Disney, Jack Ringwalt, Warren Buffet, KISS

With my near extinction as a very successful stock broker which resulted from my disastrous investment and recommendation of Radio Shack, there were not many fucking income producing options for me.

I was 32, with a wife, four kids, a dog and mortgage payments on my Jewish mansion (a house you can't afford to live in). There was but one option and that was to pick myself up and start all over again. For the 5th time.

My first and very painful step was to call everyone that had lost their ass on my Radio Shack recommendation, to try to resurrect them as clients. Email hadn’t yet been invented as a fucking cop out or as a premier way to avoid confrontations. I was stuck with that old fashioned device known as a telephone.

KISS, or Keep It Simple Stupid, was the hub of my 'Get Resurrected Now' drive. Going on my conviction that more people suffer from ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) than don’t, my pitch was short and simple. Less than 3 minutes. Not eye glazing long.

First there was a brief, painful mea culpa. Then came the line saying that they could find another stock broker who would make his own particular mistake or stay with me and benefit from the lessons learned from my horrendous stupidity.  Then came the suggestion that they buy some GM and ATT (to show that I was going straight, no more flyers, or crapshooters). The big deal was to re-establish communication. 

That chutzpah effort worked and while not many shares of GM or ATT found a new home, the re-opening of communication lines did happen and I was back in business.

Albert Einstein so famously said that if you keep doing the same thing, over and over again, each time looking for a different result, you are insane. So off I went looking for a different fucking foot race to run.

Faulkner, Dawkins and Sullivan had just originated a new way to make money. They elevated their aura of research infallibility by writing in depth reports where they blinded you with their bullshit.

Being a guy who specialized in bullshit I followed FDS lead. By the way, FDS wrote a 100 page research report on Mead Johnson. Disaster. Its estimates proved to be way off base starting with the quarter of issuance of the report.

In scrounging around looking for a reasonably decent stock to promote, Disney came up on my radar screen and away I went promoting Disney stock. Not a blue chip but not a Radio Shack type crapshoot.

The writing of a 60 page report became kind of fun. I visited the company many times looking for the one, at least, cockroach in the fucking kitchen. No more Radio Shack crapshoots in my play book. I'm slow but not that fucking stupid. 

Disney 1955

The Disney executives treated me as though I was important. Free rides at Disneyland Park went with special treatment for my family and me at the Park. The Princess loved the action while disapproving of me and my approach to life. The Princess wanted a table top smooth life. I was not her style. Me? Bumps okay. C'est  la vie.

While working on Disney, I became expert in Television Film Productions (Not recognizable from today’s media companies). I wrote a negative report on them basically calling them pieces of shit, which they turned out to be.

With two institutional reports in hand I went to the Senior Partner for permission to peddle stock to mutual funds. He went through the fucking overhead. No one, he screamed writes negative reports (true then).

As for selling to mutual funds he pointed out my ignorance of the system. Mutual Funds, in those days, did their brokerage business with the firms that sold their funds. The brokerage firms got paid twice for the same fucking transaction. First with the fee they charged the client for buying the fund and second in commissions.

There was no problem in my trying to sell insurance companies and up popped Omaha in my small mind. Having been to Omaha in my farming days I knew it for its stockyards, steaks and Polaks. Not big on hookers…turns out.  

I found that it was also, the second largest, with Lincoln, home of insurance companies in the US (after Hartford). Knowing that an expert is someone from out of town and that Omaha is in the familiar Mid-West made it a perfect destination.

On the phone, I introduced myself to the money managers of the insurance companies. Mutual of Omaha, Woodmen of the World and National Indemnity were included.

While friends were being made in Omaha, only one friend really stood out, Jack Ringwalt of National Indemnity. Jack was a former National Tennis Champion, smarter than all get out and Jack loved women, particularly those who would go to bed with him.

Jack bought my Disney story and made bunches of money with it. We had many dinners with a lot of laughs. Sometime after I left the brokerage business (turned Jack's account over to my friend Roland Biancalana who promptly fucked it up), Jack was a great help to Warren Buffett who bought National Indemnity and its investment portfolio. It was a trigger to Buffett's fabulous success.

