| | | Hi Chip,
This was a PM I sent to Fintas, he was curious why I had responded to a post from Bob that was back in April.... I ended up writing up about the old days on SI and the many of us who gravitated around
Jorj x McKie.... Jan... Tom Dorsey.... when the Piffer thread was really hot.... back in 1998 1999 as you
will recall . there were just so, so many day traders...... I am absolutely sure that there are just as many
Millenials who have had the time of their lives trading cryptocurrencies, the past 18 months.....
FredE....AKA Stocktrash.... who has been a long timer on SI has been trading Bitcoin "balls to the walls"
and he is actually scaling back his full time job to spend more time in crypto land.
the big money is made by providing a trading platform, or a service like coinbase.... or selling advisory services.... recurring fee income..... that's where it's at.
I decided to post this to you since we have know each other so long, have spoken on the telephone a several time back in 1999 -2000 and of course, you were one of the partners in the GZ fund Ltd...
The Markets were so crazy strong and everyone had so much silly money back then that we actually
had enough investor interest to set up a second fund.... ( To avoid have to register as a Hedge Fund
and/ or becoming a Commodity Pool Operator) the laws stipulated that you had to have no more than
15 investors and no more than $250,000.... I wanted to have proof of concept (i.e. that we were executing
well before we levered up)
What I love about Bob so much is that he does such due diligence... he was the only one who came to
the GZ fund office suite in the Woodlands.......but of course... he lived 3 or 4 miles down the road in a really
lovely house right on lake woodland.
I know because Bob was nice enough to have me over to his house..... we must have had dinner..... I know I met his lovely wife...... Bob wanted to learn more about the Bond market....
| To: John P (who wrote) | 8/8/2018 9:50:04 AM | | From: Fintas | | | I remember that post by BOB for I was quick to put up a recommend for I was interested in the details of who's getting cute.
I too do back reading just to see the consistency of an individual.
You are one that is very consistent and able to see out into the distance re many topics.
Most are not or are parroting another.
We are fine. Thanks for asking and hope yours are as well.
The markets are going to be interesting as we go forward |
I explained...
| To: Fintas (who wrote) | 8/8/2018 6:40:37 AM | | From: John P | | | Hi F,
I go through SI somedays on using the "alice in wonderland approach" where posts that are made take me
backward to look at posts that occurred further back in time........ doing just the opposite of probably 95%
of people on SI.
Sometimes, it's someone who recommends a post ... that gets me to go back and more throughly examine
their previous posts...... with some in frequent posters...... it takes me back 15 years........
don't know what specifically had me respond to Bob's post that you mention.
I have been hanging in there,
Hope you and your family have been well,
my very best regards,
John |
Hi fintas,
Back in 1999, there were a number of us that were day trading stocks full time and a number were also
trading futures..... so many people had made so much silly money that it was a silly crazy time.
on SI we would have an SPX futures trading contest that would run for 3 months.... we had a 3 of them.
everyone started out with a theoretical 100,000 remember the numbers were much lower back then...
some of us were more of positions traders where we would hold for a few days unless we got stopped out.
we would put in the post how many contracts, the price, the stop loss..... which most people were using
and some people had take profit and oco orders as well.
we were on the honor system to not go and alter our orders to improve the price after 10 minutes since SI has always had the 15 minute edit window. There was a really a couple of the traders who were watching the posts and noticed that one of the guys in the contest was on a number of occasions going back and
changing his entry level as the market had moved against him in his initial move.... they came to several of
us in PM's saying what was going on.... in terms of price adjusting..
there has been a lot of wild stuff that has gone on , on Silicon Investor over the years.... I don't know if
you remember Patrick Slevin, there was an active thread "trading the Spoos with Patrick Slevin" ...
Tom Dorsey the point and figure Guru... who had the best selling book and a wildly successful
institutional service in the late 1990's posted on SI as did Jim Cramer... Bill Meehan, the chief strategist
of Cantor Fitzgerald.... the biggest Bond broker posted on SI and was a jovial interactive gentleman.
Account Closed.... who was very very active on SI for several years and was stuck at an auto
parts company in Western VA.... was able to get Bill Meehan to Say the word MYTH in a sentence when
he was interviewed on CNBC in 1999... back in 1999... AC, myself, Lucretius taurus.. Peter M spent
alot of time on a thread titled "The Naked Truth Big Kahuna a Myth" .. originally" the Naked Truth of
Peter M"
the idea of that thread was that we knew that we were in a speculative mania...... a dotcom, B2B bubble
Henry Volquardsen who was wildly successful at Citibank posted here under his own name. Account
Closed (Paul M) was very interested in a number of the people who were on SI and he found out that
I knew Henry ... and he talked with Henry via PM and Henry told him of an Audiophile magazine that
had done a profile piece on the sound system that he had in his Greenwich Connecticut condo.
Paul M sent me a copy of the article and it turned out that Henry had a $500,000 condo wide sound system
installed in his condominium....
I could never cost justify that.... I don't think....??
Henry went on to set up a derivatives book in a Joint venture of UBS and AIG.... I know he had left the
firm by 2005 ... but it's ironic that the derivatives book that he set up may well have been the one that Blew
up in a Nuclear Cloud in 2008
Tom Dorsey's assistant Jan also
was active on SI and Jorg X McKie who was a good friend of her and was an executive with CSCO and
on paper was worth 5 to 10 million in employee stock options back when the stock was up at 82........
