TRUE AIM

A great magician doesn’t reveal the secret to his greatest trick. In fact, they do everything in their power to keep that secret. A great investor is no different with their greatest investment. I adhered to this axiom with great vigor over the years. But just like that, two days ago I decided the reveal is greater than the investment.

So this confession, you might call it, is my great reveal. You may end up believing the end truly justified the means, or you may think I am a willfully blind, money grubbing enabler. I hope you feel the former, but you can decide for yourself.

Many years ago I had the biggest payday of my life, of anyone’s life in the Adolescent Investment Market (AIM). I had waited sixteen years for my stake to mature, and Jeremy was one heck of a gamble. The only thing I regret is that my lucky number wasn’t a little higher!

Over the years I lost more hair than a Marine recruit on the first day of boot camp. I stressed constantly over my signature investment. In the end, luckiest man on earth sums it up nicely when my peers refer to me. I guess that’s how they explain my thirty million dollar cash-out, well $30,245,211 to be exact (after taxes and charity to my best friend Anton).

How did I make so much off a single investment? It’s a great story, but it’s interwoven with a much more important one. Maybe you remember years ago when the world’s energy crisis was solved? It only made world news and history, so I’ll assume you do. Well before that, there was the earth shaking collapse of the US economy, and nearly the government, in 2028.

Let me summarize the ’28 Great Collapse so you have some perspective on how bad it was for the US before, during, and after that time. In case you slept through high school history or economics, let me remind you why my parents wanted me to become a doctor, not an investor.

There’s little debate as to the main cause of the 2028 collapse of the US economy and most of the bureaucracy. Here are three main causes taught in school:

1. The Chinese-Unified Korea Trade Alliance. Early in the 20’s China became the world’s largest economy, military, and cultural center. This gave it unmatched influence and leverage when exercising diplomacy. In the mid-20’s China was able to not only unify the Korean peninsula, but broker a trade alliance. This alliance basically wiped out what was left of the manufacturing portion of the US economy, and made East Asia the home of world-wide tech innovation. China had all-but won the 100-year marathon about 20 years earlier than it predicted.

2. In April, 2024 Russia had a short revolution with nominal violence after the assassination of their President. The Russian hacking system also turned on its government. Those using ones and zeros defeated those using rifles and bullets. The digital revolution lasted eight months and ended with a new constitution, legitimate elections, and a functioning mixed-market economy. This grew Russia’s manufacturing, service, and energy sectors, thus furthering the regression of ours. With the US focused on renewable energy we became dependent on Mid-East energy supplied under the table to supplement our lack of production. Europe turned almost exclusively to Russia for energy and trade now that Russia had shed all remnants of the Soviet Union.

3. In late 2027, with massive debt and inflation, the US dollar lost its reserve currency status and the world turned to Chinese digital currency. Massive selloffs and closures occurred throughout every segment of the US economy. The US defaulted on most of its outstanding debt.

For decades the US economy gradually shifted from manufacturing, innovation, farming, and small business to a very small number of colossal sports and service conglomerates. I will go more in-depth on the collapse in a later addition.

Now, sit back, because I have the story only my best bud Anton and I know. I may get a little preachy throughout this story, maybe very preachy. Some of what I tell you would have bankrupted me only a year ago. Some of what I tell you would have gotten me sent straight to Federal prison a year ago. Nearly all of what I tell you can get me put on holiday, never to return. Thanks to my conscience, the wisdom of a couple friends, and my affection for AIM, I feel now is the time to tell my story.

I was raised in a home and style Norman Rockwell would have been proud of. My Father was an Army Officer, my mother a home maker. The Great Collapse didn’t touch every part of the country equally, nor every American. Luckily for us, my father invested heavily in property as we moved around the country. So we were able to get by pretty well from rental income and what the government could still afford to pay in his Army pension. My upbringing could not have been more American. My family and childhood was healthy, fun, and unremarkable.

At eighteen I enrolled at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UofI). My major was Finance, which was just a way to get base knowledge of the way our financial system operated after the ’28 Great Collapse. My dream, even from a small boy, was to become an investor, a great investor.

At UofI I had a mentor, Professor Endrin. He once said to me, “Rick, find the stake no one else is paying attention to. Nurture that stake, let it simmer. When the time is right, cash-out for all they’re worth.”

Prof. Endrin, my microeconomics Professor, loved puns, and invested in adolescents. He was a high-risk sitter. He would invest in low-income minority stakes with projected limited potential. He would invest small amounts in a lot of these stakes, watching vigilantly every quarter, selling only when he thought the stake had reached his or her highest potential. Stakes who outperform their projected potential pay out much more than those with more certain, higher potential that end up succeeding. He would make a small profit on more stakes than he lost money on, so it added up to a pretty decent profit every year if he was patient.

My investing career began October 12, 2038, the day I turned 21. It was nearly ten years after the Great Collapse of 2028. October twelfth wasn’t the day I made the most important investment of my life. No, that day would come eight years later, coincidentally, on my birthday in 2046.

