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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.

Johnew Zhang
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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 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. 15 min 22 May 2019 Academic · Research Essay on Asset Returns with Intertemporal CAPMReplicating Campbell–Vuolteenaho and Campbell et al. on 1963–2018 data: cash-flow betas no longer separate value from growth, but news about market volatility does. 15 min 1 Oct 2018 Academic · Code & Tutorials WRDS Data Access via the Python APISetting up a .pgpass file and running your first CRSP queries from Python. 1 min
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