Origins & Today: James's Road from Engineer to CLEC

In 30 seconds: CLEC didn’t appear out of nowhere. James was an electronics engineer at Acer, sent to the US in 1990, and pulled into investing by his friend Frank Lee — a mutual-fund shortlist and a $2000 account.¹ What followed was a “decade of ignorance”: he couldn’t hold Starbucks, chased and dumped HTC, churned through active funds — and every loss became one of today’s doctrines: buy and never sell, don’t chase and dump, own only the US large-cap index. After retiring he studied Zi Wei Dou Shu and hypnotherapy, opened one “spiritual finance” class for five or six people, and it grew into today’s CLEC.²³ This page ties his life back to the ideas it produced.

📖 Distilled from CLEC’s official e-book Origins & Today, James’s own account collecting 91 of his Facebook articles. People, companies and figures follow the original; for investing views, defer to the current version on each topic page — what this page adds is their origin.

1. Starting point: engineer at Acer, expat in the US (1990)

James studied electronic engineering and joined Acer’s product design division, spending two happy years in Taipei designing its best-selling PC systems (710, 510+, 915V, 915P).¹ Early on he saw that most Taiwanese tech firms were “just making plastic flowers” — buying others’ machines, bolting Intel boards to Microsoft software, assembling for export at razor-thin value — while America’s strength was originality (building up from first principles of physics). That “innovation locomotive” insight later became the bedrock reason to invest only in the US.¹

In 1990 he took an expat posting, leading hardware systems in Acer’s multimedia lab (the MP-1 architecture, Acer PAC) and holding a personal patent on computer “hibernation sleep mode.”¹ What changed his life was a golf acquaintance, Frank Lee — who, like a missionary, phoned every Friday, drove him to Charles Schwab to open an account, handed him fund shortlists, and picked two funds for him. James started with his only $2000, found himself “making money” a week later, and the door to investing opened.¹

This is the prototype for CLEC’s “tell everyone about investing” instinct. James later admitted his own zeal was just a rerun of Frank’s (see section 7).²

2. The decade of ignorance: turning losses into doctrine

James calls 1990–2000 his “decade of ignorance,” and wrote out every pit he fell into so students wouldn’t have to.⁴⁵

Starbucks: the regret of not holding → “never sell”

He’d read Peter Lynch on buying “good companies you experience firsthand.” Seeing Taiwan’s first Starbucks on Taipei’s Linsen N. Road — clean, bright, baristas who knew his name and his Venti order — he judged it a great business and bought from $6 up to $9, holding about 2/1000 of the company (2000 US stores then — “like owning four outlets”).⁴ That owner’s mindset — “wanting to own 100% of the whole company” — is, he says, exactly the psychology behind Buffett-style long holding.⁴

But he was shaken by “demons and monsters of information” — technical analysis, price/volume, options, news that McDonald’s would sell coffee, that Peet’s tasted better, that beans would rise, that profits would shrink — and sold. His conclusion is blunt: “If I could have held Starbucks to today and never sold, I’d be far richer.”⁴ This is the origin story of 從擇時操作到打死不賣.

HTC: the ignorance of momentum/trend trading

He started buying HTC around NT$300–400 in 1999 and added all the way to $1200 — “momentum investing,” “trend investing,” which he calls “grand-sounding jargon that fools others and yourself.” He told classmates to sell when it broke $1100 (broken support), bought again above $1000 (breakout), and finally stopped out below $900. All of it “brainless, ignorant operating” that got lucky — “but if I’d kept operating like that, I could never have retired early.”⁴ A first-hand cautionary tale for chasing highs, dumping lows, trading in and out.

Active funds and gutted stocks: why only the US large-cap index is left

• Active funds: he obsessively collected Schwab’s fund shortlists and magazine rankings, buying OAKMX, OAKBX — “mediocre” in hindsight (SPY rose 9x over the period; the two funds only 4x and 3x). Four active funds CLEC had recommended fell ~30% in late 2021 (QQQ only 16%). Conclusion: “even the best active fund still can’t beat the market.”⁴⁵
• Individual stocks and “gutting”: small names like 8x8 and ESST returned just 1.6% annualized over 25 years, or delisted; a Taiwanese display-brand he owned was “gutted” by a US subsidiary that stiffed the parent into bankruptcy, leaving the shares as wallpaper. Hence his strong opposition to single stocks, and his warning about Asian/emerging-market governance — “boards setting up outside companies and gutting the parent are everywhere.”⁵
• Not Europe or emerging markets: small/mid-cap indices carry survivorship bias and bigger swings; Europe innovates little and its tax/labor regime is “more socialist than socialism,” so profit never reaches investors; emerging markets have rampant insider trading and gutting with little legal recourse. Netted out, the “only investment target” left is the US large-cap passive index, QQQ/SPY.⁵

Together these three form the origin of the whole “why not the alternatives” argument in 為什麼是納斯達克100.

