"I do not know if you will get this message as I took a different channel than usual. (Editing in your little square space for comment is close to impossible and English is not my original language )

"October last year, I decided against renewing my subscription to your letter, probably the most interesting letter I ever had the chance to come across in the past 10 years. I still do not consider myself stable enough to engage investing, I had been trading for the past 5 years, testing myself, never allowing myself to lose 1 cent of my capital. I know how emotion can get you out of sanity.

"Quand il y a conflit entre imagination et volonté, c'est toujours l'imagination qui l'emporte " Emile Coué. And also : "I have heard so many men talk intelligently- even brilliantly-about something only to see them powerless when it comes to acting on what they believe. If acting is delayed until the need is apparent to everyone it will be too late" B. Baruch

"We never know how high we are until we are called to rise."( Author?) That day, I will subscribe happily. Your letter is a letter for (fiercely) independent investors, all the other sellers of soap wisdom are just p.. in the wind.

I continue my solitary search of being capable of being truly me ("If you do not know who you are, the market is the last place you need to discover it"( Author?)) before I consider myself worthy of investing. In the meantime I followed my choice of only buying fixed income at around 3% rolled over every quarter.

"During this period I also bought 3 stocks (I used to trade 500 per year) of which 1 has doubled, and two under water. Nothing to be proud of, but I live carefully with very small needs. Contentment never needed to be an expensive affair in my books and Brahms, Gregorian chant, Bruch, Paderewski, Liszt or Wagner are free of charge.

"The latest opus of T Price ( One of the books I have kept preciously and read two or three times is : "The fortune sellers" from William Sherden is a sobering account of the business of forecasting ( if you ever come across that book, do not miss the scathing words about economists)) which I follow very regularly made me think once again about my choices. The paragraph "Your mission ..is to try and identify any asset of significance that isn't experiencing huge and artificial distortion to its price"… made me think that in fact you should identify these assets because those are the one who are manipulated by the Fed or Wall Street .

"But it is an absolute matter of timing, you have to be in the inner circle, the correlation in the markets has never been that high (over 65%?). When I see stocks gain 4 or 5% because some rumor from Japan, The IMF, BCE, Bernanke or from one obscure source is pumping the market, I know that my trading days are over and I have to start investing with the absolute fear of losing 20 to 50% without never knowing if it due to a wrong choice or the games of some deep pocket short sellers who want to get in at bargain prices.

"Hoping I did not impose too much on your time…"

David Fuller's view Thanks for an interesting and unusual email. I agree that Fullermoney is for independent investors, at least in terms of absorbing information, primarily to help them think for themselves.

You mention both trading and investing. The former is, of course, high risk in hope of high reward, with all the accompanying stresses and need for reasonably precise timing which has been made more difficult, in my opinion, by HFT. Investing is less difficult and much more important for people with capital.

While reading is one of life's great joys, along with music and other cultural interests, and capable of educating or entertaining us, I would caution against over analysing or over intellectualising when it comes to investing or trading. And if you believe in an "inner circle", or that it could be anything other than a will-o'-the-wisp for anyone, you may remain a spectator, for better or worse.

The market is us, interacting in a crowd, sometimes passively drifting and at other times lurching or surging to the tune of fashion trends and mob psychology. The closest we get to understanding, let alone predicting the market is through observation.

To observe the market efficiently we use price charts, preferably analysed on a factual rather than theoretical basis. Others may prefer a commons sense approach to valuations. The two disciplines are complementary.