the financial freelancer

Somewhere in your drafts folder (or in the back of your mind) is the market-downturn client note you meant to write.

You’re probably reading this on a day when writing it feels either too soon or too late.

A note drafted during market turbulence has a specific texture. The sentences run defensive, the framing overexplains, and the writer’s own nervous system tends to leak onto the page in ways the reader can hear even when they can’t name it. Your clients look to you to be steadier than they feel; your letter arrives sounding nearly as worried as they are.

A draft of that note written when the market has been quiet has none of that. In this version, you’re writing, clear-headed, about what you believe about downturns in the abstract; what you want your clients to know before a downturn arrives and using the calm version of your own voice.

This version of the note is the one you’ll wish you had ready when it counts, because writing it under pressure will never produce the same clarity.

The job of this particular note is to name the specific fear your client is feeling, briefly and without minimizing it.

It must explain what is happening mechanically, in plain language, because a mechanism explained is one that’s made smaller.

It has to refuse the temptation to predict, because prediction is what your client will already be doing at home, badly, and your note’s authority comes partly from not joining her in that.

And it has to close on her plan, not on reassurance; the plan is what turns a scary week into a scheduled event.

One opening line, as a specimen of what the calm version sounds like:

You’re probably watching the numbers tonight, and you may be wondering whether we should be doing something. Here’s what we are doing, and why.

That sentence takes nine seconds to read and does most of the heavy lifting. It acknowledges your client is watching (which is what they actually want first, before information), it doesn’t pretend you don’t know exactly what she’s doing right now, and it points at “here is what we are doing,” which is the sentence she’s waiting for. The rest of the note is downstream of getting that opening right.

You’re not sending the finished note now; you’re filing it. When the market drop arrives (and it will, eventually), you open the note, update it with two or three sentences about what is specifically happening, and send it. The updates are quick because you already handled the hard writing, months ago, by a calmer version of yourself.

What your clients receive is a note that sounds like it came from someone who has been thinking about this for a long time…which is exactly what happened.

The alternative is drafting the note at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday in the middle of a bad week, then rereading it in the morning and hating it, then sending something anyway because your client beat you to the punch and already emailed you. That version of this note has its own texture too; your clients will recognize it, and it won’t build the trust you’re hoping.

Most advisors know having a draft ready to go is a good idea and never sit down to write it, because writing in the abstract is harder than writing to a real crisis, and it’s easy to postpone.

The Financial Freelancer writes that version for you, using your voice and your view of markets, and delivers it as a filed draft you can update in ten minutes when the drop arrives.

My contact form is below. Tell me how you tend to talk to clients when things are calm, and I will build the letter you’ll be glad to have when they aren’t.