Posted On: Sunday - December 28th 2025 10:41AM MST
In Topics: Scams
You know how Peak Stupidity has our ears to the ground about the big picture of Global Financial Stupidity*, right? It's the peak of this particular stupidity that we reckon will cause all stupidity to decline, barring a turn toward Communism.
Shouldn't you be a subscriber to our financial newsletter then?
We kid. There is, and will be, no financial newsletter. Anyone who know so much about the near future of stocks, bonds, commodities, etc., one of those After-the-fact Explainers, really would be better off keeping it to himself to make more money on those trades.
In our review of the Strauss & Howe books we mentioned a clever financial newsletter scam in the context of making predictions. I wish I'd thought of it, not because I want to scam people out of their money, but just because it's a clever simple mathematical idea I SHOULD HAVE thought of. It's also an idea just made for the internet age, having been almost infinitely more costly in the age of paper letters and postage.
Here's what you** do: You send out a series of 10 emails to a million recipients that deign to demonstrate for the them how well your financial eNewsLetter predicts moves in the market. OK, well, maybe you send them to 100 million people, as (hopefully) not one in 100 people are clicking on this crap in this day and age. (You can see why email beats the living out of letters with postage.) The predictions you make are binary, as in, this stock WILL rise this week, or this commodity will fall next Tuesday. If you do give numbers, you make them over a fairly wide range.
You write a simple little program that tailors these emails. Let's take 10 separate financial predictions that your advertisement for your pricy eNewsLetter predicts over a series of 10 emails to each recipient. Every combination of rise/fall for the first prediction is covered, so that's 10 different initial emails, with hopefully a million or so (just a very rough ballpark #) of each being read. Now, you've got 1/2 of these recipients a bit impressed that you "got it right" with your prediction by next week. The set of ad emails sent next week only go out to the 1/2 of the recipients to whom you had sent the correct prediction last week. Again, computers would be very helpful in this endeavor.
1/4 of your original set have now read ad emails that got 2 market calls right, one week after the next. That's better than the average Jim on CNBC. By now, some may already decide to subscribe. Wait until it's 1/32 of the recipients who have seen that you got "all" 5 predictions correct! They'll be signing up. Even if it takes 10 predictions in a row to get these recalcitrant losers off their asses, that's 1/1024 of your original list, still maybe a (very rough, cause SPAM folders) thousand people who totally believe in your system. Hell, why not buy a lifetime subscription of $1,800?! I mean, you're gonna save over the annual rate, and you'll be SO RICH that the $1,800 will be peanuts to you.
Another way to go might be to put all 10 predictions in one advertising email, with your software inserting all the combinations to make 1,024 different emails. Stretch the predictions to a month time-frame, and by the end of that, they'll be begging for your eNewsLetter. Dang, I wish I could do this with blog posts...
PS: Our posts may be coming few and far between this week, as, per my comment under the previous post, I am without the normal electronics temporarily. Some hotels have decent desktop computers on which one can save images and everything. This one has inop CTRL keys, which explains why you may see only the one topic key for a while.
* There are also many more related posts with the subject with the Economics and Inflation topic keys too.
** By "you", we mean here, "you people in Bangalore or Bombay".
Comments:
Moderator
Thursday - January 1st 2026 12:25PM MST
PS: I liked that one at first listen, SafeNow. It sounds more early ‘60s than late, but it’s from 1967.
YT suggested the following after that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwI6qiL8Ofo
“Princess Of Boogie Woogie Delights Everyone”
Yeah, she’s pretty, of course.
YT suggested the following after that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwI6qiL8Ofo
“Princess Of Boogie Woogie Delights Everyone”
Yeah, she’s pretty, of course.
The Alarmist
Wednesday - December 31st 2025 11:43PM MST
PS
Happy New Year, Peakers.
PBS shows Algore suggesting Bill Gates should rethink his priorities on climate change vs healthcare, while I have to turn on the heat in Florida.
Meanwhile, thinks are blowing up in peaceful, multi-culti Confederatzione Helvetica.
