Rob Kirby is a financial commentator and former broker who worked on an institutional trading desk for most of the 1980s and right up until 1996. He also worked for 11 years at Prebon Yamane, an international inter-dealer broker of foreign exchange and interest rate products. He spent an additional year at another money/bond broker called Freedom Bond Brokers, then spent two years at Garban Inc., another inter dealer bond brokerage in Toronto - and left the industry in 1996. He started writing in 1997, and was involved in a number of entrepreneurial pursuits from marketing Buffalo meat to a part time stint in the giftware business. In 2002, he went to work for Investor's Group, the largest Mutual Fund Company in Canada. He worked there up until September '04 when he resigned to write about the markets - and his book - from a "gold bug's" point of view. His website is called Kirby Analytics.