Wall Street’s latest obsession? A highschool e-newsletter

Wall Street’s new responsible pleasure began as a lunchroom debate between pre-calc and chemistry lessons.

Passing the Torch, a e-newsletter protecting markets, economics, politics and tradition, was based in 2025 by Jasper Gould and Emile Chilingirian, each now 17, whereas they have been sophomores on the prestigious Berkeley Carroll prep college in Park Slope.

It now has a subscriber record practically 60,000 robust — with greater than two-thirds of readers registering with company emails. Addresses belonging to McKinsey, JP Morgan, Blackstone and Nvidia staff quantity within the hundreds. Hundreds extra come from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, Palantir and Microsoft. 

“On politics and on capitalism, we have a lot of differing opinions,” Gould mentioned. “We probably should have been doing our homework when we were doing this.”

To learn PTT is to look contained in the collective mind of a technology — one that’s largely distrustful of establishments and misunderstood by Wall Street and Main Street alike.

Recent tales from the e-newsletter have blended anecdotal and statistical information on Gen Z’s sentiment in direction of automated automobiles and robotaxis; examined how the rising bonds between teenagers and wristwatches mirrors a rising distaste for AI; and separated performance from cultural relevance to clarify the demise of sneaker tradition. 

“I read this and The Atlantic with equal levels of intrigue,” mentioned Sam Shaffer, an early reader and former eBay government now consulting New Zealand’s authorities on enterprise improvement. “Their writing is not focused on crushing the market … it’s about the trends they see in their world.”

High finance and Big Tech sorts purchase in, Chilingirian believes, for the “Gen-Z takes … variant views that the market may not have priced in yet. We’re experiencing them in real time.”

“The only other source of high school intel is when investors ask their children,” Gould added.

A subscription to Passing the Torch runs $15 per 30 days or $150 per 12 months — with annual income for the authors sitting within the five-figure vary. 

And whereas Gould and Chilingirian attend a college the place tuition prices over $66,000 per 12 months, their reporting is distinctly populist. That’s as a result of the writers are in close to fixed communication with excessive schoolers all throughout the nation.

When they’re not engaged on the Substack — researching and writing eat up a mixed 30 hours per week) or at school — Gould and Chilingirian lead the non-profit Brooklyn Youth Charitable Investment Group which happened from them and their associates consuming pizza and speaking about shares. 

Two years in, 1,000 college students from all corners of the nation have handed by means of the group. BYCIG has hosted talks with the chief economists of the White House, Wells Fargo and the Conference Board of Canada, in addition to administrators at UBS, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase.

More nonetheless have grow to be concerned with BYCIG by means of its funding arm, which manages a fund of about $50,000 raised by dad and mom and finance professionals. Student groups analysis and pitch funding concepts to an advisory committee, and propositions that the board votes sure on are despatched by means of to an accountant who executes the commerce. The group then donates a part of their returns to charity.

All in all, the fund has outperformed the market with three of the 12 positions rising greater than 40%. 

“The primary reaction is amazement,” mentioned Nick Gould, Jasper’s father. A tech business veteran and self-employed government coach with a 200-subscriber e-newsletter of his personal. (He credit PTT as the first supply of any development he’s seen in his personal year-old publication.)

Now within the throes of faculty utility season, rising seniors Gould and Chilinigirian are fascinated with succession plans for each the e-newsletter and nonprofit. 

“We can’t set up a hedge fund just yet,” Gould mentioned. “I won’t be 18 for another two months.”