I often read a book and wonder about who the author is beyond the obligatory 2-3 paragraphs on the back flap. For those interested, this is a little bit more of a personal history.
I am often asked how to become an investment writer/analyst. The answer is I do not know. My rather torturous trek is not a model for young aspirants. It seems that I subscribe to the Yogi Berra School of Career Paths: “I came to the fork in the road and I took it.” Sometimes the path was obvious and sometimes it was forced upon me. Change was not always welcome, but it has always been interesting.
I grew up working in a small print shop, setting type by hand and running small presses, as well as the obligatory newspaper routes. I graduated from Rice University in 1972 and the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1974. God not being willing to foist me on some poor unsuspecting church (what a disaster that would have been!), I ended up running a small family printing business. I grew it substantially and then we sold it in 1976. I eventually became somewhat of a direct mail guru back when direct mail was just beginning to computerize. I started a company which sold checks through the mail, which allowed me to volunteer with a missionary outfit called Youth With a Mission for three years. During that period I did some consulting with an investment newsletter publisher. In 1981, I returned to the check printing company where we developed a new technology for printing checks. When we introduced the prototype in 1982 at COMDEX (a large computer show) it was the fastest bit-mapping printer in the world - 120 fully programmable pages a minute using magnetic toner, which was something in those days. It sold for $240,000 in 1982 dollars, if I remember correctly. I was fortunate (and forced) to sell out my interest at a very nice profit, as the largest investor wanted an older and more seasoned hi-tech CEO. His mistake, my good fortune. That was my first (and last!) foray into the high tech world. I then turned my attention to the investment publishing client (Dr. Gary North and the American Bureau of Economic Research), eventually buying a stake in the firm.
That was when Howard Ruff was the big dog on the block with 200,000 subscribers, Bill Bonner at Agora had a small office in a very rough neighborhood in Baltimore (it made me nervous to go there during the day!) and Tom Phillips was only a few years from his kitchen table. The investment newsletter publishing community, while competitive, worked closely together, sharing tips and secrets, as it was to everyone’s benefit to grow the total market.
Even though I had an emphasis upon economics at Rice, this was really my introduction to the investment world. It was at that time I was introduced to von Mises, Murray Rothbard and gained an appreciation for the Austrian school of economics. (I actually met with Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek [he was in his late 80’s at the time] in Austria, who wrote the seminal Road to Serfdom.) I helped a lot of subscribers get in the cellular telephone lotteries and our personal partnerships ended up winning a few. I banged around in Africa attempting to get some cellular licenses there (l-o-o-o-n-g story), trying to make lightening strike twice.
I also looked at hundreds of investment ideas and managers. I read voraciously and began to get some glimmer of the field. I soon realized there was more money to be made in managing money than writing about it. I formed a partnership with Gary Halbert of ProFutures in the late 80’s and we began to offer a variety of funds and managers to clients, helping build that firm into a quite respectable venture. Rather than directly manage money, we managed managers, so to speak. We emphasized alternative managers, market timers, asset allocation, commodity funds, and hedge funds. I had begun to write under my own name in the late 90’s and was meeting with some small success, and enjoyed it enormously.
I sold out to Gary in 1999 (a very friendly transaction) as I wanted to pursue some different directions. In addition to writing, I wanted to begin to manage money on my own. In my previous business, I looked over the shoulders of some of the better market timers, watching them at their trade.
I had been introduced to a money management and market timing system developed in the late 70’s using money flow indicators that had a very good track record. The gentleman who had done the work was retired and looking for someone to use his work. I spent a great deal of money having the system independently verified and then bought the system.
I found out as much about myself as I did about market timing. What I found out was that I did not have the emotional personality (the stomach?) to directly time the markets with someone else’s money. I could to it with mine and not lose sleep. But when it was a client’s, I simply worried too much over each move of the tape. It bordered on obsessive, although some members of my family might say I had a hazy idea about where the border was. Even with a mechanical system, I could not relax. My family says the best day of it all was when I sent the client money back.
I can watch another manager trade and not blink, and thoroughly enjoy the process of finding and monitoring investment managers and funds. Thus, I returned to doing what I knew and enjoyed best, which was finding money managers for my clients, with an emphasis upon hedge funds and alternative managers. I will say that I believe the experience helped make me a better judge of investment talent.
As an afterthought, during this time (late 2000) I put my newsletter on this new thing called the internet, starting with a thousand or so readers. It began to grow surprisingly fast. Today, my publisher sends the letter out to well over 1,500,000 readers each week.
What I now do every day is one of the most fun things I could ever imagine doing. I am insatiably curious about the future. I want to know what is around the Curve in the Road. My passion is to try to understand the world of economics and investment, politics and science and how they all may come together in the future. I read anything and everything that interests me and then write about it. I get to analyze the investment approaches of some of the smartest (and most interesting) people one could ever hope to meet. I have the opportunity to travel to lots of fun places. And amazingly I make a living at it. I get paid to read and think and talk to interesting people (which includes you when we finally get to meet). What a deal!
The letter was first a passion. I simply love the discipline of writing. It forces me to think. I did not realize just how large it would become, or what a focus of my business life.
By early 2002 it was clear that my small firm could not handle the potential business without serious restructuring. I had built a few businesses with lots of employees before. I knew what it would take. To add more staff, researchers, sales people, etc. would take away the time from the reading, research, manager analysis, writing, speaking and client conversations that I really enjoyed.
I decided to develop a series of strategic relationships with other firms which would allow me to do what I do best and what I enjoy doing. In essence, I direct investors interested in my ideas to them, they do the sales, share in the due diligence and research responsibilities and we share in any income which is generated.
For those who are interested and who qualify, I write a free letter on hedge funds and private offerings called the Accredited Investor E-letter. You must be an accredited investor (broadly defined as a net worth of $1,000,000 or $200,000 annual income – see details at the website.) You can go to www.accreditedinvestor.ws to subscribe to the letter and see complete details, including the risks in hedge funds. (I am President of Millennium Wave Securities, LLC, an FINRA registered broker-dealer. www.finra.com)
A Few More Details from the Official Bio
John is a Fort Worth, Texas businessman, now living in Uptown Dallas, and the father of seven children, ranging from ages 13 through 30, five of whom are adopted.
He was Chief Executive Officer of the American Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., a publisher of newsletters and books on various investment topics, from 1982 to 1987. He was one of the founders of Adopting Children Together Inc., the largest adoption support group in Texas. He currently serves on the board of directors of The International Reconciliation Coalition and the International Children’s Relief Fund. He is also a member of the Knights of Malta, and has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Texas.
He is a frequent contributor to numerous publications, and guest on TV and radio shows as well as quoted widely in the press.
John is the President of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC (MWA) which is an investment advisory firm registered in multiple states. John Mauldin is President of Millennium Wave Securities, LLC a FINRA registered broker-dealer. MWS is also a Commodity Pool Operator (CPO) and a Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) registered with the CFTC, as well as an Introducing Broker (IB).