Toronto · writing since 2018

Financial Services, FinTech, and Complex Situations

I'm curious by nature, and I spend most of my time on financial services and fintech. I trained in mathematics and financial economics and began my career as a property and casualty actuary. I keep this site as a place to write down what I learn about investing, mathematics, and economics, along with what I care about outside work.

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The site

What I Write About

Investing

Financial Services, FinTech, and Complex Situations

Essays, primers, and the frameworks I use to underwrite.

3 posts · Trident Macro Monitor · ABF and FIG Primer · Rescue Capital Primer

Academic

Mathematics and Economics

Research papers, machine-learning projects, code, and lecture notes from Waterloo and Columbia.

9 posts

Culture

Travel, Food, and History

Travel journals, places worth the trip, and every recipe in Johnew's Kitchen.

3 posts · Johnew's Kitchen · Monet to Matisse Field Guide

Sports

The Game and Its Lessons

Writing about sports: the game itself, its philosophy, and what I take from it.

Sports Investing Primer

Latest

Recent Writing

Browse by tag →

24 Oct 2026 Investing · Essays Investing as System DesignWhere my investing comes from: model the structure of a system, test it with data, and design a solution around a defined objective, at the level of the company and the portfolio. 11 min 14 Feb 2026 Investing · Essays Three Questions I Keep AskingAfter 15 years across actuarial work, financial economics, and ABF and financials investing: how do you get your money back, do you understand the risk, and can you structure around it? 3 min 31 Dec 2025 Investing · Essays My Investment Principles (v1.0)A first draft of how I invest in financial institutions: what I analyze, in what order, and where the framework shows up today. 2 min 30 Dec 2025 Culture · Travel Rebalanced: Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka in Nine DaysNine days down the old Tōkaidō, from Tokyo to Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka, with Shinto and Zen, shoguns and emperors, and what Japan ate along the way. 29 min 30 Dec 2024 Culture · Travel The City and the Church: From Troy to Constantinople in Nine DaysNine days in Istanbul and on the Aegean coast, told in the order of its history: from Troy to the Greek cities of Ionia, Roman Ephesus, the eastern Roman Empire, and the Ottomans. 22 min 30 Nov 2023 Culture · Travel Where the Writing Ended: Three Thousand Years of Egypt in Seven DaysA week in Egypt, told in the order of its history: from the first stone pyramid at Saqqara to the last hieroglyphs ever carved, at Philae. 23 min

Elsewhere

Things I Build and Keep

Trident Macro Monitor

Liquidity, Rates, Credit, and the Cycle

My macro dashboard: liquidity, rates, credit, equities, commodities and FX, growth and inflation, and fiscal, updated as a periodic snapshot.

ABF and FIG Primer

Asset-Based Finance and Financial Institutions

How lending against pools of assets is structured, funded, and priced, and how banks, insurers, asset managers, and specialty lenders fit together.

Rescue Capital Primer

Rescue Capital and Complex Corporate Credit

How companies under strain raise money through preferred equity, PIK and rescue notes, liability management exercises, and Chapter 11, and who supplies it.

GitHub · WizardKingZ

Code

The portfolio optimization library, multivariate outlier detection in R, and the variational autoencoder.

Johnew's Kitchen

Recipes, Cooked and Kept

Every recipe I've cooked and kept, in one format, with kitchen notes, the bar, and the pantry.

Monet to Matisse Field Guide

A Gallery Visit, Painting by Painting

My guide to the AGO's Impressionist Revolution show: the Salon rules the painters broke, the lineage from Monet to Mondrian, and eight paintings I stopped for.

Sports Investing Primer

How Teams Are Owned, Financed, and Valued

How funds, sovereigns, pensions, and owners buy, finance, and value teams and leagues in North America and European football.