The Morning of Chernobyl

One of my favorite memories in the investment business was the Morning of Chernobyl. I got into the office early and reviewed my senior citizen clients who had purchased some utility trusts. I wondered what would happen at the open. I then wandered over to my guru broker's office, Bruce, of whom I have written earlier. He never came into the office that early so I figured something was wrong.

"What are you going to do this morn," I asked. "Well," he responded, while everybody is pretty scared about the Chernobyl deal, I will probably buy some utilities that I like if they correct at the open. "

Then he went on, " This is just life, in that we have to figure out the meaning of it all, only in this business, we have to do it by 8:30am. There is an urgency here so just get used to it. "

One of the things that I do miss about the investment business is that if you had an idea, there was always one of your competitive peers that would think you were nuts and disagree with you. That was very helpful. Believe me, there are some crazy things I have done, but there are a whole bunch that I avoided cause I listened to someone argue with me that the idea was crazy....so.

In many ways, in the morning, I am still doing what I did back in the 80's. I am going over what is in the news, trying to see what it means and COUNTING ON the readers to pick out the ideas that are just crazy so I avoid them. The farmers always had the morning coffee in town to chat---I always wondered what they talked about. It was really whether October beans were too high at 1.55. They argued over the issue. Is it best to close the position or hold? Out of the talk they avoided some solo crazy ideas.

In many ways, this is what the Observer is all about. And it is ok to talk and argue about ideas before action. In fact, it is far preferable to acting and then dimly realizing several years later that the plan of action was very, very, very wrong.