“The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
While the digital era continues to deliver an ever-increasing and mind-numbing barrage of free information – with a vast majority of content developers competing in a popularity contest by engaging in evermore outrageous language, behavior, and physicality – Alphacution is heading the other way by competing in a value contest with the development of an ever-stronger magnet…
Historically, Alphacution hasn’t done marketing. And we’ve maintained little to no social media presence. I’ve spent very little time on the speaking circuit – live, podcast, or on-camera – and I rarely solicit prospective clients and subscribers. What has been built here is based largely on a comparatively small email distribution list and high-quality research, which is based largely on a proprietary contextual framework that’s without peer…
Since its launch in 2015, Alphacution has been manually developing institutional-grade research designed to deliver data-driven intelligence to a forward-thinking network of market participants and other ecosystem stakeholders. That journey has yielded an enviable client roster that includes many of the top traders, quantitative asset managers, and key market infrastructure providers in the world…
With our current phase of development, Alphacution is taking its first steps toward becoming more than a research and advisory platform. It turns out that, for the past 10+ years, Alphacution has been simultaneously conducting a prototyping experiment. Over that period, I’ve discovered that the expansion in our proprietary assembly of public data yields increasingly valuable insights. This is why many of the smartest and most successful executives in global capital markets – people like you – continue to subscribe, click, and consume Alphacution’s output…
The opportunity here is not only to deliver more output that’s more timely, more accurate, and more insightful – and, ultimately, more consumable by a wider audience. The opportunity is actually bigger than that: It’s to improve the strategic value of our output while driving it closer and closer to tactical value, as well. Today, the flow of evidence in support of this objective is going to start speeding up through incremental research process automation…
However, a “casualty” of this plan is that it renders our long-standing subscription pricing model obsolete. Since Alphacution’s paywall was first erected in October 2020, our subscription pricing intentionally bifurcated the shorter, more topical and timely research output from the deeper, focused case studies. In practice, this allowed us to offer low-priced subscription rates and a do-it-yourself process to individuals while preserving the in-depth, high-value research for unlimited access, all-you-can-eat enterprise subscriptions with negotiated pricing and terms.
Going forward, to re-align incentives between Alphacution and our existing subscribers and better align resourcing with my objectives for the growth of Alphacution, Basic and Silver subscriptions are being discontinued. In exchange for this, all subscribers will have the opportunity to access more – perhaps, all – published and to-be-published cases study research via Premium subscriptions for enterprises and, in some cases, individuals. Simultaneously, this move is designed to free me – and a team – to focus on developing more high-value content and research process automation for a platform that ultimately leads to our first dashboard…
Here’s a few key details:
- On November 19, 2025, Alphacution launched a new version of its website, with a new account registration (and upgrade) process, a new subscription pricing strategy, some overall polish, and a few new features – including translation into any of a dozen languages.
- All Premium subscribers are entirely unaffected by this upgrade – an occasional bug notwithstanding – and will need to do nothing. Those subscriptions will play out under the terms of our existing agreements.
- Alphacution will stop publishing new research for Basic and Silver subscribers for the foreseeable future. “David E. Shaw’s Strategy Frame” (Nov 13, 2025), which is intended to display new, deeper modeling capabilities for our upcoming case study on the legendary quantitative hedge fund manager, is the last entry for these levels. (Alphacution will continue to publish Feed posts for Premium subscribers.)
- Until year-end 2025, Silver subscribers will possess the option to use the pro rata value of their existing subscription as a credit against an upgrade to a Premium subscription – or receive that value as a refund (to be paid at year end).
- To influence this decision, there are incentives: Given the growth in quality and quantity of Alphacution’s case study library, we will no longer offer free access to that library for new subscriptions beginning 2026, as we’ve done historically. In 2026, new Premium subscriptions will receive access to year-forward publishing only, and therefore, require an extra charge to include the historical case study library. However, a discounted 2-year Premium subscription executed before year-end 2025 will include the case study library at no additional charge.
- If I haven’t done so already, I will be contacting each of our Basic and Silver subscribers directly to share details about these changes, subscription options, and incentives…
Overall, this plan is designed to expose you – and more of your colleagues – to more of our research and other new developments. Alphacution’s new registration process guides you through your options – and, in most cases, allows you to process and activate your new subscription independently. However, in all cases, I will be available to support your considerations…
Frankly, I’m expecting some sticker shock. This is an institutional platform. Our research is independently crafted by hand to offer unique insight and perspective, free of sponsorship and other third-party entanglements. 35 years of my experiences to date are embedded in it. Plus, our multi-tiered subscription pricing model is configured by the expected value of our research to the end user (based on a decade of negotiated terms) – so, there are likely to be some intriguing price points for smaller firms, non-trading firms, and unaffiliated individuals – as well as some of our former enterprise subscribers…
Furthermore, at a time when I expect continued improvements in the overall quality of Alphacution’s output, the increasing pervasiveness of artificial intelligence will simultaneously make our approach increasingly rare. Under these conditions, you should expect our work to be valued accordingly…
Lastly, for the thousands of you who receive our newsletter who’ve never been an Alphacution subscriber, I offer this anecdote:
Our largest multi-year subscriber is a leading international asset manager, currently with 71 logins across more than one business line. Within that, Alphacution informs numerous functional areas beyond trading, execution, risk, market structure, and research to include areas like human resources, recruiting, public relations, communications, and corporate strategy. Though I’m proud and gratified by the enviable roster of founders and C-suite executives from top trading firms and hedge funds that Alphacution counts as long-term subscribers, I’m also proud of the range of functional areas that find value in our work…
Point is: No matter where you sit in capital markets, Alphacution can be incremental to the refinement of your unique perspective. True, some come for the articles and others for the pictures…
Time will tell whether – or how close – we get to actualizing the vision I have for Alphacution. The funniest thing is that what we’ve developed so far, over more than a decade of focus, is still only scratching the surface of what I see as possible. Therefore, I look forward to more of you purchasing a ticket to that ride for our mutual benefit…
As always, thanks for your attention…
EP
