Hey there, passive traders, I got a really special treat for you today. Recently, we did a special presentation. And the feedback was amazing. And so we decided, hey, we need to share this. So this is why we're putting it out there. Okay, the two things that we talked about in this presentation, were number one, we talked about what are the things that are coming down the pike in 2024? What are the threats that we should be aware of now there are two different types of threats, there's first order threats, and then second order threats. First Order threats are the things that we all know about. We see him in the media with him in the news, all that stuff, those we cover some of them the ones that are really important, but we also go over the second order threats. Now, second order threats are things that are not covered in the media, they are the result of other things, those are the things that are really scary, and we really need to be worried about. And these are some of the things that I am most concerned about right now for myself and my family. And that's why I went through them. So you would be aware of them as well, you will see the signs of what's coming. And you could take action, but not everybody can take action. So that's why part two of this presentation was very important, because I go over that there is a actually elite group of people that are insulated enough that they do not have to worry about these threats as much as the rest of us. Okay, they are, I don't know, lucky, hardworking, whatever you want to call them. But they don't have to worry about them as much. Now some of the things they do, but they can insulate themselves, so that these second order threads do not affect them as much. And then I go into who these people are, and how they're insulated, and then how we can insulate ourselves from these second level threats. So that's the gist of this video and presentation. I hope you enjoy it. And I hope you take notes and implement what you're going to learn.  Thing is that whenever we talk about trading, right, everybody says I want more money. That's number one, like I just want more money, I want to be free, I want to have more time that it up. But when you do, when you go deeper into it, it's more about the way you feel. And it's more about being happier, being more carefree, having less stress. Don't you agree. I mean, money is great. But you can't eat it. Right? You can buy stuff with it, you can make yourself feel better. But it's all about the emotions and the feelings and how we feel because you know, you can't take it with you. So what's the point of it, while we're here, we need to use it to make ourselves feel better. And so when it comes to these feelings when it comes to the way we want to be perceived, according to Tony Robbins, there are six basic human needs, that we all need to live a fulfilled life, right, and you can see the six there. But the first one, the very first one and the core, human need is certainty, without certainty, without being sure without being, you know, knowing what's happening, you will never feel safe, you will never feel protected, and you're never going to feel happy. It's not it just doesn't happen. Without that basic layer on the bottom. That certainty if you don't feel that, you know, if you're if you're always afraid of what's happening, or what's coming or you know, you're uncertain, it's very stressful for the body, stressful for the mind, and you never feel protected or happy. But when you think about the current state of the economy, what do you guys think? Do you think you feel certainty with the economy? Or do you feel a certain certainty about the economy? Most of us, at this point, are feeling uncertainty, and a lot of it. And 2024 is going to be dishing up a lot more than we had in 2023. A lot more than usual. Because Americans right now are living more in fear than ever in recent history. You see, like Robert says, right? He's uncertain, but not just about the economy. Right? And I don't want to dwell on this too much because the point of the workshop is going to be to help you create a plan to help you not be affected by all these, but we need to know what we're dealing with. So I want to ask you again, what is keeping you up at night? So a lot of you guys said that you are feeling uncertain. You are feeling that? You know, there's stuff there that's bothering you. What is it what is keeping you up at night? What fears are you dealing with right now? And I really would like to know the answer to these to see if we can address them. Right? What do you see coming down the horizon? Like stuff that's happening? You know, we're gonna go over some of them. But if there's something specific that you tend to be worried about, so Joel is saying lack of funds. That's a good one. I often hear people saying, you know, the health issues are a problem. Having enough money for retirement, somebody said that they wanted more money in retirement supplemental income, right, that's another one. So the first thing I want to do is show you how many of us have stuff in common. And then I'm gonna go over a few that you might not even be thinking about, I'm talking about the fears, right? So Jen saying making sure she has enough money in the future, even when the market goes down, or stalls, this is great, because those things might be happening, they might be coming, right? So here are the top fears in 2023. The top fears that Americans had this year, now, there's a bunch of stuff on there, you take something as simple as drinking water now, where I live, which is outside in the suburbs of Houston, right? We don't even think about drinking water. It's like a non thing. Like if our drinking water wasn't safe, there'd be like an uproar. Right. But the people in Flint, Michigan, you've heard that stories, they still don't have clean drinking water. Right? And I hear people asking, Well, you know, if they don't have drinking water, why did they just move on, or they just fix it? Well, I bet they would love to, but they're not able to probably because they can't afford it. And then you got other stuff on here. You know, cyber terrorism, biological warfare, government, corrupt officials, there's so much stuff out there, that these are neither just the top 10. And these are not even the ones that most of the ones that I had identified. So here's some more, you know, Social Security for those you guys who are worried about retirement or getting close to retirement, and those of us who are paying into Social Security, the administration itself this year, said that it's not going to be able to pay the full amount of benefits. After 2033, In 10 years, right? In 10 years, Social Security might be bankrupt or might not be able to resolve it. In a Gallup poll this year 57% of working adults said that they're not going to have enough money for retirement, that's more than half the people in this country are not going to have enough money for retirement. And then, you know, obviously, they're expecting Social Security to bail them out. But then we just saw Social Security might not even be there, when we're in might not be able to give all of it that it's supposed to. So we got some big issues coming. Now. They asked the AARP members, what are the things you're afraid of? And so these are them some of their answers. So number one was inflation. Right? And it's inflation is the number one reason that people are pushing back their retirement years. So they're supposed to retire this year, they're gonna retire next year, the year after two years from now. That's horrible. That's scary, right there to push back. Number two is fear of Social Security. being wildly it's not going to be there. Right. That's the the main source of income for three out of five retirees. So what is that I don't even know what the percentage is, like 60 Some percent, or 70% of the people that are retired retirees, most of their money comes from Social Security. And they've sat there, geez, look out, look out below, right. They're afraid of a volatile market, I believe Jen said the same thing, right? If you are on a fixed income, then any shock to the stock market is going to be a problem is going to be an issue. And this is whether you're younger, older, retired or not. Number four, this was a weird one that I had never thought about. But it's fear that the kids won't leave. So whatever the reason, and we're gonna get into a bunch of reasons, a lot of kids are going to be coming back home or they're already home, and they're not going to leave. That's another one. And then fear of the unknown. So we had different things happen this year, bank failures, layoffs, all that sort of thing. It's going to get worse. Right? So what else is coming? Well, the recession still hasn't come yet. According to statistics, com, there's a 56% chance that the recession will be coming next year, September, if you remember, right, all the guys on TV, all the pundits are like, Oh, the recession is here. It's actually needed and then never showed up. And then they were like, oh, yeah, and now there's no recession coming, what what happened, right, but the data definitely shows that things are slowing down, that things are not as rosy as they say on TV. And also, we're expecting massive layoffs, not just a little layoff because in 2023, the bright spot, the thing that everybody was pointing to was the tight labor market, meaning if you wanted to get a job, you could originally there were two jobs out there for every one person looking for a job. That's not the case anymore. And in 2024 92% of companies are expecting layoffs 92 It's like everyone, every single company is expecting to layoff people. That's nuts. right? So if you have a job right now, yeah, you need to be re-examining that. It's like how secure where what kind of situate If you deny it, then if you don't get laid off by the economy, there's a good chance that you might just be completely replaced by artificial intelligence. And these are just some of the jobs where people have already been replaced by AI. And you have designers, you have lawyers on this list, you have doctors, accountants, truck drivers. I mean, I don't know if you guys know this, but they have self driving semi trucks all over Florida, where there's nobody in the cab, there's nobody there. Like, and that's, that's coming across the country. All the images that you will see in this presentation, we're done by AI, I did not hire a graphic designer to go out and create these images. I went over to Bing typed in what I wanted, and it gave me the images for this. And you'll see some of them are freaking amazing. Is your job on this list? If it's not, unfortunately, it probably will be sued, if it's automated at all in any way. And so guess what else we have? And coming in 2024, we have a presidential election, and according to a lot of Republicans, the last ones to push it over? So who's gonna know who knows what's gonna happen in this one? Right? And whether you agree with that or not, I mean, in my case, I believe that we have one candidate who I have serious doubts about if he's even going to be alive at the election time, and the other one who might be in jail at election time. So it's definitely going to be a circus, something to watch. Unfortunately, it's going to impact us one way or the other, it's going to be a major impact. Now, what about interest rates? Aren't they coming down? No, not really. According to Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed, he says they still might go up again, and they're not going to come down and flail inflation is at 2%, which should happen sometime in 2026. So we still got another three years before rates come down. And if they don't come down, then again, shrinking the economy. But the rates themselves cannot go down. Because the US Treasury needs to continue selling large amounts of debt, to pay for the bills, the US is running, right? Currently, the US debt is over $33 trillion, $33 trillion, is what our debt is, and it just continues to grow. And those of you who are like Dave Ramsey fans, probably not gonna like this fact. But the government collects $5 trillion in revenue, that's how much it gets in taxes and all the other stops, but it spends six and a half trillion, so we're going negative every year, that's just didn't spend it. Forget about the debt, this is just a spinning back, we already have a lot of debt, we have to pay interest on it, this is several separate, so they won't be able to lower the rates, because they're gonna have to keep the rates high, because otherwise nobody's gonna borrow the money from the US. It's not now as you probably already know, this something that's going to hit us right in the wallet, right? We already know food prices have gone up. But not only do food prices have gone up, but companies are making the food smaller. So you see this package of Oreos, this used to be the original size. Now it's like this. I mean, you're probably getting how many left fewer cookies are you getting. And then over here, this with the ketchup packet, that's a Whopper Jr. A Whopper Jr used to be pretty big. Now it's smaller than your fist. I mean, it's incredible. And even if inflation goes down, even if inflation goes down, like the prices go back down, the size of the food and the size of the packaging will not go back to where it was. Because companies are higher are happy, right, their costs are less, but the prices will be high. So they are not going to change, we will still be ending up paying more just to get the same amount that we were getting before. And so the government will keep spending more money, it will keep borrowing more money and paying higher interest rate to borrow their money. More and more people are gonna get laid off, people are going to cut back on spending because they're getting laid off or they're afraid of getting laid off as much as they can. Which means that companies will sell less, and they will make more profit, which means stocks will go down. And everyone's gonna go crazy over the election. And that's, that's just I'm just getting started. Unfortunately, if that wasn't bad enough, I want to go into the things that I'm most scared about. I'm not even worried about these things. I'm looking at the things that I'm most scared about. And these are issues that are not so obvious. But they will definitely impact all of us out there. I mean, doesn't matter, right. And they're already are impacting us. So number one, we talked about the federal debt and the continuous spending. Well, what do you think happened? Are you What do you think is going to happen? When that continues? Where do you think the government is going to get the money to pay all of its bills? There's only one place it can get the money. And that's us. Yeah, more printing? No, no, Rob, it's coming from us. Because they already printed a lot. They can't print more. There's nobody else there's gonna be he's gonna borrow it. They're gonna get the money from us. You and me. You can bet your bottom dollar that your taxes are going up. I don't care which party is in charge. They will raise taxes, income tax, state tax, property tax, sales tax debt tax inheritance tax, they will raise tax on the companies. And the companies will then just what turn around and raise prices on everything. So we will be ending up paying that tax as well. So that is coming. Number two, war with China. I think this is pretty much a given. The question is when the why doesn't even matter could be Taiwan, it could be trade, it could be something who knows? It's going to happen. Because if you look at history, that's the way it works. Right? Now, if you know want to know the exact reason, then there's a book out by a guy named Ray Dalio, who explains it in detail. He is the founder of the world's largest hedge fund. So the guy's pretty smart. He's got a lot of assistants that did a lot of research. And they looked at all of the empires in the world going back hundreds of years, and what they have together, and what makes one go up, what goes down. And so that's it, you have the Empire of the US. And then you have the growing empire of China. And the only way for China to overcome and overtake the US and being the dominant is through war. That's the way it happens. So the war is coming. The threat is real. And so for the US to stay on top to be the top empire of the world, right? We cannot spend less money on our military, especially the Navy, and the Navy is the most expensive branch of the armed forces. So we can't spend less, especially when you add in the fact that over 50% of our youth cannot even serve in the army because they're too fat. This blows my mind. It gets really scary. Like, what happens if we go to war, and half the people can't even go to war? Because they're too fat? So does that mean there's going to be a shortage of soldiers? Yes, obviously, what do they do then? Are they going to have a draft? Possibly. And for people like me, and for many like you, if you have boys or brothers or whatnot that are going to be of draftable age, you know, anywhere from like 16 or 18, up to 30? In the next few years? It really makes me scared. It really makes you wonder I don't want my kids going to war in a situation. But if it's not, you know, for defense, I don't know. Right? To me, this is the biggest fear I have. But when you have money, there are choices. Okay, I hope that the war is avoided. But if human history is any indication, it's a matter of when not if. And then the last thing that I'm worried about is probably the largest. And that's climate change. So I don't care if you don't believe or, you know, you if you do believe in global warming, if it's man may not may, man, whatever, the world is getting warmer. And that's affecting everybody this year, on record hottest year ever, right. And there are three major changes happening right now because of warming. Number one is migration. So we already have an issue with illegal immigrants at the border, it's only going to get worse, because most of the migrants that are coming from those countries sit on the equator, right, where it's very hot, people will do whatever they have to do to survive. And that means a lot of them will move. So you can see how many people what percent of the population is already moving around the world. And it will affect us in the US as well. The coasts are already seeing flooding, and massive beach erosion, adding the wildfires adding the droughts, the water shortages, and all the major rivers like the Colorado and the Mississippi, and you have, you're gonna have massive migration, you're gonna have massive people moving from one part of the country to the other, just like all over the world. And then there's the second thing that I want to go into anybody know what this country is? Let me know in the chat. Anybody have any guess what this country is? I'll give you a hint. It's run by this guy. Okay. Kentucky, no It is Syria, Syria. This guy. Assad has been in power since the year 2000. So he's been in power a while. But then in 2011 11 years after he took over. There was a civil war erupted. And it's still going on. It's still not over. Right. So what was the tipping point? What caused 1000s and 1000s of peoples to take arms against the government to fight back and risked their lives? Do they just wake up one day and be like, oh, man, hey, it's a good day to die today. Let's go fight somebody, or was it something else? Right, probably. Here it is. There's something else was that the country suffered a massive five year drought from 2006 to 2011, which resulted in agricultural failure, mass poverty and joblessness. So, yeah, warming led to drought, which led to crop failing, which led to migration to the cities, which led to not enough food or jobs, which led to civil war. Anybody see a pattern there? What we just went through, right? I mean, the US is not there yet. But there is something to keep it If Syria might just be a few years ahead of us, and maybe not with all this stuff, who knows what's gonna happen with the war? I mean, we're getting close to, you know, people fighting. So I don't know that social upheaval. That's another thing that's coming. Now I have a pop quiz for you guys. Keep it fun, right? Keep it light. No, sorry. Which is the most deadly animal to humans? I'm sure somebody's gonna get it. But what's the most deadliest animal to use it? Do you think it's sharks? Bears? Lions? Tigers, humans? Humans? Yeah, we gotta go. No, it's not exactly humans. But was it? Greg, Greg nailed it. Greg nailed it is the mosquito. Because of all the disease that these suckers carry, right, you got Zika, Dengue fever, West Nile, I don't even know what the heck that is malaria, yellow fever. In the past, you only had to worry about these diseases. If you visited Africa or the tropics, not anymore. Many of these diseases are appearing in the US because the mosquitoes now have a much larger and longer survival season. Because in order to kill mosquitoes, you need to have a very hard freeze. These are becoming fewer and fewer as the years go on. Now, I remember back in 2004, while back almost 20 years, when I got married, we took our honeymoon in Alaska. And all the tour guides up there were complaining about mosquitoes because it was like the first year they ever saw mosquitoes up there. And that was 20 years ago. Right? So this is a map of the US and all the all the orange ones are where we've had West Nile virus impacting people. And just about almost every state has had a West Nile virus infection. And I mean, you cannot protect yourself from getting bit by a mosquito. Right? This stuff is scary. And it's getting worse. So to summarize, what are the things that we can be afraid of? Well, there's the continued inflation and inflation, there's a presidential election coming up, there's the recession, that's going to be happening. There's the massive layoffs which are already coming, they're already happening, you just gonna be more, there's going to be higher rates for longer, there's going to be higher cost of health care. That's been going up year after year. But if you get sick, if you get a disease, if you get any of these issues, right, costs of healthcare is gonna go up. And we're already running out of doctors and nurses and all that stuff. So I mean, I don't even go into that part. There's so many things that we were living out and coming soon that higher taxes, possibly world war three, Social Security failure, more climate migration, more illnesses, pathogens, pandemics. Yeah, Mark saying the possible government shutdown, there's so much. And as I read this list, you know, all the things that are coming, I'm just, I'm getting stressed out. Right now I can see some of your faces you guys are you guys are getting stressed. Right, Tony, you jumping off a bridge? No, you might feel the stress, just building my body. But there is there is a solution. Maybe not to everything, but at least the things that we can control. There is a solution to that. And I want to share that with you. But there is plenty to be afraid of. And I would like to know, maybe in the chat, you know, what are the things? are you most concerned about? What are the things that are bothering you the most that is going to have the hardest impact on you? Or the largest impact? Let me know in the chat. Because I mean, there's there's plenty of uncertainty around us all the time, and it's only going to increase next year, I think it's gonna get worse. And that's why I'm doing this presentation. Last year, I didn't do it. Right. This is the first time I'm doing this. Because I'm like, man, there's there's a lot of stuff coming. The general public is scared. But that's not what I want for you guys. That's not what I want for us. Because fear. It only makes our problems grow. Right? When we're afraid of something, it leads to more issues, once you're afraid leads to stress leads to mental issues, health issues, families, harmony, all that stuff. So mentally, we need to acknowledge these possibilities, but we can't be paralyzed by them. And the more we dwell on them, the more power they have on us. And the first step to overcome our fear is to recognize what we can control and to shift our focus. Right. So what do we do? What do we do to shift our focus? What do we shifted to? That's a great question. So you want to shift your focus to where you want to go? Not on what you fear. So we talked about all these things to be afraid about. Now, most of them we can't do anything about right. So whether we're having a recession, whether we're having laid off, whether you get laid off or not, whether you get sick or not from the mosquito biting or whatnot, there's nothing we can do about those things. So being afraid of those things doesn't really help us. So as Tony Robbins says you focus on where you want to go. You focus on the things that you're driving towards the positive the growth right and So let us not worry about we cannot control. You guys with me here. Does it make sense? Let's focus on what we can do right now. So that we don't have to be afraid anymore. And so this is the reason why I created options genius in 2009 was to help share what I learned about options trading. So people that live a better life, but I had no idea how important this stuff was going to be, until I saw it in 2024. I mean, it's more important now than ever before. And it has really reenergized me, to help me keep fighting and keep spreading the message, and maybe more committed to be helping you guys so that you don't fall victim to what's happening out there in the world, you guys do not need to be the three out of five people that are relying on Social Security, that are afraid that is going to fall and have nothing, you know, they have no back, nothing to back it up. That doesn't need to be you. So that's why we started option genius to help, right? Because out of all this stuff, we need a solution. Because lack of money as a solution, you can grab more money, but we do also need hope. And so at option genius we really want is for all of you guys to have everybody to have a true state of independence. And this is not just like, you know, Patriot independence. It's like real independence, individual on a personal level. So after teaching for 15 years, and coaching 1000s of traders to understand what they really desire, what they really want, and how to help them, I've discovered that there are three main ingredients necessary to achieving true independence. First of all, we've already mentioned this, people wanted this one is financial freedom, right, this is the first one we think about. So you have more than enough money coming in then what you need, so that you're not worried about Social Security, you're not worried about taxes going up, you're not worried about inflation, because you can have the financial wherewithal to withstand it and withhold it. And actually, people with more money actually make more money in time to have inflation, because their assets go up in inflation, so they actually enjoy it. Second, we need time freedom, so that the time that you're spending are yours, and you get to spend them on the things that you want to do. Right. So nobody's getting, there's nobody telling you what to do and where to be, you make those decisions. And then number three is choice, choice freedom, so that you're not limited by anybody else's rules. You make your own rules, like those people in Flint, Michigan, right? They are reliant on the government shipping and water, fresh water. And if they don't fish ship in the fresh water, what do they do, they have no water, if to use the junk that comes out of the pipe until they have to wait around until those pipes are fixed. If they're ever going to be fixed. They have no choice. If you have independence, you have the choice to say you know what, that's not good enough. That's not good enough for me. And for my family. We're out of here. And that's what I want for you. And coming up, we want to be looking at a plan to help you achieve all three of these. So stay tuned. So let's see