Hi,

> I attended Joe's two-day futures trading
> workshop in Austin, Texas in 1993. $3,000
> sound familiar?

Sure does. What happened with me was I bought the course by Mr. Ken, the dude in the cowboy hat, in late 1991 and started papertrading. By mid 1992 I had convinced myself that his methods were simplistic and not rigorous and started looking for other courses. I bought Joe Ross's books for the simple reason that they were the most expensive--I assumed that the price was justified by quality (which it turned out to be). [As a side note, of course, the mindset I just illustrated is a good argument for pricing one's products higher than the norm.] I happened to notice in one of the books that Joe's address was given as Leander, Texas, which, like the town I live in, Pflugerville, is practically a suburb of Austin. I said, "Hey, this guy lives about ten miles from me!" I somehow got up the nerve to phone him, Joe's Godfather-like voice answered the phone, and during a conversation I declined an invitation to come out to his house but did request that he send me info on his seminar. In late 1992 I showed up at the Howard Johnson's where Joe put on his seminars, shyly took a seat and later in the day paid Bernie the $3,000. By March 1993 I was working for Joe, part-time, on an unpaid basis (my pay was in the knowledge I could soak up about trading and about how Joe ran his mailorder bookselling business); my duties included helping Bernie and Mrs. Ross to set up and run the behind-the-scenes part of Joe's seminars. At your seminar if you remember a bearded, unassuming guy with slightly long hair who stayed in the back of the room and who kept the refreshment table stocked and spotless, that, sir, was I. :-)

> I have all Joe's books and I find his
> approach more detailed, more logical, and
> more solidly based than anything else I have
> ever studied or read.

I totally agree.

> In fact, it was Joe Ross that gave me the
> basic ideas to write my book Timing the Real
> Estate Market. His statement that
> "markets are markets" put me in
> the mindset to apply the same principles he
> taught for trading the futures market to
> timing the real estate market. I will never
> forget those words. They are so true when it
> comes to making intelligent buying and
> selling decisions.

Indeed, a chart is a chart is a chart. As you know, if you plot any non-random event on a barchart, you can use chart-reading techniques to predict whether the chart is likely to rise or fall, whether it's the population density of monarch butterflies or the birthrate of Mongolian Buddhists.

> How is his health?

He called me about two years ago asking for a referral to a good webmaster, but I don't have any data more recent than that. I haven't had much contact with him since 1996.

I still leaf through his books every once in a while--the last time was just a few days ago. I love looking at barcharts!!

Best,

- Boyd