There is one thing the subculture’s best and brightest agree about: there is NO takeaway, no lasting lesson, from the madness of markets.

You were right; you were wrong. You made money. You lost your shirt. You knew what was coming; you could not do a thing about it.

Few of us, philosophers and behavioral investors such as Woody Dorsey and Jim Dines excepted, can justify the energy required to examine irrational behavior with a rational mind.

My old friend Mr. Dines, who lives up the road from us in Belvedere, California, just told me over a slow and delicious lunch at the Buckeye Roadhouse, “Knowing what you know about yourself will make or save you more money than winning an alimony judgment.” Mr. Jim, as I call him, will be giving one of his rare presentations to an audience next week at the San Francisco Gold and Hard Assets Show.

I have been going to the show, on and off, since the mid-1990s, when my excellent friend and now fabulous restaurant owner Sandy Lawrence used to run it. Sandy now runs what the New York Times calls the second best new restaurant in the nation for 2008, _Ubuntu on the grape-harvesting city of Napa’s Main Street. It is a vegetable restaurant, Sandy and her chef, Jeremy, point out. Not a vegetarian restaurant, mind you.

But I digest. Really I do. Pizzas and omelets to cry for.

The hard assets shows that travel North America, along with Joe Martin and his Cambridge House’s Canadian versions, attract what I believe is the nuttiest scrum of crazed and beautiful people who can cram their crystal tinged toes into a hotel ballroom. (Thom sets the scene in this 2003 article.)

I mean, where else can you see our beloved subculture of subscribers and garage loft investors fingering gold and silver coins, smoothing their palms over geological maps as if they were displayed in Braille, and listening to folks such as Dines, who generally comes accompanied by his Amazonian Dinettes (enough said about that)?

When the gold show scene was cooking, back in the early part of this decade, I remember having dyed my hair gold and wearing a pair of dollar-$ign golden spectacles to conferences in London, New Orleans, San Francisco and New York. I was mobbed, mauled and marked up. “Hey look, it’s Mister Melt-UP in the flesh,” was what I got in the Marriott lobby of one of those shows, just before delivering my own little chat about commodities and currencies.

The new operators of the Hard Assets Show this coming week were kind enough to let me take a seat on an early morning panel. The show is this Sunday and Monday at the Marriott in downtown San Francisco. I think the subculture plans on attending this shows, and others like it, as they used to when gold in 2001 and 2002 was poised for its lead role on the stage of 30%-plus compound annual returns.

Anyway, I have to pick up some more gold coins from an old friend.

That is it for now. The second issue of Ticker Trax By Thom Calandra next week will be on its way to paying subscribers -- our subculture, so to speak. We will have in the new service what might become the planet’s best short-sale candidate, plus more from the best and the brightest across the planet, starting up north.

Ticker Trax By Thom Calandra will explore planet Earth for those few stakes that offer the prospect of excellent, in some cases cosmic, returns. It is for those who are entirely at ease with stratospheric levels of risk. (Please click here for charter sign-up.)

As we complete our investment research, we fully hope and expect, but cannot and do not promise, stratospheric returns. (Please see inaugural issue of Ticker Trax.) I believe there is a case to be made for individual securities that represent small and mid-sized companies in life sciences, mining, agriculture and energy. Precious and some base metals also get my attention.  

 See you on Ticker Trax.

HOLDINGS: Thom’s cosmos of holdings is listed for free Stockhouse members on www.Stockhouse.com under the “portfolio setting” for user TCALANDRA. He and his family also own recently minted gold coins. For more ThomWatch, please click here.

THOM’S STORY: Thom Calandra helped his audience find value in a quagmire of investment choices. He also settled a valid complaint with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission in 2005. Thom co-founded CBS MarketWatch, MarketWatch.com and FT MarketWatch in Europe. As the voice of Thom Calandra's StockWatch and The Calandra Report, Thom fancied $300-ounce gold before that metal became an investment rage. Thom visited bioscience companies, metals mines and scores of thin-crust pie joints across the planet in a search for profit, fashion and pizze de trippa gorgonzola. Thom's novel PABLO BY NUMBERS was completed in summer 2008.