how this would work for you. Now, this is where we start to leave the fear behind and to move into our potential. All right. So now, again, let me know in the chat, what are your goals? So your homework was to post your number one financial goal in the group? Those of you who did it, I'm gonna applaud you and say, hey, look, you are way more likely to achieve your goal because you took action. And the others maybe not so much. They quit dreaming, right? Maybe they're jaded. They didn't do that. But we need to end that right now. Because before you can achieve your dream, you need a destination that excites you. So let me know in the chat guys. What is your number one financial goal? Could be for 2024 It could be longer. And if you have more than one go ahead and share it like let's go ahead and let's be limited Alright, so I know Connor you had posted Yours Yours was a good one. I forgot who else posted somebody wanted a Corvette I liked it. That was amazing. You know, so anybody else want a new car? Right? It doesn't have to be like serious stuff right let's have some fun too. This is the on the right that's what did the Lexus TX I'm actually going to be test driving that one to see if we get that one. It hasn't come out yet. But they have some for test driving. Anybody here? Oh, Eric's Eric's called Eric was the Corvette. All right, cool. Anybody want a new house? And when you want a house with a pool, maybe as it's getting hotter climate change, right. You're gonna need to clean off. I would advise against the pool maybe though? Yeah, like, we use our pool and our house like maybe two maybe three times a year. Max. What about a vacation? Anybody looking for family vacations, exotic vacations, anything special. My wife took some of my gains that I've been making from our new strategy that we call market power. And she booked us a Disney cruise. We just got back on Saturday. And the thing was awesome. Like I couldn't believe how nice it was. They have people on the Disney ship. They have people standing at the bathroom in the common areas. Straight, they have come in, they haven't standing at the bathroom. You go into the bathroom, you come out as soon as you come out, they go into clean everything. It was amazing. And it wasn't just like a one person bathroom. After that I went to the bathroom at Orlando airport. And my god, I was gagging. It smelled horrible. There was like, pee all over the floor. And I was like, Well, it's a big difference, right? How about some of you could maybe this was a funny one. But some of you guys, maybe you could use some new teeth, or maybe some new hair? Or maybe even both? Right? It's, it's amazing what money can do. If you just ask Elon, right? This was before money after money, right? Big difference. So Geez. See? Well, I'm gonna read some of you guys off here. Financial Independence Remainer the Corvette for Eric uncommon traitor for Ralph. Bernard saying maintain financial independence. So that's it. Okay, that's awesome. Once Mark wants to make a million dollars, awesome. Trisha wants a new house. Financial freedom, income, financial freedom to travel with no second thoughts. Yeah, that's that's like the choice freedom, right? It's like, hey, I want to wake up. I want to get on a plane and go. That'd be awesome. Matt. 10k a month for Matt. All right, Matthew, be my own boss, make my own schedule, quit my job work from home. Job. That's that's the dream, right? That's the dream. A lot of people have that dream, not only because they want to quit their job, but because they're afraid or they don't like their job. And I was talking to somebody today. He was like, Man, I can't leave my job. It's like, I hate my job. But I can't. I got 15 years to retirement, but I'm not gonna make the most the same amount of money somewhere else. So I'm kind of stuck. It's a horrible way to live. Replace my salary, then double it. Continue with the education start a scholarship. Oh, Jen. That's an awesome one. I love that one. Or actually, I'm actually gonna be doing that this year. So that's awesome. William wants to make 50k a month. Great. It's possible. Traveling while I'm working the markets. Awesome. Great. Cool. I mean, these are great. So now that you have these goals in mind, right? You guys need to ask yourself, like, what is it going to feel like to achieve this goal? What does that mean? Like? What kind of difference would it make? It's easy to just say, oh, yeah, I just want to make 50 grand a month, but you got to feel it. Right? What's the difference to your spouse? What's the difference to your children? What's the difference to your community, once you make it, a desire strong enough, there's nothing that's going to stop. There is nothing gonna stop you if the desire is strong enough. And just want to give you like a picture, I want to give you a picture demonstration. So imagine you're driving down the road in your brand new convertible, or Corvette. That's cool with the top down your thick hair blowing in the breeze as you leave your brand new mansion and head to the airport to jump on your private plane with your closest friends on a two week trip to Europe for skiing, sightseeing, wine tasting river cruising all that stuff. Right? For me tell you a personal story. For me. It took a little less than 10 years to go from being totally broke, to being able to do whatever I wanted. Financial Independence pretty much, right. And since then, I have been lucky enough to be crossing things off my bucket list left and right. You know, two years ago, we started a private foundation to give back and Jen. Next year we're going to be we're not going to be doing a scholarship. But we're working with a particular university where you know, we're gonna give money and set aside a thing for that. This year, I launched a hedge fund, which was also a bucket list item for me in a couple years, I plan to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, with my whole family, we just need my daughter to be a little older. Before we do that, and if a college dropout, a two time college dropout, like me can do these things. There's nothing really stopping nothing at all. Now, I know that you were not born yesterday, right? This is not your first rodeo, and you're not stupid. You've set goals before you've dreamed before. I bet most of you even taken action. And you've tried to reach those goals. But for some reason, it didn't work out the way you want it. So it'd be I'd really appreciate it if you'd be open enough to share with me in the chat. What have you tried in the past? or what have you thought about trying to get to your financial goals? Let me know in the chat, please. Because I mean, I know that I've tried a lot of things before I found what worked for me. I started off the first I think the first thing I started was network marketing and if you guys know what that is like Amway you know where you selling stuff and then you get people under you I wasn't an Amway was something else that was given out catalogs, bothering my family, you sign up under me, and then eventually people just stopped returning my phone calls. At one point, I was a realtor and a mortgage broker. And I realized that I really hate selling things and I am a severe introvert. So going up to somebody in a grocery store and being like, Oh, hey, are you doing you want to buy a house today? Yeah, that's not my cup of tea. I was trading stocks in college. Not doing very well. I tried this chain letter thing once. I don't know if you guys have this. We haven't. I think those died. You know when people started using the internet, but it's a basic level. You get a letter with a list of 10 people and their addresses And you mail $1 to each of the 10 people, okay, then you take off the top name, you add yours to the bottom, and then you print out those letters, and you send them to as many people as you can. So I sent 500 letters, so that was 500 for printing, postage, the envelope all that, because I'm thinking, you know, I'm going to send 500 letters back, I'm gonna get like a lot of money. I'm gonna, you know, at least $500 back. I got one. I got $1 back. And people are surprised that he got $1 back. Oh, man, I bought rental houses before for quote, unquote, passive income. Yeah, no, that doesn't work. I've tried Airbnb ease, we had three at one time. And that turned into more than a full time job. Because you have people at like three in the morning texting you saying, Oh, hey, I need more towels. It's like, I'm asleep, you know, but you have to reply to them within an hour, because that's their rules for Airbnb. So it's not so we got rid of those. I tried. I tried Jeopardy or trading futures. When I was I forgot what it was. It was. It was I think this was the between the first and second time I dropped out of college, and we'd have any money and I wanted to get into trading and my dad didn't want me to get into trading. So he's like, You know what, I'm going to borrow this money on a credit card, and you're going to lose it and then you're never going to trade again because it's going to be so painful. So when he borrowed eight grand, he gave it to me. And I had bought this mini course on how to trade futures and I had done all the technical analysis. I done everything I waited for the perfect time. And then I bought one contract of Japanese yen. And it was supposed to go up. It was perfect. The next morning I wake up I checked the prices and whoa Yen is up. That's awesome. That's great. Then I go and I check my account and my check my account had like $6 in it and I'm like what the what happened? Jen is up when what happened? Then I looked at it and it the Yen had opened low on the day it opened down on the day below my stop so my stop had gotten hit. And it just took the whole account the whole $1,000 and then the yen went up for the next several weeks. So I would have made money but no that's I didn't know how to trade so it's crazy even had to stall at the flea market for a while you know I missed out on my family he killed my back I could go on and on. So it's not I'm going to read some of these cool what you guys did Amazon FBA Yep. Didn't have tried that one. Network marketing, affiliate marketing. Options trading took a major hit car sales. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's I definitely could not do that. I need to figure out another way to maintain or increase my money. Wholesale real estate, property network marketing lots of scams for Rob Oh, geez. crypto. My God. Rental Property Amway customers want consistency but prefer traded me futures? Okay. Oh, well, Bernard. Yeah. So I think based on all this, I think Rob, I think you had the hardest time. So no, oh, no. Was it? Actually Joel, I think we're gonna give you we're gonna give you a t shirt drill. You here for doing car sales. So that's like, I think at all that that was probably the hardest thing. At least for me. Anyway, so Joel, we're gonna get you a t shirt. Just for just for being awesome. And sharing. So thank you all for sharing. I know. It couldn't be easy. But yeah. But yeah, Joel. So judicial official message you and get your information. So now, this is why we're here tonight. Right? We're trying to overcome the fear. And we're trying to arm you with the tools and the strategies to put you on the path to achieve your goals and your dreams. Because we are moving from fear to freedom. We know what we want, right? We already we have our goals. You guys did that part. We did it together. We know what we tried. We just we just did that part. Like we what we've tried what hasn't worked, but we need to know what is holding us back. Because all of us are not stupid. Right? I need to ask you. What's stopping you? What is stopping you from achieving your goals? What is it? Let me know in the chat. Why did it not work out? Why did the Amazon FBA now work out? Why did the wholesaling real estate now work out? Well, I did the I forgot what else. I mean, there was a whole bunch of stuff on there. And, and I know like after talking to so many people, I know that what I've seen over and over and over again. But if you guys didn't tell me what it was, I love to hear it. You know what was it specifically that stopped you from having a workout? For Joel it was the mindset Yeah, I mean carsales on easy. You bust your butt when and actually I think I know what you're saying here. And so normally, right Sanjay lost motivation last persistence. Yeah. Ralph, it was time. For Rob It was lack of commitment to one thing for Jay he was attitude mindset and you got to have massive action for Maynard said he didn't have money and He didn't have the opportunity. So he didn't know he didn't have the money. And he didn't know what to do. Right? And I see a pattern here. And I actually have these on the next on the next slide. So these are the three things that I normally see. Right? These are the three answers that I normally get when I ask this question, what is holding you back? Number one, I don't have enough time. Number two, I don't have enough money. Number three, I don't know enough. So where are the opportunities? How do I do that? How do I find them? How do I how do I make money, right? And I've been there too. I've been there, right? fear, doubt, uncertainty, all of these things can keep us stuck. So what I want to do is a little thought experiment, to see if I can get you to change your perspective. If you guys are with me. And this one is going to be a little for some people is going to be a little tough, okay, just because of the way it's it's set up. But again, you know, no harm is coming to you, no harm is going to come to you. But But this is the thought experiment. So imagine that your child or if you don't have a child, your spouse, or if you don't have a spouse, a loved one, left home this morning and was kidnapped, there's no way you can find them. There's no police, there's no FBI, there's no they can't help you. All you have is a note that says that once you pay, turn over or pay $1 million to the kidnappers, you will get your loved one back. And if $1 million is too small amount like oh, you can write a check for that, then let's make it a larger number, maybe 10 million or 20 million or whatever. But it's a large amount that you don't just have lying around. Okay. That's the situation. a loved one is kidnapped, you have to pay a lot of money, and you can't get them back until you do. And that's the only way to do it. There's no other way. Are you going to tell me that you don't have enough time to get them back? No, because you're going to work night and day to get them released? Are you going to tell me that you don't have enough money? No, obviously, you don't have enough money, but you're going to do whatever it takes to get the money? Are you going to tell me that you don't know how to get them back? Obviously, you don't know how right because you don't have the money. This has never happened before. You just have to figure it out. Because they are depending on you. You are their Savior, their only Savior. You will do whatever it takes as long as it takes because they mean the world to you. They are your why your motivation your whole world. When your desire is strong enough. You can move mountains, but you got to believe it. And you believe it Do you believe? Do you believe that you have that power? Because the limitations that are holding you back? They they have power over you until you decide otherwise, if your desire is strong enough. Now while I hope that no harm ever comes to your family, right, and this was only an exercise, all the things that we talked about earlier are real. And they are happening to your family. Right? Your family is in real danger. If your situation is not good enough, everything we talked about will affect them to probably more because it give their kids they're younger? How will you protect them? How will you care for them? How will you provide for them? There's only one way or there is one way that the rich have used to insulate themselves from the problems of the world. And I want us to use that same method, right. So to get rid of uncertainty and fear. You need to be in control of your own finances, and enhance your own life. There is one thing I've learned that helped me overcome the financial fear in my life. And that was to create my own paycheck, when I'm not relying on somebody else to pay me to give me money. It's just a whole new ballgame. That's the only way I know to have certainty in this economy, in this world in your life by controlling your income, regardless of your education. Doesn't matter if you're educated or not. Regardless of your resources, if you got money or not of your time of your of your location of your health. Doesn't matter where you live, right? If you have your own paycheck, none of that matters. You can't control most things out there. You can't control the economy, the stock market, the government, your job, but you can control your paycheck if if you take action and you make some changes. But most people don't know how to do that. Right? So let's create something for you. Let's go ahead and give you this other exercise to help you create what I call the perfect paycheck generator. Okay, so this is an exercise I did in the past and I wrote down every single thing that I wanted in a job or a business or whatever, a method to generate income. Okay, now, there are millions of ways to make money, right? Most of them are very hard or they take too long or they're too difficult. So if I were to create the perfect income machine, these are all the criteria that I would write. I would want to short learning curve being my own boss, unlimited income potential, no physical labor. I'm a lazy guy, to be honest. You know, I want to be well respected for doing what I do. I want something that's not going to be a short time thing. It's going to work for decades and decades. You know, I don't want to do any selling. I'm not. I'm not, you know, Joel sold cars. That's hard for me. I tried it with houses didn't work at all. I think I sold like three total, because somebody else gave me the deal. They were referrals. I don't wanna do anything illegal. I don't want to go into debt. Right. So is there anything on here that I am missing? Right? Is there anything up here that I'm missing? Now, Jay, saying that, you know, he had his own business, which because of COVID had to close. Lots and lots of hard work. You know, restaurant restaurants are very hard work. Lots of capital investment upfront. If you start to open a restaurant, you gotta go get alone, you got to go into debt. Hopefully the people like it, and you have the right location, all that stuff. I mean, it's really hard. Am I missing anything on here that you guys would want? No. So Mark, saying he wants to build confidence, something that could? Yeah, that could build up your confidence. Ralph saying vacations. Exactly. All the holidays are off. Right? You get all the holidays off? Right? That's what I want. I want to take off days even when there are no holidays. I want to choose the days I want to work. And I think this is Bernard not being able to quit and restart. Jen saying she wants smart people to collaborate with Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't have that one. Being able to work with and collaborate not exactly work for but work with people that are smart, able to help others do the same thing to teach people Oh, that's a good one. Rob, I like that one. Something that we can allow me to attend all my kids events. That's a great one, too. I love these. These are good. So, you know, I looked at just about everything out there. There, you can generate income, I looked at starting a business real estate investing day trading a lot of the stuff that we already talked about. And from my point of view, there's nothing out there that has as many advantages as what I call passive trading. So when you look at all the advantages of passive trading, guess what? It's the same list. Right? It's that exact same list. And that is on purpose. Because I searched for years and years and years to find options, selling, it wasn't an easy thing. But eventually I found it. And then to take selling options and personalize it in a way that it fits to make it into passive trading, which is something that I came up with and that we teach. So it's basically it's a way to make money by selling options in a way that is fun. Simple, takes very little time to do. Now, all the other stuff, right? provide for my family needs, being able to attend my kids events, right? That's what we do every day. So when it comes to making money, the power of passive trading is unbelievable. And I do want to demonstrate it. But I do think it would be better with a volunteer. So if you would let me know in the chat, and there might be a t shirt in it for you if you do. But if you let me know in the chat, if you would like to volunteer, and then this will be something something interesting. Okay. And gents first. All right. So Jen, if you can go ahead and unmute yourself. That will be wonderful. Okay, how you doing? Good. How are you? Good. So do you know what passive trading is by chance? Options? Maybe? I'm just getting the book. All right, cool. All right. So what I want to do with you is run some numbers using your goals, if that's okay, to see if passive trading is worth doing for you. Are you okay with that? Yes. All right, cool. So let me ask you first, how much money do you need for financial independence? If that is even your goal? What is your goal? My goal is 10 million. 10 million. Okay. How much you need for independence? Currently? Probably about 4 million. 4 million. Okay. And that would be like retirement. Yes, you could live, okay. So you can invest the money and you can live off that. Right? Cool. So basically, what my goal is to have have my, my nest egg and then be able to just basically take money out but not really ever have to deplete it or ever really ever have to, I guess, make that number go down too much. Also, does that make sense? So basically replenish it as I go along. And as I said, I would really, really like to fund a couple college scholarships, because I've got two that are getting ready to start next year. And I feel like this is not your own kids. Well, no. I mean, no, not for me. But I'm talking to a lot of people and realizing that it seems like no matter how much money people make that that paying for school is really hard. So I want to help others. Be easier. Wow, that's awesome. That's really cool. Yeah, like that. Okay, so let's see if this would work. So this is our financial independence calculator. Can you see this on this? screen? Yes, calculator? Yeah. Okay, so it's a very simple tool does some very small calculations. So, every month, how much do you think you would need to survive? Or to be decently happy? I'm gonna say about 12,000? Is this what is this before or after text? Ah I don't know, I normally I just skip taxes, because it's like, what tax bracket are you in and all that. But if you want, you want to add, you want to add to it? So say 1515. Okay. 15. Now the other question, because there's always going to ask you like, Okay, how much money you're gonna make? Right? How much money do you make on your money. And so for that, since you are not familiar with passive trading that much, there is a range of what we try to make every month. And so on the low end, we try to do one to 2% per month, on the high end, some of the strategies are more, but I want to use for this scenario, I want to use some real numbers of what we've done the past year. Okay, so I'm going to head on over to this page right here, which is our market power performance page. Now, this is the newest strategy that we've just rolled out earlier this year. And so I have a whole year's worth of real trading data and numbers. And as you can see, we have a bunch of people here and this you can use behind the dot, but this is Connor, he's, I see him here. So he's there. He's one of our original members. So on this page, we have a lot of testimonials, success stories, videos. And then if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you have the number of trades, and the and the results. So these are actual real numbers, real trades, each trade, we try to make about 5%. Now if you add up all these trades, we've had 69 trades so far. And it's about the total result was about 360% for the year, or for 11 months so far. So if you take 360 divided by 11, that comes out to like 32% a month, which is that's just crazy. Phenomenal. But it's just crazy numbers, right? If we, if we use if we use that here, it'll tell you, you can retire like in two months, but let's be a lot more conservative. And let's just say that we are making, say 5% a month. That's one trade of ours is 5%. But let's just say we make 5% a month. Okay, so that is going to tell us that you need $300,000 in your trading account, right now, if you can make 5% a month to earn $15,000. And that's just simple math. Right? So how much capital do you have right now that you can work with that you can trade with? About 500,000? And you plan on adding anything to this? No? No? Okay. All right. So this will take us how long it will take you to retire. And I don't know if it's point one, or if it's just point oh, but it will take you this much to turn 500,000 into the 300, which you already have to make 5% a month. So technically, if you made 5% a month, you could stop working and retire and make a lot more than 15% or 15,000. Right now. I did this with an earlier person earlier today. And his goal was 10,000. And he started with I think, how much was it? I think it was 7000. And he You said he could save 1000. And for him. He was going to retire in like four years. And he was like 26 years old. So the fact that he could retire at age 30 Blew his mind. Right? It's like what? And for you? I mean, it's like, you know, you have the book, you haven't read it the power is there like I do I do this? Well, it's all in there. So this is the type now if you have if you're making 300,000 500,000 a year, and you don't need that much, right? Because you said you're only looking for 15,000 a month, you don't need the rest, you can still make it but you don't need it. That gives you the ability to set up the scholarships, not and that's a lot of scholarships as to not just one or two. But every year you could do that. You're not afraid of the of all the other stuff that we're talking about because you have choices. So I do appreciate your help. Do you have any questions about any of this? Now? Okay, cool. So Jen, thank you very much. Trisha is going to reach out to you and get you your address so we can send you a t shirt. And so now that we've covered just about everything that I wanted to cover, we talked about what's coming down the road, we talked about what we're afraid of, we talked about what we want, what's holding us back. And now, you know, I love this calculator because it kind of gives us a way to show like, hey, look, it's just numbers. It's just math. Right? If you can get these results, then the problems go away. The solution is there. And I showed you the numbers from our market power program. Are you ready to get started with passive trading, and be a consistent and confident and profitable trader generating cash flow consistently from the stock market? Well, I have some great news for you. For a limited time we are offering my new book passive trading for free. All you got to do is go to passive trading.com/free book. And we will send you the book in the mail for free as long as you cover the postage and handling. So if you didn't cover that, we'll send you the book for free. We've already printed it, we got it for you. We're gonna send it out to you. It's free. All you got to do is just go to passive trading.com/free book and learn the basics of passive trading. Get the behind the scenes, get some examples, learn the strategies, and put this stuff to work in your life right now. Remember, go to passive trading.com/free book and get yours now while this offer is still available.