Remember: Remigration is a nice phrase for necessary ethnic cleansing.
🕉
Happy New Year, Peakers.
PBS shows Algore suggesting Bill Gates should rethink his priorities on climate change vs healthcare, while I have to turn on the heat in Florida.
Meanwhile, thinks are blowing up in peaceful, multi-culti Confederatzione Helvetica.
Remember: Remigration is a nice phrase for necessary ethnic cleansing.
🕉
SafeNow
Wednesday - December 31st 2025 10:20PM MST
PS
A song for the New Year Resolution spirit. The Sunshine Company. 1967. Terrific harmony! Lyric: “I used to think that the world belonged to me, but now it belongs to someone else.”. But then… the optimistic spirit emerges!…”thinking of me again!” That’s the spirit that the traditional people should have, and Mr. Moderator, being more of an optimist than I am, can latch onto it. But I really enjoy the harmony and melody…almost as good as the Mamas and Papas. Happy New Year, all.
https://youtu.be/qCmxrzT92IY?si=ZsSp-KZV99SsJa3B
A song for the New Year Resolution spirit. The Sunshine Company. 1967. Terrific harmony! Lyric: “I used to think that the world belonged to me, but now it belongs to someone else.”. But then… the optimistic spirit emerges!…”thinking of me again!” That’s the spirit that the traditional people should have, and Mr. Moderator, being more of an optimist than I am, can latch onto it. But I really enjoy the harmony and melody…almost as good as the Mamas and Papas. Happy New Year, all.
https://youtu.be/qCmxrzT92IY?si=ZsSp-KZV99SsJa3B
Moderator
Monday - December 29th 2025 1:51PM MST
PS: Thank you, SafeNow, for the plot description. That might have been where whoever I got it from got the idea.
I’m writing from a touchscreen keyboard… NOT fun.
I’m writing from a touchscreen keyboard… NOT fun.
SafeNow
Monday - December 29th 2025 12:34AM MST
PS
Okay, I described the scam to AI, and the following came back. Thus, you had a very clever idea, Mr. Moderator, but the Hitchcock screenwriter got there first. However, you did a great job of modernizing it. Here is AI’s answer, which includes the season and episode:
“That's the classic scam from the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Mail Order Prophet" (Season 3, Episode 2, 1957), where a mysterious "Mr. Christiani" sends predictions, winning bets for clerk Ronald Grimes (played by E.G. Marshall) by sending different outcomes to different people, gradually narrowing down the "successful" recipients until Grimes believes he's found a genuine psychic, only to fall for the final request for money, as explained in this IMDb plot summary and this blog post from the SAS Blogs.
How the Scam Works (as depicted in the episode):
Initial Broadcast: Christiani sends out thousands of letters, predicting one result (e.g., "Candidate A wins") to one group and the opposite ("Candidate B wins") to another for a specific event.
Filtering: After the event, only the winners get the next letter, cutting the group in half.
Iteration: This process repeats, shrinking the pool of "successful" recipients with each round, making the predictions seem incredibly accurate to the few left in the loop.
Monetization: Once a believer (like Grimes) is convinced and has won money (often by embezzling company funds, as Grimes did), the "prophet" asks for a large "contribution" or payment for the "guaranteed" big win in the final prediction, as detailed in this Film Sufi article and this Paleofuture blog post. “
Okay, I described the scam to AI, and the following came back. Thus, you had a very clever idea, Mr. Moderator, but the Hitchcock screenwriter got there first. However, you did a great job of modernizing it. Here is AI’s answer, which includes the season and episode:
“That's the classic scam from the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Mail Order Prophet" (Season 3, Episode 2, 1957), where a mysterious "Mr. Christiani" sends predictions, winning bets for clerk Ronald Grimes (played by E.G. Marshall) by sending different outcomes to different people, gradually narrowing down the "successful" recipients until Grimes believes he's found a genuine psychic, only to fall for the final request for money, as explained in this IMDb plot summary and this blog post from the SAS Blogs.
