Notes | Clear Narratives
- 23 hours ago
- 2 min read
Commentary - not advice. | Disclaimers
Following a process to see the forest for the trees.
July 26, 2026
By Edward von der Schmidt
Keeping up with markets and important news can feel overwhelming. We're flooded with information from various sources, and figuring out what's going on can be just as challenging as deciding what's true. Even then, what should we pay attention to - and why?
I studied economics and spent most of my career on a trading floor, so I'm no stranger to data. But the truth is, facts and figures don't move markets on their own. The stories that we tell about them do. Narrative allows us to construct meaning and map relationships over time. I'm here to help curate some of these important themes and explain them for your benefit.
For example, why does a blockade in the Middle East have anything to do with grocery prices halfway around the globe? Or how does demand for AI processing and memory influence global inflation and shifting alliances? What do structural changes to labor markets mean for the Fed and monetary policy? How exactly do interest rates work? What do some of these terms even mean?
If you're not willing to hand over your thinking to a chatbot that's not going to check itself, you might ask yourself where you're going to begin to learn the answers to some of these questions. I'm building Datum Research to inform you and to help you get started.
A transparent and rigorous process can go a long way toward discovering what's true and what's not and can give us confidence in what we learn. Experience and intuition are also invaluable here. You can be sure that when you read our research, it's been written by a professional whose work and methods you can verify.
I'm bringing my background and experience to the Recap and other publications so that you can see the world the way that I do - with clarity.
Check out our website, Substack, and social media in the weeks ahead as we relaunch if you want to learn more. Good luck, and thanks for stopping by.
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THIS IS NOT ADVICE - financial or otherwise - and should not be taken as such.
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