This is the final part of the series that shows you a better way to read if you want to accomplish more, and make more money. All right, welcome, you made it to Part 4 - the last part of our series. Now, if you missed part one, two or three, please go watch or listen to at least part one, because that explains everything. Otherwise, you're just going to hear me talk about books, and you're not going to understand what I'm talking about. But to give you a quick recap, I changed the way I read books, because I was finding out that I was just reading and reading just to read and just accomplish, but I was not using the information, I was not learning anything. And so it wasn't worth it. I was reading a lot spending a lot of time reading, but it wasn't worth it. Because it wasn't making any difference in my life. And I realized recently, so I've been teaching my my seven-year-old how to do multiplication tables, right? And so she asked me, Dad, I want to learn this stuff. How do I do it? I say, Well, you write them down. And then you say them over and over and over again, and you memorize them. That's the, that's the way I knew how to do it. I was taught that way. And that's, you know, that's what I taught her. And so she's been working on it. And you know, she's seven, and she got hers, she got the ones, you got the twos, you got the 5s 10s 11s. So now she's working on the threes and the fours. And she's doing really great. But again, he's just reading it over and over and over again. And so that's kind of what I'm doing with these books, I picked out 12 books that make a big difference in different aspects of my life that I want to work on. And so I identified those areas that I wanted to work on first. And then I found the books that really helped me and give me stuff to do and think about, and though I chose one book per month, so that month, I will read that book, maybe I read it two times or three times, and then I will implement. And I spend the whole rest of the month implementing everything in that book, if I can, if I'm done with the book, or if I don't want to do any more than I'll go on the next month to the next book. Or I'll just keep working on that book if I'm making a lot of progress. So that's how it works. In part two, and part three, I went through four books each. So the first eight books of the year, I talked about and I think, you know, if you are a reader, if you want to get better at your life at different areas of your life, then those two parts would definitely be something that you want to go back and cover and do. And if you're not a reader, I haven't talked about this before. But all of these books are available as audiobooks, right, you can listen to these books, you don't have to just read them, you can listen to them. And there was something I read that. And I don't know if this is true or not. But it said that if you listen to the book while you are reading it, you remember it more. Now, I haven't ever tried that I'm not no big into audiobooks. I like reading. I like having the book in my hand. I don't even like the the Kindle versions or the ebooks. And so I have a bunch, but I like the physical books. So all these 12 books, I have them physically, I tried to get all of them in hardcover, so they last and I enjoy reading them over and over again. Every time I read them, I'm learning new things, and I'm implementing again, and I'm like, Oh yeah, cuz I'm in a different spot in my life every time I read them. So really helps. Let's go ahead and jump into the books here. So this is a book. The first one is if things are going wrong, like if there's an issue, if there's a problem, if you're facing some kind of setbacks, and you don't know what to do, the book is called Everything is figureoutable. That's the word everything is figure out double. And that's basically the the idea behind the book. Now the author, Marie Forleo. She's a great author. The book is well written great stories funny, she has a business that geared more towards women. So her products, her the way she talks, everything is geared towards women, I thought it would be put off by that it wasn't that big a deal. But I really liked the way she wrote the book. And I liked it. Her other products I didn't really resonate with, but I really loved the book, I really loved the idea behind it. And so I really recommend this book for people for anybody, anybody that wants to, you know, have an easier time in life. Just need some encouragement, right? Everything is figureoutable. I mean, if you have that mindset, if you have that thing that thought in your mind that no matter what problem I have, no matter what issue I have, I'll be able to figure it out. Somebody will be able to figure out and I'll be able to get help, and it'll happen and it'll be fine. Everything's gonna be fine. Right? So if you have that idea in your mind, man, failure is not anything to be afraid of. Because if it doesn't work out, guess what, we'll just have to figure it out. Right? It's figureoutable, nothing is impossible and that sort of thing. So that was that was a great book. I really liked that one. The next one is a thinker book not really a doing book, but it's a thinking book. So everything is figureoutablee it has some stuff in there that you know if you have any challenges or whatever it we're helps you work through them. This one is called the the 8020 principle. All right, so this one is really good. In terms of it'll blow your mind. If you haven't read it, if you don't know, if you don't understand how it works, this one will blow your mind. And really, it's Pareto's Principle, it's, you know, 80% of your results come from 20% of your work. So it's about working smarter, not harder, right? In anything, even in nature, this formula somehow works. So if you're in business, 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your products, and then it goes even further. So then you have the 20%, and then the top 20% of the 20%, bring in 80% of that, so you can go down and he gets really crazy. So if you look at it in terms of results, if you turn and look at it, science, health, all these issues, you know, 20% of the food you eat gives you 80% of the nutrients, all the other stuff is just junk that we're eating, right, so you want to cut out calories, cut out the junk, and you'll still get all the nutrients that you're eating right now. But you'll eat 80% less crazy. I mean, there's so many different concepts that you can implement it in and the the guy in the book, he goes through several different ones. Very smart guy, very intelligent, you know, he gives you different examples of how it works, how it how to use it. And it really gives you a different way to think that if you have a job to do, if you have work to do, if you have a business, if you have, if you're managing people, the 80-20 principle is amazing in how you can be more effective in less time with less work. And the subtitle of the book is the secret to achieving more with less.  And that's, that's really what it does, you know it, you get to do more, you get to accomplish more, but it takes less time, less work, less energy. And that sounds pretty good to me. So that's why I read it, I get re-energized every time I read it. And then I apply it to different areas of my life, like, okay, how can I do this? Okay, how can I apply this to, you know, how much time I spend with my kids? Like, if I only have a certain amount of time with my kids every single day? Because I'm busy, they're busy, they're getting older? How do I make the most of that time? If I know that I'm with them for an hour, but only 20 minutes or 10 minutes of that is quality, then how do I improve that? Right? So that's just one example, but there's so many different ways that you can incorporate that into your life, read the book, it's really great. And it'll make things easier, faster, simpler in your life. All right, then we have this one is, I don't know how it's gonna go over. I don't know how it if it's gonna go over with you, but it's called the Untethered Soul. Okay, so this one, it's not about accomplishments. This is not about life, psychology, anything, this is about your soul. It's a spirituality book. And it's life changing. Realistically, it really, the book is about focusing on the hereafter, it's about focusing on your soul. It's about focusing on what happens to us, and how we deal with pain, how we deal with issues, how we deal with life in general. And it's a deep book. It's a very, very, very deep book. But if you have any type of trauma, grief, self esteem issues, anything of that nature, mentally, emotionally, that you are working on, that makes you unhappy, or just makes you feel like life is not all that, then this book will help you. And it really, it really makes you happier if you follow the instructions and follow the steps. So this man who wrote his book, he has a couple other books, I suggest you read those as well. The first one maybe before you read this one is called the surrender experiment. It's his life story, an amazing, amazing story. It you know, he started off as a basically a hippie that wanted to live in the woods. That's all he wanted to do. He wanted to live in the woods and he wanted to meditate. He had an experience when he was younger, when he was meditating. And that's all he wanted to do. Just have that experience over and over and over again. Right. But life had other plans. And so he surrendered to life. And he went with wherever it took him. He ended up starting a company that was became a billion dollar company. He was the CEO of a billion dollar company, when they had gone public, sell shares did all this stuff. It's still around today. And I mean, his whole story of how everything just worked out, you know, from having no money, really nothing and just wanting to meditate all day in the woods, to going building up companies multiple companies. Helping 1000s of people employing 1000s of people, building a massive company going public merging. You know, everybody in everybody in business, everybody on Wall Street knew this company. That's how big it was. Right? And it was all started by this guy who he just wanted to meditate. But life had other plans. Right? Life took him on that direction. And he didn't fight it, he. And so that's the, that's the story. He tells in that book, the surrender experiment. And then in this book, he actually explains why and one of the things he talks about, is that how we all have the voice in our head. Like, why don't we have peace? Right? When we're thinking, we're, there's always something, there's always a voice going on our brain, there's always something. There's always thinking, there's always talking, Oh, you didn't do that, right? Oh, this guy didn't like you, Oh, that guy cut me off. Oh, man, this is too hot. Oh, it's too cold. It's too this is too that. And none of that. Our brain is always going on and on and on and on. And in this book, he tells us and he explains that we are not that voice. You know. So he does talk about meditation, he does talk about how to deal with certain things like grief, and trauma, and all these things, how to look at life, how to look at the beauty of life. And so if you have any type of those type of issues, if you're looking for, this not a religious book, it has nothing to do with any kind of religion, right? Doesn't matter what religion you are, the book can help. And so that's why I bring it here. I mean, some people might have with it, but it was game changing. For a lot of people, millions of people have read this book, and many, many more billion people recommend it. So if you haven't read it, that's a really, really good one. But it is a deep book. And so I read that one in November, you know, it's towards the end of the year. You know, it's my birthday time. And so I'm thinking of, you know, just, it's a relaxing period, for me, you know, usually November and it's a celebratory period, because it November also has Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving is my favorite, favorite holiday. Because we actually see on one day we stop, everybody stops and actually give thanks and being happy and grateful. Right. And so that and spirituality and the birthday, you know, when you're older, it's like, oh, you know, what's gonna happen with me, all that kind of stuff. It all just comes together. And so that is a perfect time for this particular book for me. And so yeah, I really, really recommend that one, a lot. Final book. Now, this is one that I was not sure if I was going to add, but this one is, for me, it's pretty cool. And I've read this book several times, it's called the future is faster than you think. Now, this book is going to be outdated, and probably already is outdated. As soon as it comes out. This book was probably outdated. And the thing behind this author, he's written a couple other books. He's written a book called Bold, is written a book called Abundance. And then this was the third book. And I think he's working on the next one. This particular guy, he is what they call a futurist. Right. So he focuses on the technologies that are coming down the pipe, he looks at all the different technologies that people have been working on. And then he sees how they work together in the Confluence and what could be possible. So in this book, here, he talks. And basically, it's how converging technologies are transforming business industries and our lives. And if you don't know what's coming down the pipe in the future, if you read this book, it will blow you away. Right? So most people, they look at what's wrong in the world. They look at all the negative. Oh, It's getting harder every year. Oh, the politics are this, oh, there's so much garbage in the world. Oh, people don't get along. Oh, there's so much. There's so much war, intention, and, and scarcity and all these different things. And this guy, he takes a different approach. He's like, you know, if you look at it, if you look at the numbers, life has never been better for people on this planet. We're living longer, we're healthier, we have more food than ever, we don't have to worry about food. We have cars and food and entertainment at our fingertips. And there's so many things that we can be grateful for so many things that are unimaginable just 10 years ago, 20 years ago, right, and the way that the future is coming, and he explains all the different technologies, you know, he talks about flying cars, when they're coming, how they're coming, how they're gonna get here, he talks about AI, he was talking this book came out years ago, way before ChatGPT and all the AI companies that are going crazy now, people have been working on AI for years, but it wasn't ready to be mainstream. Now. It's actually coming to be mainstream. So every other other predictions he made in this book are coming true right in front of our eyes. So it's incredible. So some of those predictions have come true already. The other ones are going to be coming true. So if you want to know what the future holds for humanity, this is one of the books that is really, really good. And I'd say it's already outdated, because there's a lot of thing that's already happened. And there's more things that are happening now that he hasn't covered in the book yet. So maybe in his next book to be even more things, but these guys are on the cutting edge of technology. And so one of the things is that we're going to be able to live Have a lot longer and he explains how so 120 150 years old is doable, maybe not. For you, I don't know how old you are maybe not for me, I might live to 120, my kids, they might get to 200. Because the technology is in the advancements in health and all this stuff is growing crazy fast, just all the stuff that happened during COVID-19 time, right? The technologies that they came out with the way they streamline the processes, how everything became faster, because they needed to be faster.  Health-wise, they made huge jumps, what used to take five years or 10 years before in health was able to be done in five months or less. And so it's amazing, you know, like before, I never even my doctor never even considered doing a zoom call with me. And now that's the only way I talked to her I haven't talked to I haven't seen her in years as you're on Zoom, and that's it. Because I don't want to go to our office, I don't wanna sit there for an hour in the waiting room, then sit there in the cold room with the with the nurse that doesn't smile, and then you know, see my doctor for like 10 minutes, and then she's out the door, I don't want to I got work to do, I don't have two hours to wait, waste at the doctor. So this is something that maybe I never thought about that would happen. But he predicted it in the book. And it came true. So this one, there's really nothing for you to do in this book. There's no work. And so this is why I put it at the end of the year is just it's inspirational. It makes me like, Oh, holy cow, holy cow. This is the type of book that when I read it, I tell everybody about it like, Hey, did you know about this? Oh, do you hear about this and people like, I don't care, you know, because it's like, okay, but for me, the the future stuff, the technologies that are coming, they're, they're really cool. I love this kind of stuff. So, you know, when you're trading, it's really passive trading, right? The idea is that we want to make money and have our money make more money for us so that we don't have to work. And it's called, that's what it's called passive, we're not really doing too much work. And so what do you do with all that free time? Well, in the future is going to be a lot different than it is now. So the time that we have, right is going to be way more fun. And we're gonna have a lot more of it, because you're just living longer. So the advancements in health that are coming down the pike, organs, you know, pig organs and transplants, and this and that, and it's insane, the stuff that's coming, and they already have it. I mean, everything he talks about in the book is already here, right nuclear power and how they use it and how they're cleaning the how they're cleaning the ocean, and how they're turning salt water into fresh water, and all this stuff. These technologies are here, they're not maybe all of them are not ready for primetime. But with enough investment, they could be and they could change the world. So these type of technologies, these type of companies that are doing this kind of research and stuff, they need investment. And so if we want to really make a big difference in the world, we want to leave it at a better place than when we got here, taking the money that we're making from trading, and then giving back to the world. You know, helping solve some of the world's problems would be a wonderful way to use your money. And so people ask like, oh, yeah, you know, I got this question today, like, how much money do you need? Right? Like, you keep trading? How much? How much do you actually need? Do you actually want? Do you do it for fun? You do it for for greed, what do you do it for? And I'm like, there are so many things that I want to fund, there are so many things I want to bring to the world. And I don't have to be the one doing all the research and being the scientist and the technologists and all that stuff. But if I can help them by funding the company, or by making an investment, then that's going to help my kids, my grandkids, my great grandkids, and on and on and on, because I'm scared for them. I'm scared for future generations, because I see the news do I see things, you know, might not be getting better in all aspects. But then I read a book like this, and I have hope, I hope for the future, I have hope for technologies that are coming down the pike that will make things better that we're not going to just, you know, go crazy, and everything's going to be so hot, and nobody's going to get along and everything's just going to be a big mess. I don't think, I hope that doesn't happen. You know, and I do want to live to 120 years old. That's my goal, how another 220 years old. And one of the things that this author says is that just don't do anything stupid. Don't do anything stupid to hurt yourself. Because the technology in health at least is growing so fast that yes, even somebody my age, which is at 46 years old right now, I will be able to live past 100 Based on the technologies that are coming as long as you know, I don't ride a motorcycle without a helmet and crash and hit my brain or have a heart attack because my cholesterol is too high or you know, fall off a roller coaster or something. I don't know. But as long as I don't really do something that's irrepairable you know, if I'm older, and I need a new organ, there'll be able to replace my organ, they might just be able to make an organ just for me with my own cells, if I have any kind of issues, they'll be able to fix it, they can't fix it now. But that technology is maybe 10 years coming, or 15 years coming, you know, arthritis will be gone, cancer, gone, all of these things, they have stuff that is working now that it can help. But it's not either it's not in the clinical trials, it's not finished with the trials, or it's, you know, still in research stages. And so I could go on and on about this stuff forever. But I read that, you know, it's a book that you don't have to read. But if you do, maybe just read it once. It's really cool. It's really inspirational, and it'll help you be a lot more positive. And so that's the one I read at the end of the year, it's not something that you really have to learn a lot from, I mean, you'll learn a lot by reading it, but you don't have to do anything, right. It's not an implementation book. So that's why I put it at the end of the year. And then when this author comes out with a new book, I'll probably replace this one with that one, and read that one and see, okay, what's the progress made since the last book now because books take so many years to write, edit, publish, print all that stuff. You know, by the time the book comes out, a lot of stuff is old anyway. And outdated because of technology is changing so fast, but it's still so as of right now, as I'm recording this, this book is still really readable and awesome. But if it's not for you, again, this is one of those times that you can change it out with another book of your liking that you want to read over and over again. Now you'll notice that I don't have you know, I didn't put any religious books in here, I have one spirituality book, right? And I was even considering, should I put it into essay it not say it, I said, No, you know what I want to be real, I want to be transparent. That's it, the book I read, I think you should pick it up. It's very deep, very heavy. And it doesn't talk about religion. So you'll be good with that, hopefully. But if you want to add a religious book in there, feel free to go ahead and add it, implement that sucker, because that'll be really good for you. Right, that's the whole point, these books were to implement these books are to read, to learn again, and remember again, and to implement. And that's the whole point of it. So those are the those are the 12 books that I read every year. And I read them over and over again, one book per month. And they really make a huge, enormous difference in my life. And I think if you do something similar to this, you will also benefit a great deal. I mean, an amazing deal. And it will save you a lot of time because you won't have to read every other book out there in the sun, you know, you stick to the 12 you stick this stuff that you want to work on. And then you just work on it and implement it and life gets good. Really good really fast. Now, if you need an extra book, right? If you don't have one, and one of these didn't make sense, you can always talk about passive trading. That's, that's like my own little plug here. Okay, so you can put passive trading on the list, read this one over and over again, especially if you're not trading. If you're not trading. It's like, what are you doing? Like why? Why are you not trading this way? Right, you need to read this way. You need to trade this way. You need to read the book, again, get inspiration, do all the success stories and all the stuff about retirement and how it's crazy and how to make money selling options. And then just do it and enjoy life and then you will be able to celebrate and you can read all day. Maybe just have fun, read all day. And that is the end. So you know this was part four. Again, there were three other parts 123 So go check those out as well if you started here, and trade with the odds in your favor.

