Essays
Read the thesis
Evergreen articles explaining the incentives that drive markets, businesses, and investors. Written to be read in any order, and to hold up years from now.
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Start Here
Begin with the Pilot Essay
Recommended first read & listen
Pilot Episode: Introduction to Markets Without Spin
The inaugural episode of Markets Without Spin — how distorted incentives, not bad luck, drive institutional failure, and why stock buybacks, debt, and executive pay so often accelerate the decline.
New here? This is the essay that lays out the entire thesis—read it, or press play and listen. Everything else builds on the ideas introduced here.
Pilot Episode
- Published
- June 2026
- Listening time
- 14 min listen
“Most people focus on what happened. We focus on why it happened.”
Three Pillars
One idea, explored three ways
Podcast
Listen to the archive
Audio versions of the essays, collected in a permanent Podcast Archive. Every episode keeps its home here, even as the feed rolls forward.
Open the archive8 episodes, permanently archived
Incentives Index
Measure the alignment
An upcoming research platform that measures how well corporate management incentives align with the interests of long-term shareholders.
Preview the researchIn development
From the Notebook
Ideas that recur
Buybacks return money to sellers — not shareholders.
Dividends put cash in your pocket.
Buybacks put hope in your portfolio.
Hope is not a strategy.
Intrinsic value is a story wrapped in math.
Change the assumptions and the valuation changes with them.
Models are often more persuasive than predictive.
People do what they are rewarded to do.
If executive compensation rewards EPS growth above all else, financial engineering should surprise no one.
Who Writes This
A lifetime of context
Markets Without Spin is written by Franz Amussen, who began investing in 1969 and has worked professionally in the field since 1985. An investor, entrepreneur, and financial educator, he co-founded a large investment advisory firm—a lifetime spent studying the incentives that move markets and institutions.
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