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About Markman Capital Insight

About Markman Capital Insight

My quest to help independent investors take on financial markets and win is built on vengeance, anger, fear and quest for the truth..

But mostly truth vengeance. The sting is still fresh.

The time was May of 1992. My father had just passed away after a long illness.

My dad had built and run a successful manufacturers rep business in Los Angeles over the prior 40 years, and was the master of what I have called “innocent flamboyance.”

He had grown up during the Depression in a household in Great Falls, Mont., where money was scarce. His father traded furs on the Blackfeet reservation, but  income mainly came from  a small junkyard  near the Great Northern railroad tracks.

After his father passed away due to complications of a mental illness in the mid-1940s, my dad packed up the family truck with his three sisters and mom and drove them all to Los Angeles, where a cousin had invited them to stay in a spare bedroom. He turned 13 along the way.

Dad worked three jobs a day through high school to keep his family afloat but got more serious about work after returning from the Korean War. He worked in a liquor store while getting a sales company up and running, but ultimately it all clicked. By the time he passed away, he owned half a block of warehouses in the San Fernando Valley;  thriving sales firm selling Japanese stereo equipment to boomers in the sprawling postwar suburbs; and a speaker factory.

He got all the toys that accrue in LA with success, including a super-sexy blue Maserati sports car and a twin-engine turbo plane, which he regularly flew to Utah, Colorado and the Sierras with my two sisters, mother and I to indulge his love of skiing.

Neither of my parents graduated from a four year college, but they were proud to send me to Duke University undergrad and  Columbia University for a masters. I banged around at smaller news operations in the troubled economy of the early 1980s but ultimately business perked up and I nabbed an editing position at the Los Angeles Times.

Over the next two decades, I managed to rise through the ranks, ultimately becoming an executive news editor, an investigative reporter and an investment columnist, which gave me for the first time an opportunity to learn how Wall Street really worked. I used the position to interview some of the world’s smartest hedge fund managers, brokerage analysts and private equity investors. The more I learned, the more I came to realize what a ridiculous advantage the professionals had, particularly back in the years before the Internet.

Now here’s where the story turns kind of dark and made me mad enough to change the trajectory of my own career. After my dad passed, my mother was flooded with calls from fund managers and lawyers who tried to persuade her to pay massive, shocking fees to get their services. It was gross and disturbing. I pledged then to do everything possible to help her and other widows obtain smarter advice that was more fairly priced. .

In 1997, I was recruited by Microsoft to become managing editor and columnist of their fledgling financial news site ultimately called MSN Money. My column was extremely popular at the time as the Internet was just starting to figure out media, and ultimately, I left to create an investment service of my own that could work for the little guys like my mom at a reasonable cost - particularly during the difficult years of the 2001 dot-com crash and the 2008 financial crisis. . In time I learned that fulfilling my promises to my mother and widows like her could be best accomplished via a reasonably priced newsletter format stacked with guidance from a select band of independent analysts like myself and my great team.

I hope that you agree and will strongly consider using services like our Foundational ETFs and Digital Creators at first, and then work your way up the risk ladder to options and futures when you are ready. Let know how you’re doing, as your goals are our goals.

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A FEW FINAL NOTES  I believe that ordinary people from all walks of life can learn to turn both bear and bull markets to their advantage by learning to time and exploit the ebbs and flows of market sentiment, global finance, commodity scarcity, corporate earnings and technological developments.

Our customers include teachers, veterans, attorneys, farmers, business owners, athletes, portfolio management pros and even investment industry lifers who have two things in common: Self reliance and self confidence.

A pioneer in the development of stock-rating systems and stock screening software, I am  co-inventor on two Microsoft patents and author of the best-selling books "Online Investing," (1999 and 2001 ); “Swing Trading” ( 2003 ); "New Day Trader’s Advantage" ( 2008 ); "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator: Annotated Edition" ( 2009 ); and “Fast Forward Investing” ( 2018 ).