This is part 3 of the 4-part series. See which books I read every year and why I chose them. Plus learn why the way most people read is totally a waste of time. Welcome back. Alright, so this is part three of our four-part series on the books you can read to change your life. Okay, so if you haven't done Part One and Part Two, you probably want to do those first, at least part one. So you know, you get the gist, you have the background of what we're doing. Now I'm going to dive into the second set of books for I broke it down into four books, four books, four books, so part two, part three, and part four, I'm going to show you four books each, so it doesn't take forever. And now these are four books in the first three months, right? January, March, April, the first four books, I started pretty heavy, I like to it's, you know, the new year, you want to get going, you're setting your goals. And it's like, let's just do this, this time, these four months, you know, you're going into the summer season, things are busy, right? Things are hotter, you don't want to be thinking as much. And so these books, a couple of them are really about how to flick change of perspective, not so much work-related or to do work, you know, not to do stuff. But so let's just get into that. Alright, so the first book we have is called "The Slight Edge". Okay, it's the slight edge, turning simple disciplines into a massive success. Now, this is a short book, a very simple concept, one that I can explain to you in five seconds, maybe not. But it's very simple. And it's still worth reading, it's still, you know because you get the examples, you get the illustrations or whatnot. And it's a quick read the idea is the one about knowing where you're going and making small incremental steps to get there, right? So for example, you got on a plane that's going from Miami to New York, right? If it's on track, it'll get to New York, if it's off by even a couple of degrees, and it doesn't correct, then guess what it ends up way off-course, right, somewhere in like Iceland or something, it'll never get to New York. So that's the kind of simple here, it's like, you know when you want to do something, there are certain steps that we have to take, we have to take them over and over and over again. Now, it's very simple to not do those things to take those steps. But in the long run, it's very difficult when you don't do them because it's a problem for you. So if you have a goal, and you say, hey, look, I want to accomplish this, I want to go back to school and get my degree, right? There are certain things you have to do daily, you have to do your homework, right? Now, is it simple to just say no, I'm tired? I don't want to do my homework. Yeah, very simple. It's like I just worked all day, I don't want to go back. You know, like, I don't want to do this, it's very simple for you to miss a day, Miss two days, right? But if you keep missing and keep missing and keep missing, eventually, you're gonna flunk out, and the whole goal is gone. So the first couple times you do it, no big deal, no harm done, you know, you might get away with it. But if you keep building and building and building, then it just doesn't work out. So same with trading, right? If you don't follow the rules in your trades, there might be a trade that it doesn't matter to trade the works out, there might be another one that just doesn't matter. There might be another one that works out. But then eventually there'll come a time when you won't even remember what the rules are. And there'll be a time where you mess up and you don't do it and the thing goes bad and it just destroys you. So if you want to do something, the book says, right, you're taking simple disciplines, just simple, small things, you just have to do small steps, right? The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step. And that's all the book is telling you. It's like you figure out what are those steps, and you just do them slowly, slowly, and you have the discipline, you have the desire and the book is that's all it's about. And he's telling you how to do that. So I mean, it's a very simple book that is very hard to live by. And so that's why you need the constant reminder, you have to read it again. And again. And again. When you do and you get you back on track, you will accomplish things like crazy, like it's powerful, very powerful book. Alright, so the next one, and now this one is called The Four Hour Workweek. There's probably I think there's a second edition out. So this book is outdated. And so I don't even know if it's worth it for everybody to read this. So this one might not work for you. You might want to take this one out and put in another one. I'll tell you what this one is about. Now, this book came out years ago, and I met the author, I hung out with him. We went to the Berkshire Hathaway meeting together, along with a group of other people. But, you know, the book had just come out and he had come with our group he had come with us.  And so, you know, really smart guy. Tim Ferriss is the name. He's got a very popular podcast the guy is blown up. He's very famous now. But the book is The Four-Hour Workweek. And it's he came up with the idea years ago and he didn't come up with it. He wrote a book about it. The idea was already there. But he made outsourcing pretty popular in common knowledge. So outsourcing is right. It's taking a job from here and having somebody overseas do it. And so his whole thesis of the book is that you can create a business online, and you can have people in other countries doing the work for you. And basically, you don't have to do any work. kind of the gist of it. And so people are like, what, you know, I don't have to hire a secretary in my office, I could hire somebody in the Philippines that would work for like, $3 an hour and do just as good a job. Yeah, it's possible. Nowadays, you know, it's common, there's almost no company that only has all their employees in one location, right? People are virtual people all over the world, for example, our team, right, I am the only one in the office at Option Genius. We have an office, I'm the only one here. So it gets kind of lonely sometimes, you know, we have one of our traders, Matt, he lives in Alabama, right? We have my manager, who lives in North Carolina. We have another trader who lives in California, we have Harriet who does customer service, but she lives in the Philippines. Kevin, who helps me with my podcast, He also lives in the Philippines. And then we got Ray Mark, who does our video editing, He also lives in the Philippines. So most of our team either lives in us or lives in the Philippines. Right. So that's what the book is really about. It's like how to find people that will do a great job that is cheaper, because they're living somewhere that's cheaper than living overseas now, doesn't mean you have to give them cheap money, right. But that's how it works, right economics, that's how they work. So the book itself is outdated. Because nowadays, everybody knows about outsourcing, there are plenty of resources online to say, hey, I want to hire somebody overseas. And there are a million websites and companies that will help you find the perfect person to hire overseas or wherever for whatever task you want. And so there's nothing new in that book. But the reason I like to read it is because of the idea that he has in there that the business itself that you create, is for your benefit as the business owner. So his thinking is that you don't want to start a business and have the business own you, and control you right, he wants to start a business that can run on its own, by smart people who are given the authority to run the business. And then you get to go do whatever you want. You get to travel, you get to go to school, you get to do your hobbies, hang out with your family, you get to do whatever you want. And you're making money from this business, it could be a side business, it could be a bigger business. Most big businesses do require you know, if you want a full-time income or business, most likely you have to be involved. You can't just, you know, dictate and abdicate responsibility and let other people do the work. You can't do it unless you've already established and built the business. And so this is mostly for like side hustles and things like that. But people can make a pretty good living, right? Nowadays, with all the tools and the Zoom calls and everything, outsourcing and doing stuff online has become easier than ever. And so if you have kids, and they are not doing some kind of online business, or learning or marketing or whatever, I think that's a big mistake. So that's that one. I read it for myself to remind me, right of the reason why I started business, the reason why I got into trading, which is so that I don't have to I don't have to work for money, and that I could just go do what I want. Now, I enjoy making stuff like this, you know, content for you guys. And I enjoy trading so it's not a burden. But still, it gives me a reminder like, oh, yeah, you know, I wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, that's one of my things. Oh, yeah, I want to do a bike race, that's 100 miles in a day, you know, I want to do that. And those two things, take a lot of training, you can't just wake up one day and do that. And so I'd have to prepare and I have to, you know, get ready and preparations, and all the equipment and somebody has to take me up to Kilimanjaro because I'm not going by myself, all kinds of crazy stuff. So you have to know in advance what you want. Right? And so that's that's why I liked that book. The third book that I want to talk about this, this part is called Millionaire Success Habits. I got this book for free, the author was giving them away for free. So you might even do a website search for this 1 million how-to get millionaire success habits for free. It might pop up and this book is it was written as a marketing piece for the author, you know, because he has a course and he's selling he's got so much other stuff that he's selling, but the book itself, he's got a lot of good content in here. He's got a lot of good exercises in here. And it's really about how you can change your thinking, change your mentality, change your psychology to become a millionaire, like, what are the habits of successful people? What are the habits of rich people? What do they do, that non-rich people don't do? And he goes through those, and he helps you figure out, you know, what are the things that you are not doing that you can do and how to change it. So this one does take a lot of work. So this one is a heavy book, and it does take a lot of time to implement. One of the examples that he talks about here is the why exercise. So whenever you create a goal, it has to be a very big goal, something challenging, something worth accomplishing. And any of those types of goals, they always have challenges, right? There's always something that will stand in your way, and you might want to quit, you might want to give up, you might say no, no, I can't do this. It's too hard. It's taking too long. And I don't know if he's worth it. You know, trading is like that. Trading is really like that. I mean, sometimes you'll do great. And then one day, the market will just slap you silly. And you're gonna be like, Man, is it worth this pain, I feel horrible. I feel so bad. I feel so stupid, I made a mistake. Bla bla bla, is it worth it? The only way you're going to continue is if you, really, really, really know your why. And I talk about this a lot to say what is your why what is the real reason that you're trading is just because you want to make some extra money, then you ain't gonna stick around very long? To be honest, you have to have something besides money, you have to have something that you desire, much more than money. So it can that desire can get you through the challenges and the pain that are going to come because trading is, you know, it's simple, I guess you could say it's easy, but it's not simple, or it's simple. But it's not easy. I'm not sure which one, you know, I can give you the rules, I can give you everything, but you got to follow it, you got to do it. And there will be losses along the way there will be hardships, there will be unknowns, a lot of unknowns in trading, right? We never know what's going to happen tomorrow and trading, nobody can predict it. We just have to go with the flow and that can be very hard and taxing on you emotionally mentally and physically. And so you have to know your why. And so in this book, he goes through the exercise of the seven why so you start off asking, and you do it with another person.  And it's basically Hey, you know, tell me, why do you want to get good at trading? And then you come up with an answer. And the person says, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, cool. Why do you want that? And he goes, like the second level deeper, right? And then you have to give a reason why you want that second thing. He goes, Oh, that's wonderful. That's great. That makes no sense. Okay, so tell me why do you want that second thing? See, okay, and you give another reason? And then okay, why do you want that? Third thing? Why do you want that? Fourth thing? Why do you want that fifth thing, that by the time you get level after level, after level, deeper, deeper, deeper, the real reason comes out, the real explanation of why you want to do something comes out? And that's when you might even cry because that desire or that frustration is so strongly built up in you that you don't even know is there. But if you do this exercise, it kind of unleashes that brings it to the surface, and allows you to know the deep, deep, deep desire that you have, and you might not be even conscious of it. So this is one of the examples in there. It's a great one, I urge you to do it, get that book, read it, go through it, implement it, really, really good book. And then I'm going to end this one with a book that is a reader and a thinker. Not really too much of a doer, maybe a little bit of a doer, it's Tuesdays with Morrie. Okay, now you probably already read this one came out a long time ago. It's the story of an old man and a young man and life's greatest lesson, basically how to live your life. So the author here is a true story. The author was a journalist, and he realized that his favorite college professor was dying. And so he would go every Tuesday and hang out with him. And he recorded the lessons that he learned from the man about how to live a great life, how to enjoy yourself how to be happy, and he wrote those in a book very, very, it's a short book, but it tugs at your heartstrings and makes you realize a lot of things about life. Because I mean, think about it like I did, you know we went through the slight edge then we went The Four Hour Workweek to teach us about work then we did the millionaire success habits we need a break right from reading and so that's why I put this one in there because even though this one will make you cry, he's a does for me, it makes you think about life. It makes you appreciate life, but there's no work involved in it unless you know you have some issues with somebody you know, your brother, your sister, or your parents that you gotta resolve. That might be a good thing you know, this book might help you do that. But in a sense, it's a story that you read and you learn and you appreciate what you have. You appreciate your life and you feel good about it. So that's it for these four books. I got one more part of the series coming up, which is gonna be part four So go ahead, check that one out as well, to finish it out, those are gonna be the last four books of the year. And again, you know, like I said, with the four-hour workweek, if it doesn't work for you, you don't you can put something else instead, right? If you're not, you don't care about outsourcing, you don't care about virtual assistants, anything like that, you know if you don't want to run a business, that book is not for you, that's fine. Take it out, put something else in, you know, that's the way it works. You fit this for what you want. Now, these four books, I think the slight edge is great for everybody. You know, the millionaire success habits. I mean, this is good for everybody, even if you don't want to be a millionaire. I mean, he talks about money, most of it. But even if you don't want to be a millionaire, you just want to be successful and happier. It's a great book, and then on Tuesdays with Morrie, everybody can read that Morrie's son has come out with another book called Wisdom of Morrie, which I have, on my shelf waiting to be read. I haven't read it yet. But like I said, I don't have time for it, because I need to focus on my 12 books and read them every year. And so I'm going to work on myself first, and I'm working on not having to finish that book. So it's sitting there, it's there. I know is there I'll get to it eventually. But for now, let's go and let's head to part number four of this series.

Alright, let's get on with this. All right, so this is part two of a four part series. Okay, so part one explained the basics explained why I'm doing this series and explained that you are reading wrong. No, I'm kidding, I don't know how you read, at least for me, the way I was reading was wrong. Now, the point of reading is to learn. But the way I was reading is that I was reading to be done. And I know psychologically, there is this thing in our brains that we have to go to completion, right? So it's like, you watch a movie, but you don't want to stop in the middle because you want to finish it. And you want to feel that you completed something, even though it's a bad movie. So most of us don't get up and leave or turn it off in the middle. Same with books. For me, it's like I wanted to finish the whole book, even if it was not good or boring, or I don't really know what was talking about, I would go through and read the whole book anyway, and then go to the next one, then go the next one. But I never really learned and I never really sunk in so that it wasn't effective in my life, I never really used it because I was just reading, reading, reading. And so the books that I'm going to share with you are totally different, I read them in a different way. And you can please go to part one of the series, and it'll tell you exactly how and why and the reasoning behind it, and how it works. But in this session, I want to talk about the first four books of the year that I read. Now, these are set in a specific order, because it's the first of the year, right first four months, and I really want to get on a good start. And so these particular books, the ones I'm going to show you are the ones that I read every single year. Now some of the books depending on what I want to learn what I want to accomplish that year, I might not read every single one of them every now and again, they're interchangeable, depending on the topics that you want to excel at. That's the cool thing about this program. So these four books, I would like there for me, they're like long term, you know, and they the issues that they address are long term issues. And so sometimes these four, sometimes take me longer than one month to implement. Some of them are not and some of them do. So it's really I tried to interspeed them. So one book will be a very highly implemented book. And then the next month, it might be just a thought-provoking book that I don't have to implement, and do and work on that much. And then next month, that again, it'll be another workbook. So all of these books, there are their, you know, best sellers, you can probably still get them. I like to get them in hardcover, because I know I'm gonna be reading them and keeping them for a long time. Even if they go on print. I want the hardcover. So I can keep doing this over and over again. So with that, let me get into book number one. So this number one is called the "One Thing". Okay, that's the name of the book, the one thing and again, you can see its hard cover, this basically tells you and ask you a simple question. It's like, what's your one thing? And the idea is very simple. It's, if we focus on too many things, we don't get enough things done. So the idea is to have really close concise goals. And then you work on just one thing to accomplish those goals. And so there's one question that they asked in here, that makes things much simpler. And they call it the, they call it the defining question, or the focusing question, sorry. And the question is, what's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary? What's the one thing I can do that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? And you might be thinking, well, you know, my problems are really hard. My problems are intense, right? But there's always if you break it down into small steps, those small steps are like dominoes. And the small one knocks over the bigger one, then you can knock over a bigger one, then you cannot go for a bigger one until the goal that you want is accomplished. So there's an example of losing weight, right? I want to lose weight. Okay, what do I do? Well, I gotta hit the gym. Well, what's the best time to go to the gym first thing in the morning? Okay, well, I don't do that because I don't like getting up early. Or I get lazy in the morning. So I don't go to the gym in the morning. I don't work out in the morning. So if I can just get myself up early in the morning, then I'll do that. Well, what's the best way to do that? Oh, no, set my alarm. Okay, is that the one thing that I can do? No, the one thing I can do is workout, right? That's it? No, no, no, we gotta go smaller, smaller, smaller. So if the the goal is to lose weight, then one step removed from that is I need to work out, I don't know, five days a week, okay, then one step removed from that smaller than that is I need to get to the gym, right? Five times a week. And then once that smaller than that is a I need to wake up on time so I can get to the gym. And then once that, below that, and then that and then that. So what we realized is this was an example that you know, so it's not just getting to the gym, I'm you know, I'm gonna put my snooze button on and I'm gonna go back to sleep. So how do I get to the gym on time? Well, one thing I want to do is that you can swim you can sleep in your gym clothes, and then you just get up alarm rings, you get up and you go to the gym. Okay, that's fine. But I still don't get up. Right? I'm so groggy in the morning. Why? Well, in the example it was because the person would drink alcohol at night to help them go to sleep, or to unwind, and they would sleep late. So, obviously, you got to cut out your alcohol, and then you have to go to bed on time. Okay, so is that my one thing go to bed on time? No. Because you don't know what on time it so you have to set your schedule, and you have to be in bed before it's sleep time. So when do you want to sleep? Well, okay, if I want to go to sleep, if I want to be asleep at nine, or sorry, at 10. Right? Because I can get up early, then you should probably be in bed by like, 930? Well, at 930, you know, I'm still doing stuff. So I don't, I can't just like snap my fingers and go to bed. So I gotta start getting ready. Okay, so I need like half an hour to get ready, right? Pull my stuff away, put the kids to bed, blah, blah, blah, and then be in bed. So nine o'clock is when I have to start getting ready. So is that my one thing? No, the one thing would be even smaller, it would be to set an alarm for nine o'clock. So you set an alarm for nine o'clock, that, hey, it's time for me to start getting ready, I got half an hour to be in bed, so that I can fall asleep in half an hour so that I could wake up early in the morning. And not drink, obviously. And so I can get up early in the morning so that I can go to the gym so that I could work out so that I could lose weight. So that's how it breaks down. So that one thing you could do the one small thing that you could do right now, that makes everything easy is to set your alarm for nine o'clock at night and make a goal. And the goal is to lose weight, but you break it down. So that's one example. The book has a lot more examples, the book is really good, they wouldn't have sold millions of copies otherwise. And I read it every year because it keeps bringing me back to Hey, what's the one thing? What's the one thing we just did one thing right now, I had a problem that I've been working on for months, literally months and asked the question, and the answer just came with, oh, wow, if I did this one small change, it just makes everything so much simpler. And it makes all this extra work that I was thinking of doing completely unnecessary. Like I already have to do it anymore. Because of this one small change. And it was one thing that I didn't want to do. But when he asked a question, it's like the answer is like it's pointing the answer, like this is the thing you have to do this is going to make everything easier or unnecessary. So in my case, definitely gonna be easier, it's going to be faster, and it's going to be make a lot of things unnecessary. So that's how you that's the one question. That's just one thing in that book, right? So that's, that's the one thing that's a great book, I start off every January with that book. All right, February is this book, The Power of full engagement, making energy, not time is the key to high performance and personal renewal. Okay, so the power of full engagement. Now, this is something that is really, really good about energy, about health, about stamina, about exercise. And it's not just talking about health, it's not just talking about one type exercise, it's, it's about your mind as well sleep, fitness, Health, or nutrition, all that stuff, it combines all of it. That's why I put it in in February, so that it can retrain my brain and get me on the right path. If I fallen off, which I usually do, I'm not the most active person, alright, so it helps you figure out and it reinforces all the different reasons why you need to eat better, why you need to sleep well, why you need to, you know, exercise on a daily basis, and all that. And so, this one, if you're dealing with, you know, overweight or high cholesterol or whatever problems, which almost everybody nowadays has some type of health problem, right? If you're dealing with that, you can use this one, or you can use some other one, that similar vein, you know, and that really helps you to remember and get you back on track and back on focus for your health. Now, this is not particularly a health book, it's more about energy, and how to have more energy to have a more productive and more happy life. That's the point of it's not health and nutrition is part of it. But it's just it's more than that. It's more about energy, how you think how you act, how you work, all that sort of thing. So that's why I like this one. It's not just about oh, this is your diet, you know, it's not a cookbook or whatever. So that's when I really liked that one again. And now when I put in February, so this one is a you know, the February is a smaller month, and sometimes this one can be a little bit heavy and so sometimes it overlaps in February and March. So it takes February and March because it's really, really important, right? The concepts are really important and you want to if your health is no good, that doesn't matter how much money you have, doesn't matter how much time you have, you can't do anything, you're pretty much screwed. So that's why your health and your energy are really really important concepts. Next, we have one that I have spent a lot of time working on. And it's basically happiness. It's like how do you, you know, how do you be more happy? We, a lot of us are suffering, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, all kinds of crazy stuff and mental health is, is getting worse and worse, even though, you know, we have everything