February 4, 1999
New ones Monday through Friday

My Investing Pardner

How can I describe the thrill I feel whenever I check my mailbox and find a new booklet inviting me to buy Ken Roberts's The World's Most Powerful Money Manual & Course? This is a case where the brochure is so cool, you don't even need to buy the book. If you're afraid of trading futures and commodities, Ken is the man who'll put some steel in your spine. And while he may look imposing, his tale of how a California deputy sherrif taught him he value of commodities gives Ken something beyond just folksy charm. Somewhere in his saga, the cowboy trader from Grants Pass, Oregon makes contact with mystery. Like the principles of Islam as explained by the mysterious Wallace D. Fard to Elijah Muhammed, Ken's story is one of wisdom received third-hand. For the deputy sherriff was himself an acolyte of "Ted Warren," a mysterious beachcomber and author of a book featuring baroque chart formations that predict the behavior of the commodities market. Ted Warren is now deceased and his book is out of print. This elusive depiction of Ted Warren - last glimpsed on a beach in Venice, California, and now unknown to all but the Elect - connects with our elemental love of crabbed learning, of lore that is all but lost to the mists of time. What more attractive way to tame the chaos of the futures market than with reference to prehistoric numerology? There's a similar hermeticism to Ted's own credentials. He has been repeatedly named a top investor by "Investment Hotline Monitor," an organization whose only citation I can find is at Ken's own website. But this kind of open-range Masonism wouldn't be so interesting if it weren't coupled with a bold Reagan-era faith in conspicuous consumption. Ken's brochure is decorated with prominent Jazz Age wealth icons - a roadster, a luxury liner, a ticker tape machine, a jewel box, piles of gold bullion, a Spruce Goose. It's actually the timeless polish in this collage of bygone status symbols that keep me coming back to Ken's booklet. But there's a sly hook mixed in with these pastel images. At first you might think the farm figures at the bottom of the collage - a lamb, a cow, a haybale and a scythe - are merely more examples of this gauche insistence on objects, a cornily comprehensive celebration of America's bounty. But these figures - cattle, grain, crop - are in fact the tools of Ken's trade. The booklet teems with anecdotes of customers who struck it rich in soybeans or even in that oldest of futures jokes, pork bellies. Here and there, the pitch is laced with horse sense: "Let's step back and look at this sugar investment: Why would anyone want to invest his or her money in sugar, of all things? Because it's a survival industry: it's been around hundreds of years and will be here hundreds more." I am unable to avoid another reference to Ronald Reagan. For again, there is something in Ken's appeal, a faith in paradox, a belief in belief, that seems essentially Reaganesque - skepticism overcome through common sense, spirituality attained through materialism, improbability negated by impossibility. Ken offers a special "Eavesdrop" number (541 955 2862) you can call to listen in on conversations with his students. They're both more and less crass than simple shill-conversion stories. "Steve" starts out skeptical, ("I put the brochure down, said 'Here we go again'"), but ends in total submission: "Everything that Ken said is true." As for "Cindy," the drama of testimonials demands that women not be skeptical, and so her compliance is easily won. Still, she begins her shpiel by complaining incongruously of her hard job at a fast food restaurant - a job she still holds. As always, the most difficult converts become the most fanatical believers. The conversations are worth hearing just for the Troy McClure-ish mooning of host Gary Owens. Again, that number is: 541 955 2862. But perhaps the most intriguing thing about Ken is the prospect of what he looks like without that cowboy hat. With the money I made using Ken's investment technology, I invested in a computer simulation program that gave me an exact description: How close my projections are is just part of the mystery of Ken. Until we know the truth, feel free to visit Ken, and be sure to tell him simpleton sent you.

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