Perhaps 10 years or more ago while working for Casey Research, I got a piece of particularly virulent hate mail. The sender spent a great deal of time and energy cursing at me for recommending a stock that was down substantially. I can’t share the author’s creative use of language with you—not sure where the email got to after all these years—but I can tell you it wasn’t pretty.
I replied to the gentleman, politely urging him to follow our published recommendation (which was to hold). A few months later the fellow wrote to thank me, because the stock was up substantially. He wouldn’t have made all that money if I hadn’t replied calmly and helped him decide to see the speculation through.
The interesting thing to me is what Paul Harvey famously called “the rest of the story.”
You see, Peter Pottymouth wrote again some months later. It might have been during the crash of 2008. He cursed me and everyone within a 100-mile radius, because he was losing money again.
Of course, we now all know that the “waterfall event” of 2008 created buying opportunities of a lifetime. People literally made their fortunes buying when Peter was dumping everything in a panic and a rage.
The moral of this story is not that I’m always right and everyone must follow me blindly.
I’m quite capable of error. I’ve made some very bad calls. Happily, I’ve made more good calls than bad, and the law of averages has delivered for my readers over the years.
The point is that Peter should never have tried to be a speculator in the first place. His character was clearly not suited to it.
This is one of the main points I make in my Speculation 101 report: know thyself.
People who are themselves so volatile that they can’t take a setback with grace should not speculate on the most volatile stocks on earth.
Nor should people who don’t have any money they can afford to lose.
Nor should people who need their gains (or initial cash) back out of the market by a specific time.
Nor should people who—if they’re honest with themselves—know they’re prone to follow popular consensus, rather than stand their contrarian ground.
I don’t mean to sound elitist. I don’t want to discourage people who sincerely want to learn the art of successful speculation. But the plain truth is that it’s not for everyone. It takes high levels of courage and discipline.
It’s precisely because these traits are so extraordinary that it can be so rewarding. If it were easy, everyone would do it and there would be no profit in it.
I’m not just saying: “Enter at your own risk.”
I’m saying: “Don’t enter at all if you know this is not for you.”
But if it is…
If you are one of these people with a sharp mental eye and nerves of steel, I can show you everything Doug Casey, Rick Rule, and others taught me.
