I will introduce this new blog (and potential for-profit newsletter if I can work the kinks out of it) like a third-grade essay “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”
I am David Buffalo, who trained as an engineer at Georgia Tech many years ago. I have done everything from research and development to institutional brokerage and have worked in everything from a clothing manufacturer to a refinery.
I basically taught myself how to trade, but have had two great mentors, Andrew Cardwell and Larry Pesavento, to help me along the way. I am also a real estate investor, a sometimes hard-money lender for real estate and I run a struggling but profitable print-on-demand business.
In 1974, while taking the state-mandated English literature and composition course at Georgia Tech, I was instructed by the associate editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. She was so impressed with my writing, she encouraged me to be a professional writer. Knowing that such a job did not pay very well, I graciously accepted her compliment but graduated anyway under Georgia Tech’s cooperative program as a chemical engineer. I have always liked to write but could never find an outlet that would allow me to be paid for it.
After working as an institutional broker with an entrepreneurial outfit in Atlanta, Georgia, I moved back to South Carolina in 1995 and began to trade stocks and futures. When the new century rolled around, I began to write on blog sites (Tradehard.com which became TradingMarkets.com). It was run by veteran Fidelity Investments portfolio managers.
Shortly after that, I began to contribute somewhat anonymously to what was once the second most trafficked trading website on the internet at the time, MrSwing.com, which is now defunct. The owner of the website, who was impressed by the data and the writing I was providing, asked me to call him in Belgium. He hired me as a writer on the spot.
By 2004, I was the number one most read writer on that site, and readers would go to my column before they read anything contributed by the Wall Street Journal or other major financial content. About 11 months later, the owner of the Online Trading Academy complex in Dallas, TX contacted the marketing manager of MrSwing.com to see if he could find a contributor to his soon-to-air program on the BizRadioNetwork. The marketing manager did the first show, and despite his knowledge, he basically sucked, and he would admit it too.
Shane called me in to do it next week, and the rest was history. I did a 5 and ½ year gig with OTA, not as a representative of the school, but as a swing trader, for that radio show, which at its peak was heard in 20 cities across the USA. The podcast from those broadcasts, at their peak, ranked #2 on iTunes. When the network died over a dispute between partners, the program died with it. I think this show was the first show on earth that allowed me to simulcast my trading on Webex while the broadcast was live over AM stations. I am pretty sure that is done now all the time, but it was fun being first.
I ran the Buffalo Trader blog from 2005 to 2014. I attempted to monetize it, but the data providers killed the format that allowed me to run neural-net-based price pattern analysis on every US stock, mutual fund, ETF, and ADR. My work on that ended in 2014 formally. At its peak, that blog had a readership of about 250,000, but most of that traffic came from the radio show.
Why did I just write all that? I like to comment on markets. I want to do it again without as much of the technical work that I used to do, though it will be input when I see important patterns and situations develop.
I also like to discuss economics and the social dynamics of world and national politics. I deeply dislike both political parties. They have wrought havoc on individual liberties, our basic standard of living, and our once civil society. I guess you could call me a conservaterian, as I have libertarian leanings but look at things from a relatively conservative point of view.
When I am not discussing markets, I will likely discuss topics that will anger a lot of people. That’s OK. I lost 40 “friends” on my Facebook account last month alone, because people may dislike what I say. Even so, that list still grows slowly.
I am OK with that. Facebook throttles my commentary and likely my business accounts at the same time. At that rate, my friend list will turn over in about 6.7 years. By that time, I may be in a post-Constitutional American FEMA gulag by then. Just kidding.
I will present you with commentary that you might not see anywhere else. I will throw in a lot of rich media, from reading material about my journey into cryptocurrencies, or audio examples of my being upset. This is how “Don’t get me started!” sounds.
I care not that you agree with me. I just want you to THINK. Most people’s ideas come from a steady diet of propaganda media (from Fox, CNN, OAN, Newsmax, Al Jazeera, and God knows what else). I try to pull from the most-trusted sources that I can find and corroborate with other information. That is only done rarely on cable and broadcast media.
The first post will deal with the issue of the control of money. The name of it will be “Cryptocurrency and Camel Noses”. There are challenges from government to the blockchain and cryptocurrency, and many of you are blissfully unaware of it. It could be radically changed as early as in the first quarter of 2022. I think you will like that one.
There will also be considerable discussion about the poison of media political narrative. I almost pulled the trigger on that post, but I realize that this was only round one. The statist/fascist/corporatist media elements are not done with it. The title of it has been planned to be called “Perfection”. It relates to a song written by one of the founding members of the “27 Club” in 1970 as he and his bandmates toured America. It is quite relevant to what is happening in America today, but in a much more pernicious fashion than it did 51 years ago. This post will probably set this blog on fire, but so be it. Something needs to be said without interference from the speech gendarmes.
Stay tuned. Sign up for delivery of these posts by using your email address. I WILL NOT SPAM YOU.
More soon.