frederik Gieschen goes to places like the New York Public Library and the J.P. Morgan Library to sift through microfilms, newspaper databases, and old books. His interest is to learn from the world's great investors, and to bust some of the myths that exist out there.

And luckily, he shares some of the myth-busting on his blog, Insecurity Analysis.

That Buffett myth

"I just sit in my office and read all day", Warren Buffett reportedly once said. The problem is, this widely bandied around quote is incomplete at best. At worst, it portrays Buffett in an entirely wrong way.

The Sage of Omaha also once said:

"I can be anywhere in three hours. New York or Los Angeles. I get all the excitement I want on those visits. I probably have more friends in New York and California than here, but this is a good place to bring up children and a good place to live."

While Buffett might have spent some of his time in Omaha reading, he also travelled and networked a lot. His wealth was built on a combination of accumulating wisdom through reading AND building real-life relationships across his home country (until he was in a position to have everyone come to see him in Omaha).

Analysing this particular aspect of Buffett is the subject of "The Reading Obsession", which has become the most popular article on Insecurity Analysis.

What drives the author of Insecurity Analysis

Frederik Gieschen is a German national who made New York his home. After working at (and getting fired from) a hedge fund, he found that writing and teaching an audience about investing was his true passion.

Gieschen launched a blog to make a living out of it. Insecurity Analysis connects the fragments of financial markets history with lessons you can benefit from for your own investing.

Early on, Gieschen started by publishing Twitter threads such as:

• The first profile of George Soros from 1975
• A glimpse of Stanley Druckenmiller as young manager
• Why a young Benjamin Graham had wanted to buy IBM stock

Later, he added free long-form articles such as:

• What George Soros and Steve Jobs Can Teach Us About EV Stocks
• David Tepper: The King of Bouncing Back
• Reginald Lewis: Bootstrapping Buyouts

There are also articles that actively try to teach you something (all for free):

• The Milken Way
• Barry Diller's System of Discovery, Debate, and Development
• The Most Important Insight(s)

As Gieschen summarises his own work, he is "exploring the stories and characters of the 'money game' of investing and business. I cherish the game's paradoxical nature: the wisdom and the absurdity, the grand designs and the fever dreams. I get a kick out of finding nuggets that add nuance and texture to the story. And I love piecing together what would otherwise be forgotten or reduced to a soundbite."

Along the way, Gieschen shares his personal journey. After a while, you feel that you truly know the author, even if you have never met him.

I personally support this blog

To enable him to spend more of his time on researching and writing, Gieschen launched a paid-for version of Insecurity Analysis in May 2021.

Since then, some of the paid-for articles that stand out include:

• Bernard Arnault: Empire Builder
• Marc Rich: Riches in Regime Change
• Michael Bloomberg: Fintech's People Person

For USD 120 a year, not only do you get a service that truly delivers its money's worth. You also help support a truly worthy cause – analysing, presenting, and preserving financial market history so that future generations can study it.

Purely for selfish reasons I'd love to see Insecurity Analysis stay in business and thrive, which is why I just upgraded my own subscription to that of Founder Member (USD 200 a year).

One of the last 3 "Blogs to watch"

My "Blogs to watch" series will come to an end once you have received its 30th instalment. Feedback overall has been great, but there's just SO much other content out there that I'd like to focus on in my future Weekly Dispatches.

With just three instalments left, I figured Insecurity Analysis would be a perfect fit for my final choice. I believe many of you will love its content, and not enough of you will have heard of it yet. Do check it out!

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