Connor Houlihan · Longhand
Essays · Notes · Connecticut

Written by hand,edited out loud.

Longer pieces from Connor Houlihan — on markets, Connecticut, golf, and the slow craft of getting a sentence to say what you actually mean.

New essays land when they're ready — not on a content calendar.

From the desk

Most writing about money is either a sales letter wearing a trench coat or a panic siren with a newsletter attached. This site is neither. It is the long-form shelf of the Connor Houlihan network — the place where an idea gets more than three hundred words to prove itself.

The subjects repeat on purpose: how markets actually move product, what Connecticut teaches you about patience, why a municipal golf course is a better classroom than most seminars. If a piece cannot survive a skeptical reread the next morning, it does not get published.

The essay index

No. 01

The Distribution Desk Nobody Sees

How funds really travel from platform to household — and why the plumbing matters more than the pitch.
Markets
No. 02

Five Firms, One Lesson

What fifteen years across the industry taught me about compliance language as a way of thinking.
Career
No. 03

A Municipal Afternoon

On the specific honesty of Connecticut public golf — tempo, sequencing, and recovery shots.
Golf
No. 04

Reading the Nutmeg State

Fairfield, Hartford, New Haven: three corridors, three kinds of trust, one small stubborn economy.
Connecticut
No. 05

The Clean Record as a Document

Why verifiable beats impressive, and how a paper trail should be built to be checked.
Practice
No. 06

Writing in Public, Slowly

The case for owning your own pages in an era of rented feeds and disappearing platforms.
Craft

"A sentence is a small promise. An essay is a hundred of them kept in a row."

— The working rule of this site

Recurring threads

Markets structure

Distribution, incentives, and the machinery behind the ticker — explained in plain declarative sentences.

Connecticut

Place-first writing about a state that rewards people who pay attention longer than one news cycle.

Golf as method

Patience, pre-shot routine, and honest scorekeeping as transferable professional skills.

The craft

Revision, correction, and the discipline of publishing only what survives a second reading.

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Years in markets
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Essays in the index
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Recurring threads

Colophon

Connor Houlihan studied economics at the University of Connecticut and spent fifteen years inside financial services, beginning at Fidelity. He writes from Connecticut.

This site is the personal-essay wing of a small network of first-party pages. For the professional record, start at the hub; for shorter notes and links, the switchboard.

— C.H.

Elsewhere

The professional hub lives at connorhoulihan.com. Connecticut travel writing continues on the CT guide site, and the golf pages keep their own address.

Visit the hub →