I won the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Financial Journalism for  columns exposing mismanagement of the S&P 500 in 2003; Society of Professional Journalists awards for reporting on Enron and the post-Sept. 11-investment environment; a Society of Business Editors & Writers "Best in Business" award for coverage of the 2008 financial crisis; and was a news editor on Los Angeles Times staffs that won Pulitzer Prizes for spot-news reporting in 1992 for the Rodney King riots and in 1994 for the Northridge earthquake.   

In my personal life, I am an avid tennis player and golfer, the father of two and grandfather of one; and in 1990 was the first American competitor in the Raid Gauloises multi-day adventure race, which was a precursor to the “Eco-Challenge” and the TV series “Survivor.”  Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this story here.

Jon’s books

A pioneer in the development of stock-rating systems and screening software

Leveraging three decades of experience, wide-ranging contacts throughout the global investment industry, a passion for quantitative finance and an eye for value, Jon is the principal author of our equities and options research services and editor of our futures services.

Awards

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Markman won the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Financial Journalism for his columns exposing mismanagement of the S&P 500 in 2002
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Society of Professional Journalists awards for his 2001 reporting on Enron and the post-Sept. 
11-investment environment
financial-crisis
Won in 2007 for explaining the global roots and pathways of the Great Financial Crisis.
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Co-author of two US patents awarded to Microsoft for Investment Management Software.
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Awarded for the Rodney King Riots Coverage at the LA Times.
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Awarded for the coverage of Northridge Earthquake Coverage.

Meet Our COO

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Joe Markman
COO

Serving as chief operations officer is Jon’s son, Joe, an accomplished entrepreneur who specializes in on-line marketing and systematic management. Joe started his first successful business in high school after learning to turn his passion for scuba diving into a shoreline restoration service in Seattle. For the next six years, he hired dozens of divers every spring and trained them to remove invasive species of plants to improve lakeside waterfronts and the health of the region’s underwater ecology.

Working out of a warehouse in the industrial Georgetown section of the city, Joe developed unique ways to market his services to a wealthy and demanding clientele via radio and social media advertising.

Joe sold his company to a firm associated with a national waste-management company after moving to Austin, Texas, and now brings his considerable organization and marketing skills to Markman Capital Insight.

A graduate of the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business, he is responsible for the MCI customer experience as well as sales, operations and staff management. In his spare time, Joe can be found smoking meats in his backyard, working out with his wife (a fitness competitor and start-up operations specialist), managing his rental properties or practicing archery.

Build Income For Now and Wealth For later – in Minutes a Day

Meet Ben

Pilot Turned Market Navigator

Ben

Ben
Market Navigator

Once upon a time, amidst the vast blue yonder where eagles dare and the roar of jet engines signified the dance of commerce and travel, Ben charted courses unknown. A maestro in the cockpit for over five fruitful years, he navigated the arteries of the sky, knitting continents closer. Yet, beneath the uniform and the calm command over the tumultuous heavens, Ben harbored a fervor for the frenzied dance of digits and decimals—a passion for the financial markets.

Transitioning from the structured skies to the chaotic cacophony of the trading floor, Ben found his new cockpit within the esteemed corridors of Franklin Templeton in the United States. Here, managing the European Equity Value portfolios, he steered $850 Billion AUM with the precision of a seasoned pilot, navigating through economic turbulences and market tempests, charting courses that others dared not.

Yet, the horizon called for broader vistas. London's financial heartbeats lured him, and at Pacific Investments, he found his next challenge. Amidst the launch of a groundbreaking Quantitative Long/Short Hedge Fund, Ben was the architect, setting up the trading operation and managing the fund with an insight that melded chaos theory with cold, hard market analytics. His leadership propelled the fund to industry-leading success, solidifying his legacy as a master of financial frontiers.

