The Gotham Gal and I were born in 1961, at the tail end of the baby boom. Or so we thought.

In an excellent longish essay on GenX in T Magazine, Amanda Fortini writes:

The consensus, particularly among elder Gen X-ers .. is that the endpoints were mysteriously revised, but no one seems to know why or when or by whom .....many hold that the real Gen X range is 1961 to 1981 — beginning when fertility rates declined, soon after the Food and Drug Administration’s 1960 approval of the birth control pill..... Still, a 2017 Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies article placed Gen X at 1965 to 1984, recasting four years of millennials as Gen X-ers, in part because “using 20-year age spans for each generation” makes it “easier to compare them.” It also renders much generational theorizing meaningless.

While I largely agree that this generational theorizing can be pretty meaningless, it is fun. And so is Amanda's essay, particularly if you are GenX. My friend Pat called the essay, "my so called life". That cracked me up. If you were born between 1961 and 1984, you should read it. It will be at least a fun trip down memory lane, and maybe more, for you.

I likely am a baby boomer. If growing up in a Leave It To Beaver household is the measure, that was me and my family. And it was warm, safe, healthy, and happy. I believe I am a boomer because of that.

The Gotham Gal, on the other hand, grew up in the classic 70s household where the kids would come home to an empty house and had the run of the place. And everything else too. I believe she's GenX because of that.

Does any of this matter? I don't think it matters much. But there are cultural differences between children and their parents and charting them and understanding them can be helpful to marketers and anthropologists. And for the rest of us, it sure can be a lot of fun.

I didn't learn much in business school.

For me, it was a way to move from being an engineer to an investor. And as such, it was super valuable. As an education, not so much. It did lead to MBA Mondays, which was a ton of fun to write. But I digress.

There are a few occasions in business school that were "aha moments" for me. One was in a class called "Speculative Markets." The professor explained that speculating and hedging were two sides of a trade. And that there would not be hedging without speculating.

I had never considered that. It made me think.

Speculating has a dirty quality to it. One thinks of Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems or George Soros making billions betting against the British Pound. How can speculation be good?

Hedging is different. A farmer in Iowa needs to hedge the risk of a bad winter so she can keep the family farm she inherited from her parents. How can hedging be bad?

And yet you need one to exist for the other to exist. That's powerful. At least it was for me at the young age of twenty-four.

I thought of all of this when I read Murtaza's thoughtful musings on writer coins this morning. In it, he writes:

Part of the difficulty is philosophical: journalism is a public good, not a speculative asset.

There it is. The dirty word. Reading that makes me feel bad.

And yet, what if he had written this?

Journalism is a public good and we should invest in it.

Reading that would make me feel good.

Investment needs speculation.

If you make an investment and you can't sell it, no matter what the price, then you are way less likely to make it.

The Gotham Gal and I were born in 1961, at the tail end of the baby boom. Or so we thought.

In an excellent longish essay on GenX in T Magazine, Amanda Fortini writes:

The consensus, particularly among elder Gen X-ers .. is that the endpoints were mysteriously revised, but no one seems to know why or when or by whom .....many hold that the real Gen X range is 1961 to 1981 — beginning when fertility rates declined, soon after the Food and Drug Administration’s 1960 approval of the birth control pill..... Still, a 2017 Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies article placed Gen X at 1965 to 1984, recasting four years of millennials as Gen X-ers, in part because “using 20-year age spans for each generation” makes it “easier to compare them.” It also renders much generational theorizing meaningless.

While I largely agree that this generational theorizing can be pretty meaningless, it is fun. And so is Amanda's essay, particularly if you are GenX. My friend Pat called the essay, "my so called life". That cracked me up. If you were born between 1961 and 1984, you should read it. It will be at least a fun trip down memory lane, and maybe more, for you.

I likely am a baby boomer. If growing up in a Leave It To Beaver household is the measure, that was me and my family. And it was warm, safe, healthy, and happy. I believe I am a boomer because of that.

The Gotham Gal, on the other hand, grew up in the classic 70s household where the kids would come home to an empty house and had the run of the place. And everything else too. I believe she's GenX because of that.

Does any of this matter? I don't think it matters much. But there are cultural differences between children and their parents and charting them and understanding them can be helpful to marketers and anthropologists. And for the rest of us, it sure can be a lot of fun.

I didn't learn much in business school.

For me, it was a way to move from being an engineer to an investor. And as such, it was super valuable. As an education, not so much. It did lead to MBA Mondays, which was a ton of fun to write. But I digress.

There are a few occasions in business school that were "aha moments" for me. One was in a class called "Speculative Markets." The professor explained that speculating and hedging were two sides of a trade. And that there would not be hedging without speculating.

I had never considered that. It made me think.

Speculating has a dirty quality to it. One thinks of Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems or George Soros making billions betting against the British Pound. How can speculation be good?

Hedging is different. A farmer in Iowa needs to hedge the risk of a bad winter so she can keep the family farm she inherited from her parents. How can hedging be bad?

And yet you need one to exist for the other to exist. That's powerful. At least it was for me at the young age of twenty-four.

I thought of all of this when I read Murtaza's thoughtful musings on writer coins this morning. In it, he writes:

Part of the difficulty is philosophical: journalism is a public good, not a speculative asset.

There it is. The dirty word. Reading that makes me feel bad.

And yet, what if he had written this?

Journalism is a public good and we should invest in it.

Reading that would make me feel good.

Investment needs speculation.

If you make an investment and you can't sell it, no matter what the price, then you are way less likely to make it.