John Steinbeck once said that communism never took root in America because the poor “see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” The point of this is either that Americans should wise up and shake off their parasitic overlords or that we should be happy with what we have and let go of the delusion that we are all on our way to riches, somehow.
Either way, he’s right. There is a form of illness in refusing to be happy with the life provided by modest means. The obsession with prosperity has reached a point where levels of wealth that would have awed kings and queens of past centuries are now considered un-taxable poverty. Even greater depths of financial mental illness threaten us when we look at the outlier success stories. The lottery winners and the overnight stock hitters are real. But they are nothing to model ourselves after.
But in today’s economy, which has been thoroughly trashed by an illegitimate presidential administration that is controlled by enemies of freedom, the fact that someone has managed to strike it rich might be instructive. Emphasis on “might.”
Enter Carson Seabolt. No, he’s not a character in a spy novel, but we won’t blame you for thinking he’s a fiction. He is a corporate fiction. He is a former commercial fisherman, apparently, who nobly fought his way out of rock bottom poverty to scrape together a $50 million fortune before the age of 40. Zerohedge.com calls him a “fearless entrepreneur and investor.” His modus operandi is to make concentrated bets on high risk companies. And you can bet your bottom squalor that insider info never played a role in his jaw-loosening success. You would lose that bet, but you could bet. His results look something like this:
- Made a $2 million mining company into a $2 billion mining company
- Raised $42 million from globally famous investors through a cold email
- Betting on billionaire friend, Robert Friedland, who helped him double his money
The whole story is laid out in full, lurid detail in the documentary entitled “From Bankruptcy To $50 Million: Confessions Of A Stock Operator.” There is also a YouTube video of the same name on the channel CEO.CA.
So the question is, “How did he do it?”
Well, there is something of a clue in the list of accomplishments listed on Zerohedge. For a start K92, the gold mining company he invested in, was already well positioned to make massive gains when Seabolt bought a huge load of their stock. The second point, where he sends a cold email to a world famous billionaire investor who happens to open it and agree to the terms, well frankly, if you believe that then we have a timeshare to sell you, and so does Seabolt.
On the final point about his millionaire friend, unfortunately, it looks like he and Friedland had had friendly connections for a long time. So it should not surprise anyone when one monied person uses his connections to help another monied person double their winnings. It’s called cronyism, kids, and you’re getting a copy of the home game.
At the end of the day, this rags to riches story looks like nothing but a riches to more riches story disguised as an under handed way to remind normal people that they are all slobs. There’s nothing impressive about having your hands is held on both sides by globe trotting tycoons, especially by someone who’s suspiciously on-the-nose name sounds like a character in an Ian Fleming novel.
The lesson here is, don’t waste your time admiring financial success outlier stories. Invest wisely. Put money into durable goods, and focus on the long game. Stories like this are only good for shaming the hard working people of modest means who make this world function.
It would be nice if his “confessions” were actual confessions rather than vague and sub-credible braggadocio offering too little acionable information for anyone to intelligently duplicate. Frankly, it’s offensive.
