I just received news that Chistopher Michaels has passed away. He was an avid system developer and was a P123 subscriber for many years. Most recently, he operated ETFOptimize, an ETF-based service fuelled by P123. RIP
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Shoot. Spoke to him several times, mostly about p123 subscription. Not the easiest guy to deal with sometimes but I could tell his heart was in the right place. He worked through major back pain, and medical issues, to create something he believed in. Very sad.
He was a good guy. Had several nice email conversations with him.
He allowed some folks who had no money to get a subscription for his service for free. He had lots of pain and medical issues but kept going.
Yes, sad indeed.
Ready for this?
Chris’s newsletter members got an email from his “assistant” with the sad news. A long, poignant email with details about his cerebral lesion, swelling and coma that then resulted in the tragic death. And what a great person he was, accomplished strategy designer, husband and father.
I canceled Chris’s account because we should not be billing dead people. Low and behold, Chris rose from his grave and sent us an angry message to reactivate his account, ASAP. When I asked for an explanation about his death I got no reply.
I can only assume he’s using P123 to create amazing backtests, market them (perhaps even using our name/screenshots to “certify” the results), then conveniently die when his strategies fall apart.
Sorry Chris, we will not be reinstating your account.
Please let us know if you see other cases like this.
Goodnight!
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Wow! Just Wow!
Don’t know the guy, but
Mind = Blown
So maybe off subject but maybe not.
I recently have been thinking about getting sued without some sort of insurance coving it (e.g., like bad advice in a newsletter without being sure that is the problem here).
I have malpractice insurance in the event that I were to misread the tea-leaves on a set of signs and symptoms.
I recently had a data breach of my medical records that came out of the blue for me. I was not thinking I was doing anything other than what the law requires now (i.e., use electornic medical records). The data breach occurred on an outside server controlled by a reputable and established company that provides medical record services.
I was amazed that it was all my fault or my responsibility at least. Pretty much all my responsibility although the medical record company had a lot of clients that it did not want to lose and aided in this. My records were not the only records breached at the of-site server this company controlled.
Fortunately for this old-timer, data breeches are now covered by medical malpractice companies (and was by mine). Despite considerable legal help at 300 dollars an hour (with usually 2 lawyers interacting over a computer–hmmm why 2 lawyers? 2 lawyers that would always say my maximum coverage was limited and were pretty vague on how that worked. But still quite capable legal help which still has not put me in full compliance with Massachusetts’s law (near as I can tell). She jokingly said there was no extradition treaty with Kentucky (apparently I had a patient who is or was a MA resident). But thought getting into compliance was not realistically possible.
There is often a risk in referring a patient who needs specialized care to the University while violating the EMTALA act in making the referral (not covered by malpractice insurance for sure). You would be surprised how hard that can be. But it can come down to the risk of managing a problem that is a little outside of your comfort zone or violating EMTALA rules.
Anyway, I recently had an incident that made me think not everything is covered by insurance. E.g., if were were slandered or were to slander anyone. Or EMTALA above. To be clear I am not have any problems with the EMTALA act now (that I know of). This just an example of a potential problem that I am aware of.
I know none of the details of any of what happened with Chris. I have no intention to assign blame or excuse anything either.
But I wonder if there were any legal considerations. Even a data breach, off-site with a company the government forces you to use could be unmanageable (without legal insurance) is my only point: I’m still not right with Massachusetts–although there may be a statute of limitations.
Even if this is not part of the lesson that can be taken away from what happened with Chris, be careful not to get into the legal system if you can help it. Which is not to suggest that faking a death is an effective way to deal legal problems if it does happen to you. But I can see how it might make one feel desperate, if not homeless.
Jim
I was analyzing what I thought was a intra-day Bitcoin chart. Then I realized it was a sentiment gauge for Chris Michaels.
Maybe he saw The Prestige one too many times. Speaking of which…can anyone confirm or deny that he doesn’t have a twin brother by the name of Bret Michaels (lead singer of Poison)? There is a possible resemblance but I would need to run P123’s regression analysis tools and examine the R2. To be clear, I hope he really is alive because these jokes will be rather in bad taste if something untimely did indeed happen.
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Chris used to run a website called intelligentvalue.com. It was a complete fraud. His posts were always full of lies. I told him back in 2017 that he shouldn’t be using the forum to push his website and that his returns were impossible to believe. He stopped for a while and shut down his website but then he resurrected it as ETFOptimize, using ETFs rather than stocks. Check this out: https://etfoptimize.com/resources/performance.htm. All lies, lies, lies.
We had a major spat in 2018. Chris was posting the results of his investing strategy. “The total return for the portfolio is 13,304.83% over about 13 years.” The results posted on his website were even higher. If he had a 46% CAGR over 13 years, all while avoiding small and microcaps, why was he running a newsletter? The lies he tells in this thread are pretty jawdropping: MARKET FORECASTS = EMPTY NOISE - #36 by charles123. Here’s a great example:
There are hundreds of long-time subscribers who have been receiving the weekly IntelligentValue portfolio updates, stock recommendations, individual stock analysis, and market-risk analysis since 2004 - and getting the return I showed for the Blue Chip value Portfolio and other portfolios on the site. These subscribers are living proof of the authenticity of the returns, and the fact that the website and company show a history of not a single complaint to the Better Business Bureau in all those years is a testament to the fact that false claims weren’t being made. However, a few months ago, I sold IntelligentValue to a financial publishing company that also offers value-investing content/websites. IntelligentValue has not accepted new subscribers for several months and I am in the process of wrapping up this long chapter of my career devoted to individual stock analysis /selection and heading in a different direction in my career.
None of those statements were true.
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Oh, and another thing. If you shut down your website, you probably have to return subscription payments. But if you die . . .
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