Reggie Middleton

I'm an Entrepreneurial Philosopher and Investor that runs a small private investment fund. I just came off of a stint as a real estate investor, with a background in corporate valuation, insurance, risk management, financial engineering, real estate investment and management, and technology (particularly web-based technology and distributed computing).

My interests are literally all over the board, basically anything that is interesting. I have almost always been an entrepreneur and worked outside of mainstream corporate America and Wall Street (code words for “unemployable”), thus have a distinct contrarian/outsider's perspective. I noticed that it is now vogue to consider oneself a contrarian, but if everyone is contrarian, then to be a conformist is the pinnacle of contrarian philosophy, or is it???

I currently, and have always during my adult life, invested my own money through booms and busts. This blog is a digital diary of my thoughts and ramblings on Booms, Busts and the associated Bling. It is my philosophy that we are constantly in one of those three states in a variety of gobal asset classes and economic cycles, and it is my job to ascertain where we are, what direction to expect in the future, and how best to take advantage of it.

I started selling off my real estate portfolio in April of 2005, citing irrational valuations and silly transactions, and I had this veiwpoint despite dealing with properties that were only VERY deep in the money from an optionality perspective. No one (including some pretty bright people) seemed to be willing to put thier money behind what appeared to be a very obvious trend. Well, they do now… I am now in the process of shorting the asset class that served me so well for the past 7 years, hence the origin of this digital diary.

I do not try to predict the future. I simply combine a thorough look at the past and attempt to use that and some good ole' common sense to see what the present means to me and what the future MAY hold.

I have a moderate to long term horizon. There is much, much too much competition for the short term, with quarterly hedge fund redemptions, monthly performance reports, etc. I have learned my lesson the hard way and know first hand that it is self defeating and silly to attempt to mark your performance to market day to day, month to month, or even quarter to quarter when the truly permanent capital is dealing with 100 year horizons for legacies. Now, I know we may not all have 100 years to spare, but simply extending your horizon out 2 years puts you ahead of most of the "smartest guys in the rooms". I am the first to espouse that as a matter of fact, it is so crowded in the short term that many an arbitrage opportunity is available for the moderate to long term. That says something about the investment climate in the world today. Patience is a virtue, and volatility is not necessarily a bad thing, but losing money is!!!

Please enjoy my digital diary cum blog!!!