1,000 subscribers: trading and price lines as a metaphor for readers and journalism
Trading as a metaphor or analogy for other things in life has been amusing me again over the past few weeks. It could be applicable to all sorts of things but let’s stick to real-world business projects.
A line flows up or down, pushed by the energy of the participants. You take the trade, get on the price line, hope that it goes up, then at a later point get off it with some kind of profit. Easier said than done, of course, in trading as life, especially when you can look at the retrospective line of what has already happened, but that’s the idea.
Trades, life, business and indeed news events all happen forward though, onwards into never-ending uncertainty. No one really knows what is going to happen after lunch, tomorrow or next month, although some people are a bit better at guessing. That is what gives us narrative tension in life itself also, reflected in good stories, a giant, never-ending what happens next?
Trading graphs and screens, whether stocks or cryptos, also mostly let you see the order books and how many people are positioning at each price point. The price line ticks up or down when someone gets on or off it and everyone can see it happening in different versions of now (seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc.). The action on the lines is transparent.
Not so in real-world business projects, especially at the small or micro-business end of the scale. There is a general awareness of a line there somewhere, you can feel it moving, some people are getting on for the ride, but it’s hard to put a finger on it and generally speaking, most clients of small businesses have no idea what other clients are actually doing or paying for the product or service (the line), beyond the general price list or range.
And markets can be more liquid (easier and quicker to get in or out of) or illiquid (harder and longer to get in or out of). This also happens with real-life projects or entanglements.
The entrepreneur, literally from the French, “the one who takes up, or undertakes”, the captain who drives or leads a line with his own energy, decides to get on it, to do that thing, to invest in that effort in some part of life, and in some almost magnetic way, customers or clients or readers jump on board for the adventure.
For an independent journalist or analyst, reading and writing and discovering directly for readers, the energy flows through his knowledge and experience of a topic (Spain, in our case) across the (fascinating, exciting) stories and into other minds, increasing understanding and interest for all, story by story, update by update (the mind ticks of a news line vs. the price ticks of a stock line), as real life unfolds before us and new trends appear.
Some readers choose voluntarily to become paying subscribers to support that use of time and energy which, over time, benefits all, and that economic energy sustains the activity and helps turn it into an optimal version of itself, which for us would be me roving around Spain across the different stories over time, seeing things, talking to lots of people, asking questions, to better select those stories and write the analysis and dispatches for you all.
That’s why I want go get to 1,000 subscribers. Let’s get going again.