More about The Long Room

Ever wanted to share your investment thoughts with a wider audience but were wary of the Wild Wild Web? Maybe you are a budding blogger but lack an audience and/or the tech skills?

Perhaps, instead, your thoughts are already published in research format or as a weekly newsletter but you now want to share that work with an audience hand-picked by FT Alphaville’s editorial team?

Either way, here is your chance.

The Long Room is an extension to FT Alphaville, the Financial Times' multi-award-winning finance and markets blog. It offers members the chance to publish their own material and comment on the work of others, and on subjects ranging from macroeconomics to commodities to financial derivatives.

Webby-types will recognise this as a 'mini-blogging platform.'

We prefer to think of the Long Room as a 'digital restaurant,' or an online re-creation of a century-old City of London institution, Throgmorton's Long Room Restaurant & Bar. The original Long Room was the place to go for free-flowing financial conversation – and we hope to recreate that atmosphere in our online version.

Sadly, the real world Long Room is now closed, its Edwardian splendour having declined over recent years. But until the Big Bang in 1986 - when dealers began to desert physical trading floors - the Long Room was the place to be.

Its twin rows of booths and mirrored tables, hidden deep underground between the Bank of England and the old Stock Exchange Tower, were for decades the true epicentre of stock and bond market chatter. Be it a public business lunch or a discreet conversation with a fellow market operator, Throgmorton's offered the ideal venue.

FT Alphaville's Long Room echoes the original establishment by offering a variety of digital tables where financial types can meet, mingle and swap ideas.

Featured tables cover the big, obvious topics, be it the price of crude or the unavailability of credit. Hosted by the FT Alphaville editorial team and select Long Room members, these tables are open to all members, who are invited to post their own articles or comment on the work of others.

We encourage thoughtful, accurate work that does not defame and does not breach someone else’s copyright. The tables are actively moderated by FT Alphaville staff.

Established research and strategy professionals are offered the right to host their own tables as an additional outlet for their work — often extracts from published buy and sell-side institutional research.

Depending on the content, you may find that you have to apply to the host for access to certain tables, since the subject matter may be restricted to a firms' clients.

Tables are also open to selected financial bloggers who want to promote content published on their own sites, beyond the boundaries of FT Alphaville. Quality writing has blossomed across the web and we’d like to help people find it.

Finally, the Long Room offers sponsored tables, where both content and access may vary, depending on the sponsor’s requirements. Feel free to contact our commercial colleagues if you are interested in sponsoring a table.

So this is a chance to read and (if you feel the urge) produce some of the best-quality writing on investment and finance, markets and economics, available online.

Membership is free, but exclusive to professional readers.

Start the application process by telling us a little bit about yourself.