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Jack is a semi-retired, former software developer. He has a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology (1976) and has worked at two computer companies, a tech startup, and independently as a consultant for numerous smaller tech companies. (Click here for his resume.)
In the early 1990's Jack invented and marketed an object-oriented programming language called Liana that was designed to make it much easier to develop applications for Microsoft Windows.
Jack's first investment was during his Junior year in college (1975) when used savings from his work at the college computer center to purchase a modest position in Digital Equipment Corporation, back in the days when it was a great company. His investment promptly lost 50% in less than a month, but he hung in there and the next year was able to sell for a 90% gain. Jack does not believe in stop-loss orders, not then, and not now. Jack believes that stop-loss orders are for traders, not serious investors, but of course you should dump any company that no longer meets your investment interests. He believes that the best way to "beat" the pros on Wall Street is to pick good companies and then hang in there through the market turbulence.
Early in 1999 Jack decided to "retire" after having diligently made maximum contributions to his self-directed retirement plan over the preceding decade. Jack currently spends his time managing his portfolio, researching and writing his daily stock market column, and doing deep background research in the field of software agents.
Jack lives in Boulder, Colorado, but previously lived in New York City, and had a second apartment in Washington, D.C. where he attended variety of congressional hearings and panel discussions at various think tanks. He attended the entire Microsoft antitrust trial.
His last "real job" was doing contract software development for the Northern Light search engine which was sold to divine, inc. and is now used to power the Yahoo! Premium Document Search. Actually... Yahoo has since discontinued that service! There are rumors that the former CEO of Northern Light bought back the search engine from divine and will be building a new business around it.
Jack does not have any formal qualifications in the investment field (no MBA, CPA, CFA, CFP, or PhD) and has no formal training in economics (other than several courses in college), but does a lot of reading and spends a lot of his time reading and digesting economic data reports. His favorite magazine is The Economist. He also reads BusinessWeek, Forbes, CFO, and various publications put out by the Federal Reserve.
Jack is also a regular attendee (observer) at the semi-annual Shadow Open Market Committee (SOMC) meetings where the state of the economy and monetary policy are discussed.
In addition to Finaxyz.com, Jack runs a number of other webs sites:
The best way to contact Jack is via email.
Updated: January 31, 2006 12:05:10 PM -0500
Copyright © 2006 John W. Krupansky d/b/a Base Technology