Why should I subscribe to this?
We get it. There are a lot of newsletters out there these days. A LOT. But if you appreciate both stupidly long and detailed explorations of financial stuff as well as a few judicious shitposts to liven things up, then please check us out.
All of the team’s original reporting still goes on the blog. This newsletter will sweep our work together each Friday, augmented with the best stuff we’ve found elsewhere. We’ll also include a selection of killer charts cribbed from around the FT over the past week. And you’ll get a heads up on all our pub quizzes, chart shows and drinks dos.
What even is “FT Alphaville”?
The Financial Times launched Alphaville in 2006 as a “daily news and commentary service giving financial market professionals the information they need, when they need it.” Finance blogging has changed a lot since then but Alphaville’s purpose has not.
We aim to be read by an audience that’s smart, informed, questioning, open-minded, sometimes obsessive and occasionally unserious. FT Alphaville — or plain Alphaville or FTAV — seeks to cover everything in financial markets through a wide-angle lens. From microstructure to M&A, corporate fraud and big-idea macroeconomics, if it interests you it should interest us. And if it doesn’t interest you, we’ll be trying our hardest to change that.
Unlike the FT, Alphaville doesn’t cost anything. All you need to do to read us is to register with your email (look for the “free limited access” option in the menu). You can follow Alphaville on your social network of choice, and by setting a story alert on your myFT profile. You can email the team at [email protected] or individually at [email protected].
So who is the team?
Louis Ashworth — New York
Louis joined FT Alphaville in September 2022. This coincided with a sharp sell-off in UK assets, but he insists that correlation is not causation. Previously, he worked at the Telegraph, where he covered economics and markets. He’s interested in macro- and micro-economics, path dependency, political economy and [Björk voice] human behaviour, but also dodgy dealings and unusual business arrangements. Louis has been described (by himself) as one of the great Photoshop talents of his generation.
Toby Nangle — London
Toby joined Alphaville full-time in 2025 after a stint as a contributing Alphavillain and contributing editor at mainFT. He spent 25 years as a professional investor, first managing global multi-currency fixed income portfolios for pensions, insurance, and sovereign clients before moving also into equity, real estate and alts as an asset allocator. He left the industry in 2022 having failed to get it to stop managing money for sovereign clients engaging in crimes against humanity. He managed the first actively managed synthetic Collateralised Debt Obligation, which helpfully matured just ahead of the global financial crisis.
Bryce Elder — London
Bryce is Alphaville’s City editor and has been a sporadic contributor to the blog since 2008, when he joined the FT as UK equities reporter. Before that he wrote about UK equities at Morningstar. Before that he wrote about UK equities at The Times. Before that he wrote about UK equities at Bloomberg. Before that he wrote about UK equities at AFX News. Before that he did not write about UK equities.
Robin Wigglesworth — Oslo
Robin is the editor of Alphaville, before which he did a variety of financial, markets and investing roles for the FT, after joining the paper from Bloomberg as a Gulf correspondent in 2008. He once wrote a book about passive investing, which he has very actively told everyone about ever since. Robin has soft spots for quants, sovereign debt restructuring, Islamic finance and the Eurovision Song Contest.
Other contributors:
Craig Coben
Craig is contributing writer at Alphaville. In his 25 years of investment banking he held various senior positions, including global head of equity capital markets and vice chairman of global capital markets at Bank of America. His only previous media experience has involved co-hosting Cottage Talk, a podcast for Fulham FC fans.
Alexandra Scaggs
Alex returned to FTAV in 2022 after writing for Barron’s about bonds, and is now a contributing writer at the blog. Alex first joined Alphaville in 2016, weeks before the Brexit vote, but still isn’t entirely confident in her understanding of what Brexit means for the UK. Before that she wrote for Bloomberg and the WSJ. Alex is interested in bonds, private markets, utilities, regulation and market structure, and grudgingly pays attention to cryptocurrencies.
Dan Davies
Dan has combined the careers of “financial analyst” and “internet loudmouth” since the late 1990s. He worked as an equity analyst covering the banking sector until 2014, when fundamental analysis finally convinced him that the era of big bonuses was over. Since then, he has been an independent consultant. He has written two books - “Lying For Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal The Workings of the World” and “The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions”.
Is that it?
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