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WHY DEMOGRAPHICS COME EASY FOR ME By Dan Tiffin When I was five years old, I contracted Nephritis, a disease of the kidneys. The first time I was in the hospital at age 5 and came out at age 7. This disease kept me in and out of the hospital until I was 12 years old.
My mom and dad both worked hard and could not see me every day. When they did come, they brought me Dinky Toys and my favorite, toy soldiers. I pitched battles on my bed and always picked one to be the Hero to lead the troops. By doing this, my imagination grew very strongly. Many that have come to my office have seen my toy soldiers’ collection, along with swords, shields and helmets. Using my imagination as much as I did at such a young age trained me to believe in the impossible, even though others say it could not happen.
All these years collecting toy soldiers have also given me an extensive education in history. History is about the past and being able to understand the way history is a big part of demographics. I believe this is why demographics come easy for me and it has given me an investment edge.
When I was 15, I was forced to leave my collection with my best friend in England because of weight restrictions on the plane. At that time, I had to start a new hobby that did not cost me money, as I was no longer in the Church Choir earning money at weddings. Therefore, I began studying sports statistics. When I lived in Windsor, my favorite baseball team was The Tigers, and my favorite football team was The Lions, but my favorite hockey team was The Leafs. I started doing research on statistics only on the specific teams mentioned above in the beginning and then ended up doing all of the NHL. There were 24 teams in total. I never missed a game on TV or Radio. I became so good at it that I could tell you, the names of players playing at any given time, such as the first line on Chicago, Black Hawks, named The Scooter Line with Ken Wharram, Stan Mikita and Doug Mohns, all the way to the Third Line to Montreal, Canadians, with Claude Provost, Ralph Backstrom and Gilles Trembley. I could tell you who were the names of the players by the way they skated and I knew how many goals they made, assists, points and penalties. I became so good at this, my brother Rick would think of a question and bet everyone at work and then ask me for the answer. Unbeknown to me, I was developing another skill by collecting data or statistics, another very important aspect of demographics. Now I had history and statistics, two vital parts of the demographic picture.
At this point in time, the Dinky Toys became the real thing and for 7 years of my life I was an auto mechanic. Here I picked up two more skills; learning how to fix people’s auto problems and learning how to diagnose the problem. Now, its financial problems diagnosing the problem with all of these learned skills became my strongest ability. It’s not like today where you hook your vehicle up to a computer and the computer tells you the problem at hand. In those days you had to think and diagnose everything from finding a nail in your tire to why the car will not start. Now with demographics you need history and data and you need to understand or diagnose everything you have collected. Then convey this to the public.
What we have in place right now is the massive Baby Boomers getting older and their spending patterns will determine the markets. We have already seen the housing boom created by their spending. We are about to see the same happen in the stock market, as spending as saving for retirement is combined, followed by a housing crash and a stock market crash that will trigger the mother of all depressions.
Like the hero I had leading my troops on my bed when I was in hospital as a child, I want to be a hero and prepare you for the up-coming depression and take advantage of the last stock market boom and make you a millionaire.
Isn’t it funny how life shapes you to fulfill your Destiny? You could say, my destiny is in demographics, but demographics are in every ones destiny.
Dan Tiffin 08/14/2006 |
