By the time I was a mere 20 years old, I was establishing myself as a financial planner, having already started working with a local firm in my home town of Binghamton, New York. Among other things, I became licensed as a General Securities Principal of our firm’s brokerage arm, supervising operational activitiesAlready becoming successful as both a manager and financial advisor, I was nevertheless quite unprepared for some of the massive market shifts of the early 1980’s. Successful strategies that had helped our clients reap huge rewards during the inflationary times of the late 1970’s particularly were turned upside down as interest rates skyrocketed and many previously-hot assets CRASHED.What STUNNED me was the fact that — though we can look back now at that change in Federal Reserve policy under then-Chairman Paul Volcker as one of the most abrupt in the central bank’s century in existence — NOBODY saw fit to do anything but continue to sell the same investment products. As with virtually everyone in the financial industry, you see, I had been trained in selling financial products and generating commissions; not in truly understanding the economy and markets.This experience first taught me that I needed to understand what I have since come to call “The Game” of our fractional reserve banking systemand how it and related factors create often-foreseeable swings inmarkets and asset classes. And it is this knowledge, together with specific, actionable strategies and investment recommendations, that I make available tomy Members on an ongoing basis. (NOTE: An archived version of my signature essay on all this, entitled Understanding the Game,  can be accessed onmy web site, at http://nationalinvestor.com/)With this foundation, I am happy to tell you that The National Investor has become recognized as a leading source of credible, understandable information, commentary and investment strategies for individual investors. Often times, our performance has had us at the very top of the rankings put out by the well-known Hulbert Financial Digest, which has covered us since 2000._______________________________________________________________In addition to spending some time at The National Investor web site, you can follow me: On Twitter On Facebook On my YouTube channel