One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

[LargoWinch]

iTulip 2.0 which restarted in March of 2006 is turning 5 today! So...

...Happy Birthday to all iTulipers. It is a daily pleasure to read you all, while benefiting from your knowledge and insights.

Finally, without being perceived as siding up with management (): A big thanks to EJ, FREDs & Co. for keeping this community alive - you guys/gals get the cake today:

[jk]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

i'll second that. it's the place i turn to for cogent discussion of the global economy. it's an irreplaceable resource. thank you, ej.

[c1ue]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

Hear hear.

A light in a wasteland of darkness.

[lektrode]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

Hear hear.

A light in a wasteland of darkness.

ditto!
this is The Most Underappreciated Resource on the web (by those a lot further up the food chain than most of us on here, i suspect)

just to imagine what the outcome of the prev 5 years mightve been had more in the political class had the benefit of the content of these pages (EJ's output anyway) - things mightve been different = lots less human suffering (i know i wouldnt be suffering had eye found the tulip in 06)

A BIG MAHALO AND CONGRATULATIONS to EJ & Crew (and to you too Mr c1ue) - along with the rest of the uploaders here - if any of wisdom that graces these pages makes it into wider discussions, life on the planet, for all, will be better for it.

truely in awe daily by what eye read here.

and like i said prev, if huffpo is worth 300mil, this baby is worth at least 9digits.

[jneal3]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

Hear hear.

A light in a wasteland of darkness.

The best part of this site is learning where your own intellect stands in the scheme of things; nowhere more humbling and more enlightening (and more motivating) than this site.

[lektrode]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

The best part of this site is learning where your own intellect stands in the scheme of things; nowhere more humbling and more enlightening than this site.

+1

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

Someone had to do it.

For EJ, President of iTulip

[don]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

doesn't come close to MM. Does have a beat

[jiimbergin]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

The best part of this site is learning where your own intellect stands in the scheme of things; nowhere more humbling and more enlightening (and more motivating) than this site.

+1+1

[EJ]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

Today iTulip.com 2.0 that re-launched March 1, 2006 celebrates its fifth birthday. In honor of the event, the stock market tanked and gold reached a new all time high.

Today stocks lost 1.4% on rising security risks in the Middle East and North Africa.



Gold gained as much.

I founded iTulip.com 13 years ago in 1998 during the tech bubble to offer an insider's contrarian view of the markets that was at the time sorely needed to counter the disinformation flowing out of Wall Street's marketing arm, the US business media. I re-opened iTulip.com in 2006 during a new peak of complacency. The housing bubble was peaking and another great crash awaited the unwary. But unlike the 1998 version if iTulip, a blog before there were blogs where I posted and others commented -- the guru and minions approach -- I intended with version 2.0 to use the forums to create the first crowd-sourced platform for non-ideological economics and finance theory development.

My main role is to provide leadership by developing original theories of the political economy based on primary data analysis, research, and interviews of experts with a wide range of viewpoints. I develop my our own theories from the ground up. I seek to never jump on any bandwagon no matter how much I may agree with it philosophically. We question everything and do our homework.

My other role is to maintain a level of decorum and discussion that will tend to attract bright, thoughtful, accomplished members who contribute their unique perspectives and expertise. You can think of iTulip as a kind of conveyor belt of expertise. Each of us seeks to put more on it than we take off. Think about it, if the whole economy operated on that principle, just think how well the US would be doing?

Not only do we do our homework but we stick to our guns and ignore uninformed views and the opinions of those with not so well hidden agendas, vendettas, pet peeves, obsessions, and jaded research.

We ingored Wall Street's product sales force otherwise known as Certified Financial Planners who pushed stocks as a value and denigrated gold as a "bubble" for the past five years.

We ignored the goldbugs who said gold is manipulated down by central banks at the expense of private investors.

We ignored the deflationists who said gold will correct with stocks.

We ignored coin-operated and ideological economists.

This led us to the hard and fast decision to stay out of stocks and in gold.

Readers who did in 2006 as we did in 2001, here are the results since March 2006.

The DJIA has gained in nominal terms only 8% in the past five years, and lost ground
in real, inflation-adjusted terms.

Meanwhile, gold on the other hand has gone up 253%.

Of course, the iTulip community isn't any old crowd. It's you, the folks who make this place what it is.

Congratulations to the iTulip community for a successful first five years. On to the next!

[Mega]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

Missed Silver though, didn't you!
Sorry EJ, but i put 3700+ posts here, i watched the "Shop" while you where busy & helped drive up Traffic.......& NO offer of a Company BMW!

Hummh
Mike

[EJ]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

Missed Silver though, didn't you!
Sorry EJ, but i put 3700+ posts here, i watched the "Shop" while you where busy & helped drive up Traffic.......& NO offer of a Company BMW!

Hummh
Mike

I used to run a company with an office in London. Once per quarter I'd visit the office to meet with the team there to find out what was going on, and to explain the company's strategy and solicit feedback. Unlike my US employees, who tended to be deferential to the CEO, the British employees were subtly confrontational, occasionally sarcastic and dramatic, bordering on disrespectful. The managing director was embarrassed on one occasion and told his team to knock it off. It didn't bother me. I figured they weren't being confrontational, sarcastic, dramatic, and disrespectful on my account, they were simply being British.

My experience is that the average Brit gets out of grade school knowing how to read and write, find places on a map, think more or less clearly about things, and otherwise operate without a continuous source of external authoritative inputs to tell them what to believe from on minute to the next. Here in the states the average American needs to read a web site to know if their coat is on fire.

[oddlots]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

Congrats EJ et al. And thanks to all who've shared their thoughts here (and improved the quality of my own.)

I hope that five doesn't represent middle age in the blogosphere, but since today happens also to be my birthday and 45 is decidedly middle-age, I thought I'd share what is quickly becoming my anthem:

Best all.

[LargoWinch]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

I hope that five doesn't represent middle age in the blogosphere, but since today happens also to be my birthday and 45 is decidedly middle-age, I thought I'd share what is quickly becoming my anthem:

Cool. Happy Birthday oddlots and I do hope your present was not a "shop vac".

[oddlots]

Re: One Special Birthday: iTulip 2.0 is turning 5 today!

Thank you sir.