Okay. We’ve got some ground to cover. First, watch this, if you dare.
Got that? He’s a “YouTube sensation” and, one would assume, some kind of stock market wizard who is printing money left, right, and sideways.
Let’s catch up with something more recent…….from days ago……..here is the young stock trading genius YouTube sensation, straight from a storage center:
There’s a lot to unpack here. Let me save you the time, As this young fellow declares, he…….
- Had two business partners “fuck me over” (wow, he sounds really professional right from the get-go)
- Smoked pot which was K2 since his dealer screwed him over (ready to sign up for this guy’s stock trading course yet?)
- Thought he was taking Adderal, but it was actually Xanax
- He admits he’s been acting crazy and regrets not letting people in comments section give him guidance
- Mentions pot a second time
- Claims he’ll be pressing charges (against his drug dealer!)
- He acknowledges students want refunds, but needs to “sorts things through” (translated: finds money to fund the refunds)
- Been in drug rehab
- Doesn’t know what day it is, exactly
- He’s at a storage unit because he’s been evicted, and his apartment complex, he calls out by name
- Claims his friend was “disrespecting” a staff member
- States the apartment is going to be “pressing charges” too (!)
- Warns us all about some character named Yanni he hangs out with
- He’s going to be “laser focused on creating the most valuable educational program in terms of the stock market in history“. Wow.
- And then build a school of wealth, love, and happiness. Because he’s a servant of God now. So he’s going to start going to church. And take care of homeless people.
- He’s going to give all his money away (please note he’s currently broke)
- He’s going to create wealth from credit (since Jay Z said that’s how Jews got all their money).
- He is living under his parent’s supervision because he’s still medicated. Oh, and homeless.
- He doesn’t think he should be taking it, though, since he’s higher than ever.
- He has to spend times with friends, see a psychiatrist, and has to obey his parents or they will send him back to drug rehab (this is all said while a siren gets louder and louder)
- He’s going to make great content and give it away for free
- At the same time, he’s going to have an affiliate program which entitle you to free iPhones, free Mac Books, free AirPods, and anything else you want. How he’s going to fund this with free content is beyond me.
- He’s going to focus on options, though, because they give you “so much power.” He then goes on to make a clumsy explanation of options and delta.
- And more on options………they are “very simple” and – – surprise – – the “billionaire Warren Buffett” made his money with options. Who knew?
- If you’re a student of his (God help you…….) he’s taking a survey so you can tell him what you need created. Since he’s here to serve you, like he said. But he has to work on himself. He’s angry. And has bad habits. He thought he was normal. Because he was smoking normal weed. But it was K2. Like he said twice already before.
- “I need help.” Yeah, true. I’ll give you that.
- He utters more obscenities than a Tarantiono movie.
- Oh. A 4th “it wasn’t weed” reference. Then he starts talking to himself. And tells us that’s normal, too.
- Oh, God, this guy won’t shut up. Now he’s telling you the course will be $600, not free. But it’ll be worth tens of thousands.
- Now he says he’s on drugs and has lost all his money in trading.
- But he’s focused on his students. Since, God knows, anyone watching this will want to emulate his life.
- He has a lot of “negative balances” and if you want a refund, then just tell your bank. Yep. Tell ’em.
- With that, he repeats a bunch of stuff he said already and “signs off” for like the fifth time.
Before I go even one step further, allow me to express my horror and astonishment that I, Tim Knight, who has credentials and bona fides up the yin-yang, and an awesome, well-respected website with fantastic tools, has to get on my knees regularly and plead with free Slopers to pull a few bucks out and subscribe – – while this clown actually has had tons of people throw $370 subscription fees at him in what is widely declared to be a total scam – – and now people can’t get their money back! Incredible! God damn it, sign up!
But I digress.
I had never heard of this clown in my life. Looking at his ridiculous unibrow, his gross facial hair, and listening to his unhinged verbal meanderings, I just want to rush to the closest sink and scrub my hands with soap vigorously. This guy is so smarmy and repellent, he just grosses me out.
Then I remembered who he reminded me of: Casey Serin.
Casey’s thing wasn’t stocks, like the kid described earlier. Casey’s thing was real estate. As I described it in a post from 2008:
By “activities,” I mean the purchase of over $2 million in various houses the then-24 year old individual with no meaningful income had purchased. In retrospect, the article about Casey was the most fantastic canary-in-a-coalmine story ever, because it showed how this completely unremarkable person was able to easily get loans (which he himself called “liar’s loans”) to buy properties, all with the hope of “flipping” them for a profit. Now, at this point, those of you familiar with Casey are probably interested that I’m even mentioning him (the rest of you are probably wondering where the charts are). The reason this is such an interesting topic to me is, one, how indicative Casey’s experience was in the context of the “Emperor has no clothes” mentality of real estate investing during 2002-2006, and two, because of the astonishing subculture that grew up around Casey.
Simply stated, Casey spent his early 20s acquiring millions of dollars in real estate, hoping to become a very rich young man. Instead, he wound up bankrupt with ruined credit and a reputation as, and I quote, “the world’s most hated blogger.” There was honestly an entire subculture built around hating the guy, including one of the most hilarious and thorough Wiki sites (over 700 articles!) I’ve ever seen.
Anyway, after the housing bubble collapsed, Casey was last seen parking cars (hence the photo of him above, in the cheap bow tie). But during his manic get-rich-quick days, he floated dozens of insane ideas including a personal favorite, buying an island of his own by 2012:
I hadn’t thought about Casey in many years. I did have a ‘Kennedy moment” when Casey finally gave up on his crazy real estate dreams. I remember precisely where I was and what I was doing, and it was at that moment I realized the ridiculous 2007 bull market was going to get destroyed. Casey was, for me, the poster child of the insanity. As I described above, “the canary in the coal mine.”
The common elements I see in these two:
- Young men, but give off a gross, slimy, smarmy vibe;
- Desperately want to be rich;
- At the same time, piously claim a disinterest in money and instead want to help out humanity in general;
- Have latched on to whatever the big financial craze is;
- Claim to want to be able to teach people;
- Seems to be persistently under the influence of something or another;
- As they “fail forward”, keep making up grandiose schemes about some kind of big come-back, some miracle cure-all that’s going to make everything all better;
- Very much into magical thinking and simplistic solutions (aphorisms and bromides being a salve for the soul);
- Wind up causing a lot of damage in their personal lives, typically on a cataclysmic scale;
- Tragically so un-self-aware as they offer a way you can learn to be just like them, while any rational observer would pity the poor son of a bitch and would never want to be in their shoes.
I guess some things never change. And I further suppose that I’ve been around long enough to actually see cycles repeat themselves in the form of human characters playing out the same tragic games on their tiny, doomed playhouses of their lives.
