In Which I Return to ETF.com

Back to the Future, Indeed...

(Alternate Tunes: Legend Has It by Run the Jewels, Guess Whos Back by Eminem, The Boys are Back by the Dropkick Murphys, On Hold by XX)

Greetings, my excellent friends.

I say that because as someone who’s helped support me and my work over the last year or so, I consider you a friend-of-Dave, and hopefully, I’ve had the chance to connect one on one with most of you this year.

Today’s a weird and exciting day. I’m joining ETF.com as President and Director of Research. (Here’s the whole press release!).

It’s weird, because I am returning to ETF.com, a business I helped grow from the seeds of Index Universe in the halcyon pre-GFC era with Jim Wiandt, Don Friedman, Fernando Rivera, Matt Hougan and so many other amazing folk.

It’s weird, because ETF.com has been built, sold, remodelled and reconfigured about a half dozen times since then, with pieces of the business ending up everywhere from FactSet Data Systems to CBOE global markets, and yet the brand remains a central pivot-point for the ETF ecosystem.

It’s weird, because while in some sense I am “returning”, it’s also a completely new business. Just a handful of us, looking to build something fresh and amazing.

But mostly, it’s exciting.

It’s exciting, because I’m joining up with CEO Matt Middleton and his crew of event masterminds — the folks who built the Future Proof franchise not out of conference rooms and agendas, but out of sunshine, music, big ideas and real connections.

It’s exciting, because there’s a freedom and possibility that comes from building with a small team.

It’s exciting because we’re going to try a bunch of different things, some of which will be wildly successful, and some of which will be glorious failures.

Meaning what, Dave…

Here’s what I can tell you today.

• ETF.com is going to build communities and conversations. ETFs have become the center of gravity for the entire investing world. Every interesting conversation about money, power, wealth and markets runs through ETFs, from crypto to corn to Coca-Cola. We’re going to highlight those conversations, engender them, celebrate them.

• The old content models are pretty spent. The era of handwringing about search-engine optimized content streams to drive raw traffic to feed display-ad clickthrough rates is fading with the rise of AI, and the massive changes to how smart people interact with their investments.

• In an increasingly trustless world, ETF.com will aim to earn and keep your trust. When I talk to advisors and high net worth investors, they all tell me the same thing: they want fewer, deeper relationships. We do too. So we’re going to have a lot of conversations about what’s really going on in ETFs, in trading, in markets, in regulation. In life.

• There’s a lot (like, almost all of it) still to build, but I can say we’ll be building towards a big event, and I’m really passionate about the magic that happens when like-minded people gather for a purpose. Building a no-holds-barred, no-pay-for-play ETF & Investing event around a genuine community is pretty much all I’ve ever wanted to do. Wish us luck.

Practically, this means …

• All the juicy ETF Dave-content you’ve gotten used to I’ll now be publishing at ETF.com, with no paywall. I will continue to post articles I write to this list, but increasingly, there will be more and more over at ETF.com, so I look forward to seeing y’all there too.

• “Hey wait a minute, I just sent you money …” — I’ve turned off any future billing, but if you feel in any way due, please just drop me a line and I’m happy to send you back whatever you want. I appreciate the support over this last year, and it frankly allowed me to clarify what I really want to do, which is help folks cut through the BS and understand each other and what the heck’s going on with their money. But if you want a refund, all good. Or dinner’s on me next time we’re same place/same time. If you paid for an annual subscription and would like Zines, drop me a line too.

• I still plan on writing here, but you’ll mostly be getting music, culture, and weird stuff about meditation.

And Next …

Look, you’re obviously on the inside here. I’d love to talk to you. You can ping me here on DMs or in all the usual places.

Dave Nadig