The Tycoon Report

Life as a Tech Insider (Part III)

Wednesday, January 10, 2007 | Wayne Mulligan

What a ride!

Within a span of a few years I went from a snot-nosed hacker working on programs in my basement (instead of going to high school parties) all the way to running my own business and having meetings with producers at Viacom.

It was definitely an experience.

But in the end, the nature of a “market bubble” took its course and eventually popped, leaving me feeling a little discouraged and wondering what I’d do from there.

Luckily for me, I had some great clients who turned out to be even better friends – and if you could believe it, ended up becoming even better business associates.

These guys offered me a position as a Broker/Analyst at their firm where I’d get the chance to put some of my technology experience to use.

At first I was a little apprehensive – there’s a big difference between having general business acumen and being able to assess an investment opportunity.

But after a little assurance from the branch managers and coming to an agreement with the Chief Investment Officer at the firm – he was responsible for training me – I jumped on board.

Now, when I said that my previous few years were a heck of a ride, the years I was about to spend on Wall Street made those pale in comparison.

I think it was maybe four days after I went to work on “The Street” and 9/11 happened!

Here I was, first week on Wall Street and the single worst terrorist attack in the history of the country happened right down the block.

The market was closed for days – I didn’t even go into work.  There was nothing to be done – and when it did reopen, it went straight down.

And it kept going down for years – I’d really stepped in it this time!

I was trying to recommend stocks during one of the worst Bear Markets we’ve seen since the great depression.

The interesting thing was that it made all the sense in the world to me.

It was just like Bernard Baruch said.  “Buy straw hats in the winter, and sell them in the summer.”

I was simply telling people that it was the winter-time for stocks, and we'd be selling in the summer.  I don’t know why, but it seemed so clear to me – it seemed simple, even.

However, trying to convince skeptical investors of this concept wasn’t so simple.

First off, many of them had just been burned in the tech sector when the Nasdaq cracked, and now they were getting hurt in everything else because the general market was tumbling.

I can remember when the Dow was at 7,000, and an institutional client I had at the time told me, “Wayne, I just don’t know if this market will ever go back to where it was.”

That was it – I’d had enough. 

If a “sophisticated” investor would make a blanket statement like that, it showed me that I was in an industry where I’d only be dealing with the most short-sighted people . . . people with no grasp of the history and behavior of the capital markets.

I was only on the street for a few years, and I felt I had a better idea of how to make money than these guys did.

They were all about following trends, and it always left them behind the curve.

My associates and I were longer term thinkers – we liked to step back and see the bigger picture.

It’s hard to impart long-term strategies on short-term thinkers.

I’m not saying any of this to brag, either . . . I’m really trying to illustrate an important point. 

You have to be greedy when everybody else is fearful, and fearful when everybody else is greedy.

Those are words to live by in the market.  That’s why I’m being very cautious in what I invest in lately – everybody seems to be greedy.

In any case – I was dealing with the most short-term thinkers in the world, and I’d had enough.

Plus, I was really starting to see how Wall Street, as a business, operated.

Most guys weren’t looking out for their clients.  Most of them were looking out for themselves, or, at best, looking out for their firms.

Doing right by the client once in a while was an accidental byproduct of putting cash into their firms' coffers.

It made me sick to my stomach, quite frankly, and it’s why I walked away from Wall Street – I walked away from a high-energy, high-powered, and high paying job because it just didn’t fit with what I really wanted to do – help investors do well in the market.

“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”  That’s the motto we live by here at Tycoon Publishing.

And that’s exactly why I’m here – as a matter of fact, it’s why we’re all here – doing what we do every single day.

I enjoy technology.  I enjoy studying companies and the markets.  I enjoy teaching people and helping people become better investors.  I enjoy learning from people and becoming a better investor myself.

This has been a crazy ride that began all the way back in high school.  But I have to say, it’s all been worth it . . . the good, the bad, everything.

Now I’m investing my time into what I love to do, and that in itself makes me feel like the greatest investor in the world.




Wayne Mulligan
Contributing Editor
The Tycoon Report