Money, read like people.

Nagham Writes is a newsletter in a form I call Narrative Finance. It begins with a simple conviction: markets are not machines occasionally disrupted by emotion. They are systems in which fundamentals are continuously interpreted through fear, desire, memory, and denial. Psychology does not merely distort price; it helps produce it.

Each issue takes one cognitive bias—the kind psychologists have named and studied—and follows it through three lenses.

One bias, three lenses

The Story. A human story—a reported case, a composite, or a clearly fictionalized scene—in which someone is caught inside the bias before knowing its name. This is where the pattern becomes recognizable, because you have been this person or sat across from them.

The World. The same bias at scale, playing out in a capital, a negotiation, or a crisis. Governments and institutions repeat many of the errors individuals make. The stakes change; the psychology remains recognizable.

The Market. The bias with a ticker attached: what market participants may be rewarding, ignoring, or mispricing—and where the strongest case against the thesis lives. Analysis, not advice.

Who’s writing

I’m Nagham—a Lebanese-American writer based in Beirut, with a background in law and international affairs. Living through a currency collapse transformed behavioral finance from a textbook subject into something immediate and observable.

I write every issue in English and translate it into Arabic myself, because voice is not something I am willing to outsource.

The rhythm

The Friday Letter arrives every Friday.

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Nagham Writes offers independent commentary for educational and informational purposes. Nothing published here constitutes personalized investment advice.