Meet the 17-year-olds behind the finance worlds favorite Gen Z newsletter

Wall Street’s new guilty pleasure started as a lunchroom debate between pre-calc and chemistry classes.Passing the Torch, a newsletter covering markets, economics, politics and culture, was founded in 2025 by Jasper Gould and Emile Chilingirian, both now 17, while they were sophomores at the prestigious Berkeley Carroll prep school in Park Slope.It now has a subscriber list nearly 60,000 strong — with more than two-thirds of readers registering with corporate emails. Addresses belonging to McKinsey, JP Morgan, Blackstone and Nvidia employees number in the thousands.

Hundreds more come from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, Palantir and Microsoft. “On politics and on capitalism, we have a lot of differing opinions,” Gould said.“We probably should have been doing our homework when we were doing this.”To read PTT is to look inside the collective brain of a generation — one that is largely distrustful of institutions and misunderstood by Wall Street and Main Street alike.

Recent stories from the newsletter have blended anecdotal and statistical data on Gen Z’s sentiment towards automated vehicles and robotaxis; examined how the growing bonds between teens and wristwatches mirrors a growing distaste for AI; and separated functionality from cultural relevance to explain the death of sneaker culture. “I read this and The Atlantic with equal levels of intrigue,” said Sam Shaffer, an early reader and former eBay executive now consulting New Zealand’s government on business development.“Their writing is not focused on crushing the market … it’s about the trends they see in their world.”High finance and Big Tech types buy 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 month or $150 per ye...