| Commodity Shark
[By William Green]
JAKE BERNSTEIN is not alone. Another prominent
purveyor of hype is Ken Roberts, a college dropout and
former life insurance salesman. Roberts convinces
neophytes that they can become successful traders with a
grubstake of only $1,000.
In 1983 he self-published The World's
Most Powerful Money Manual & Course, a mail-order
book that intersperses tips on futures with platitudes
about getting "everything you want (mentally,
physically, and spiritually)." He claims to have sold
more than 300,000 copies. At $195 each, that adds up to
nearly $60 million.
Roberts, who touts futures trading as
"the world's one perfect business," charges $2,695 for
his advanced trading seminar. He hawks trading charts, a
course on options, a newsletter and his novel, The Rich
Man's Secret.
He also owns a piece of a California
brokerage firm, Main Street Trading. It charges
commissions so high—$95 a trade—they virtually assure
that most small active traders will lose money.
The hype has paid off for Roberts. It
has brought him tens of millions of dollars and an
Oregon mansion with a cigar room. But where are the
customers' mansions? –W.G.
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copyright Forbes 1998.
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