QUESTION: Martin,
I’d like to ask you a somewhat personal question if you don’t mind (and I’m sure many readers would be interested too). The vast majority of people that seek your advice, based on your work, I’m sure are looking to make or save money; that’s all their interested in with you. I too have that interest, but I have always been interested by fascinating people, of which I categorize you. Many of the most interesting people who’ve ever lived have never made much money, or in some cases don’t seem that interested in it, yet they’ve made great contributions to humanity, i.e. Tesla, Einstein, etc.
My question to you is this, “What makes you tick, or drives you?” No doubt you’ve made substantial sums of money in your life, he’ll you’ve enjoyed exotic cars (Ferrari), flown like royalty (Concorde), but you don’t seem to be of the ilk that so many in the finance arena are; caught up in all of the traditional trappings (yatchs, 10th home, penthouses, etc.), as if one’s trying to over compensate for a small penis or something? – like a Blankfein or Dimon. What expensive hobbies you do have are collecting rare, ancient artifacts; hardly sexy stuff to most people.
After the injustice of what you’ve had done to you and stripped from you life, which you can never get back, and knowing that you could just as easily have joined “the club” when they tapped you to become “one of them”, what is it that’s made you choose another path, and truly drives you?
Thank you for what I deem as being a true American Patriot!
– Tim
ANSWER: A friend of mine has been married for over 35 years. When asked how did he do it, he responds easy. He makes all the big decisions and his wife the rest. When asked which big decisions he has made, he replies, none have come up yet. So I do not know what makes me tick yet. I guess when I answer that question completely it is time to die.
Perhaps I was just instilled with a sense of right and wrong by my mother and her determination to stand up for what is right and to never yield. I can say, yes I made way too much money for a kid at 13. But in retrospect, that made me not impressed with money from an early age. Oddly enough, I could step into a crisis and was never scared. Others would be so afraid of how much money they had to make a decision on they could not do it. So I could be called on for trillion dollar portfolios and made the same calm decision as if it were $100.
Yes I use to fly the Concord. It was great on saving time. I bought the ticket when it cost me LESS than a first class ticket in the States. As for the Ferrari, it was the collapse in the pound that then caused those cars to be raised in price. They were not trophy cars as they are today. People now buy them for investment and to show-off. The Ferrari I had was a 328 and it was the best handling car ever. It was like a jet cockpit. I had to put my hand on the road to climb out. After that, sports cars got bigger so they could sell them to fat rich guys. I use to race cars when I was young. I drove a 535i BMW 2011 that was manual. I just had to trade that in for a 2015 and they no longer make manuals. I also said the day I had to drive an automatic was the time to die.
Having the richest clients in the world also showed me that money did not buy happiness. So while others spend their hundreds or millions of houses and yachts, I spent it on models and computers. I was curious. I wanted to know what made the world tick.
What I do, is not for money but the challenge. I do not need money and the more you get the more you are a target for government anyway. I am old school when you traded on your word. You called the floor and said buy. If you lost money and did not honor the trade, you were finished. When taped lines came in, it actually lowered ethical standards – they did not increase them. Now it did not matter who you dealt with because the line was taped.
I never saw myself as anything but a trader. It was Milton Friedman who came to listen to me speak in Chicago who inspired me saying I was doing what he had only dreamed about. Strangely, I was always traveling to Europe from a teenager. Jumped on a plane using student passes for $50 every chance I got. I ended up knowing a lot of people everywhere. That trained me to be international and to listen to everyone’s opinion. It did not matter if I agreed or not. My father had taught me people will act according to what they believe – not you.
I feel the ECM was something I discovered – not theorized. Hence, it was an important discovery that can change the world if it is understood how it functions. So I do what I do to leave it behind. Accomplish that, then I suppose I did what I was supposed to do in life. So I have expected to be attacked, slandered, hated, and mocked by all those who are driven only by money. Those who only try to further their own self-interest by manipulating society for personal gain be they analysts, politicians, or government employees, I have no time for and regard as the worst of human society. Their inflexibility shall be their doom.
I have been called the accidental analyst because I never aspired to such a position. I have simply gone with the flow. I do not fear death and I fully agree with Socrates and his speech when sentenced to death. Once you lose that fear, nobody can harm you. Life merely becomes and endurance test to see how much you can handle. I suppose the words of Socrates, for whom I named our computer, were etched into my soul.
Friends, who would have acquitted me, I would like also to talk with you about this thing which has happened, while the magistrates are busy, and before I go to the place at which I must die. Stay then awhile, for we may as well talk with one another while there is time. You are my friends, and I should like to show you the meaning of this event which has happened to me. O my judges – for you I may truly call judges – I should like to tell you of a wonderful circumstance. Hitherto the familiar oracle within me has constantly been in the habit of opposing me even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or error about anything; and now as you see there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. But the oracle made no sign of opposition, either as I was leaving my house and going out in the morning, or when I was going up into this court, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a speech; but now in nothing I either said or did touching this matter has the oracle opposed me. What do I take to be the explanation of this? I will tell you. I regard this as a proof that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of us who think that death is an evil are in error. This is a great proof to me of what I am saying, for the customary sign would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good.
Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: – either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.
