Who owns us, and what else he does.

Who owns this publication

Off Script Wire is owned by one person, its founder, Andrew Lazzeroni. There is no co-owner, no parent company, no investor, no private-equity owner, and no third party with a say in what we publish. He writes and edits here, and his name is on the masthead and on the pieces he produces.

We're pre-launch. This page describes how the business is set up and the standard we're holding ourselves to from Issue #001 — not a track record we're claiming yet.

What else he does: he trades

Andrew Lazzeroni trades securities for his own account — in his own name, with his own money. There is no firm. No fund, no management company, no partners, no clients, no outside investors, and nothing managed for anyone else. Nobody pays him to trade and he gives no investment advice to anyone.

We are saying this plainly because a version of this page used to name a company here, and that was wrong. There is no second organisation to point at, no separate brand, and nothing on this site that trades on a trading record as a credential. What we do not do is pretend the trading isn't there.

The conflict, stated plainly

He holds positions. This publication writes about markets. When those two overlap — when we cover a company he has money in — there is a real conflict of interest, and no amount of good intention makes it go away. Writing favorably about something you own, without saying you own it, is the thing securities law is most pointed about, and it is the thing we have built the most machinery around.

So every piece that names a specific company as its subject carries a position disclosure at the top, under the byline, before you read a word of the story. It names both the writer and Off Script Wire's owner, it says long or short, and it says so even when the answer is that nobody holds anything — because a disclosure that only appears when it's awkward is one you can't trust when it's missing. Our disclosure policy sets out the timing rules behind it.

The part most disclosure pages leave out

Big publishers whose owners trade solve this with an information barrier: different people write the articles and run the money, and neither side can see the other's work. That is a real control, and it is not one we can build. There is one of us. The newsroom and the trading account are the same person.

We will never tell you our editorial side has no knowledge of the trading book. It would not be true, and a comforting sentence that isn't true is worse than an uncomfortable one that is. What we have instead of a barrier is disclosure you can see, timing rules that make the bad pattern impossible, and a written record of every trade against the coverage calendar. That is a weaker control honestly described, and we would rather be judged on it than on a barrier we don't have.

What ownership does not buy

• No company pays us to cover it. Not cash, not stock, not tokens, not a trip. Advertisers buy a labeled slot and nothing else — see editorial standards and our disclosures.
• The trading does not steer coverage. A story is not commissioned because of a position, and a position is not the reason a company gets written about. The timing rules exist so that the reverse — buy it, write it up, sell into the bounce — is mechanically impossible rather than merely promised against.
• We are not trying to move prices. What we publish is meant to explain what happened and why it matters. It is not intended to influence the price of any security, and we do not write about a security in order to trade the reaction to it.
• Nothing here is advice for you. We publish the same thing to everybody, we don't know your situation, and we won't manage anyone's money. That's a line in our disclosures, and it isn't moving.

Questions about any of this

If something on this page doesn't add up, or you think we've missed a conflict we should be disclosing, tell us: [email protected]. Pointing at a specific line is the most useful thing you can do, and we read every one.