Introducing Albatross, a sub-newsletter about concentrated wealth
Unique attention on a gnarly problem
Albatross is a sub-newsletter all about concentrated wealth. The tactics and madness.
Subscribers don’t have to do anything. Every once in a while, an Albatross note will ship.
Albatross
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a long poem about a mariner shooting an albatross and the terrible things that follow.
If you have 30 minutes to spare, here is Ian - You Shall Not Pass - McKlellan reading the original version.
After killing the bird, the mariner is forced to wear it around his neck. His crewmates die. He beholds the beauty of nature and is spared, only to be retraumatized by telling the story over and over.
An albatross is a bird, but also “something that causes persistent deep concern or anxiety,” like a chunky stock (or bitcoin) position.
Concentrated wealth is a large enough problem, and the solutions beguilingly varied and complex, that I’ll focus on it regularly under the Albatross brand.
To begin, my two most popular pieces on concentration risk.
Antti’s paper: Underperformance of Concentrated Stock Positions (also available on Brooklyn Investment Group’s research website).
53% of the time, it worked every time
Morgan Stanley: Confronting the Concentrated Equity Challenge and Measuring Drawdown Vulnerability (Jan 2025).
These stories are torture
The madness of concentrated wealth is the irrationality that keeps people holding, but also the remorse after selling, and the “what if it keeps going up?” heartburn.
Woe unto the friends and family of the concentrated risk bearer. A good problem to have, surely, but annoying to hear about constantly.
Pop culture reference to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner
A suffering albatross
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