How the Scam Works (as depicted in the episode):
Initial Broadcast: Christiani sends out thousands of letters, predicting one result (e.g., "Candidate A wins") to one group and the opposite ("Candidate B wins") to another for a specific event.
Filtering: After the event, only the winners get the next letter, cutting the group in half.
Iteration: This process repeats, shrinking the pool of "successful" recipients with each round, making the predictions seem incredibly accurate to the few left in the loop.
Monetization: Once a believer (like Grimes) is convinced and has won money (often by embezzling company funds, as Grimes did), the "prophet" asks for a large "contribution" or payment for the "guaranteed" big win in the final prediction, as detailed in this Film Sufi article and this Paleofuture blog post. “
Moderator
Sunday - December 28th 2025 7:10PM MST
PS: Hello, SafeNow. Do you have the name of that particular Hitchcock episode?
Your flood them with the salacious advances technique takes some toughness that you don't need in the new internet age.
For example, in the old days, the replies to your paper letters advertising your newsletter still must be read. Some people may eventually be a bit pissed at your scamming and you'll end up reading that.
In the modern age you don't have to read any return emails, if your in the driver's seat. "Please do not reply". So the guy who honestly wants to make sure this is not some scam before he puts his money down will have his questions, in bits and bytes, get scattered into the void, never to be seen by anybody.
I still like this one: "The first guy says, Yes, almost always, but occasionally I wind-up in a motel room."
Your flood them with the salacious advances technique takes some toughness that you don't need in the new internet age.
For example, in the old days, the replies to your paper letters advertising your newsletter still must be read. Some people may eventually be a bit pissed at your scamming and you'll end up reading that.
In the modern age you don't have to read any return emails, if your in the driver's seat. "Please do not reply". So the guy who honestly wants to make sure this is not some scam before he puts his money down will have his questions, in bits and bytes, get scattered into the void, never to be seen by anybody.
I still like this one: "The first guy says, Yes, almost always, but occasionally I wind-up in a motel room."
Moderator
Sunday - December 28th 2025 7:05PM MST
PS: That "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" line never gets old, at least for me, Alarmist.
Yep, TJ Maxx and companies and the Dollar Trees make sense. Someone on ZH years ago remarked that the Dollar stores (soon to be back to the "5 & 10" from 50 years ago, except in dollars not cents) are a step down from your Wal-Marts and your Targets.
I do recognize your "Honeymooners" line too, BTW.
Yep, TJ Maxx and companies and the Dollar Trees make sense. Someone on ZH years ago remarked that the Dollar stores (soon to be back to the "5 & 10" from 50 years ago, except in dollars not cents) are a step down from your Wal-Marts and your Targets.
I do recognize your "Honeymooners" line too, BTW.
SafeNow
Sunday - December 28th 2025 1:48PM MST
PS
This clever scam was the plot of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents program way back in the day. It is of course much more feasible in our email age. This reminds me of the old story about a guy who tells a friend that he makes immediate salacious advances at every woman he meets. The friend replies, Don’t you just get slapped in the face. The first guy says, Yes, almost always, but occasionally I wind-up in a motel room.
This clever scam was the plot of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents program way back in the day. It is of course much more feasible in our email age. This reminds me of the old story about a guy who tells a friend that he makes immediate salacious advances at every woman he meets. The friend replies, Don’t you just get slapped in the face. The first guy says, Yes, almost always, but occasionally I wind-up in a motel room.
The Alarmist
Sunday - December 28th 2025 11:54AM MST
PS
Newsletters? We don’t have no newsletters… We don’t need no steeenking newsletters.
First thought is to simply fade Jim Cramer’s recommendations.
Me, I just buy weapons makers and poverty plays, like TJX and DLTR.
To the Moon, Alice.
Newsletters? We don’t have no newsletters… We don’t need no steeenking newsletters.
First thought is to simply fade Jim Cramer’s recommendations.
Me, I just buy weapons makers and poverty plays, like TJX and DLTR.
To the Moon, Alice.
To me “remigration”, - a word my editor’s text-completor never heard of, BTW - is too mild. It sounds as if the intruders should take their own sweet time.