On my 21st birthday I received my license to invest in up to one hundred adolescents a calendar year (the maximum for a junior investor). A license was easy to get and maintain, you just had to sign all the documents swearing to obey the laws that govern AIM. Because there were children involved, the government had to do their outright best in protecting them, and they did about as good a job as a rabid hyena would guarding a nursery.

The day my license came in, I invested in my first stake. I thought, God willing, I’d be investing until the day I kicked the bucket. I’ve never looked up the definition of an addict, but I would think my picture is next to it.

I am what they called in the investment business a “sitter”, and the kids I invested in, were a “stake”. Two words that mean basically what you think they mean, only with a 30’s twist.

Being new to the adolescent investment business I had only my education and short internship to draw knowledge from. So I did what most beginners do: I took an ignorant risk on the most potential I could. My very first investment was in a six year old singing prodigy. Long story short, there were a lot of six year old singing prodigies. As an adult he ended up touring college campuses then opening a music shop. Not to take anything away from the kid—I couldn’t do it—but that wasn’t a winner for me. That’s just one of many examples of the rough start to my investing career.

I worked part-time and invested part-time through college. I saved for four years during college to eventually make my signature investment. I planned on that eleven thousand dollar savings to at least triple. Professor Endrin introduced me to Miguel on the market; he himself invested one thousand dollars.

My greatest investment could not have happened without that introduction. So this story really couldn’t have happened without Miguel.

Miguel was the stake that produced the capital for my biggest investment, and was even one of my first one hundred investments. He was already fifteen, and neck deep in the Chicago public school system when I first invested. Miguel was Hispanic, and already stood a towering, yet slim 6’1”, 155 pounds. His parents were both semi-alcoholics buried in debt. They held decent jobs at the post office, and had no other children to divert their attention from him. Miguel’s parents couldn’t afford proper coaching, and he had a lack of opportunity in the Chicago Public School system. I saw what was most important for an investment: he showed thrilling potential as a tennis player.

Yes, a tennis player.

It was a risk, but I was young and risk is what the investing business was all about. Plus, for me, the loans from spending four years at the University Of Illinois School Of Business wasn’t going to pay themselves off. Debt makes me uneasy, so I was focused on paying that loan off.

At seventeen, Miguel received a tennis scholarship to Northwestern University, enrolling in fall 2041. He spent his first two years taking as many losses as wins.

I asked Anton to visit him the summer after his sophomore year. I won’t get into how I found out Miguel was going to Northwestern in this story, but it wasn’t easy. It also wasn’t legal. Any interference by a sitter was strictly forbidden by Federal law and punishable by fines and/or prison time, but he was my first big investment, and I refused to let him fail.

Miguel just couldn’t hold on late in matches. He would consistently be up sets, but collapse and drop the match in the end. His flaw was simple: lack of stamina. He loathed running, didn’t like his coaches, and liked to drink.

Anton was a baseball player while at UofI. After graduating, he became a part-time baseball coach for local teams. Anton used some social engineering and empathy to gain Miguel’s trust. Lucky for us, Miguel eventually accepted Anton’s free coaching advice.

Anton got him started on a relaxed running program, a healthier diet, and solid sleep cycle. All Miguel had to do was follow-through. He already had the intangibles like raw talent, drive, and the ability to recover from an injury quickly. And as Anton and I learned, follow-through was another one of his intangibles. By mid-Junior year, he was finishing the matches as strong as he started. He lost only three matches, total, his last two years at Northwestern.

He went pro in 2045 and was runner-up in a grand slam a year later. During his eleven-year pro career, he didn’t crack the top twenty in the world rankings, but did manage a respectable forty-three.

Even though all of this was impressive considering where this young man came from, the most impressive thing was a ninety-two thousand dollar net return on my investment. That breakthrough investment made my crowning achievement possible.

What I learned from fostering Miguel’s success— ethically questionable practices aside—would produce a lot more than pride. It would produce a fortune.

In the autumn of ’46 I used every dime of that return on an even riskier stake, a nine-year-old named Jeremy Caskett. During those long years, I waited for that stake to mature, I made hundreds of other investments. Most of those other investments were safer “late-term” investments.

Late-term investments were stakes ages thirteen to seventeen. By law, a stake could only be invested in up to his or her seventeenth birthday. This way, the stake still benefitted from the investment, but there was still a degree of uncertainty to the stake’s future value to society. Their first tangible (see terms and definitions page) was determined and quotient calculated near their eighteenth birthday, and during each quarter thereafter (more on this later).

Jeremy Caskett was the longest of long shots—which was why he paid off in such a big way.

I briefly explained the three main events leading up to the collapse of 2028. Let me explain what happened during the ’28 collapse because it was the catalyst to the creation of AIM. Some brief history will help you understand why our story is so stirring.