Scraping the Verbiage off the Bottom of Your Shoe

You get a lot of verbiage bantered about in this biz, most of which is pretty well all BS. But the scary thing is that a newbie might actually take some of it seriously. The other scary thing is that by using certain words, you can bring it outside meaning and actually start forgetting what you're doing when you spend into one of these.

After reading the average ponzi blurb, I have to stop and scrap stuff off the bottom of my boots. Its that bad.

So we're going to look at a few of these words and see what the score really is. I've got the barbie fired up and I'm ready to throw on a few slabs of sacred cow...

GUARANTEE - I just love it when I see that word in a ponzi blub. Lets face it, a ponzi-related guarantee has all the value and substance of a mouse's fart. I mean we're talking ponzis, not government-insured bank accounts. The problem is that a newbie comes in from a world where that word actually means something.

The warranty on a Chevy means something, because its backed by substance, GM isn't going anywhere quick. Canadian 10-Year Bonds are backed by the strength of the Canadian government. They've been around for 140 years and they print the bloody money, so I'm not worried about getting paid.

But in the ponzi world there is NO substance and the use of that work is just meaningless sucker bait...

INVEST, INVESTOR - Never call this investing or yourself an investor. Its gambling pure and simple. An old penny stock player once told me that the day you think of a penny stock as an investment is the day you will do something stupid as actually hold it long term. He used the term 'flipping paper' to describe playing the pennies. So call it gambling, even call it speculating, but never investing, because you just might get tempted to put the kids' college money into them. Calling it an investment is sucker bait for sure.

Its also a real laugh when they talk about what they invest in, when they ever do. You get vague references to Prime Bank Debentures, Forex and index trading, Hedge Fund, and other 'offshore trades'. Which is all a load of crock. As I've said elsewhere, they are either ponzis or play other ponzis.

Yes I expect to get flamed over this, especially my view that HYIP's are a myth. Yup, I can see the yellow-fringed flag crowd foaming as I speak.

A real trading limited partnership, say one playing TED Spreads (a bond arbitrage play), could not offer a fixed return, because God only knows how the next trade does; could be a home run or could end up a margin call. Not to mention, a position could be open for several months.

So lets all pause and scape that stuff off our boots and call it what it is... Gambling that you are not the greater fool on this one.

PORTFOLIO - Never talk about your HYIP portfolio. That's like including lottery tickets in you portfolio. One has Dell in a portfolio, not the Mega-Money-Machine. Keep the Mega-Money-Machine in the top drawer with youe lottery tickets and a couple of chips left over from your last trip to the casino.