I, on the other hand, had turned into a fucking drunk and The Princess unloaded me.

I was blessed to quit drinking and given the chance for one more fucking comeback…which I made.

Radio Shack, Charles Tandy, Dick Jenrette, Jack Wolgin

"I am a man of means, by no means."...Roger Miller, King of the Road

Confusing brains with a bull market was my hallmark. Sadly, I was never as smart as I thought I was...but later in the game and after getting my ass totally whipped another time or two; my stock market paranoia took over and not believing management, until proven otherwise, ruled the roost. Made a real winner out of me.

My first meaningful stock disaster (I had two) and one that shook my very soul started its journey around 1962-63. A prominent security analyst with Drexel, Harriman (This was long before Mike Milken arrived on the scene.) had recommended to me a POS called Atlas Credit run by a guy out of Philly called Jack Wolgin.

Jack was a piece of work. He had a hard time walking directly from A to B. It was always a stroll by way of Z. He would fuck you for practice even if it didn't do him any good. And he made a gazillion fucking dollars playing his game.

Atlas financed home improvements, specializing in roofs. The company sold the financing with the roofing at outrageous prices and outrageous interest rates. So outrageous, that in 1965 the State of Pennsylvania passed a law forbidding Atlas's practices.

But the stock was a huge success. A good stock market (brains and a bull fucking market) helped propel the stock from the low single digits to the high teens. Naturally, needing income and knowing that trees don't grow to the sky, I got my clients out. Little did I know that I was right for the wrong reason. More better than being wrong for any reason.

That stock performance (it all happened in less than two years) empowered me to become powerless over my own bullshit. Arrogance took over and the clients who didn't follow my advice were thrown over the side of the boat. Hanging up on the people who helped feed my wife, four kids and the dog plus supply me with booze, became part of my schtick.

I hadn't as yet crossed the Rubicon and turned into a full blown functioning fucking drunk but was well on the way. Had then, have now, the patience of a moth on a hot light bulb.

So naturally when my Drexel broker friend called me with another genius idea paying attention to him became a must. He was promoting a stock that was selling at $12. In looking at the balance sheet the company's short term debt jumped out at me so 'No' was my answer. He kept calling, with me declining as the stock kept going up. Finally, at $18, I figured that he was right and I jumped in with both fucking feet.

Believing that moderation is fatal and diversification breeds mediocrity every poor son of a bitch who knew me ended up owning what proved to be a total piece of shit. The stock started sinking.

I panicked and flew back to Boston to visit the company based on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston and then to see the underwriters in NY (DLJ). Being slow but not stupid I knew I was up to my ass in alligators when it hit me that the company was being run by two guys, a Jew and an Irishman. A dangerous combination.

Dick Jenrette in NY, the underwriter, told me that there was nothing happening to be concerned about. That turned out to be complete and total bullshit. He had his own axe to grind, whatever that was. The stock kept sliding. I had even promoted my Mother into it. What money that I hadn't pissed away supporting the Princess, the 4 kids and the fucking dog was in that asshole stock, called Radio Shack.

At near $2.00 a share Charles Tandy came in and acquired it. The Irishman and the Jew had devised a simple bookkeeping ploy that covered up a serious shortcoming, which I, in my arrogance, failed to see. Radio Shack, named after the radio shack on ships, was capitalizing costs against mail order sales. When the sales didn't materialize pop went the weasel.

And there I was, one more time, busted on my lower case, jewish ass with the same wife, four kids and a dog that the Princess called 'Honey'. Something she absolutely never called me. My second ex-wife continued that pattern but she preferred 'Asshole' to passive, aggressive silence.

Starting all over again from zero was grim but ignoring the Princess's entreaties to drop dead I went on to greater heights though very bruised.

Having gone from being a travellin' man (a success) to farmer (a disaster) to car salesman (big success) to stock broker (a success) to stock broker (a failure) back to stock broker (a success) didn't really fill the Princess with love and admiration for my decision making ability.

But it was onward and upward, one more fucking time. Renewed optimism, energy and new friends to make in places ranging from NY, London and even Omaha. That stuff for another blog.