Personal communications


Now here’s what I don’t understand. Bruce would take personal communications and post them online, taking pieces out of context or with no context and then twist them, trying to destroy Jim with that, on the premise that Jim is not doing what he said he would do in those personal communications. Yet in those very same communications here’s what Bruce said:


BruceM wrote on 22-Mar-11 9:54:59 PM EST:

Hi Jim,

...I'm gonna comment on this rather briefly... ...Let me assure you that your personal details will remain with me and will not be shared..thanks for going down that path and feeling comfortable enough to do so with me.


So, the basis of the attack is that Jim doesn’t do what he said he would do in a personal communication, presented by Bruce who doesn’t do what he said he would do in a personal communication…

Maybe I was just raised differently, with different morals and different values, but I would be confused by any reader who would think this makes sense, or wanted to listen to it.

Let me finish with this. Here is an email Bruce sent me:


Jim,
… It would be a shame if you stopped teaching. Who would be left that's reputable ? Not many. And you have a real passion for so many aspects of the business. Don't pull the site and business. Your like the "Bailey" brothers from the Movie "It's a wondeful life". I'm sure it's a tough gig on many levels and you put up with a lot of crap from skeptics but keep focusing on the traders you have helped and are making their world a better place through trading.


So, I can’t make any sense of any of this. Look, I wish Bruce all the best in whatever he is dealing with. All this hatred and anger, it’s not good for a person. And if one is a Christian, well, I don’t believe it’s what God would want…
As an aside (I really wanted to end all this with the above post), I can’t help but see the irony in all this. Bruce seems to support Borsellino (in that he cites him, and it appears some of his techniques are built upon ideas he got from him), yet to the best of my knowledge Borsellino wrote books (which he sells), has a trading room (which he charges for), a training program (which he charges for), does market research (which he charges for), and so on. And then to post all this hatred for vendors (in my opinion) Bruce does so on a ‘free’ forum, which is run by a for profit business (which charges for some services it provides) and is supported to some extent by ad revenue from vendors! (all of which I think is just fine, since this is America, which is a capitalist society which promotes creation of businesses with the goal of making a profit). I just can’t get over the irony of all this…
I keep trying to wrap this up and get back to what’s important to me, but something just hit me like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, and I wanted to post it. I was thinking about what changed, and why I decided to keep the website running, whenever it was, like five years ago when I wound it down to basically ‘inactive’. I mentioned all the issues I felt were the basis for that, and that was what I assumed was the entire reason. Then something just came to me, like that intuition read I mentioned in one of my recent chart posts.

I said I was getting very tired of being associated with what we all think of as the sleaze that most vendors seem to be. They all seemed very shady, and what they offered seemed to lack any real substance. (As an aside, the reason I always refer to myself as not a ‘vendor’ with quotes around it, and say I’m not really a ‘vendor’ is because my KT project is not my focus in life, my work on my trading quest is my focus. I also think that what I offer is very robust, and that is not a trait I have seen in pretty much any vendor I have seen.) Consequently whenever I heard anyone call me a vendor I felt like I needed a shower to wash the association off. This was new to me, since other businesses I have been in had no such association.

Anyway, after the emails (they were actually PM’s via this forum) that have been so quoted around here ended, there was a long series of posts that escalated to the point that the forum owner deleted them all. There was a lot to the story after the end of those emails. Unless someone can resurrect those threads (I hope no one even attempts to), the entire story will not be told. After that, almost five years ago I think, I have not posted in the public area except my post in my area commemorating when I hit 20K posts (that I can recall, who knows if I made a stray post somewhere, but I don’t recall it).

Now, here’s the point. What happened at that time, other than all the family and health related issues that I thought were the entire basis of my decision to keep my website going? I stopped posting or reading this forum. And with that all the people who have incessantly hounded me to stop being a vendor, or were determined to ‘put me out of business’ were no longer in my consciousness on a daily basis. All the feedback I got was from people emailing me, thanking me for helping them so much. Many, if not the majority of those thankyou’s came from people who never bought a thing from me. Many said what I offered for free on the site was more extensive than any paid course they had taken.

What I just realized moments ago was that as soon as I got away from the haters, the ones who seemed obsessed with me not selling any products, all those feelings associated with being a ‘vendor’ just basically disappeared. It wasn’t so much that in the real world I was being associated with sleazy vendor charlatans (all the people that followed my website verified that for me); it’s that in here I was constantly being associated with them. So, I am now thinking, once I got away from all this, I started to enjoy what I was doing (as Bruce so eloquently pointed out in the email in the previous post) with the project again. I stopped feeling like scum was bleeding over onto me from being in a crowded room full of dream merchants.

That was my great epiphany (and what an irony, the very people who wanted me to stop selling products drove me from this forum which led me, in part, to keep the website going…). I love to teach. I love to pass things on. I don’t like spending all my time just doing things on my own. The project answers that for me, and I love it. If I ran the website and stopped selling the books and working with the few students I do, then I not only wouldn’t be able to pass this on and enjoy the associations I form, I’d have a net negative situation on my hands, paying the costs of the website to keep it up just for the writings and bringing nothing in. None of that makes sense to me. It may make sense to others, but not to me.

I should be done, but everyone knows how wordy I am. Let’s look at a fictional small business owner. Let’s say he runs a one-man website, and has a business where he provides some service. Let’s say he plays middleman for local businesses, providing some service they could do for themselves, but he has some skill at doing it better (could be landscaping for all we care). Now, why doesn’t he do all that for free, especially if say his business is one that provides a service that is good for the community? Isn’t it kinda not right for him to charge for this? Now think about if you own a small website business and someone said this to you, what would you say? Imagine if that same person is telling me I shouldn’t charge for my services.