The call of the West saw Ben covering the Asian region for Chicago's Nuveen Investments. In Southern California, under his stewardship, Tradewinds Global blossomed from a $10 Billion to a staggering $40 Billion AUM, a testament to his visionary strategies and his unerring judgment.

Retirement could not dull Ben's sharp acumen. Even in the quietude of Los Angeles, his thirst for the markets remained unquenched. As a consultant and a mentor at the Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management, Ben's legacy continued to evolve, guiding future titans of trading towards their dreams of market mastery.

Now, at the helm of Digital Leverage and Digital Futures, Ben introduces a vanguard approach. With Digital Leverage, the promise is clear: transform modest leverage into monumental gains, navigating the tumult of markets with up to 20 trades a month that turn volatility into victory. In Digital Futures, Ben orchestrates a symphony of swift, proprietary trades that harness the raw energy of financial indexes, offering members a seat at the table of market movers.

Ben's saga from the heavens to the heights of financial stewardship is not merely a career. It is a chronicle of unyielding pursuit of excellence, a relentless quest to harness the unknown, be it in the skies or the stock markets. With Digital Leverage and Digital Futures, Ben invites you to join him in this journey of discovery and triumph, where the skies are not the limit, but the beginning.

Beyond the financial markets, Ben is equally passionate about the outdoors. An avid deep-sea fisherman, kiteboarder, and spear fisher, he thrives on the thrill and challenge of nature.

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Meet Ben: Pilot Turned Market Navigator


Once upon a time, amidst the vast blue yonder where eagles dare and the roar of jet engines signified the dance of commerce and travel, Ben charted courses unknown. A maestro in the cockpit for over five fruitful years, he navigated the arteries of the sky, knitting continents closer. Yet, beneath the uniform and the calm command over the tumultuous heavens, Ben harbored a fervor for the frenzied dance of digits and decimals—a passion for the financial markets.

Transitioning from the structured skies to the chaotic cacophony of the trading floor, Ben found his new cockpit within the esteemed corridors of Franklin Templeton in the United States. Here, managing the European Equity Value portfolios, he steered $850 Billion AUM with the precision of a seasoned pilot, navigating through economic turbulences and market tempests, charting courses that others dared not.

Yet, the horizon called for broader vistas. London's financial heartbeats lured him, and at Pacific Investments, he found his next challenge. Amidst the launch of a groundbreaking Quantitative Long/Short Hedge Fund, Ben was the architect, setting up the trading operation and managing the fund with an insight that melded chaos theory with cold, hard market analytics. His leadership propelled the fund to industry-leading success, solidifying his legacy as a master of financial frontiers.

The call of the West saw Ben covering the Asian region for Chicago's Nuveen Investments. In Southern California, under his stewardship, Tradewinds Global blossomed from a $10 Billion to a staggering $40 Billion AUM, a testament to his visionary strategies and his unerring judgment.

Retirement could not dull Ben's sharp acumen. Even in the quietude of Los Angeles, his thirst for the markets remained unquenched. As a consultant and a mentor at the Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management, Ben's legacy continued to evolve, guiding future titans of trading towards their dreams of market mastery.

Now, at the helm of Digital Leverage and Digital Futures, Ben introduces a vanguard approach. With Digital Leverage, the promise is clear: transform modest leverage into monumental gains, navigating the tumult of markets with up to 20 trades a month that turn volatility into victory. In Digital Futures, Ben orchestrates a symphony of swift, proprietary trades that harness the raw energy of financial indexes, offering members a seat at the table of market movers.

Ben's saga from the heavens to the heights of financial stewardship is not merely a career. It is a chronicle of unyielding pursuit of excellence, a relentless quest to harness the unknown, be it in the skies or the stock markets. With Digital Leverage and Digital Futures, Ben invites you to join him in this journey of discovery and triumph, where the skies are not the limit, but the beginning.

Beyond the financial markets, Ben is equally passionate about the outdoors. An avid deep-sea fisherman, kiteboarder, and spearfisher, he thrives on the thrill and challenge of nature.