To make outsized returns or avoid some nasty losses in investing, you have to go against the grain.
There are few people who live that principle more than Reggie Middleton, the CEO of fintech (financial technology) company Veritaseum.
On his independent research website BoomBustBlog, he called the demise of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, the subprime market, and Blackberry maker Research in Motion, as well as a correction in Apple.
Epoch Times spoke to Mr. Middleton about his unique way of distilling information into useful knowledge, the powder keg that is Deutsche Bank, and why central bank intervention can ruin financial markets.
Epoch Times: You have been very successful in slicing through balance sheets to spot weaknesses in banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. What makes you different?
Reggie Middleton: I’m a contrarian: When the whole world goes this way, I by nature go that way. The masses are always wrong which is why you have the famed one percent. The reason why they are the one percent is that they benefit from the mistakes of everybody else.
The average person rarely has access to the information and knowledge that will allow them to succeed in financial markets. You can surf the internet, and you’re swamped with information everywhere. Most people can’t process information at that level. Even if they could, it’s hard to make use of it.
So let’s say Amy and Frank are an engineer and a business manager and they can read the Deutsche Bank balance sheet, and they say Deutsche Bank has this much in cash, this much in liabilities, etc.
People understand how to put together the income statement and the balance sheet statement, but they don’t understand how that equates to actual corporate value. What makes this entity worth more than that? What makes this entity risky compared to the other?