we need, we have everything we want. Basically, you snap your fingers, and you know, your food comes, groceries come to your door, people take you anywhere you want, anything you want is available. It's incredible. You know, Amazon used to be like, Oh my god, next two day delivery was amazing. Now, it's one day delivery. Now it's like same day delivery, you press a button and thing shows up before you get home. It's like, what I just ordered, they gotta get here. So why are we so sad? What's the problem? I don't know, I guess a difference for it's different for everybody. So for me, I spent a lot of time, you know, I went through some depression issues. We had people in our family that passed away unexpectedly, they were murdered. And so I did go through depression, take the pills and all that. And then I was like, No, I don't want to take pills, I want to do it myself. And so this book is The Happiness Project. It's a really cool book. And the reason it's good is because there are a lot of books on happiness. I mean, there's a lot of trainings, a lot of things that happiness, most of the things, they all say the same thing, right, they all use the same studies, they all say the same things. So what this woman did was, she took a year out of her life, and he probably, you know, I'm gonna write a book about it. But she looked at all the studies, and all of the different techniques that they tell you to do. And she actually did them. And she recorded, which ones made her happier, which ones worked, which ones didn't, which ones, you know, are like a waste of time, which ones are amazing. And she records them in her own voice, which it's pretty funny, you know. And so I like that one a lot, because she has all the research, but then she also has how she applied it. And so it's a bit of a story, you know, it's not all dry and scientific, even though she explains everything very nicely. So that one is the Happiness Project. That one is really good. I love that one. I read it ever again, these these four, these first four, I do read every single year, because to me, they're they're that important. And the happiness book, you know, even if you're not suffering from depression, or whatnot, it does tell you how to it gives you ideas, and he gives you a lot of tips and a lot of tricks. You don't have to use all of them, you can use some of them, you know, you don't have to do it like she did, where you have to try every single method. And I don't, you know, I might take one, maybe two out of the book every year and be like, You know what, I'm gonna try this. You know, one of the simple idea would be like, I've started doing this with my kids, you know, so every night when I'm putting into bed, I asked them, hey, tell me three things that went well today, you know, tell me three things that weren't good today. And so you end the day thinking about positives. Most of us think about, oh, man, this happened wrong, that happened wrong. I do this tomorrow to that tomorrow. But I'm so tired, but I'm so exhausted. But we don't think about all the stuff that went right. So this was one technique that you just think about three things every day, that went right. And it could be something really simple. You know, for me making this video is going to be one of those things for me, like, hey, you know, I've finished part two of the four part series, Yay, I'm gonna celebrate that, you know, might have had a trade that went well, today. Yay, I'm gonna celebrate that because we don't celebrate enough. And this is the reason that we also have an option genius. We have all the bells, you know, we ring bells, every time. Every time we have a positive trade, we ring a bell because we went on a lot of trades. And so it becomes common common to just when it's like, Oh, hey, made money today? What do you do that? No, you got to celebrate it, you got to make it exciting, right? Otherwise, it just gets boring. So we ring the bell every time we have a positive trade, and it's a bit of a celebration. Same thing with the three things that happened today, you're celebrating every single day, because these days don't come back. There was another another technique I talked about in a different episode, where you find out how many days supposedly, or average you have left in life, you know, based on how old you are now, and when you're going to die, which is probably around around 80 years old. So how many days you have left, you write that on the mirror with a dry erase marker. So when you're brushing your teeth in the morning, you got to change the number every day. So it's like, you know, like yesterday was 12,700. Today, it's 12,006 99. You know, you got to change the number every day. And you give yourself that mental remembrance that oh my god, I got one day left. Today's god, oh, man, the days gone. So at night, you know, when I see that number of washing my teeth, I'm like, man, what did I do today? Was it worth it? You know, and then you change your patterns. So it's not immediate, but it does gradually help and gradually remind yourself and gradually you spend more and more time doing the things that you enjoy. So then you at the end of the day, you're like yeah, you know, today was a good day. Today was a good day. Yeah, maybe I'll do more of that tomorrow. All right now, this book number four is for me, it was a very deep book. It's called a million miles. No, sorry. Yeah, it's called a million miles in a thousand years by Donald Miller, how I learned to live a better story, not a better life, but a better story. A million miles in 1000 years. Now, I was lucky that I found this book. I don't know how I found it. But why picked it up? But I did. And so for me, I've been told, and so have you to find your purpose, to find your passion to find the thing that really makes you alive, you know, and then if you can find that one thing and do that for a living, then you never have to work a day in your life. That's great. And I spent years trying to find my purpose, like, what is it? Do I want to help people? Do I want to make a lot of money? Do I want to build a building? Do I want to build a big company? Do I want to travel the world? What is the purpose? What is the point of my life? And I realized that there's a lot of things I want to do. Right, but there's no just one overarching purpose. Like, was I put on this earth to trade options? Was I put on this Earth to teach people how to trade options? Not necessarily, I don't think so. I mean, I enjoy it. But I want to do that for the rest of my life. I'm sorry, but this, this show is not gonna it's gonna end one day. So I don't know, like, What is my purpose? You know, what do I really want out of life? Like I have everything I want? What is it that makes me keep going? And maybe that's, maybe it was one of the reasons I get depressed. It's like, I already have what I want. Where's the challenge? You know, what's the next steps? But in this book, he talks about, it's basically a story of his life. And he's going through and he has this crisis. And what he realizes is that maybe we don't have to have a purpose in life. Maybe everybody doesn't have a purpose, or you do, maybe you don't know what it is. But instead of looking for a purpose, how about, we look at it in a different way? Right, we look at our lives in a different context. And we say that, you know, my life is my story. And I get to tell, and I get to write the story, however I want. So what is the story that I want to write? Well, I want to be a teacher, I want to be rich, I want to be a father, and it'd be XYZ a sailor, you know, I want to be a famous type fisherman. fisherman, I don't know what whatever. You know, I'll be famous at doing this one thing, those are all things that you can put as part of your story. And so there's one story in there, he was talking to a friend of his, and they had, the guy had a daughter, teenage daughter, and he couldn't get through her. And so the daughter was actually her, she, she got a boyfriend, the boyfriend was many years older than her. And they were doing drugs, and they were in a gang and, and all this bad stuff was, you know, and the guy listened to the author, about this realization about, you know, the story that we tell with our lives. And that guy realized that the story that the daughter was telling herself about herself, was not a good story. So he said, You know what I want her to be I want her to live a good story. So that she gets out of all this bad stuff. And she feels good about herself. And so he went home, and he said, Hey, you know what, we are going to build a school in Mexico. And they didn't know anything about building schools. They didn't have any extra money, they didn't have nothing. He just went to his wife and his daughter and said, We're going to build a school in Mexico. Because for some reason, he came up with that. And that was the story he wanted to be able to tell. And so the daughter actually got really excited. At first the wife got mad, she's like, Well, you didn't tell me about this. We didn't talk about this. How do you you know, how do you just spend all this money building a school, blah, blah, blah. But the daughter got really excited. And she did research on it, she found you know, how much stuff is going to cost you found where she could put the school, how they're going to approach it. And that family actually ended up building a school in Mexico. And that was the story that the daughter was able to tell about herself. And that increased her self confidence and increase her self worth self esteem. And that was just one story that she was able to tell about herself, then you talk you know, then you go on further and you say okay, if I'm a person who builds schools, right, what else can I accomplish? I'm not gonna go being a king. Hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna do drugs. I'm I'm I'm a school builder. Right. So your your perspective changes on you And so you don't have to have a purpose, you just have to be able to tell a good story about yourself, and you get to write your own story. So it could be that I am a successful trader. That's part of my story. But that's not the only story I have in my life. Right? I'm also a good father. That's another story. How do I tell that story? And then it's up to me to come up with the reason and the way to be able to know that I'm leaving a good story. And then you have different stories, and you pile them on top of each other. So that was a really good book, you reminds me of that every year. And so nowadays, whenever I hear, you know, there's articles and videos and podcasts and everything about oh, how do you find your purpose? How do you find your purpose? I just now, nevermind, I spent so much time trying to figure out my purpose, listening to this taking courses on how do you find your purpose? And I'm like, Man, I still can't find my purpose. I don't know what to do. You know, it's like, what's the one thing it's like? There's not just one thing, there are many things and it's okay, if there are many things. So if you haven't found your purpose yet, no worries. You know, there's another way to look at it. It's like, hey, just tell a story about your life. What story do you want to tell? You know, so it's like, if it's your funeral, what do you want them to be talking about? That's your story. That's how they're going to be telling the story from their perspective. But you get to write your story now, so that when you die, and they they talk about you, they'll be telling your story the way you want it to be told, right? So these are the first four books. Alright, so this is part two, part three, I'm gonna go in for more books. And then part four, they do form our books. So we finish out the whole the whole year. These are the way these are the books that are read every year to make myself better, more successful, more appreciative, have a happier life. So these four books are really good. The next four ones are going to be amazing. They're knock your socks off in the four after that are maybe even the best ones. So that said, I'll see you in part number three.

Hey there, today I want to be talking about something that I call how I get better every year. Now, when I think about getting better, that could be in any aspect, it could be trading, it could be life, it could be in any part of your life. And what I want to talk about can be totally customized to you. So you can choose what you want to get better in. But it does take a little bit of work.  Now, whenever I talk about this with people, or I share this with anybody I mean, they get a lot of benefits out of it, the people who have tried it have really told me that they loved it, they love doing it, and is very different from anything else I've ever seen. I've never seen anybody do it quite like this before. And now I believe that we don't stand still, you're either getting better, or you're getting worse, you're getting faster, or you're getting slower. You can't just be "Oh, I'm the same as I was last year", it doesn't work that way. You're either getting smarter, or you're getting left behind. Because everything, the whole world, everything moves way too fast. There's many, too many changes, there's too many people competing, there's too much noise, there's so much out there that you have to get better, and if you don't, you get left behind. Now, in many things, that's not a bad thing. But when you're in life, and you want to get ahead, then you want to keep getting better. And it's actually fun to do as well. Right? I get better by learning by education by reading. And so I'm going to be talking about how I read and it's not the way most people read. And it's definitely not the most regular books that you've heard of. It's a completely different way. I've never heard of anybody talk about it like this. And so I think it's going to be very helpful. And like I said, totally customizable to you based on whatever you want to accomplish. So that's the cool part about it. Now, I read a lot, the voracious reader. And so whenever I read, I'm always reading to get through the book, because I want to finish it because on my stack, you know how my desk I have a stack of other books that I'm ready and excited to read. Because I just love to read, there's certain topics that I like to read a lot.  And so every new book that comes out, I'll get it and I'll read it and I like the paper books, you know, printed books, I don't like the ebooks that much. But I'll read those too. I have a bunch of those too that are still stacked up. But in my house, for example, my wife keeps getting upset because I keep getting more and more and more books and we don't have plates anymore. We don't have space to put these all these books. I got bookshelves on top of bookshelf, bookshelves and they're they're still full my nightstand on my table is like full of books. She even, my poor wife, she even got me a bookshelf for the bedroom. So that I could have that as well. But those are awful, too. And they're falling off and they're on the floor. And it's just piling up. So that's just the way I am. But what I realized is that I was reading and reading reading, but I wasn't learning. That's  the sad part though. I was just reading to read. And so I had no knowledge, but I didn't have any implementation. And so I learned this because you know, my wife and I, we sometimes were in bed or night you're talking, she has a business. She has her own business, and I have a business so we're talking and she was explaining a particular problem that she had. So I was like, Oh, wow, that's, you know, and stuff. But you know, I'm reading this book, and it said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she goes, oh, wow, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, I'm gonna try that. So then she goes, and she comes back like a week later. And she goes, Hey, you know, I tried that thing. And it worked really well. Thank you. You know, problem solved is wonderful. I'm like, Oh, that's great. You know, and then we move on. About six months later, we're in bed. And now I'm talking about a problem. And she goes to me, Oh, well, you know what you could do? You could do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Oh, wow, that's such a great idea. Oh, my god, that's amazing that you're so smart. And she goes, Really? You don't remember? I'm like, remember what she does? That's the exact same thing you told me to do six months ago. And I'm like, really? And she's like, Yeah, so you read in a book, you told me to do it. I did it. And it worked. And now I'm telling you to do it. And I was like, oh, and so I realized that I'm reading all this stuff. I'm reading all these books upon books upon books. And I'm not learning is coming in one year is coming out the other. Not only that, but I'm spending a lot of time reading. And normally I will read four or five books at a time. At a time, I'll have four or five books that I'm reading, because, you know, whatever fancies my mood at the time is what I'll read, I'll pick it up. And I'll be in the middle of four or five books at a time. And I mean, if I get to do one book, I can do it and maybe within a couple of days. But when I want to learn about a particular topic, I like to go deep in a topic, but when you buy three or four books about the topic, you will realize that they're almost all the same. There's very little new stuff in the books that come out nowadays. You know, there's maybe one or two that are like the definitive book about it that cover everything. And then everybody else, all the books that come out afterwards are just reiterations of that book. Like, for example, one time, I wanted to learn about habits, I have maybe six or seven books on habits. And guess they all say the same things. They all use the same studies, they all talk about the same problems that people have, the same examples. It's a lot of it is almost like, if you take the title off, you wouldn't be able to tell which book is which, because they're almost they're all the same. And so I realize that I'm buying book after book after book on certain topics. And I'm just reading the same thing over and over and over again. So like, Yeah, this is not working either. This is just wasting time. I mean, repetition does help. But still, I'm not getting anything closer to my goal. And so I decided to do something different. And I decided that I'm going to make a list of all the things that I want to work on, on me.  Now, I have two sets of lists, I have one for business, because I want to improve my business. And then I have another set for me personally, all the things that I want to improve on. And so what I did was made a list that added up, and I picked like maybe eight or 12 things. Okay. And then I went and I found the definitive book, on that particular topic. Now, some topics, I picked three or four books because we come at it from a different angle. And it's a very big topic, like productivity, productivity is a big one for me, discipline, getting stuff done, working on the stuff that's important, I getting sidetracked. That's important to me. And so I have three or four different books that I identified that are really good about that particular topic. And so what I've done is I call it the 12 books a year. So I have set aside and I've decided that I'm going to read one book, every month, about my personal to make me better make me as a better person be more successful in all the different areas of my life. So I'm going to read one book per month. Now, obviously, like I said before, only takes me two or three days to read one book. So I'm not going to read all of them together, I'm going to read one, it might take me two days, three days, four days to read this book, the rest of the month, I am going to implement what I learned in the book, I'm going to go back, I'm going to take notes, I'm going to apply it to different situations in my life, I'm going to make examples or exercises or take the exercises actually do them. Because a lot of books, they have exercises where the author tells you do this, this, this this, and I don't do those. Really, you know, I might think about it for like 30 seconds and then move on, because I'm rushing to finish the book. So I'm gonna go back. And I go through the entire book. And I go through all the exercises, and I actually do the work I actually do with ask you to do. And I go further and I spend time thinking about it. I spend time thinking about okay, what did this chapter say? How can I implement this in my life? How does this make any sense? Does it make sense for me, and I found that there are certain books that are just really, really good. And so I do them every year. So in January, I have one book, and then February I'll do another March is another and I'll work through the book. Now, if that particular topic or that particular issue is really, really important to me, and I'm not finished implementing the book, then I can just keep working on the book, I don't go to book number two, you know, I don't go to the next month's book, I keep working because I don't want to break my momentum. And so I will continue keep working on it. And I've seen myself, the gains are incredible. Some people tell me Oh, my God, how did you accomplish so much. I just, you know, buckled down. And I did this, some of the times my family tells me what's going on, you're different. You've changed. And I'll explain that you know how that works. But it's really extraordinary, how amazing this is. How this one simple concept.And it's cheaper, because you don't have to buy about a book, it's easier because all the information is right there, you just have to do the work. And doesn't it takes less time. Because you're only reading one book, and then you're implementing, and the success you get the results you get are mind-blowing.   And so what I want to do is I want to share all the 12 books that I read every year most years, and I will share them with you. And now I don't have I don't want to do it all in one video because they're going to be too many. I want to go through each book and tell you why I like it. And so I'm going to break this up into a series. And so we have this video, which is number one, right? And then I'll take the first four books, that'll be part two, then part three and part four, and we'll break it down. Now the cool thing about this is that the books are interchangeable. So one year, I might not need that particular topic that that book talks about, and so I can swap it out for another book, or another topic. Right?    That's the cool part. It's up To you, you can spend as much time on a topic or a little time on a topic. And if you don't want it, then you just take that book out, and you put it in something else in its place. Because of course, there's always stuff we can work on, there's always stuff we can get better at. And these books have so much content in them, that you do them. And you're probably not going to finish the whole book in a month, right? And so you might feel okay, I want to move on. But then when you come back to it, you come back to it 12 months later, and you are a completely completely different person. Now you have different problems. Now you have a different point of view, you have different understandings. And so when you read the book, again, a lot of stuff, you won't remember some of it, you will, but a lot you won't, but you did, you take deeper meaning out of it, you'll understand it from a different point of view. And so the problems that you have, you be like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna apply this, even though you've already read the book. And if you've done it several years in a row, you have probably read the book several times. Right. And so this is a, like I said, it's a great process, I want to go through it with you, it's really not that hard. But I want to in the in the following episode, versions or series, I want to talk about the different books that I use, and the different topics that are important to me. And they're really important to a lot of other people, you know, productivity, happiness, keeping the end in mind, which is like, you know, how do we approach life? How do we live life on a day to day basis, we don't get caught up in the day to day things, you know, energy, nutrition, health, that one is a big one, what else we got, we have, I don't have any money books in here, you know, like, oh, how to make more money, or how to do marketing, or those are all on my other list of business type books, right? Financial, Business, Trading, all of that stuff would be on a separate list. Now, I used to do both at the same time. So I used to have two books a month, one for my personal one for my business. But I realized that when you work on the personal, the business stuff, and the trading stuff, all that gets better automatically. And I spend a lot of time on that stuff anyway. And so that stuff gets better anyway. So I really need to focus more time on myself, because, I mean, there's only one me, right, I only get one me only get one life. So I want to make it as successful and as fulfilling as possible. And so I have books on there on happiness, books on getting things done. But really finding out what things really need to be done. There's a book on spirituality that I've read, or that have included, I'm going to share that one with you is really good. It's not about any one particular religion, but it's just basically on spirituality, that one's a good one. So I'm going to give you the list, we're gonna go through each one, I'll tell you what it does, why it's important. And these are books that I recommend to everybody. Like, as somebody who reads and has read 1000s and 1000s, and 1000s of books, literally, you know, I can tell you right off the bat if something is good or not. And there are many books that are really, really good, but they didn't make the cut, you know, so these are the ones that are, you know, hand-chosen by me to tackle certain topics, most of them are all, you know, mega mega bestsellers. So you probably have most of these already, if you like to buy books, if not, you've probably heard of most of them. Some of them you've probably never heard of, if you're not really familiar with that topic, but all of them are exceptional. And so I can't wait to get into this and share them with you. And hope you have a great year too, you know, and you can just get better, just get better and better better. Just follow the process.  Again, it's nothing, it's easy. It's, you know, pick one topic that you want to work on, per month, find one book that teaches you how to work on that topic, and then just do the work for a month. And it's only a month it's not, it's not that long, you know, do it forever, right. And then at the end of the month, then you pick another book and you go in a different direction, you do something else. And if you want to do work more on it, because you're excited, you stay on that book, and you keep going, and then you cycle back. So the next year, you'll go back to the first book, you read it again, you'll be like, Oh man, I can implement this, this, this, this, this, and you learn more and you implement more. And sometimes you end up oh man, I forgot that I used to do this. And you stop implementing and then you forget and then you read the book and you're like, Oh, I got to do that again. Yeah, that was really important. Okay, okay, I'll do it again. So you start doing again, and you just, you just continue to stair step, get better and better, better, better. And it's not about, you know, making huge major goals or muj major improvements. You can make small improvements. And that's actually one of the books that we'll be talking about eye opening really topics. So yeah, this is part one. Go ahead and queue up part two. Go ahead, go through that one. And I'll go through the the first four books, and then we'll do the rest as we go along. But yeah, this is gonna be really helpful. Thanks. All right. Bye.

