The Evolution of the FinanceProfessor.com newsletter

In the past week I have had several emails, and two phone calls, from people asking about the newsletter. So in part to save time and in part to explain to all, I will make a few public comments about the newsletter.

First of all, yes it is coming out. Soon. Or so I say. It just takes too long! I estimate about 8 hours. Now if I had an extra 8 hours laying around...lol.

But even more than the time it takes to create the newsletter, is the large number of newsletters that get sent to bulk (or junk) mail accounts or blocked outright by the anti-spam software packages. For instance, I tried sending myself test newletters (to my Yahoo account) and three times in a row (even after I marked it as not spam), the test message was delivered to my bulk mail account. On top of that I have herd from professors at several schools saying that they (or the students) has stopped getting the newsletter even though they see I am still publishing it.

It is one thing to devote the hours of making a newsletter if people are going to receive it (let alone read it), but if it is not even making it to the correct mailbox, then I sort of have lost my motivation.

Hence the blog! As I mentioned in the August Newsletter, I am very excited about it! And now that I have had some time to work with it, I think it may be even better than I hoped and better in some ways than the old format (admit it, it is difficult to make time to read a 16 page newsletter!).

Thus, the newsletter (which I will try to make monthly) will be more of a recap of what has been happening on the blog, along with some other things (example important news, what I am reading, etc.).

However, the emphasis has turned more to research papers. To those of you just wanting the news, I apologize. But given that there are many news sources out there, in some ways I would be merely replicating their efforts.

If you want a daily newsletter (almost same format as mine if you select the text option), I suggest that you subscribe to the free New York Times Deal Book. They link to many stories (not all on the NY Times site) and the newsletter is VERY good! From their web site:

DealBook Edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin, The Times's chief mergers and acquisitions reporter, DealBook provides exclusive interviews, breaking news about M&A, IPOs, Private Equity transactions and Venture Capital Deals. See sample.