3. Dodging two bubbles: luck, not prediction

In early 2000, meeting Dell in Dallas, James saw at breakfast that a big company had reported earnings “below expectations” (large-caps had beaten for a decade-plus). Sensing something wrong, he went back to his room and sold most of his tech stocks (including Cisco), dodging the dot-com bust.⁶ But he stresses: “This is no basis at all — beyond luck, I absolutely have no ability to predict the market.”⁶

He also recorded the mania signals: engineers all rushing to grab IPOs, everyone talking stocks in restaurant parking lots, Yahoo parking a sports car out front to poach engineers, AT&T buying a dozen-person company for nearly $5 billion in an all-stock deal (his first taste of financial-asset asymmetry).⁶ Those “even non-investors became stock gods” top signals line up exactly with 崩盤是朋友 and 從擇時操作到打死不賣.

4. Rebuilding Acer (1999–2004): focus, going with fate, the wisdom of leaving

In late 1999 Taiwan’s GM flew to the US to ask him back to fight the fire; he “said yes within a second” — giving up a US salary of $160k/year for an NT$130k/month Taiwan salary (under $50k/year).⁷ He rebuilt Acer’s R&D and engineering process, winning Intel’s “world-first on-time mass production” medal; moved to the brand business group managing suppliers; and during SARS led a team to Foxconn’s Longhua plant, working through the Lunar New Year to ship exactly on time.⁷

Those four years forged several worldviews that recur across CLEC:

• Focus: good products get buried in a big company’s small division (the Yahoo Messenger example); for firms as for people, “focus is competitiveness.”⁷
• Going with fate, listening to the inner voice: at pivotal moments an inner voice always spoke first; “investing is the same — I keep listening to an inner voice: critique, reflection, correction.”⁷⁸
• Ten years as a unit: the school decade, study; the work decade, work; the child-raising decade, put the children first — deciding by asking “what matters most in this decade?”⁷
• Position is temporary: “your perks and rights come from that office and the title on your card”; leave and you’re nothing. Real success is being missed after you’re gone.⁷

When Acer’s stock returned to a $120 high and his career peaked, he resigned to raise his daughter — echoing 別為錢賣命: Wang Chen-tang had floated a NT$100M bonus per BU head if things kept going well, but he’d already decided to leave and “never gave that NT$100M a thought.”⁷

5. Back to the US (2004): class, dignity, and investing education

He resigned and returned in 2004, refusing to become “a synonym for a dad off making money,” and opposing shipping kids abroad as young students alone — “what many successful entrepreneurs regret most is not being there as their children grew up.”⁸

A week as a school-van driver: after retiring he volunteered to drive a cancer-stricken colleague’s kids for a week, going from senior tech executive to blue-collar driver, and felt first-hand the distrust and contempt aimed at blue-collar work (parents coming to “check out the new driver,” a teacher sneering “our school isn’t a daycare”). He resolved to “treat blue-collar people with dignity.” This is the source of the dignity/class concern in 勞工還是資本家 and 快樂是人權.⁸

Teaching his daughter to invest: her question — “Daddy, how come you have money?” — became the perfect teaching moment, which he explained as “you drink Starbucks coffee, Starbucks makes money and shares it back, so you don’t have to spend.”⁸ The concrete method is worth any parent’s attention:

• From elementary school, $10/week: “whatever you don’t spend, put in the jar — I’ll match whatever you save” (matched contributions).
• Once the jar hit ~$500, move it to a Charles Schwab investment account; New Year’s and birthday money all went into the investment account.
• Twenty years later the account peaked at $500,000; now working, she puts a fixed $19,500/year into a Roth 401K — “retirement is no longer a problem” ($30k/year, ~$7M after 30 years).⁸

Core belief: “Investing education should start as early as possible.”⁸

6. A lifelong bond with Apple: from Apple II to iPod

The summer of his freshman year he worked, bought an Apple II board kit at Taipei’s Chunghwa Market, and assembled it himself — even hand-touching matrix wires through a keyboard controller to input programs. That engineer’s intuition later gave him “an edge over any analyst.”⁸ Around 2000, seeing the earliest iPod at Stanford’s bookstore, he was stunned by that smooth, precise click wheel, judged Apple’s future limitless, and “besides Starbucks, held only Apple.” He even read a company by “how tidy its retail stores are” — Apple’s shift from messy to spotless signaled its turnaround.⁸ A live example of investing in good companies you experience yourself.

