Happy First Birthday to The Reformed Broker!

One year ago today, on a dark and forbidding night, a blinding flash of lightning shot out of the sky as though hurled by Zeus himself and struck deep into the heart of a long-dormant, but massive volcano.  The reaction was swift and earth-shaking, as the first violent plume of smoke blew up into the atmosphere, followed by an eons-in-the-making eruption of molten lava.  Fire and ash consumed the surrounding area as peasants and royalty alike fled for their very lives ahead of the coming wave of destruction.

And just as suddenly as the onslaught of smoke, flame, flying debris, high-speed winds, thunderclaps and quaking earth had begun…all became eerily still.  When the clouds dissipated, the people ambled back over the smoldering rubble and rifts in the firmament, and they discovered exactly whose arrival that moment of apocalypse had heralded…

…and thus The Reformed Broker blog was born.

Too much?  A little over the top?

There was a whole bunch of stuff in there about choirs of angels and oak trees blown down perpendicularly from the sheer gale force of my awesomeness, but it was edited out at the last minute.

So The Reformed Broker turns 1 today.  I thought I’d take this opportunity to say thank you to the regular readers. to the sporadic visitors, to those who link to my stuff, and to those who quote it.  My gratitude to all of you for joining me over the past year literally knows no bounds.  I am both humbled and amazed by the response I’ve gotten for my sometimes insightful, sometimes outrageous commentary here on TRB and I owe a great deal to those who’ve checked in and followed along.

A glance at the growth of my monthly stats for year one tells me that, for whatever my faults as a commentator or shortcomings as a writer, I must be onto something…

A Breakout Coming?

Many of my colleagues, clients, co-workers and friends have asked me the question: “Why do you blog?”  It took me awhile to actually answer that question myself, even though from day one I knew that this was something that I had to do.

I now believe the following:

I think through my writing, this blog is both the product of my thought process as well as the engine that propels it.  Posting here everyday, multiple times a day, has helped me to crystallize my random observations into strategy.  My updating of the site, even in the darkest days, has enabled me to keep a firm grip on the market environment at a time when I would otherwise have been tempted to throw my hands up and capitulate to the chaos.

If I’ve accomplished anything in the last year, I hope that:

a) I’ve made you look at market events in a different and interesting way

b) I’ve exposed you to the writings and opinions of people you would not have otherwise known about

c) Of course, I hope that I was able to make you laugh at some of the absurdities we are forced to live with on a daily basis

If I’ve been successful at any of the above tasks, then I ask only one more thing…..keep reading!   In the words of the Bachman-Turner Overdrive, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Thanks again to all, your patronage of this site means the world to me, even if we disagree from time to time.

– Josh Brown aka The Reformed Broker, November 1st 2009

P.S.  Tune in tomorrow for a very special surprise!

Get the Reformed Broker Feed:  http://feeds2.feedburner.com/thereformedbroker