Let Rob take the wheel like a Tesla

How to hide the dope in the message.

When I was growing up, there was no greater mystery in my young life than what my father did for a living.

He was gone every morning before I woke up for school, leaving behind only a gently rustled Wall Street Journal on the kitchen table as proof of life. Then he arrived home just in time for dinner, set down his briefcase full of secrets and loosened his necktie, and we never once spoke about how his day went.

My own children – who grew up napping on my shoulder, staring at my inbox, and wandering blithely into my Zoom calls as I worked remotely through COVID and beyond – also find my career to be a complete mystery.

“So your job is just sending emails?” asked my son.

I had to sit with that one for a moment.

I thought about my years of hard-won niche subject matter expertise; the long nights spent hunting down user metrics that didn’t make sense; the increasingly complex task of developing a viable enterprise-level editorial strategy in a landscape dominated by LLMs; the nonstop scramble of managing a far-flung network of freelancers and creatives to produce timely, useful content that resonates with traders and investors in an algo-driven market.

“Yeah,” I told him. “Pretty much.”

The Bezos of the Email

When I first started working here at Barchart, I was almost exclusively editing other people’s writing all day.

Years later, I do a little bit of editing but a lot of writing, and it’s mostly for our daily Barchart Brief newsletter.

Sometimes there’s a Barchart Brief and Clipse lyrics.

Now, when I say that I do “a lot of writing,” that’s a particularly wobbly-kneed phrasing, but it’s very intentionally so. It’s a lot of writing compared to what I used to do as part of my daily routine, sure.

But compared to the average output of our diligent ETF columnist, Rob Isbitts? I’m barely hunting-and-pecking along over here.

I would sleep roughly as much as the average housecat on a daily basis if my circumstances permitted, so on a personal level, I can’t pretend to understand or relate to Rob’s boundless energy.

On a professional level, of course, Rob is our editorial champion.

So when our regular Chart of the Day newsletter columnist, Jim Van Meerten, had a couple of weeks off on the calendar, Editorial Director Sarah Holzmann reached out to Rob for coverage.

From my perspective, the relationship between a daily newsletter author and their audience is a lot like a desperate comedian delivering a hastily workshopped tight five – but to an audience in another theater, via carrier pigeon.

Most of the time, your only feedback arrives the next day in the form of metrics. Or maybe one of your coworkers or colleagues will say, “Hey, that was good.”

On your best days, a reader will be engaged and entertained enough to write in and say, “Your Morrissey reference was great! I love Barchart.”

On your worst days, a reader will be bothered enough to write in and say, “Your Meg Thee Stallion reference was unnecessarily political! I don’t need that agenda-pushing from Barchart!”

On at least a few occasions, you will find yourself several emails deep into a thread where you have succeeded in personally convincing one specific reader not to unsubscribe over some perceived offense in the prior day’s copy, and you’ll wonder why it matters to you so much.

Evergreen.

And my little newsletter is a very certain kind of ether. We haven’t built a permanent home for our Brief issues on the site just yet, so a couple years’ worth of my daily output exists only in the form of email blasts and nowhere else.

Sometimes I think about this on days when I’m writing and want to link to a prior issue, and the only available URL is my memories.

So, yes, my job is “sending emails,” but there’s also a modicum of emotional labor.

You Ain’t Malice

What we were asking of Rob in this Chart of the Day coverage assignment was even a little more fraught.

He would be stepping in for Jim Van Meerten, who is – to quote Pusha T – beloved like the BeeGees.

If the Chart of the Day newsletter goes out with even a minor change to the usual format, our support team is likely to hear about it from a faithful reader, asking why their daily issue looks different and politely asking if we can please put it back the way it was.

And as if to apply a proverbial thumb to any guest editor’s neck, Jim Van Meerten is quite literally hard-coded into our content management system as our Chart of the Day author.

No kidding. One of the below columns was written by the real Jim, and one was written by Rob. It’s what we call an “uncredited cameo” in the industry.

Corporate needs you to find the difference between these two Jim Van Meertens.

So in asking Rob to write this daily column for two weeks, we were both opening him up to some well-meaning but very real complaints from the Chart of the Day fanbase, and asking him to do so with almost zero credit for his labor – except for whatever small percentage of readers actually scroll all the way down to the italicized text at the bottom of the newsletter version, where we’re able to note his authorship.

Very fortunately for us, Rob is the kind of guy who’s willing to analyze charts all day long just for the love of the game. (See also: night charting.)

Let Rob Sort ‘Em Out

So not only did our resident ETF savant sail through his Chart of the Day tour of duty, he also built a new stock screening process for the occasion.

Naturally – because we didn’t hire him to do impressions – Rob’s daily routine for finding Chart of the Day candidates is not identical to Jim’s. Instead, it’s inspired by Jim’s process with a distinctly Isbitts twist.

I understand the switch-up might be jarring for regular readers – but one thing I’ve discovered over my lengthy career of sending emails working with a broad, deep bench of market experts is that the most valuable lessons tend to emerge where the Venn diagram of different analysts overlaps.

And sometimes the two different analysts are both Rob, as he explains in our latest longread breaking down his behind-the-scenes Chart of the Day experience.

No mistaking Rob for the reverend.

Check out Rob’s latest deep dive to discover how our macro-minded ETF expert rediscovered his passion for stock-picking – plus, get an inside look at his custom Chart of the Day screener.

If you missed Rob’s stint as our Honorary Jim Van Meerten in May, don’t worry – you can catch him again when JVM hits the road for another summer break starting this week.

To get the best of all possible worlds with daily stock features from Jim ft. Rob, subscribe free to Chart of the Day.

And if you’re interested in exploring a very emotionally complicated relationship with me, check out Barchart Brief, too. Your inbox is quite literally the only place to find it.

Thanks for reading, and extra special thanks to all of you who take the time to email me about my cultural references.

If it weren’t for my kids, you would be the only reason I do this.