Let me finish with a statement that I had no idea I’d be stating when I started this post. In a black and white world with no in between, everything is an acid or a base, has either a positive or a negative charge, is hot or cold, I am a vendor, no doubt about that. By the strictest Webster’s definition, I surely am. I sell products and attempt to make a profit. I don’t think I have ever denied that I do that. What I attempted to do using the term ‘vendor’ with quotes around it was to better explain what I do in a world that is not simply black and white.

To me some of the characteristics of a ‘trading vendor’ as we think of them is a charlatan, a sleazy character who has little or nothing of value, and knowingly tries to trick people into making purchases, knowing as soon as they catch on to the scam they will move on, but a new crop of suckers will replace them. This game has been going on for ages. I think we all can agree that is pretty much exactly what we all think of when we hear the term vendor. Now, for me, I do not see myself in that category whatsoever. So, to me, outside of a narrow definition used by say Webster’s, I am not a vendor by the above definition. No way, no how.

As I stated, my primary goal in this project is to help people. I am not going to do that for free. In a capitalist country I think it’s silly to expect that I should devote all those hours and spend my own money for this. Besides, as I have explained, if a person gets something for free they tend, in my experience, to not value it. They must be vested. This is my belief.

I am not trying to maximize my profits. That is clear. No seminars, no webinars, no paid chat rooms, nothing designed to mass produce or maximize the methodology. I have yet to see any vendor take that approach. So, I tried to coin a new phrase, ‘vendor’, and explain I’m not a vendor like the ones people are familiar with. Has all this trouble been because I didn’t define what I meant with what I said clearly enough? I assumed people would understand? Could all of this trouble been avoided if I had simply put on my website, and in here, a very specific, clear definition of what I was meaning when I said I’m not a 'vendor'? Should I have simply said ‘typical vendor’?

One might think that could have solved all this, but I don’t think so. As you can see, even my harshest critics now didn’t think this way long ago. Some things happened. Some have to do with other people, people I had no connection with at all except they posted in my forum and elsewhere. I have my theories (which I will not post in here), though, as to what the real issue is. You see, I walked into the wrong thread, and as they say, at that point it was all over… If you ponder on that one long enough you might figure it out.
I have a couple of points to make on this subject which for the life of me I cannot understand why it is still being debated 5 years later...

My first point is: I don't like to work for free. Apparently Jim Kane doesn't either. Is it realistic to expect someone who has devoted a lifetime to developing their trading skill to just hand you all that time and effort for free ? Just this premise alone ends the debate in my mind because it is beyond ridiculous to even make that statement much less demand it (as was done here).

Secondly: Jim Kane in my opinion is a math teacher who wrote a book about some trading concepts he discovered. He then, with his Dad, cobbled together a simple little web-site to go along with the book, which provides a bunch of free follow-on information and ideas. And he mentor's a small group of traders or aspiring traders with the focus being on using his trading ideas and techniques. So Jim is an individual trader who wrote a book and mentors a small handful of traders. Jim Kane: "Book Author and Trading Mentor." Big freaking deal, get over it already. Quit trying to paint this guy as something he clearly is not.

As for me, I keep an open mind. I try to learn something from each person I meet or interact with. Some people I learn what to do, some positive idea or concept, and others I learn by example what not to do, saving myself from making those same costly or painful mistakes. I don't know Jim well, just from our interactions here. But I did learn a couple of important things of value from him. So thank you Jim Kane for freely sharing what you did at that time, it helped me at least, and I appreciate your well intentioned efforts to help.
My responses are in bold

Originally posted by pt_emini

I have a couple of points to make on this subject which for the life of me I cannot understand why it is still being debated 5 years later... you'd have to have been following along or try to find JIm and ask him why he brought it back up...or just find the post of his from a few weeks ago...we debated it to get to the truth which has been finished

My first point is: I don't like to work for free. Apparently Jim Kane doesn't either. Is it realistic to expect someone who has devoted a lifetime to developing their trading skill to just hand you all that time and effort for free ? Just this premise alone ends the debate in my mind because it is beyond ridiculous to even make that statement much less demand it (as was done here). Nobody asked him to give us a "Lifetime" of time and effort for free...just the educational articles he said he would deliver to the forum...Jim confirmed that you can find his stuff for free on the web anyway..doesn't seem like a big deal ... it was always about keeping to one's word.

Secondly: Jim Kane in my opinion is a math teacher who wrote a book about some trading concepts he discovered. He then, with his Dad, cobbled together a simple little web-site to go along with the book, which provides a bunch of free follow-on information and ideas. And he mentor's a small group of traders or aspiring traders with the focus being on using his trading ideas and techniques. So Jim is an individual trader who wrote a book and mentors a small handful of traders. Jim Kane: "Book Author and Trading Mentor." Big freaking deal, get over it already. Quit trying to paint this guy as something he clearly is not. What was he painted as ? We paint ourselves by the words we post on the forum. The things we can and can't explain..our actions and reactions And for the record this stopped a week ago so I'm not sure why it's coming back up again....so you gotta get "over it" too and practise what you are suggesting...no offense here but we are trying to move on... let us do that

As for me, I keep an open mind. I try to learn something from each person I meet or interact with. Some people I learn what to do, some positive idea or concept, and others I learn by example what not to do, saving myself from making those same costly or painful mistakes. I don't know Jim well, just from our interactions here. But I did learn a couple of important things of value from him. So thank you Jim Kane for freely sharing what you did at that time, it helped me at least, and I appreciate your well intentioned efforts to help. This to me is the best part of your post and I think we should have more posters come forward with the POSITIVE side of Jim's teachings... we need to see more of this and end it all on a high note with supporters of his teaching efforts and let Jim go with a positive legacy