INTERVIEW – FT Alphaville Editor on engagement, contrarianism and controversy in financial services

I first became a fan of FT Alphaville when I was preparing for a panel about private markets last year. Most writing about private markets was broadly positive about the asset class, if expressing some caution around valuations. I noticed, however, that one section of the Financial Times was writing regularly, and sceptically, about private markets, as well as more vociferously denouncing poorly understood and overhyped assets such as cryptocurrencies. In an industry that talks about returns and risks in quite abstract, mechanical and distant ways, this blog within the FT seemed to be showing a quite human quality: having an actual opinion.

FT Alphaville is not an opinion site, Editor Robin Wigglesworth tells me over a Teams call from his home in Norway, but a platform where experts do deep dives into things they find interesting, whether it be tokenisation, illiquidity or French sovereign bonds. It just so happens, though, that these writers are well-informed, opinionated and willing to draw fire over controversial stances on these topics. There is also a conscious attempt to write in an irreverent style, with puns, memes and “snark” galore – headlines in the last year have included “Bitcoin printer go brrr” and “CBDC for thee but not for me”.

The result is a fairly specialist financial blog that attracts a depth and passion of audience engagement that would be the envy of many consumer publications. Much of this happens in the comments section of the website, where the commenters are usually well-informed and opinionated themselves, but on topics such as bitcoin has expanded onto other platforms such as Twitter.

Robin denies being “contrarian” or courting controversy for its own sake.

“One of the things I think is a danger in journalism is this performative contrarianism, where you’re trying to be difficult or weird or different for the sake of it. Contrarian positions or different viewpoints are incredibly valuable, but if you’re always just trying to take the other side of things, this can get a bit incoherent.”

The real power of Alphaville’s writing comes from the willingness to express a genuinely felt opinion and be challenged on it.

“What I’m worried about is not making a mistake in saying the price of something is going to go up or down; I try never to say things like that anyway.”

The reason he does read the comments “religiously” is because he doesn’t want to be wrong about the mechanics of how something actually works.

“I’m always worried about embarrassing myself: saying something stupid or something that misinforms people or doesn’t give them the full technicolour view of things. Comments shouting at me for being stupid and not getting it, I couldn’t care less.”

The Alphaville team clearly actively takes pleasure in teasing the “crypto bros”, on two occasions publishing heavily sarcastic apologies for its sceptical stance on bitcoin.

“In crypto specifically, it tends to be more ‘have fun staying poor and you’ll never get it’. If they say that with a bit of panache or in a new way, I love it. It’s great fun.”

In an era where the sheer quantity of investment-focused content produced by asset managers seems to swamp the audience it is aimed at, Alphaville is clearly managing to cut through. How? Robin thinks the problem with asset management content is not the people in the industry – “fund managers as a group are (some of) the smartest, nicest, hardest-working people I’ve ever met in my life”.

“But when you see what they produce in these generic things on their website, they’re just devoid of any sort of interest or any sort of analysis or value.

“It’s just aggressively pushing verbiage out in the world. I don’t understand it – I think it’s a real missed opportunity.”

He accepts that boutique asset managers are more likely to produce interesting material, highlighting TwentyFour Asset Management’s blog, which does similar reporting to Alphaville in terms of deep dives into topics.

He says some mainstream firms have done interesting things. M&G Investments had its Bond Vigilantes blog, run by Jim Leaviss.

“That blog was obviously marketing for the fixed income team, but they actually produced stuff of genuine value that journalists would read and pick up. We’d seek it out because it would teach us something.”

But on the whole he is critical of the content produced by the industry.

“A lot of what asset managers currently do is very commoditised and very uninteresting. It is useful if you’re a breaking news reporter on a deadline and something lands saying, oh, this inflation number was hotter than expected – maybe the Fed might have to raise rates now. But really the value-add, in my view, of stuff like that is de minimis. And that’s what I feel like they get wrong.”

Obviously compliance can be a huge issue, but Robin attributes the hesitation to a more abstract fear.

“The reason Bill Gross was able to become Bill Gross wasn’t just that he was successful and then he got a platform, it was both, but he was willing to say stuff and be interesting and be daring and give a little bit of himself.”

Not everyone has to be a Bill Gross or Ray Dalio, who “revel in the public wanting to know their views, but you have to be willing to share them. Don’t be controversial and contrary for the sake of it, but be unafraid to be punchy and say what you actually think”.

He likens this to politics, where politicians are rewarded for seeming authentic. The problem is that the entire system is optimised for minimising mistakes and screw-ups.

“If you do a Q&A or interview and nobody reads it, that’s not ideal. But if some portfolio manager or senior executive and asset manager says something stupid or punchy or some client complains, people lose their jobs. So people react to the incentives. And I don’t think it’s just compliance, I don’t think it’s just the PR person.”

This is of course not an abstract concern – HSBC’s Stuart Kirk was forced to resign in 2022 after a controversial speech that argued climate risks had been overhyped.

But the main point Robin makes is that being an interesting spokesperson is not necessarily about being a flashy or charismatic character.

“There’s some people I interview where I think they’re such vibrant speakers and they’re so interesting. I come away thinking my notepad is overflowing with story ideas and great quotes. And when I look at them on paper they’re incredibly dull. I was almost tricked into thinking they were really interesting.

“Other people are just very introverted, quiet, cerebral thinkers who word themselves quite carefully. You write it and look at it like pen on paper and the quotes were way better than they sounded at the time.”

Robin thinks there’s far more that can be done with research, highlighting one very large asset manager as an example.

“A lot of those analysts they have are incredibly smart and good, but unfortunately, a lot of what they produce is incredibly mediocre. Essentially it’s what you can get from some consultancy – ‘private credit is a booming area’.

“I don’t expect them to [criticise] their own business but they can try to do something a bit deeper than what you get from a bunch of 25-year-olds at McKinsey.”

Ultimately what shines through, and perhaps why his content approach lands, is that Robin thinks finance is genuinely interesting. He’s written two books about it, Trillions and A Fabulous Debt, which tell the stories behind passive investments and the bond market respectively.

“Incredibly smart people can have genuinely vociferous but thoughtful disagreements on big stuff or small stuff. It’s endlessly fascinating. And anybody who thinks they know everything is inevitably shown to be an idiot very soon afterwards.

“It is just an incredibly vibrant field. It keeps people young. You see people in their 70s and 80s work in finance and in many other areas, that’d be unthinkable.

“But there’s none of that in finance because it’s ever changing. You’re always learning, you’re always developing, and that’s almost a beautiful thing.

“People embarrass themselves a lot in finance. That’s kind of what keeps it fun.”