Last reviewed: 5 August 2026
Incomestead publishes about money — a subject where being right matters, and being trusted matters more. Here is how I work, so you can judge me by it.
Who writes here
Everything here is published under my name — Stefano Starkel, Incomestead's founder — a self-directed investor running my own leveraged, multi-strategy book. I am an operator, not a licensed adviser, and I say so plainly. I write from lived experience, and I distinguish clearly between fact and opinion. More about me.
How these pages are made
I draft with AI assistance, and I publish nothing I haven't reviewed and signed. AI tools help me research, draft, and check my own consistency. Every draft then passes two independent review gates before it goes live: a brand-and-craft review against my own written standards, and a separate cold-read fact-check — run with no knowledge of this company — that verifies every claim and citation against primary sources. After both gates, I read the piece end to end and publish it under my own name.
The division of labor mirrors the product: the machine prepares, I decide. Nothing publishes on autopilot, and no AI decides what I believe — I keep those positions, and the best case against each, on the record.
I cite primary sources
Claims about rules, regulations, and figures are grounded in primary sources — FINRA's own rulebook, the original peer-reviewed study, the journal, the book — not secondary blog posts. When I cite a margin maintenance requirement, I point to FINRA Rule 4210 itself, not a screenshot of it. I'll name a regulator's rule or standard in prose where it's the authority, but I deliberately link to durable, stable sources rather than government (.gov) URLs — those get restructured and rot into dead links over time, and a dead citation is worse than none. And where a widely-repeated statistic is misleading — the "90% of your returns come from asset allocation" line is a classic — I flag the caveat rather than pass it along.
Caveats travel with the claim
Anything about leverage, margin, or markets carries its real downside in the same breath as its upside. I never inflate a number to make a headline hit harder — my reader checks sources, and so do I.
Education, not advice
Nothing I publish is personalized financial, tax, or legal advice. I explain how things work and how to govern them; the decisions — and the responsibility — stay with you.
The same standard I hold my software to
Incomestead the product is a deterministic engine: the same inputs produce the same result, every time, and every figure is traceable to its source. I try to write to that standard too — transparent, reproducible, and open to correction.
Independence
I make Incomestead, the governance tool these ideas point toward, and I'm upfront about that. It is not open to everyone yet, and the waitlist page says plainly what the alpha is and is not. Beyond my own product, I take no payment to feature companies and earn no affiliate commissions. When I point to something else, it's because I'd use it myself.
Corrections and updates
If I get something wrong, I fix it and note the change. Spotted an error? Email hello@incomestead.com.
Posts carry a "Last reviewed" date, and when I revisit one, the revision is a substantive upgrade — new evidence, a tightened argument, a repaired link — never a date bump to look fresh. If the date moved, something real changed.
Written and stood behind by Stefano Starkel, founder. Incomestead recommends. You decide.