(Just an aside on Tom Dorsey, My friend Jeff Thomas, who I was in bible study fellowship with in Houston,
Jeff along with his Partner Risher Randell were both SVP's doing Institutional business with Morgan
Stanley in Houston... and Jeff commented to me in 2000 how MS was paying $500 a month for all of
their brokers of Tom Dorsey's Point and Figure 25 page Newsletter.. So that added up to some serious
money... ) <<Think about whether it's 7 figure or 8 figure money that Jim Cramer has got to be pulling in
from his Street.com... his Real Money Service, and his Real Money Pro Product. and he's on TV all
week twice a day to promote himself and his products...
That's what American capitalism is all about..... God bless him...... He is a pretty darn sharp guy...
he has 300 million data points in his head available on demand.... -g-
Any way....back to Jorj, he had a very active piffer thread with quite a few people participating and Tom Dorsey
would go out to Las Vegas where he entered Power weight lifting contests..... and so Jan and Jorj and
a bunch of people would come along and times where very good... I went out to a Piffer get together
in Reno in November of 1999 where we all stayed at John Assauaga's Golden Nugget and it was
arranged where we went out for a craps tournament weekend. where for $75 we were entered into the
craps tournament where we played on Saturday... and those of us who did well advanced to the final round on Sunday..... We got these really nice name badge with out state... and that entitled us to free
drinks at any of the 8 bars all week end...... a number of us went out on Thursday afternoon ... some
went sking .. I got to spend a number of hours have in depth conversations with a few people who have become really good friends..... We had 75 people come men and women... some were members bringing
their wives..... or vice- versa.....
On Friday Night they Hotel threw a reception in a banquet room for our group, with an open bar an
appetizers . where we could meet and mingle..... it was really a very pleasant, convivial weekend .
It was fabulous to be able to stop at the bar ask for a double glenlivet, or a double courvoisier... and give
the bartender a buck or two tip..... and in the morning get some V8 or orange Juice......
The casino was very nice, had a very nice sports book.... and they had a couple of great music acts.
We then had another even bigger Piffer get together Just about at the exact top of the Nasdaq around the weekend of March 10th in Las Vegas...... Most of Stayed at the MGM, but some stayed at other hotels....
and I know I went out with Jan and Kirk down to the Venetian hotel and we strolled along their canal and
perused there shops........ we stopped into one of the Cigar shops and I bought Kirk and myself $20
Cohiba cigars...
also spent time at the Bellagio and had their Buffet... which was exceptional...... maybe the most fun was
going across the street to New York, New York.... ... and wondering around the different little boroughs... with the rollercoaster going by and going up and out through the roof and looping back around .... to come back down into the Replica of Old fashioned NY...... we took the escalator up to the Casino.... but
that did not look nearly as fun.....
probably the most interesting part of the weekend occurred in Quentin Tarantino... 3 stage flash back
fashion... when Jan, Kirk and I got back to the MGM from our excurcursion over to the Venetian .... We Sat Down in the Betty Boop Bar and proceeded to smoke the cigars....
Kirk....absolutely inhaled his... and jokingly said "wow I really , powered through that" I was only about 1/3
of the way through mine.... and it was 5 pm and time to head up to the room and relax for a bit before our
dinner at the Brown Derby... Then off to the craps tables we went ..... and a group of us including Jorj,
his Boss, Patrick and myself stopped in to get a salad at around 2:30 AM.... so we are sitting around
the table and Gary and Patrick..who is really three sheets to the wind get into this discussion regarding
the relative merits and quality of New Jersey Natural Aquifers....which became so intense that it
nearly degenerated into fisticuffs.......... crazy times.... the 3 of us....... there was a 5th person there with us..
probably Kirk..... were quite bemused by the bad craziness of the entire nature of the debate...
So as we all head off to our rooms around 3:45 am... I remember that I have got about $14 of my Cohiba sitting up on my desk in my room, I go and retrieve it via the elevator and within 3 or 4 minutes I am back at
the Betty Boop Lounge..... where I order a beer and figure I will polish enjoy the rest of my very fine cigar
..... I'm kind of on the tired side.... I've had quite a busy day and am not really looking around that much ..
but withing 2 to 3 minutes I realize there are many more women..... and these are attractive women.....
than there are men.... basically there are 2 or 3 couples, myself and... about 4 or 5 ladies.... who are ready
willing and able to relieve any "tension" I might have in my back .... or for that matter ,, any where else in
my body,,,,,,,,, It was not even on my radar screen when I went back down to the Betty Boop......
So as you can see those were some of the real glory days of SI, in the sense that I have meet well over
120 People from SI in real life, a number of them have become really good friends.... to the extent that
I have helped them through the deaths of 98 year old Mother last year..... and including spouses and
significant others that number is higher..... Now as time moves on, that number is dwindling ..... as Father
time and the Lord calls Some of us home...... as he shall ultimately call all of us home.....
lost MPH several years ago, she was quality... she had ALS...
be blessed my friend....
and my prayers and fondest wishes for us all,
John |
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