Hello Barbu Beatnik.

By the name coupled with your last message (“BarbuBeatnik”) and by the emphatic headline that you posted next to it (“So long guys! Thanks for the adios party!”), I feared (when I saw it) that it was you who had taken your leave. By the documented details you gave within the message itself, you made it clear it was some other guy who had broken his (last remaining?) ties to Fancamp. Thank goodness it was someone else!

The 333,000 shares Jean Lafleur sold added up to $20,090 (minus commissions). That’s enough to make a monthly mortgage payment or two (or three?) in one of the better neighborhoods on Long Island (New York) where I used to live (when the cash flowed more freely than it does now).

If it’s any consolation to Jean, his decision follows illustrious precedent. As follows is a link to a brief 1997 news account of Steve Jobs’ decision to sell his entire holdings of Apple Stock (except for the one share he kept). Following that is a link to another brief news account. This time the news was an update to the year 2011 of what Steve Jobs’ masterful decision cost him (“more than” $29,000,000,000).

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-202239.html

http://www.cultofmac.com/116587/the-dumb-mistake-that-ended-up-costing-steve-jobs-29-billion/

Dramatic as it is, this is not an isolated case study. Statistically speaking, following the general statistical averages of what insider executives do, will not net you notably better than inconclusive results (if that). It doesn’t seem logical. But that’s the way it is.

Of course, in regards to a selected particular case, that doesn’t preclude the possibility that the insiders could be up to something. However, so far as Fancamp, whatever you think (one way or the other) of the insiders’ investment acumen, the real problem they have is the simple problem of their inability to understand the meaning of very large numbers.

When I first invested in Fancamp, it did not occur to me that people who could be so smart in one field of endeavor (geophysics) could be so dumb in another (understanding the meaning of numbers). To make a long story short, there’s an expression, “You live and learn.” Well, I’ve “lived and learned.”

The powers at the top really are that dumb. The explanation of our predicament is that simple. If the men at the top truly understood the implications of what it means to own billions of something as opposed to owning millions of that something, they wouldn’t act any way approximating the way they have. And we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are today.