I Get Letters

Dear Steve

Larry, an ambitious country boy, makes his way to San Francisco in '63; over the next 10 years acquires a good job, bad marriage, and a license to practice law in '73 after working his way through night law school. As a trial lawyer for business litigation he had an up and down career in San Francisco and San Diego, always scrambling for business but never able to build a stable practice, but did gain a reputation as a winning trial lawyer who was something of a wordsmith. Then in '89 he got his big break, a partnership with a San Diego lawyer named Al who controlled a sizable amount of business litigation but didn't have the capability to handle it. This allowed Larry to create and become managing partner of a ten person law firm which prospered under his leadership. However, Al became gradually threatened by the success of Larry, and betrayed him by forcing him out of the partnership by false accusation. Faced with the necessities of loss of the partnership, the need to overcome the false accusations, and the need to build an entirely new practice---Larry decided to quit the practice of law and find a new profession. After several false starts over a period of a few years, Larry became aware that the only profession to which he was attracted was as a medium term stock market trader. His wife (who had her own business) agreed to allow Larry to spend time in learning how to beat the market, but as time went by, she became more and more resentful that Larry was not producing income and was depleting their savings. The marriage began to fray badly, Larry refused to give up his pursuit of being a trader, and, finally she and Larry agreed on divorce, just about at the time Larry felt he had created a safe and profitable way to beat the market. But it was too late. Larry had depleted his savings in partial support of the marriage, his wife was nearing retirement and wanted to retire without worry, and the marriage could not be saved. So Larry believed he had created a trading system which would bring substantial wealth, but didn't have any money to speak of, no profession, and no track record in creating wealth through trading the market. So Larry went from a La Jolla residence to a rented room while living just on social security, and that is the way it remains today.