For more info on what is discussed in this epsiode, head to MarketPowerMethod.com Allen: Boom, welcome to another edition of the Options Genius Podcast! Today, as promised, in the last episode, we have an interview, an interview with a fellow named Kevin. And Kevin is one of our beta testers in the Market Power Program, Kevin has done an amazing 266% ROI, since he's joined the program earlier in 2003. So that's not even a whole year worth the results. And that is after fees. So after he took out his commission's after he took out his fees, that's how much money he put in his pocket. Or basically, he left in the account. I don't know what he did with it. But yeah, that's what he kept. All right. That is amazing. I wanted to share this with you, I wanted to get this to you. Because these type of results are uncommon. I think that's an understatement. You know, when you have most people trying to make seven 8% A year from the stock market, even though you know, the market, banks, banks are paying what 4 or 5%. Right now, that's wonderful, that's great. Stock market should be paying more, but nobody out there is getting 266%. So shake cheese, but we are doing it with the market power program, I wanted to share this because I want you to be excited, I want you to be happy for Kevin, I want you to know this type of stuff is available, it's doable, if you have success with trading. So that's like the goal. I mean, the goal shouldn't be 266%. But the goal should be that you have enough money coming in to pay for all your expenses that you could do that from your trading. So you have basically your financial independence, right? And then after that you keep adding more and more money to the accounts or to your savings account or whatever, so that the financial worries that you have in your life melt away and you don't have any financial work. Because the thing is like, hey, oh, I got a speeding ticket. Okay? Well, if you can write a check, to make your problem go away, you don't have a problem. And that's what I really want. That's the type of life I want to have for you. Okay, so the type of problem where he's like, Okay, if I can just write a check and make this problem go away, I don't have a problem, I have a money issue. And the money issue, we want to make it go away through trading, market power is going to be one of those ways this program is coming. It's exciting. It's amazing. I can't speak enough about it. I mean, it's just unbelievable. I haven't I lost sleep. When we first came up with this seriously, I lost sleep for days and days and days. And I just can't believe it. And even now, it's still unbelievable. 54 trades in a row that I have made with this program. I think Kevin, the one that you're going to see in the interview, I think he had one trade that went bad, and he had to adjust it. And so it still worked out. And it's phenomenal. It's amazing. And he's not the only one, I'm not the only one, we have 35 other people that are trading this, in our beta testing program. They're all doing phenomenal. We have case studies, we have screenshots, we have interviews, we have, you know, the emails from them, thanking us and saying how amazing it is. So it's just a matter of time before we can open it up for others join. And unfortunately, you know, we can't let everybody in the whole world join. So whoever gets in to get in, that's wonderful. You only help certain limited amount of people, because we still need to protect it and keep it somewhat secret in the sense so that it doesn't get diluted and it doesn't stop working. So that's the situation here. I'm gonna go ahead and stop talking and let you watch or listen to the interview. And then when market power, makes his official debut and launches to the general list, I will let you know on the podcast. Or if you want to get to know earlier, then you can go to OptionGenius.com and email us or contact us and say hey, I want to be on the notification list. I want to know more about Market Power. I want to know when it comes out. I want to be one of the first How do I get to the top of the line, right? So let's do that. And let's go ahead and let's get into this interview. Matthew: Alright. So today we're joined by Kevin Donegen, and he's a member of our market power program. And I want to thank you today for sharing your experience. And you know how the course has been going for you and the program, and just really appreciate having you. Kevin: You're welcome. Glad to be here. Thanks, sir. Matthew: You're welcome. So, I always ask people, you know, the first question is, how did you find Option Genius? So a lot of people find it by podcast or other means. So how did you find out Option Genius? Kevin: It's been a few years now, because I joined other, you know, the training portion of Option Genius a couple years ago, I think it was late 21. So almost two years now, I guess, you know, it's a good question, how I found Option Genius. I guess. I was exploring Option Trading, you know, on my phones, or searches and option genius. And I looked at a few mean, option, genius came up and I gravitated towards it. I don't know, I think I was just searching for option learning, training and learning kind of stuff and found it and it's been good. So I think I found it just by searching. Matthew: Just by discovery. Kevin: Yeah, research Matthew: Great. So you've been a part of our original market program. Call you guys kind of like the Founding Fathers, you know, you, you went in there and tried everything? And is there anything when you decided to join the program? Were you like, hey, you know, I want to be a part of this program that stuck out to you. Kevin: Boy, when Allen, when you all had that first introductory conference call regarding the program, and shared the historical back testing data about what the program was based on? I mean, that that clinched it right there, that historical back tested data, of, you know, the premise, and the process of the program, and how it looked back tested was just the results are just remarkable. Matthew: Excellent. Did you have any personal expectations before you joined the program, you know, as far as like a percentage goal or just to kind of get consistent? Kevin: I had been trading options, covered calls and in spreads before a little bit, I dabbled in it. So I guess my initial expectation for the program was to pay back my, the cost of the program. First, that was my first goal. And I did it pretty quickly. And by starting out slow, you know, I, you know, I started out real slow just to get the feel for the program. And as I traded more, and you know, the indicator came up, and I made a trade in one and one again, and one again, my confidence, says, Yes, this is real. And then I just started slowly, my trade starts slowly ramped up, and I think I paid for it. And depending on how slow or fast you start, it can be a fast payback. If you start with larger trades, but I think I paid mine back in a few weeks, like 12 weeks or something. Matthew: Wow, that's great. That's like, yeah, it's really important, what you just said, you know, a lot of people, you know, you're excited, and you can see things working. And a lot of times, you know, the human psychology gets involved, and we go too fast, right? You know, so it's, it's really kind of really great that you kind of measure yourself and start slow. So it's really great. For sure. Is there any kind of particular part of the program that you really like? You know, is it some people can say, oh, it's adjustment, or it's, whatever. Is there anything you can pinpoint? Kevin: Yep, the two things come, pop up in my mind, that the online forum of the group and the chats and the sharing of information amongst the market power group, I really enjoy that to get other people's opinion and take on the program in the market and when to trade, not to trade. So I really like that it's an open forum. And it's, it's welcoming, and no one's afraid to say anything. So I really liked that. The second tool I like is the trading log, the market power trading log that you all put together. It's well organized. I've been using that to track all my trades. Matthew: Great. Yeah. I mean, again, you hit on a really great point. I mean, that we have a group of people, you know, some people are just new to options. And you have some people I said in another interview that are looks like they take it to quantum physics. So it's like, you get all this range of knowledge. And it's really kind of, we're all here for the right reason. So it's really kind of great. It's almost like a family, if you will. Kevin: Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Matthew: How has the support been? I mean, you kind of mentioned a little bit from Option Genius, but more like the people around you. I mean, I think you just alluded to that, that you have a good support system that If you want. Kevin: Oh yeah, whether it be a group member or yourself or Trish or an even Allen, it's been great. The communication has been prompt and, and timely and always answered. So there's always someone to answer a question or what have you. So it's been really good. Matthew: That's great to hear. You know, we really want people to feel involved and not feel left out. I'm, you know, there's nothing worse than feeling like you're alone, you know? Yeah. Kevin: So I don't, I don't feel that way at all.  Matthew: Awesome. Has your trading changed at all? Since you joined the program? Like, as far as I mean, can you talked a little about confidence, or, you know, some people? You know, a big main reason is confidence, I say, but how was it for you? Kevin: So, last year before the program, I had some success, just doing it myself, but then I got burned, and wiped away all my profits. So what I get out of the program is the discipline of the program. And, you know, when you have an indicator day, that's the day to trade no other. So, I'm more disciplined since joining the program. And I'm only trading when there's an indicator day, by and large. So the short answer is, I've gained a lot of discipline after joining the program.  Matthew: That's great to hear. So we're all shoot for that to be consistent, you know, and there's nothing worse than trading and winning than winning, and then giving it all back. I think it's like the, you know, it's the worst thing that can happen, right? Kevin: Anybody that's probably been in options have had that experience at one time or another? Matthew: Sure. So it's almost required. Kevin: Boy, it's a tough learning, but that's okay. Matthew: All right. So, um, how have your results been so far? For you? Kevin: I'm looking at my trading log right now, because I figured you'd ask that. And I've kind of added some features to it myself. But if you're interested in those, we can talk about that. But I've made what about 47 trades? Not counting yesterday. So I work off the two platforms. So I'd make trades in both one as is a smaller account, one's a bigger account. So I may duplicate a given day on two different platforms. But anyway, you know, 47 trades, I think I lost only one. And that was because of me. It wasn't because of the program. And I only lost like 600 bucks. So no big deal. And then I adjusted and made it back. So but that was my fault. And I bought too early in the day, basically. And I put notes out there, which is good. My average number of contracts, I would say is 20. So but you know, I've been up as high as 40 and 10. And 30. Just depends how I'm feeling. You know, like, like, yesterday, I did only 20. I don't know, I I don't know why I just didn't want to do 40. You know, and so long and short. I've made over a minute, I also back out the cost of trades to get a net profit, right? So my net profit is 226%. Matthew: Yeah, that's great. You mean, you're trading at a good amount? You kind of just talked to how a little bit can made me kind of feel how I trade you know, there's some days that, you know, you don't you have like kind of a hunch, you know, you're like, I don't really feel, you know, can be personal. It could be like something like, I just don't feel like trading today. And that's perfectly fine. And what I do love, and I think you'll agree is that some days, you don't have to trade, you know, it's like, you don't have to take every signal. Right? You can, you can wait and there'll be another one coming down the pike, you know? Kevin: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And that's why that's where the discipline comes in. You know, because you just got to be patient because the signal will come. And when it comes, that's your time. Matthew: So yeah, yeah, you kind of take it as a case by case basis. You know, that's great, for sure. Alright, so kind of a fun question. So a lot of people, they have different goals for their profits. And it's nice to good problem to have, you know, you're in your profit, you're making money. Some people do fun things like take vacations, and some people just roll it into their account. So what are your plans? Kevin: So I guess, on articulate or unstated two goals for the program and the profits that I earned from market power. First is to build up my account so I can grow the dollars in My Account for doing this so that I could keep slowly ramping up as I get more and more comfortable. But then I also, the second one is to take some of the profits and have some fun. And like you alluded to, I think maybe before we started the call, but, you know, I went fishing in Colorado, and virtually almost paid for the whole trip, in a day, at least a good portion of VRBO expense. And then, earlier in the year, my wife and I went to Paris, and I was trading when I was over in Paris, and helps pay for that part of the trip. So, you know, Matthew: It's great. I mean, it almost makes your trip more enjoyable. You know, you're over there, you're like, hey, you know, this is cash flow in this right now, you know? Kevin: Exactly. So it's, it's a great feeling. So yeah, two things, take a little profits, have some fun with it, and then keep growing the account. Matthew: Excellent. Excellent. So what would you say to someone that you were there in the original group, and a lot of people have apprehensions about joining programs, you know, whether it's true, we're kind of at a point now, where we've had many, many winners, and if not any losers on the track record, actually no losses on the track record. So it's almost too good to be true. So people are naturally skeptical. What would you say to someone that, you know, there's going to be next group and a group after that, and people join in this program? So what would you say to someone that's kind of on the fence about joining this program? Kevin: Well, if they see any of these interviews from the current market power group, I gotta believe take it from the member, the current members and what they're saying, and their results, trust, the back tested data is real. And ever since we, we joined market power, the program to your point hasn't had a losing trade yet. So it works. I mean, the data speaks for itself, and they can if they're apprehensive, start slow, kind of like what I did and get comfortable with it. And you'll quickly, quickly get more confidence in the program. Matthew: Excellent. Well, wise words, I mean, you know, it's really important, you hit on some really important points that, you know, patients taking your time, and really kind of just trusting yourself. I mean, give it you know, giving something a try and, you know, the worst possible thing that can happen, you know, so that's great. So I really want to thank you for taking the time today. I really appreciate it and you know, sharing your experience, so really great having you on. Kevin: Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you, Matthew. All right. Thank you. Have a great day. You too.

I have some exciting news. And as you might have seen from the title of this episode, the news is that market power is coming. It's almost here. In fact, we have it here, but we haven't rolled it out to everybody. So just today, I finished or I got out of my 54th market power trade for the year. Now, market power is a new trading program that we have come out with. And so since the beginning of the year, I have done 54 trades using this market power method. And out of those 54 trades, I've had zero losers. That's right. Every single trade has been a winner-- 54 winners in a row. It's something like 300%, or close to it in ROI. I mean, it's mind-boggling. The trade has been amazingly consistent, amazingly profitable. And it is one of the most exciting things I've ever worked on. I just, can't believe it. So if you don't know what market power is, back in February of 2023, back of this year, we put on a like a live seminar-type thing. And we introduced market power. So basically, market power is a trading plan, as well an an indicator as well as a way to adjust the plan. So you have an indicator that tells you when to trade. And then you have the plan that tells you what and how to trade. And then if the trade goes bad, which sometimes they do, but not this year. So far, we have an adjustment module, which tells you how to actually fix the trade. So that potentially you might not ever have a losing trade ever again. Now, I know big work, right big promise. But so far, it's been kicking butt. So back in February, we had this event, we introduced it to about 600 people who registered for that. We then explained the whole thing and showed the back-tested results.  And it was actually something very new. We could not do this before this year. So last year, in June of 2022, the CBOE introduced options on SPX that would expire on Tuesday and Thursday. So that meant that you now have options that expire Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, all five days of the week. That is how we were able to create a way to adjust this trade. So we have this indicator, We’ve had it for a while we've been using it for our weekly trading system, which is also doing amazing. But there was an issue with the trading system that we couldn't share all the trades for a couple of reasons. Now, I don't want to get into everything on this episode, because that would defeat the purpose of the episode where I just want to share that this thing is coming and I want you to be aware of it. If you are looking for a way to be consistently profitable, If you like to sell options, or if you haven't sold options before and you're looking for a trade that is simple to understand and do. This might just be what you're looking for. Now, again, I already gave you the performance. We've had that event in February, we opened it up to have about 35 people in the program. We taught them exactly how it works. We showed them the indicator we showed them how to read it, how to use the trading plan, and they have been having amazing results as well. Just today I saw an interview with one of them. He's up 266%. Another one of our beta testers let me know today that he is on his way to India for his second trip of the year. The first time he went for two months. Now he's going again this year and both trips have been paid for by his market power money, which is basically the money he makes from his market power trades. So that's just 2 of the 35. And then we have testimony like case studies and we have videos and interviews of all the others. It's really phenomenal. Really exciting. So what we've been doing since then, is we've been fine tuning the program, we're getting those feedback from those guys about and girls, how to make it better, how to make it simpler how to make it more outstanding. And using their feedback, we've actually been able to improve our indicator. And the indicator is, you know, pillar number one, which is it tells you when to trade, if you don't have the indicator give you a signal you don't put the trade on. That's what gives us our edge. So we only trade when there is a signal from the indicator. And the more powerful and better the indicator, the more fine tuned it is the better human signals you get. Right? So we've been working on that. And we have improved the indicator significantly since we first introduced it. We also have the trading plan. And now thanks to the CBOE what they did last year with the new options, we also have an adjustment plan. So we know how to fix this trade. Now, we haven't had to do any adjustments this year. But we did go back and test previous years to see if we if it would work. And we found an adjustment method that basically got every single one of our losing trades back to break even. And so there aren't that many losing trades in a year. But if there are there, we have a way to make them and get back to break even. So like if, for example, if we had been trading this same program, the same method last year in 2022. And if you could adjust the whole year, we would have been perfect, we would have had to adjust on 10 trades out of 81. So there was there would have been 81 trades last year, 10 of them would have been adjusted and they would have broke even 71 would have made money, and it would have been the return would have been somewhere close to around 450%. So currently, I'm up to 300, right close to it. And I still have September, October, November, December. So I still have a quarter, four months left. So maybe I'll get up to 400 this year, who knows. It's amazing. It's just it's just mind boggling. So I just wanted to give you a heads up if you haven't heard about it, we are going to be introducing and showing and sharing more about it in the coming weeks and months. We are still in beta phase beta testing phase. So we're gonna let a few more people in, out of those 600 that registered for that live event, we're gonna let a few more of those people in, make sure everything is working great. We're still waiting for our programmers and our developers to give us the green light that we can invite more people in because right now the server load and the website and all that would not be able to handle so many people, because it's all real time data and data feeds and all this technobabble stuff that I really don't understand. But they say that the thing will crash if we have too many people. So we gotta wait until they build in redundancy servers and stuff like that. So once that is done, it'll be in a couple of months, we'll be able to let more people in. But then here's the thing, even when we are allowed to have as many people as we want, we still will not be allowing as many people as we want. Because we have to limit this and keep it basically under wraps. There's going to be a very hard stop in how many people we actually let into this program, because I am trading this for the fund my hedge fund. And I don't want to over saturate it. I don't want to have too many people doing this. Because SPX is huge, that's what we trade, but it's not unlimited. And so I would like to be able to do it for a long time. And if we have too many people doing it with too much money, it might get messed up. And so yeah, definitely we're are going to have strict limits on how many people come in. But so far the people that we've led in the stories we've hearing from them, how it's changed their lives, how it's how it's given them faith in humanity, to some degree, It's been mind blowing. So, you know, part of my mission of starting Option Genius is to help people become more financially independent and be able to live the lives that they want. And this program so far with the beta testers is definitely doing that, as we get more and more people in. I think it's going to continue to do that. So this will be I don't know, it might be like the best thing I've ever done. I have. I don't know, it's that exciting. It's that good. So I'm really excited. I just, you know, I had a 54th winning trade today and I said, You know what I need to I need to share this with our audience so that they're aware of it and if they're looking for something if you are looking for something to add to what you're doing or if you're very frustrated and upset and you know you want to make a change or you want to do something different in your trading, you might want to take a look and see how this works. The background is basically it is a SPX trade meaning we trade the SPX index. It's a one-day trade, meaning we get the trade in today, we get in today, and we're out tomorrow, it's a credit spread. It's a very simple trade to do. And we only trade on days when we have the indicator. Historically, there are about seven trades a month. So you know, you'll do seven trades, and you put the trade on when you get the signal. And then the next day, the trade is over, if the trade went bad, you can do an adjustment, then the trade might go on a little bit longer, maybe another day.  But still, you only have one trade at a time. And it doesn't take very long to do each trade. I mean, once you know how it works, you should be able to do each trade within less than five minutes or maximum 10 minutes, if you're on your phone or your tablet or something and it's really small. But really, it shouldn't take much time at all. And the way we've set up our program, I mean, the program, the software, the technology is going to give you every single thing you need to be able to do it quickly, easily, smoothly. I'm really excited. It's like, all in one complete package. And yeah, so I'm really excited, hopefully, you'll get a chance to check it out. We will if you're not on our email list, go ahead and get on the email list. We'll be letting people know more about it. First, we're going to, like I said, we're going to deal with the people on the notification list, we're going to let them come in, try it out. And then once we get the go ahead from our programmers, that we can open it up to more people, then we will be talking to everybody on our list on our email list. Again, we have 40,000 people on our email list, just our company email list. And we're not gonna let anywhere close to 40,000 people into this program. So we might just sell out just to people on our email list. And we might hopefully you don't have to do any advertising or anything like that. But we'll see how it goes. And for now, you know, we're having amazing success, amazing results. I hope you can join us.  And in the next episode of the podcast, we're actually going to have an interview with one of our beta testers. He's going to be talking about how he's doing, how the program works, you know what his experience was? So look out for that in the next episode. That's going to be really cool as well. And then if you guys like, then I can share more about the market power program on the podcast. Just let us know. And we'll do it that way. Cool. I wish you the best of luck in everything you're doing and trade with the odds in your favor.

