David Fuller's view When presented recently with some historic Fullermoney copy dated 5th June 2002, I was fascinated by the quotes on gold - real contrary indicators - so I posted the item on July 1st under the heading Golden Oldies. It also occurred to me that perhaps I should post the historic archive of monthly letters, commencing with the first issue of Fullermoney published in 1984.


Stored in ring binders since they were published, early file copies of Fullermoney have been unseen for up to 26 years. They were initially the product of a Dickensian publishing system. The price charts, mostly p&f, were hand-drawn by skilful, artistic colleagues. Although I had learned to touch type at college, that skill had yet become operational in the pre-desktop publishing days. I wrote copy by messy longhand which an assistant struggled to decipher. It took several drafts and was a tedious process. The copy, charts, scales and labels were then pasted to page outlines and sent to a commercial printer.

My, how times have changed although not in terms of the price trends. They look much the same as they did in the mid-1980s when I launched Fullermoney, or the mid-1960s when I joined the financial industry, or far earlier than that judging from graphs which I have seen. It is still all about fear and greed, despite all the innovations that we have today.

One can learn or re-learn from the past, which is my main reason for scanning and republishing the Fullermoney historic archive in PDF format. I re-read the launch issue last night with some apprehension. Written shortly after my 43rd birthday, it has a brashness best left behind. It is also political - something I try to avoid today. My excuse is that the Cold War was still very real in 1984 - a good Orwellian year. I am relieved not to have the same travel, seminar, speaking appearance schedule of those years although I enjoyed it at the time.

Incidentally, I found FM1 Early March 1984 easier to read online rather than from a photocopy since the latter reduces the type size and price scales. I will post FM2 next Friday, and subsequent issues sequentially on a weekly basis.