Speculative Contagion

How did an investment advisory firm in obscure Elkhart, Indiana, find the antidote to remain rational in the highly contagious speculative pandemic of the late 1990s? At that time the crowd of true believers, in what was to become the Great Bubble, was swelling exponentially to number in the millions as irrational exuberance reached full flower. From the ill-equipped wage earners on the factory floor deluded by slick pitches evoking images of 401(k) financial independence to the institutional investors, the fate was often the same-except for the parasites who were knowingly complicit. When the Great Bubble inevitably imploded, few were spared the financial fallout. Speculative Contagion is an insider's riveting real-time and real-money account of the inflating Bubble, accented with the genuine suspense to be found only in real-life drama. The epidemic of tech-driven lunacy gradually affected more and more feverish investors all too prone to be infected by the insidious absurdity of the times. In the midst of it all, Frank Martin found sanctuary in the treasure trove of history. As he reflected on the unremitting succession of other departures from reality in the past, along with the madness of crowds, he was able to grasp shreds of sanity, at least partially muting the Sirens' call of speculative contagion. Spared the emotional devastation and accompanying paralysis that shocking losses inevitably and cruelly visit upon the unprepared, Martin commanded the capital and the conviction to be able to step up to the plate and lay wood to the fat pitches that at last came floating his firm's way. While the path to investment success is arduous at best and assured for no one, the eye-strained yet battle-hardened reader-from student to amateur or seasoned investor to rattled professional-is forearmed by this book to face the future with a short list of foundational antidotes. Rationality is their common thread. We can thus combat the ill effects of whatever may yet come at us from the perilously unorthodox and persistently unrepentant current episode, as well as those that lie in wait beyond the horizon. With both colorful anecdotes and timely antidotes coming as thick and fast as baseballs to a hitter in batting practice, the reader is in for a delightful and eye-opening romp through an extraordinary era in U.S. financial history.