Allen: Welcome passive traders to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast. Today I have a special guest with me, Mr. Carl Nord, We’re going to be talking about something pretty interesting that goes back to a few episodes ago, something I talked about, which was back on episode 140 of the podcast, I introduced something called the 66 Trade challenge, which is something that people can do if they are having trouble with discipline, it's one of the ways that we talked about of how to overcome the deer in the headlights syndrome, or the not knowing what to do syndrome or just not doing what you're supposed to do while you're trading. Allen: And we've all been there. And it's a it's a mental thing. You know, I talk about it a lot that trading is 90%, mental 10% skills. Most of us know what to do, we just don't do it for whatever reason. And we all have our individual hang-ups. So Carl here, he's in a couple of our programs. He listened to that episode, he took it to heart. And he reached out and said, You know, I'm doing the challenge. And I've been following him. And he's been giving me updates all along the way. And I said, You know what, this is awesome. We need to get Carl on the show. We need him to share his expertise, his wisdom about going through the system and going through the challenge, and basically, his results. So, Carl, welcome so much. Carl: Thanks, Allen. So glad to be here with you. Allen: Yeah, it's so it's a wonderful for you to share your time and experience experience with us. I'm really happy to have you here. And it's part of what we like to have in the Option Genius community where we help each other. So appreciate that. So Carl, let's let's get started. What was it about the challenge that made you decide to do it? Carl: Well, actually, it was a combination of two of the podcasts. I listened to the 66. Great Challenge first. And then I listened to the one right before it number 139. When you have tried everything, and you're still not profitably trading that one, which is a long, long podcast, and over and over in there, you were saying, You got to have a plan, you got to follow the rules step by step and, and this other thing, and I was thinking, you know, if I'm gonna get this down, the 66 trade challenge will make me do the things you were telling that the other fellow in the podcast just previous to it, it was a combination of the two. That made me do it. But mostly it was because also, like you said, I had no discipline. I panicked all the time. Yeah. Allen: Hey, cool. So I mean, yeah, I remember. I remember that one that was 139. I think that one was like a it was like a coaching call. Basically, someone had written in and said, You know, I've been trying this for years and years, and I haven't had any success and what helped me, what am I doing wrong? And so I got on them. And I asked him, I was like, Hey, would you be willing to have it recorded and shared? And he was like, yes. So we got on the call. And yeah, it was about an hour and a half long.   Carl: He had either an English or Australian accent?    Allen: Yes, yeah. And he's actually in our, the free Facebook group that we have. He's in there. And he responded, it's been about a year I think, since that episode, or I don't know how long it's been. It's been a while. And he responded on Facebook. Just recently, I think it was last week that he's been he's made a lot of strides. He's listened to that interview several times. And it really helped him. And he's made a lot of changes, and he's doing much better. So I'm glad. I'm glad that was helpful. So basically, you said that you were having a problem with discipline. How bad was that problem?   Carl: Well, it was bad enough that I wasn't making money. You know, it just yeah, if the market went against me, I was just panicking all the time and either selling too soon, or, you know, exiting the trades too soon or too late or something, you know, just kind of got overwhelming for a little bit. And I was looking for an answer when that can't win when I listened to those two podcasts and put it together for me.   Allen: Sweet and so what were the things or some of the things that you had tried before the challenge to overcome that problem?   Carl: Well, I guess I just Well, I had taken the class so I was trying to apply what I learned there. But until I did the challenge, I couldn't get myself to stick with it the way I needed to. And even after the challenge I started with the challenge. There were some things that happen along the way for one thing I didn't want to do adjustments. And in that cost me I saw big time. The the last, next to the last trade that I did, I did an adjustment, I tried doing an adjustment on it. And after all was said and done, I came out with six bucks ahead. So you know, don't lose money. That's the big thing, don't lose money. And, and so now, I keep an eye out for for doing adjustments. But by that by the time I got done with the, towards the end of the second half the last 33 of the trades. I was starting to settle down pretty good. And profitability was going up. I was doing better in percentages and stuff like that. And on my returns and fewer, fewer losers. Certainly. No, no big big losers. Awesome.   Allen: Cool. Yeah. So that kind of leads me to my next question. So before the challenge, what were your results?    Carl: Well, my results were mixed mostly down. But I had a few winners here and there. But I wasn't, I wasn't applying all the rules. As I was just looking at a chart for a company, I'd pick something and look at the chart and see if it was starting to trend or if I thought it was going to and then I looked at looked for the look for the option. Look at the option list there and, and pick out something I wouldn't look at. You have a whole lot of particulars. And I don't know how much you want me to get into those. But I mean, it just things like dividends, I didn't worry about whether a stock had dividends or not. And that was important as far as the stability of the company. And then there's the some of the Greek stuff, the betas and that I hadn't been paying attention to that even though I know you had emphasized that. When when you were when I went through your course.   Allen: Okay, so that's really interesting. So you have you had the passive trading formula course you had all the rules, you had all the plan, you had everything. But it sounds like you kind of picked and chose what you wanted to follow in what you left alone. And what strategies were you using before and during the challenge? Like what? What was the naked puts covered calls, credit spreads?   Carl: No cover calls. I did call spreads on the call side and the foot side. Most of them were naked quotes actually. Okay. But as I went on, the spreads seemed to be working for me better. Puts on the spread side. And I did those four things naked calls.   Allen: You did naked calls?   Carl: Yeah. So Naked calls.   Allen: Okay.    Carl: Just a few. Not a lot. Actually. I think. No, yeah. Right. I there was not a lot and I only did two. I take that back there was a bunch of bunch of call spreads that I did. Okay. There was two naked calls that one was a loser one was a winner. Overall. That way was aware of the to the naked puts and then put spreads, put spreads, gave me a better percentage when not necessarily a better dollar and better percentage, which overtime would have been better, I think.    Allen: Okay, and how long were you? How have you been trading options before you took the challenge?   Carl: Ever since last October.   Allen: Okay, so what is that? Almost a year? It's coming up on a year. Yeah. Okay. And so how long when did you start the challenge?   Carl: I started the challenge it on January 25th.   Allen: Okay, so October, November, December?   Allen: So about four. So you were trading for about four months before you took the challenge. Okay, cool. All right. So now just to recap, you know, you've been trading for four months using different strategies. And you said that mostly your results before the challenge were that you were negative and you kind of didn't didn't really know what you were doing. So what were there   Carl: I still wonder that.   Allen: We all do so then What were the results? So what are your now that the challenge has been completed. And the whole point of the challenge was to have you and just a little bit of background for people who haven't heard that episode, the whole point of the challenge is to have everybody do 66 trades in a row of following the rules exactly as they're laid out. And the idea behind it is, if you do that, it should help if not trigger a habit-forming response. So we want to make following the rules a habit where it's just automatic, you don't have to think about it. And, you know, go back to psychology and whatever, they say that the average is about 66 times that you have to repeat something for it to be a habit. Now, it can vary depending on the emotional response in the whatever the person, but 66 is about, about average. So that was where we came up with it. And so if you've, the idea was if you take a trading plan, you do it 66 trades in a row with no deviation from the plan, then it will make it much easier to have that discipline as you continue. So now that the challenge is complete, Carl, what are your trading results after the challenge?   Carl: I use ThinkOrSwim. And so when I go to put on a trade, first I check the chart on a company if I've got one picked out. And I check the chart on it to see if I can spot a trend or whatever, if I want really want to do the company, then I go to the to the trade to get the option chain. And Thinkorswim has, you can lower it and it gives me the beta the dividends while volume and the trades and all that stuff, you know what's going on with it. My eyes just start, I just started the left and go across the top and okay, it's got this, it's got this has got this, okay, it's got all that now, I go down. And that takes care of the underlying, I go down to the option chain, and I started looking for the price on the individual options and making sure that the delta is within the range that I want, first of all, and then and then go to the price itself. And if I'm doing a spread, I want to get not less than 30 cents on the spread. If I do a naked put if I liked the company well enough on you know, it's 30 cent minimum to you know, just 30 cents is a base. So any if it's above that great, wonderful. So, so I do that.    Allen: Okay, so that's the process, but what are we how are we? How are your results now? Like? Because before you said you weren't winning on too many trades? How about now?   Carl: Oh, yeah, no, no, yeah, the second half of that set of trades, I had out of 33, I had maybe four losers five losers as all, which was good for me. I mean, it was much better for me, it's without a doubt. In the beginning, I got hurt in some of my average is in the dollar amounts. Because I started using five contracts for trade, paper trading. And it wasn't after about five trades in I heard you telling somebody somewhere along the line to do it like we would really be doing and I could only afford one contract on a trade.  So I reduced it. But in those five I had two losers that were really really big, dollar wise, that hurt me there. So, but all of that, as I went on, it became practice with following the rules and getting a little bit better at reading the charts. Just between the two it helped check the company once in a while to make to on the fundamentals to see if the company is standing in good with some of the analysts or in Wall Street or whatever.   Allen: Okay, but let's say guess I'm trying to in my mind, I'm trying to create like a progression, right? So before challenge, during challenge, after challenge now before challenge, he said things were not too good. You were still pretty new. And so you were having more losses than winners. During the challenge. As you said in the beginning the first 30 trades or so, you were you were paper trading while you were trading a little bit larger size, then you actually have the capital for so eventually you cut that down. But because of those two losses, you're saying that you were negative, and then for the last half of the challenge, you said you did about 33 or 35 trades or something. And there were only about four or five that you lost on. Is that right? Right. Okay. And then when did you finish the challenge? What date?   Carl: Do know? I didn't look at the data when it's finished. If I can get that for just a second.   Allen: Yeah, I mean, I'm just looking for ballpark, you know, because he started in January.   Carl: June 5th    Allen: Oh so it took about four No, about five, five months to do the whole challenge. Now, from June to now, because right now, as we're recording this, it's August. So we got June, July, August, or June, July. Really? How have you been doing these two months?   Carl: The trades that I've done have been winners, but I haven't done very many trades because of the oils. We're working with you. Okay. trading program. Yeah. Okay.   Allen: So you're doing fewer trades, but you're switching what you're doing?   Carl: Yeah, well, things kind of evolve over time, you know, as you do stuff, like, I can afford to put on one contract for the oils. But it gives me just enough to do one contract in equities if I picked a low enough value company. And for that, gotta follow the rules for that with Lauren companies, you got to you got to get it. It's hard to find a company that's really stable and can can give me what you need. But so I've been, I've just started doing that kind of evolving into that. And so far, I've got two trades of one. Yeah. And, and that, that side of it is going good for me the oils, I need to work on,   Allen: Right. I mean, anytime you're learning, it's something that's going to take some time. But it seems like the challenge the I guess, what it seems like the biggest benefit for the challenge was that it forced you to actually use the rules. And it forced you to actually dig deeper into the material and be like, Okay, I paid for this. I'm in this program. I gotta make sure that I'm actually following the book. Is that Is that safe? Yeah. Okay.   Carl: Yes. Okay. Cool. And it was what I needed. Because I, you know, like I said, at the beginning, I panicked a lot. If the market went against me, and I get out too soon or too late. Just the rules are there for a reason, they set you up so that you can get in and out at the right times. And if you're down, then, you know, how to adjust and, you know, what, what time do you want to pick to do the adjustment? And that kind of thing? It was important, you know?   Allen: Yeah, I think something you said is what you just said is like, really, really important. Because, you know, in the progression, I'm like, Okay, you went from new trader to having a little bit of experience and losing trades, and now you're winning on most of the trades. And that's great, you know, the, the, you know, you're making more money than before, it's, it's showing potential, but I think what you said is that before, you used to panic now, because you've done so many trades, and I think this one challenge also forced you to do a lot of trades, you don't panic as much and that in itself by itself, even if even if, you know we don't even look at the money or the wind Ross ratio or anything like that. But the fact that you have more confidence in the system in the trading plan, and in yourself as a trader, I think that's huge, because that will go you know, well into the future.   Allen: And I think for me, that was one of the one of the things that helped me switch in my mind from "Oh, hey, I'm a new beginner. I'm just messing around to Okay, now I actually know what I'm doing. Now. I'm confident now, if the market goes against me, I know how to bail myself out. And so that allowed me to sleep at night. Because you know, it's like oh my god i trades a triple what do I do? You know, in the beginning it's like oh my god, the trades are trouble. Oh, I hope I hope the stock goes up tomorrow. I hope the stock goes this tomorrow. I know you're praying and you're not sleeping at night, your chicken the name the overnight markets. But once you have that confidence that hey, you know what, even if it goes against me tomorrow, I know what I'm doing. And I know how to get out of it. I know how to if I have to take a loss I know I can take a loss or if I know if I want to adjust I know what to do and how to do it. That gives you a peace of mind. That is kind of like what puts you in the zone. You know I don't know if you play sports but you know for for basketball players or for foootball players, they just get into this mental state where they see everything, they can do everything and they don't mess up. And that's where the the greats really have a lot of that, you know. So I think what you just mentioned, is because of the because of the challenge, and because of you just doing it over and over and over again. I think that's a huge benefit that's going to carry and help you for the next, you know, years and years of your trading.   Carl: Yeah, yeah, it trained my eyes to when I bring up the screen. It's just automatic. No, clicking across the different things, this fits this fits. Nope, that doesn't. Let's go on. Another thing that that it's done is where before I did the challenge, I was watching the watching the numbers all day long. Click-Click-Click. Now. Now, I know that if it doesn't make this percentage, or, you know, whatever, to get in or out where that gets triggered, there's no point in even looking at the computer. So now I'm stuck wondering what I'm going to do with the rest of my day. It's been, it's been good, because I know I don't have to worry about it anymore. It just, I just follow the rules. So two or three times a day I check where where I'm at. And that's it. Yeah.   Allen: Yeah, we call it passive trading for a reason. So what I'm hearing is that I think, and this was a side benefit, like, I don't even think about this, but it seems like because of the challenge, you put on a lot more trades than you would have normally.   Carl: Well, yeah, when I was paper trading, I could, you know, I had a limit thought I had. I mean, I knew, even if I had the money, I probably wouldn't do more than six trades. And if I had the money, I wouldn't learn I would limit myself to probably 10 contracts. Or if I had the money, and that was going to be my overall limit someday down the road. I did do the six trades. I did do that with the paper trading. And in order to speed up the process, I didn't want to do one at a time only all the time. And, and so I just kind of went through that. But..   Allen: Yeah, so. So it seems like you by doing the challenge and doing the trades and wanting to get through the challenge, you actually sped up your your learning process. Because it's because I mean, you've been trading for less than a year and you're talking in a way that I don't hear a lot of beginners talk, you know, you're you're speaking like a option traders that's been doing it for like several years now. So I think this was like one side benefit that I didn't even think about that we wouldn't be when we have somebody new to options would be like, okay, you know, here, here's the basics is what you got to do. And then do you got to do the challenge. You just have to do the trades. This is how many trades we want you to do over and over and over again. So that you put in the reps you put in the time you put in the you get that experience and you build it up as quick as possible. So that you go from "Hey, I don't know anything. I'm not disciplined. I'm not experienced. I'm scared" to "Okay. I've been through the war. I've been through the battles. I know exactly what to do, when to pull the trigger when not to and you come out the other side and you're like, okay, hey, I got this. So yeah, this is this is awesome. Cool. So what did you learn about yourself when doing this?   Carl: Well, I learned that I needed help. that I that I shouldn't just try to figure it out to do it by myself. I learned that I had to put in a little bit of time and work on it more than a little and I learned Yeah, I learned to focus on the right things and then not get get so worried about where the other money was going up or down and stuff and the trainers sticking with watching percentages and watch how it's rising and falling to the rules. So before it was grad I can't stand to lose as much money I'm out and then I get out and the next day it is right be right back up again. And I'd have lost all that money.   Allen: Yeah, yep. Yeah, that's a big one. That's a big one that a lot of people never overcome. And that's something that I'm actually learning myself again, right now, because as we're trading for the fund, you know, the fund is much larger than I've had in any one account. You know, I mean, I have multiple accounts, overall, the, the size is big, but now that I have that whole big, big pie in the fund, we look at it and if a trade is going bad, or not going bad, but the trade is just not going the right way, the number, the last number is really, really big. Oh, my God, you know, we're losing a lot of money. But when you when you ignore that part of it, and you just look at, okay, when is I'm getting out, or when am I having to adjust, I would realize that, Oh, hey, this trade is not even in trouble. It's not even anywhere close to being adjusted or getting out. It's just that because the trade is so large, that the numbers are really big. And so when the trade goes, well, then the numbers get really big on the good side. So I'm learning this whole process again, myself about, hey, don't worry about the numbers, you know, don't worry about the amount the dollar amounts will focus on the trade, the debit, the debit, the delta, and all that other stuff. So yeah, it's something that we keep learning over and over again. So that's cool. Now, when it comes to the challenge, what was the hardest thing for you to do?   Carl: Well, the hardest thing was to I got 28 trades in and blow it, you had to restart.   Allen: So okay, so 28 trades in and then you know.   Carl: You know, all of it Allen has been trying to pick is is trying to find is trying to be right in the chart that I look at and use and and the assumptions I make about whether it's trending up or trending down or whatever like that, that is always the hardest. I mean, the rules are easy, you've made them simple. It has got to do them. But but you know, there's just no accounting for the market. Yeah, that's the part that started is true.   Allen: Right. So I mean, you know, depending on the strategy, of course, it varies. I know for the spreads themselves, we do cover that in the program, I can go through that with you, if you need to. But it's, it's really, you know, basically, the idea is very simple. It's okay, if I'm trading a credit spread, I don't want to be guessing on what the market or the stock is doing. And I don't want to be trading something that I don't It's not talking to me, pretty much. I mean, it's a weird way to say it, but like, I want to look for a stock that's trending, you know, it's either going up, it's going down, or it's going sideways, the sideways once I don't even mess with you know, if it's going up or going down. Those are the ones I will I will trade spreads on. So I think we do cover that. And there's some things maybe I can go over with, again, to see how to make sure that it's, you know, what are we looking for, to say, hey, it's trending. But in in that sense? There, it's still trading, right? And so we can we can line it up and do it and have the perfect setup. But then the thing just stops and turns around it goes the opposite way. Or like what have it.   Allen: And that's why we need to be able to follow the rules. It's not just finding the perfect trade, it's also managing the trade. And when do we get out? When do we pull the plug? When do we adjust it? Or how do we know if we should adjust or get out? So there's, there's all that stuff. And I'm really glad that you actually went through this, because the only way to know is to be in that situation over and over and over again. So kudos to you for that. Now, now that the challenge is over, and you said that I want to go back to this, you said that you did I think what was it? 28 trades. And then you had to start over again. So why did you start over?   Carl: Because I took on a trade without checking one of the one of the rules is to have a dividend. What I don't know if it's your rule, but it was one of my rules that fit your, your structure there. My I had to have a dividend or a yield over 1%. And, and I didn't look at that. And it was zero. And I had already put the trade on. And then I was going back to do the paper do to fill in my paperwork. And I saw that not Doggone it. No, no dividends. So that company was off my list. But I done it. So I had to start over again.   Allen: Yeah, because that's one of the rules of the challenge that you have to follow the rules on every trade. And if you mess up or if you don't follow the rules and you gotta go back to the beginning and start over again. And that's that's kind of what makes the habit you know, just doing it over and over and over again. So I mean, good. Again, kudos to you like most people would have been like oh, Oh, that's not a big rule, I'm gonna just budget and keep going. But it shows that you're serious about this. And that's one of the things I want to point out to everybody that, you know, when you we see you on the call on the coaching calls, you know, you ask questions, you, you post and say, Hey, this is what I'm doing. You know, this is what this is what I have, and you want to do it, you want to learn, you're putting in the time you're putting in the effort, you know, doing a 66 trade challenge is not easy.   Allen: It's definitely most people will not do it. I would say just because, you know, like, I say that the mental aspect is 90 trading is 90%. Mental, I can say also, that 90% of option traders who are learning this stuff are not going to go through and do an entire 66 trade challenge. You know what you describe that? Oh, hey, I missed up on this one rule. I messed up and I started over again. Most people would be like, yeah, no, I'm just gonna keep going. So, you know, that shows that not only do you want to do it, but you have the willpower and the discipline. And I don't know if that came from the challenge, or it just you had a naturally but that's a challenge. Well, that's awesome. Because that's what it takes to do it. Yep. And that's what it takes, you know, that's what it takes to get good at this. And, and like, you know, from what I'm seeing, I've seen a change in you yourself. Right from from the beginning, from when you start started the program to now I've seen a change in you, your demeanor, your questions, and you've come light and day. So if there's anybody listening is like, Oh, how do I learn options? The fastest way? Well, I think it's, you know, do the challenge, get a trading plan, do the challenge. Put yourself in that position, do the reps, and you'll make light years of progress. So that's, that's really, really awesome. I think I might have already answered this one. But what has changed for you now that the challenge is complete?   Carl: Well, I'm more sure of myself with doing the trades. I mean, the the part of putting on the trade, selecting the underlying and putting on the trade and that are just, you just it's just the rules. It's it's only figuring out whether it's going to go up or down or, you know, along those lines, and that's always going to be there. But, but for me, I don't have to wonder if I'm doing the right thing with putting on the trade. Because I know now with with the trade that when I look at the Options that that I'm doing everything right? I just need them the market to go in my direction as all. And like I said, Now I only check on it two, three times a day. And it's it's it's a it's been a relief, you know, to be able to go I went fishing all day yesterday and didn't have to worry about it. I could have checked on my phone, but I didn't guide. It's just let it rip.   Allen: Yeah, I mean, some people say, Oh, this is like passive income. I'm like it is. And it is it. You know, I mean, it is income and we still have to watch it. So it's not like you're not doing anything, but it has a it has a hint of excitement. But it's not overwhelming. It's not like terror most of the time. Yeah, well, I had those episodes. So yeah, but that's that's the progression of going from like a newbie to you know, an experienced trader that's been doing this for some time that you don't be you don't have as many of those. Cool. So now the final question for you. The challenge itself, did it help you form some habits? Or no?   Carl: Oh, yeah. Like I said before, it's it's like it's automatic. My eyes just go to the things I want to check. I've got a worksheet that I made up for myself and, and then I just fill in the numbers as they go on. My but even when I'm looking now to see if it's a trade that I suspect I might want to do, my eyes are still traveling from right to left the line on Thinkorswim. They're checking off the things on the underlying that, that I know I'm going to need to have in place before I even go any further with it.   Allen: Wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah, I mean, it does, in a sense, make it more boring. The trading can get more boring when you actually know what you're doing. And you have a set plan, you know, it's like, Hey, I do this then I do this and I do this and I do this and once you have that, it's like oh man, it's not so exciting anymore. But I think that's the that's the goal. You know, I mean, if you want to excite me go buy a lottery ticket or you know go   Carl: Yeah, well, I do that to   Allen: Cool Beans. All right. So is there anything that else you would like to share with our audience? Any tidbits of advice or anything like that? Well,   Carl: I guess I guess we've covered most of everything. Whether you do the challenge or not, I would say, you know, follow the rules, right? Just, you got him, and they work so well on, you'll reduce your number of losers and increase your numbers of winners.   Allen: Yep. Yeah. I think we, I've heard it over and over and over again, it's like, just follow the rules, just follow the rules. It's like it. But that's the hard part. That's the hard part of getting getting people to do that, you know, getting them to follow the rules. And that was the whole idea behind the challenge. So I thank you again, for your for your time and for your wisdom. I'm very happy that you were able to complete this and that he got the results that you have. And I can't wait to see the future and what it what it Hell's in store for you. So thank you so much.   Carl: You're welcome.  