7. Today’s origin: from “spiritual finance” to CLEC

In retirement he first studied Zi Wei Dou Shu (Chinese astrology) and hypnotherapy, seeking answers from another layer of human wisdom. What he distilled — “go with fate, heed the inner voice,” “when you have money, buy the index, don’t hesitate” — became the spiritual undertone of his investing and teaching.²

The teaching had been brewing all along: since 1990 he’d been “telling everyone about investing” like Frank once did — so much so that he wrecked gatherings. Before leaving Taiwan to retire, he met a friend at Starbucks whose first words were “Please stop talking about investing.” That moment made him realize he’d become “the ruiner of the mood.”²

The real first class came when hypnotherapy classmates, curious how he’d retired early, pushed him to teach — the teacher even named it “Spiritual Finance,” blending astrology, hypnotherapy, and his investing experience. The first class had just five or six people, under two hours, covering only Starbucks and Apple.³ Then:

• A student (today’s CLEC secretary-general, PaoChen) volunteered to find classrooms; James says “without his continued help, CLEC wouldn’t be here today.”³
• At a Panera Bread in Cupertino it grew to seven classes a week, up to 500+ students a year, charging only the $60 room fee and capping enrollment.³
• After COVID-19 it moved online and became completely free to the whole world — “because we teach expecting nothing, there’s no profit or organizational problem”; instructors are veteran students of 10+ years, all unpaid volunteers.³
• In 2005/2006 he returned to Taiwan for his first large class at Acer’s Aspire Park (Evon helped; only costs were charged). Tellingly, he still taught technical analysis then, even simulating live charts — it was precisely from verifying that “technical analysis can’t produce excess profit long-term” that he moved to pure passive investing.³

From Frank’s phone call and a first $2000, to a “spiritual finance” class of five or six, to today’s free, worldwide CLEC — that is “Origins and Today.” The one line running through the whole book: “Buy the US large-cap index, invest long-term, never sell, and you’ll be rich.”⁴

⚠️ This page faithfully distills CLEC’s Origins & Today; it is for education only, not investment advice. Past experience and performance don’t predict the future.

Further reading

• About clec.md (what this knowledge base is)
• 從擇時操作到打死不賣 — how the Starbucks/HTC experience converged on pure passive investing
• 為什麼是納斯達克100 — why the US large-cap index, not single stocks / Europe / emerging markets
• 常見的投資錯誤, 勞工還是資本家, 別為錢賣命

Footnotes

1. Origins & Today, Ch. 1 “Origins” (engineer, expat posting, Frank Lee and the $2000 account), pp. 1–4. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. Origins & Today, Ch. 10 “My Post-Retirement Study of Zi Wei Dou Shu and Hypnotherapy” pp. 39–41 and Ch. 11 “The Road to Teaching” p. 42 (going with fate, the “stop talking about investing” epiphany). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Origins & Today, Ch. 11 “The Road to Teaching” pp. 42–46 (the first “Spiritual Finance” class of five or six, PaoChen finding classrooms, Panera Bread, 500 students a year, free online after COVID, the 2005/2006 first class back in Taiwan at Aspire Park). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. Origins & Today, Ch. 2 “My First Starbucks Shares” pp. 5–7, and Ch. 4 “My First Decade Investing (Ignorance)” pp. 12–16 (Starbucks, HTC, his first Acer shares, “buy and never sell and you’ll be rich”). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

5. Origins & Today, Ch. 4 “My First Decade Investing (Ignorance)” pp. 14–18 (active funds OAKMX/OAKBX, 8x8/ESST, the gutted display company, why only US large-cap and not small/mid-cap, Europe, or emerging markets). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. Origins & Today, Ch. 5 “The 2000 Dot-com Bubble and the Subprime Storm” pp. 19–21 (the Dallas breakfast sell, the IPO frenzy, AT&T’s all-stock acquisition, “beyond luck, no ability to predict”). ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. Origins & Today, Ch. 3 “Joining Acer’s 2000 Restructuring” pp. 8–11 and Ch. 6 “My Four Years at Acer Taiwan” pp. 22–27 (returning to firefight, the salary trade-off, Intel’s on-time award, Foxconn’s Longhua plant, focus / fate / the ten-year unit / position is temporary). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

8. Origins & Today, Ch. 7 “Returning to the US in 2004” p. 28, Ch. 8 “The Days Raising My Daughter” pp. 33–35, and Ch. 9 “My Lifelong Bond with Apple” pp. 36–38 (the school-van driver week, matched-contribution investing for his daughter, Apple II / iPod). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