I graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1984 with a degree in electronic engineering and from 1984
until 1998 worked in the commercial construction industry as an engineer, a project manager and an operations
manager.
I began investing in the stock market 2 months prior to the 1987 stock market crash and thus quickly learnt about
the downside potential of stocks. Only slightly daunted by the rather inauspicious timing of my entry into the world
of financial market investments, my interest in the stock market grew steadily over the years.
In 1993, after studying the history of money, the nature of our present-day fiat monetary system and the role of banks
in the creation of money, I developed an interest in gold. Another very important lesson soon followed: gold may be
the ideal form of money for those who believe in free markets and a wonderful hedge against the inherent instability
of the government-imposed paper currencies, but it is not always a good investment.
By mid-1998 the time and money involved in my financial market research/investments had grown to the point
where I was forced to make a decision: scale back on my involvement in the financial world or give up my day job. The
decision was actually quite an easy one to make and so, at the beginning of 1999, I began investing/trading on a full-time
basis.
My major concern in deciding to pursue a career in which I devoted all of my time to my own investments was that
I would miss the personal interaction that had been part and parcel of my business management career.
The Speculative Investor (TSI) web site was launched in August of 1999 as a means for me to interact with the world by
making my analyses/ideas available on the Internet and inviting feedback from others with similar interests.
During
its first 14 months of operation the TSI web site was free of charge,
but due to the site's growing popularity I changed it to a
subscription-based service in October of 2000. Its popularity continued
to grow, although I remained -- and remain to this day -- a
professional speculator who happens to write a newsletter as opposed to
someone whose primary focus is selling newsletter subscriptions.
My
approach is 'top down'; specifically, I first ascertain overall market
trends and then use a combination of fundamental and technical analysis
to find individual stocks that stand to benefit from these broad
trends. This approach is based on my experience that it's an order of
magnitude easier to pick a winning stock from within a market or market
sector that's immersed in a long-term bullish trend than to do so
against the backdrop of a bearish overall market trend. Fortunately,
there's always a bull market somewhere.
I lived in Asia (Hong Kong, China
and Malaysia) from 1995 to 2018, but in early 2019 I returned to my home
country (Australia). This move was made solely for personal (lifestyle and
family) reasons.
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