Following a summer-long hiatus, the first Wall Street analyst to cover bitcoin, follow marijuana store sales and measure the economy by the price of a bacon cheeseburger is back.
Nick Colas, formerly the chief market analyst at brokerage Convergex, is launching a newsletter this week that will deliver much the same innovative thinking for which his Morning Market Briefing was known.
Whether it was cryptocurrencies, the burgeoning exchange-traded fund market or his early focus on the JOLTS — Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey — Colas has become well known for finding market-relevant factoids where no one else is looking.
His new venture will be called DataTrek Research, a daily emailed newsletter to subscribers that will be penned, as usual, with his writing partner Jessica Rabe, who helped make the briefing a must-read by tracking legalized pot-store sales in Colorado.
“It’s obviously going to be a lot of capital markets discussion,” Colas said in a phone interview just ahead of the launch. “We’re also going to be touching very heavily on the data revolution and innovation disruption generally.”
Prior to Colas leaving Convergex at the end of May, the briefing reached about 5,000 daily subscribers. He left as the brokerage was acquired by the Cowen Group.
The new letter, which also will be available for a fee at DataTrekResearch.com, seeks the same kind of scope and reach. The focus will be on macro trends rather than individual stocks, with a particular emphasis on how technology is influencing markets.
“As I talk to investors, as I talk to sell-side and buy-side (analysts), I’m always astounded there isn’t more focus on all the innovation and disruption on the technology covering from all sectors,” Colas said.
“Retail talks about Amazon, auto talks about Tesla. But everybody views innovation in their very narrow vertical,” he added. “There’s a lot of work to be done to understand how this broad-based technological disruption coming out of Silicon Valley really affects the entire economy, the capitalist ecosystem. I don’t think there’s anybody putting those dots together in a creative way.”
Colas’ contacts received an email Monday regarding the new product. The first report will be released Tuesday morning.