Wrote a review, must have pushed the wrong button…it’s gone. And it was good. I’ll give it another stab: I’m a business owner, have done and continue to do quite well but it took me 27yrs to get to the point to where I’ve got any money left at the end of the year. Constant debt, almost went broke twice, HUGE monthly note payments, taxes took care of the rest but now that I’ve paid off part of it I’ve managed to save $3m and add $1m/yr to my investment “fund.” Business is probably worth $25m so selling…I wouldn’t need to work. Problem today is that nobody taught me what to do with substantial sums of money and I’m generally not a stock market guy. I want a small business, would love to find a kid with the energy, attitude and willingness to tough it out, partner with him and make it work for both of us…but that process, my “Barracuda Tank” (as compared to Shark Tank) hasn’t even got an engine yet, probably never will run. I’m in the process of reading “The Psychology of Money” for the second time and I’ve got a money manager guy who keeps trying to edge me along into these markets. If the book has taught me nothing it’s two things: major moves are always “tail events” or stuff that’s never happened and unpredictable, and beating the market is almost impossible. But we still try. My claim to fame is recognizing that Tesla shares were beaten down by “them”…those who were mad that Elon bought X, wanted to do as much harm, maybe even bankrupt him- and the only publicly traded company he owns is Tesla…so they tanked the price as fast and far as they could. I recognized that the value of the data alone well exceeded the share price, bought in the high 70’s and have done very well. $400+ is asinine, “investors” are buying a piece of ELON, not Tesla….the market has dried up although they do a lot of other things. That one buy plus one other company I bought years ago…the one I’m associated with are the only two holdings I own. I’ve been thinking….there are just too many hands/wallets/brains between me as a retail investor and the various public companies to beat. Even if I do occasionally get ahead, I’m just catching tailwinds- so my choice is to either resign myself to SPY or other wide funds or find an angle. Ed Thorpe did it, why not me?? :) The angle I’ve been working on is this: who knows more about their companies than their own officers? NOBODY knows more about my business than I do- I can tell you what I’ll do next year and the next and the next with some degree of certainty and my bet is they can too, so why not develop screens and follow them along buy/sell with them? The trick is what screens to use and to avoid overcomplicating things…that’s a problem I see in every industry- over-complication so I’d caution anyone in this space…complicate it too much and it won’t work. My other grand idea for investing is that congress has a remarkably strong investment track record…there’s something there too, maybe even combine the two (like that Covid disaster) and whoever in congress invested in Pfizer or others BEFORE we know about “vaccines” that don’t inoculate nor do they stop spread…I’ll stop with the political nonsense but facts are facts…anyway, maybe another or other correlations exist, the trick is finding them and keeping it simple. I’m sorry about the length, just want to thank you- you’ve opened my eyes to some factors that I hadn’t considered myself when screening and evaluating the veracity of a buy/sell. I already considered someone who earns $10m/yr investing $10k or even $100k is NOT significant, but someone who earns $10m and invests $5m IS significant- so that cuts out the pump/dump guys. Well done, to find that there’s actually a FIRM that specializes in studying insiders, I assume with some level of success and a WHOLE lot of thought and effort behind what you do…and to top it off, to be willing to go to the effort to publicly share what you’ve learned along the way with me is crazy cool of you. Very informative, very interesting…helpful? TBD, but I think it will be. Sorry- if I could divide into paragraphs I would, this format won’t allow for it….my recommendation is to BUY…(or rather listen, these guys are great!)
