Re: 600 Members Coming Up
Posted: Fri Aug 18, 2017 5:54 pm
And that is the highest compliment I could receive, thank you.
I credit the PP community (here and elsewhere) for exorcising many investment 'inner-demons' which I had carried with me for years.
For example: in high school, I remember having a class on personal finances. In it, we learned about how investing in the stock market would grow your money at about 10% a year, as long as you kept your money in the market "for the long run". There was a slick chart that demonstrated how, if we invested some small amount of money in the stock market every month starting at age 18, how we would be multi-millionaires by age 65. The chart was so gorgeous, and that exponential curve so beautiful -- I fell in love. I determined then and there to become a dutiful investor, with the same resolve of a monk or a knight.
But, even though I was only 16 years old (or something like that), something didn't quite sit right. Even though I was still almost totally ignorant about economics or investing, I could sense that I wasn't being told the full story. "It couldn't be that easy", I thought to myself. "If it were, everyone would be millionaires." And I also had the sneaking suspicion that the past wasn't an indicator of the future. "Why is it guaranteed that stocks will be so stellar for my generation, just because they did for the last?" I never asked any of these questions, probably because my subconscious recognized that my teacher had no grasp of the subject herself.
I graduated in the summer of 2008 and started university in September of that same year... well, it goes without saying that any scraps of faith that I had in "100% stocks for the long run" were eviscerated. For those who lived through that crisis, you will remember that it wasn't just the 40% drawdown that was disturbing, that's just a number: it was the atmospheric tinge of APOCALYPSE that hung on the air-waves and oozed from the newspapers that I'll never forget. At the time, no one knew just how far this implosion was going to go. It could have been the end of the financial system as we knew it. I was terrified, and I didn't even have a dime in the market.
After that experience, I felt like a desert wanderer with no home to settle my savings into. Nothing was safe, nothing made sense. No portfolio or asset allocation system relieved my doubts. They all made me feel like I was being taught about the "glories" of the stock market by my personal finance teacher in high school again.
When I stumbled upon the PP, the internal logic of it appealed to me immediately. It was so contrarian, so bizarre, so utterly insane that I knew immediately that it warranted investigation, since everything that was mainstream had to that point failed to seduce me in anyway. The community answered most of the questions about it, and I never felt like I was being sold fishy, suspicious reasoning. I felt like I found home, finally.
A few lingering questions remained though. That's where MediumTex comes in.
It is him, in particular, who resolved many of the final "tough questions" that I had regarding the portfolio, especially related to the subject of Peak Oil. I owe a lot to the PP community, but especially to Tex for reconciling all of my fears, objections and hesitancies.
I credit the PP community (here and elsewhere) for exorcising many investment 'inner-demons' which I had carried with me for years.
For example: in high school, I remember having a class on personal finances. In it, we learned about how investing in the stock market would grow your money at about 10% a year, as long as you kept your money in the market "for the long run". There was a slick chart that demonstrated how, if we invested some small amount of money in the stock market every month starting at age 18, how we would be multi-millionaires by age 65. The chart was so gorgeous, and that exponential curve so beautiful -- I fell in love. I determined then and there to become a dutiful investor, with the same resolve of a monk or a knight.
But, even though I was only 16 years old (or something like that), something didn't quite sit right. Even though I was still almost totally ignorant about economics or investing, I could sense that I wasn't being told the full story. "It couldn't be that easy", I thought to myself. "If it were, everyone would be millionaires." And I also had the sneaking suspicion that the past wasn't an indicator of the future. "Why is it guaranteed that stocks will be so stellar for my generation, just because they did for the last?" I never asked any of these questions, probably because my subconscious recognized that my teacher had no grasp of the subject herself.
I graduated in the summer of 2008 and started university in September of that same year... well, it goes without saying that any scraps of faith that I had in "100% stocks for the long run" were eviscerated. For those who lived through that crisis, you will remember that it wasn't just the 40% drawdown that was disturbing, that's just a number: it was the atmospheric tinge of APOCALYPSE that hung on the air-waves and oozed from the newspapers that I'll never forget. At the time, no one knew just how far this implosion was going to go. It could have been the end of the financial system as we knew it. I was terrified, and I didn't even have a dime in the market.
After that experience, I felt like a desert wanderer with no home to settle my savings into. Nothing was safe, nothing made sense. No portfolio or asset allocation system relieved my doubts. They all made me feel like I was being taught about the "glories" of the stock market by my personal finance teacher in high school again.
When I stumbled upon the PP, the internal logic of it appealed to me immediately. It was so contrarian, so bizarre, so utterly insane that I knew immediately that it warranted investigation, since everything that was mainstream had to that point failed to seduce me in anyway. The community answered most of the questions about it, and I never felt like I was being sold fishy, suspicious reasoning. I felt like I found home, finally.
A few lingering questions remained though. That's where MediumTex comes in.
It is him, in particular, who resolved many of the final "tough questions" that I had regarding the portfolio, especially related to the subject of Peak Oil. I owe a lot to the PP community, but especially to Tex for reconciling all of my fears, objections and hesitancies.
On July 12, 2017, I wrote we were at 599 members. That prompted sweetbethescrivener to sign on as #600. All hail Herman Melville! (The best short story ever)?
Funny but true. Membership is directly correlated with the price of