If The Components Are There, Let Your Mind Do The Rest

BY JOHN GUY

The desire to write arises from some strange brain cell that carries two elements. The first is an idea or experience that leaps forward not unlike the impulse to learn how to skydive, and then to do it. The second is the rather absurd belief that this idea or experience should be shared with other people, whether other people want it, or not.

So, if you have spent a lifetime in the securities business, something must have happened worth telling. The Scottish Veterinarian found it in the business of treating animals—and their owners. The English jockey found all kinds of stories in the competitive, ego-filled, ripe-for-cheating-and-stealing environment of tracks, jockeys, horses, stewards, owners, reporters, spectators and gamblers who populate tracks and barns.

A securities industry arbitration should be interesting, right? The comings and goings of client/investors must produce unique and compelling stories, right? Once in a while, people cheat to make money, right? The components are there. They merely had to come together in some kind of logical framework. Perhaps the day-to-day stuff is not logical, but it can be made logical in fiction, right?

And so emerges a middle man, a person, not unlike a sports official, who is in the middle, looking out at both sides, and giving both sides a fair and independent evaluation. The unfortunate reality, however, is that no one is perfectly in the middle, perfectly able to evaluate events without the mindset given to him by parents, friends, clients and experience. He can try to escape these influences, and many times he does. But, not every time. And one of those times leads to tragedy.

John Guy, CFP, is president of Wealth Planning & Management, LLC, a financial planning and investment advisory firm. His book, Middle Man: A Broker’s Tale, was published by IBJ Book Publishing.