So what is it that is stopping you? What's stopping? That's what we're going to talk about today. Now look, I have a thought experiment for you today. Now thought experiments are what Einstein you'd see use, you know, Einstein used to think about all these different things about how this would work. And that would work, especially when you're dealing with abstract concepts that you can't write down, it's a good way to get the creative juices flowing, and to come up with answers, helping your subconscious being able to help you out as well. But it's really meant to get you to see things from a different perspective. Or as Obi Wan would say it a certain point of view. Right. So since you're consuming this content, right? I know that you're interested in trading. If not, I don't know why you're here. But maybe you're trading a little bit. Maybe you're trading a lot. Maybe you haven't started trading? I don't know. But chances are, that most of you are holding back. You're not all in either you're not all bought in that this actually works. Or you're scared? Or you're trading with a little bit, not too much. Because you don't want to lose it. Whatever the reason, I'm sure you do have your reasons, right? Not enough time. Not enough money. Oh, the market is too volatile. Oh, the markets not volatile enough. On and on and on. So let me ask you this question. Okay. In 10 years, 10 years from now, if you take no action, nothing changes, you just go about your day go about your life, the way you've been going. It's the same going on the same path. You don't take any action, you don't change anything in your life. What is your life look like? Think about it. I mean, pauses and think about it. Really? What does your life look like? Now? Obviously, you're 10 years older, right? So as your family, so is your house, so it's your dog. And things are worse than they are now. If you don't change anything, because that is life, things get better. Or they get worse. Nothing stays the same. Right? Your house is 10 years older, and to be falling apart. I need a new AC my I need a new roof. I need something else. If you're older, yeah, things are falling apart, right? You get an older squeak year larger, maybe it's my case. So if you took no action, things are worse. Are you happy with that situation? Or would you be happy with that situation? Take the take where your life is now. Fast forward 10 years, and it's a little bit worse. I don't know how much worse and you know, hopefully, you did the exercise. And you thought about it, like what things would be like 10 years from now, if you don't change anything? Are you happy with that situation? Probably not. So the question is, then, what are you going to do about it? Do you have any idea? Do you have any plan? Because really, you know, nobody is coming to get you. Nobody's going to save you. All right, you got to have to save yourself. So I hope you do. I hope you have come up with something. And I hope things are better for you. And I hope you know I'm trying to get you out of the malaise. Okay, now, let's do another thought experiment jelly.  Yeah, I know we had one but you get one for free. Okay, so now look, instead of thinking about all the wonderful things that could happen if you started making money by passive trading, right, because you've heard me you've listened to the show you you've heard me all the great things that happened. You get the freedom you get the money, you can spend more you can have more time off. You don't have to work as much or work at all. All these wonderful things that can happen that have you ever been to people. Let's do it on the side. What is the worst thing that could happen? If you didn't start passive trading? What's the worst thing that could happen? If you never started, or you never grow, or you never go all in, ruminate on that a little bit, you know, think about it. Some people, they need a carrot, you know, they need a reward. It's like, oh, man, you know, if you get this passive training stuff down, man, you can make a few $1,000 extra a month, that might be enough to buy that new car you want or go on a vacation you on or buy the new house or boat or whatever. Now for some people, that's enough. Yeah, motivated, they go for it. Other people, they need the cat, right? And in this case, where the rat, the rat, you got the cheese, or the carrot, whatever, you know that you got the, you got the reward on one side. But then you got the cat. On the other side, the cat is behind you, and the cat is wanting to eat you and they wants to trick you wants to catch you and eat you. That is the worst case scenario. Right? And some of us, actually, according to statistics, I think most of us will do more to evade the cat or get away from the cat than we will to get the reward. So maybe that's what you need. Maybe you need to imagine the cat. What's the worst thing that could happen? What is the worst case scenario? So you don't trade? You don't devote the time? You don't give it the energy? What could happen? thing of it, I mean, I'm sure you've come up with something, right? And you mix this with the other one. It's like, okay, if I don't do anything, what's 10 years going to look like? Does that make your blood boil? Does that bother you? Does that freak you out? If not, then you didn't go dark enough. Okay, we want to go dark, we want you to come up with the worst, worst, worst, worst, worst case scenario. Now, hopefully that doesn't happen. Right? But if in your mind's eye, you think, Man, this could happen or this will happen unless I take action. Maybe that's enough to get you to take action. Right? They say that, hey, you know what? Somebody puts a gun to your head, you'll do whatever you have to do. Why does it take putting a gun to your head? Why can't you do it on your own? Well, some people are just not motivated that way. So they need the gun to their head. Okay, well, let's create the metaphorical gun and put it to your head. What's the worst thing that can happen? And think about it and say, Yeah, you know what this is going to happen? Maybe, I don't know, you could come up with something like, You know what, I think I'm going to have a heart attack. And my insurance is not going to cover it. And it's going to cost $200,000. That could be possible. It's happened to people. I mean, that's my father was just in the hospital for a back surgery, and it costs about $175,000. Luckily, he's insured. But if you didn't, that would have been catastrophic, right? If you didn't have the money, so what if you don't have the money that will help you move forward? It's just a different way to think about it. So these exercises, these thought experiments can be used for anything starting to trade and diet, starting exercise approaching someone of the opposite sex or the same sex, whatever it is a mate, anything, they are that powerful. So put them to good use. Alright, until next time, trade with the odds in your favor my friends.

The maximum money exercise. All right, this is gonna be fun, so chances are that you're not trading as well as you want. Chances are you're not making as much money as you want. And you might, or you might not know, the reason why. I don't know, maybe you need a better strategy. Maybe you're not disciplined enough, maybe. And then you can enter whatever excuse in the blank, right? Now, in reality, I bet that you have all the answers you need. I bet that you already know the basics of trading, you know how to do it. But something is holding you back. I mean, realistically, how hard is it to sell a covered call, right? I mean, that's the most basic trade, you can make money on it, you can be consistently profitable with that, how hard is it, right? And if you don't know what a covered call is, you buy 100 shares of stock that you like, okay, and you sell an out of the money call on out of the money call option to bring in some credit. That's it, that's all you got to do, then you wait till expiration, at expiration, If you get called away, meaning the stock is taken from you. That's great. That's wonderful. You buy more stock, you do it again. If on the other hand, the option expires, and you still have the stock, that's great. Go sell another one. Right? A fifth grader could do this. So what's stopping you? Right? Why do you trade well, for a few trades, and then give it all back? Why do you fail to follow your own trading rules? And I hear this over and over and over again, from students. Right? When you're in a trade that's going bad. You kind of know what you need to do. You kind of have an idea like, oh, man, I need to do something about this trade. I should do some this getting bad. But still you do nothing. And then you justify it, right? You rationalize, oh, yeah, you know, I needed to pay my dues. I needed to learn from that mistake. Really, you needed to learn you need you have to lose money to learn? Is there an easier way? You know, really? The answer is that it is subconscious. The reason we do well, and then we start messing up our subconscious. You've heard about it, right? It's self sabotage. we hurt ourselves. And it happens with money. And just about anything. Happens with businesses happens with relationships, it happens with trading, it happens with health, happens with all sorts of things. And we're going to work on that right now. So stay tuned. First of all, I have to give full credit to this to Mr. Allen Sultani. All right. He is one of my mentors. And actually, he teaches marketing and sales. But he spends most of his time teaching about human psychology. So this is our works, okay, and I'm going to quote him here, so that I get this right. All right, so "you'll only be able to make money close to what your subconscious mind allows you to make". And as you get closer and closer to that boundary, you'll start to notice, is a lot of resistance, shiny object syndrome, and all sorts of other thoughts that start to work against you. What was once easy now becomes difficult. What used to take a few minutes now takes days, and once and what once you thought you could do now becomes impossible. In the process, the mind will start to conjure up all sorts of stories, justifications and bullshit to keep you from hitting the boundary, which I call the maximum money boundary. And the first key to overcoming this boundary is knowing what your boundary is in the first place. And here's how you do it. So you close your eyes and you take a deep breath, say this statement in your mind. I make $5,000 a month, then you keep increasing this to make to "I make $10,000 a month", and you keep going in increments of either 5,000 or 10,000 or whatever is reasonable. Okay? If you're doing well, really well. Then you go up in increments of 25,000 to 50,000 and in some cases $100,000. Okay. As you're doing this process, pay attention to where your subconscious mind goes. Hell yeah. And it feels good. But when you say a number for example, I make $10,000 a month. Notice it starts to feel bad, and a voice will appear out of nowhere that goes something like "Yeah, right, or bullshit". And in a sense, makes you feel as if you're telling yourself a lie. This little voice, this lie itself is your outer boundary of what you can make.  And that's generally where you're stuck. Now, from my experience, when I'm about 50%, near the boundary, remember, Alan is saying this, when I'm about 50%, near the boundary, things will start to go to shit, get harder, and I have to work through them. I used to use a whole lot of force and effort to make things easier to work through this boundary. But that wasn't very effective, as you're literally fighting against yourself. And as your subconscious knows a whole lot more than you, then that's one battle, you're never going to win. So instead, what you want to do is start doing identity change work. This requires a lot of how to, but in short, just saying to yourself, that I make whatever the goal and then do it with feeling. So if it gets harder to attend, I make 10,000 a month, and you do it with feeling. After doing that for about a week or two, regularly, come back and retest your boundary. And what you'll notice is that everything magically became a whole lot easier. Money started coming in, and things are now working for you". That makes sense. It really is that simple. And it's not just about the money, it's about the actions to like for me, I had a huge mental block about trading for other people. I couldn't do it for years I didn't want to then I don't want to I don't want to own on. The reason was I had a mental block. In the back of my mind. I was like, No, you can't do it. You can't do it. Then I bit the bullet. And I created the hedge fund. And I want to side note, I want to thank you to everybody who has reached out wanting to invest with me. I mean, I can't. It's super humbling. And it's unbelievable that there are so many of you that want to turn your hard earned money over to me. So I really appreciate that. And thank you. Okay, but now back to the back to the thick gear. So ask yourself this question, right? Where are you stuck? Find out, find out what level you're stuck at. And then go further, and then find out why you're stuck there. Right? Because if I were to tell you, hey, you know what you can make $50 a month trading? You'd probably be like, "Yeah, I can do that". You can make $500 a month trading? I'll probably lose a couple a year. But most of them are you guys. But yeah, we could do that. You can make $25,000 per month trading? You can right now. In the back of your mind, some of you a lot of you are like me in No, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think so. Yeah, I don't know. I don't use the proof. I don't I did all the stuff starts happening. Right? So you need to figure out where your limit is. So you do that simple question. You know, just go up in increments. Maybe if you don't do to increments of 5000, you do increments of 2000 or 1000? You know, where do you stop? Where does it start feeling like a lie? Where does it start feeling weird? Like, oh, no, I don't know, when you're not confident in the number anymore. Okay? And remember it's not I am making 10,000, it's I can make 10,000. You have to have that confidence. And if you think you can, then you can. So you want to figure out where the boundary is. And then you want to figure out why it's there. So to do that, I have some other questions for you. So you can ask different questions like, if I was starting all over again, what would I do differently? Right. If I was starting from scratch, I didn't know anything. What would I do differently? Different paths, different strategies, blah, blah, blah, whatever. If I had all the money in the world, how would I approach this? If I know no boundaries, no lack of resources. I had all the money in the world out approached this. Who can help me with this? Or even just do it for me? We did an episode before on who not how, you know, there's a lot of things out there. You don't have to figure out if you just find somebody else that already knows them and can do them for you. There's just simpler, faster, easier, just let somebody else do it that enjoys doing it more than you. Another question is if I was teaching somebody to do this, what would I say to them? How would I teach them? What would I tell them? Now, the truth of the matter is most of us already know enough. We already know everything we need to know most of us. Well, we limit our ourselves. So I want you to use this exercise to expand your boundaries. All right? That's all it is. It's self-imposed, self-inflicted wounds, self-sabotage. It's crazy. I don't know where like, you've come, subconsciously, we all have it, nothing to be ashamed of. But until you go through it and break it, you're gonna stay at that same level, there's nothing I can teach you, nothing I can do for you, to make you pass through that level, unless you do it yourself. And you go, you know, you convince yourself that you can do it. And then eventually, when you get to the higher level, again, you're gonna get blocked again, then you get blocked again, you get blocked again, I was having this conversation with one of our traders today. It's just, it's amazing. The limitations we put on ourselves. And part of it is because we've never seen it. We've never seen somebody making a million dollars a day trading. So for us, we're like, oh, "Man, that's not possible million dollars a day trading?". Now, I'm just coming up with this. But I'm sure there are guys on Wall Street. There are hedge fund managers that are making that much money because their accounts are big enough. Right? For us. They were like, Oh, my God, I'm just so totally out of my comfort zone. I couldn't do that. Why not? Why not? You have the skills? If not, we'll teach him to you. And I got to ask myself that same question. Like why can't I make a million dollars a year, a day? I got the skills. I know I have the skills. I just don't have whatever. It's a blockage, right? So we had to work through it, though. That's it, very simple. Until next time, my friends, trade with the odds in your favor.

Why do we trade? Sounds like a simple question, right? Maybe even a stupid question. Duh Allen, we trade because of the money. We want the money. Now I'm gonna say bull. No, it's not because of the money, money's great and all that, but it's not money. It's something deeper. So after that, what comes after money? Well, okay, if it's not the money, then yeah, maybe it's, well, it's freedom, right, Allen? Because you keep talking about that, you know, the three freedoms-- time, freedom, financial freedom, choice, freedom. It's the freedom. That's why we trade we trade for the freedom. I'm going to say no to that, too. Those are side effects, benefits of trading, but they're not the real reason. So in this episode, I'm going to tell you exactly why we trade. So look, a student reached out to me recently about investing in the hedge fund, which is great, because, you know, it shows a lot of confidence that my students are wanting to trade with me and invest with me. So we started talking, and I asked him, you know, Hey, how's it going with your trade and what's going on? He was over the moon happy. I mean, super, super happy. This guy, he's making  3-4,000 per week. Right? per week. That's pretty good. But then he said something that, you know, he said things were a little bit different. And I'm like, "What do you mean? What do you mean, they're different?" He says life's different, it is better. I'm like, Okay, give me an example. He goes, Well, you know, I used to argue with my wife, about her spending, every time I would look at the checkbook, you know, I get mad because she's spending on this or that. But I don't do that anymore. We don't argue about spending anymore, because there's more money at the end of the month, in the account, even with her spending. That's awesome. Also, he said he enjoys buying his kids things, you know, things he wasn't able to do before. Now, this is a fellow who's going to retire in six months, he's got six months of work left, he's going to be retiring. And he told me, he's not going to be worried about surviving on just, you know, 4%, that you're supposed to be taken out of your, your IRA or retirement funds, right? The 4% rule, he's like, you know, 4% is, not that much. And if that was the case, I would still be very concerned and worried about running out of money. But now he's not. He's actually looking forward to retiring compared to when it was a stressor. Right. I was talking to a another student, also last week. And he is also in the beta group of the market power program that we have. And then after about two months in that program, he joined our oil program, the blank check trading program. And I was curious, so I reached out to him. And asked, "Hey, man, you've been with us for a long time, like you've been on our email list, you've been in the you're in the passive program, you've been in that one for a long time, you've heard about blank check, many, many times, probably a dozen times you've gotten emails about it, or I've talked about it,  what made you jump into it right now, because you just joined this program, market power. And then two months later, you join into this other program. And I knew that money, you know, it was the price of the program was a bit of a concern for him in the beginning?" And this is what he said, This is a direct quote. So I'm going to read it here. He said, "Just started to figure everything out, it started to fall into place. After the market power group, I just felt more confident in my trading. And once I started seeing monthly returns, getting close to being able to stop working levels, I felt like I should go the last step and add the oil to the toolbox, and see if I can make enough to surpass my original goals. So I went for it. And I'm glad I did. It's really easy to understand, and I can't wait to start doing it live trading with it". Thank you for being so consistent with your teachings and methods. That feeling that you and your crew are there for us made it a much easier decision as well. So interesting. Right? Now, in both stories, there was no mention of a Lamborghini or a mansion or a private plane, you know, any extravagant spending. Now, there might be a couple of listeners out there that want that stuff. There's nothing wrong with having cool stuff. But I think most of us, yeah, we don't want that stuff. You know, we want other stuff stuff that's real. We want to have less stress, happier family, simple players. I think that's what life is really about, you know, and it's that's the real reason why we try not to get super rich, but to enjoy the simple things the little things. It's not because of you know, we're greedy or we want to take over the world but it's the small things that people don't even notice that make the world or life really better like going to a restaurant and ordering whatever you want on the menu without having to look at the price without worrying about the price. Oh, well how much is at stake? Go lobster only Oh, she wants lobster. Oh no, right? Choosing a vacation based on the location, the place you want to go to compared to the price, the cost. It's like, oh, we can't go to that island that's too expensive. Let's go to this small little beach over here instead. Now you don't need to do that anymore, right? Or even being able to take multiple vacations a year. So now I'm curious. Did I get it right? Is that why you trade? Let me know in the comments, or leave a review. I always love getting feedback and I would love to hear what it is why you trade. Until next time, trade with the odds in my favor my friends. JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Time decay, The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly. So I love Theta, right? I love that Theta is my best friend. It's also known as time decay. And since I sell options, I know that every day that goes by, the options that I've sold are closer to expiring, my trades are closer to ending. And I am closer to keeping all the money that I've already collected for selling the options. So it's a good thing, when I'm selling options when I'm trading options, theta is a great thing. Time decay is wonderful, I love it fish the weekends, right? It's a market, it's not moving, but I'm still getting my theta decay. And it's funny, because in the fund, you know, I'm starting to pay attention to the theta number. So, theta is basically how much money are you going to make every day from time decay, and it's a number. So you can see based on how many positions you have, there's a numbers like, Okay, could be 50 bucks, you know, it could be 1000 bucks could be 500,000 bucks, you know, whatever it is, it's a number that you're like, oh, man, I'm gonna get that money tomorrow. Oh, yeah, this is nice. Obviously, it's not guaranteed. But if one day passes, and no price change, or no volatility changes, then that's the amount of data that you get. But it's good to have a gauge, right? But today, I want to be talking about a different time decay. And this one is not the happy type of time decay, all right, it's not theta, but it's the time decay that we all go through in life. So we all know it. We all know that death is coming for all of us. Yes, we're all going to die. But for whatever reason, we forget about it. We put it in the back of my mind, we put out a video No, I'm not thinking about it. I'm not gonna worry about that, you know, I'm gonna live to a million, I'm not dying, you know, I don't want to do that. And so we stress out about little things, we get upset about petty little things. cut me off. You know, in the big deal, it's not right, in the in the big scheme of things. And you forget that in like, 100 years, just about everything we do is gonna be meaningless anyway. Realistically, 100 years, we're gonna be gone, okay, nobody's gonna worry about it. Nobody's gonna be thinking about us. Nobody's gonna worry about that one guy that is off, it's meaningless. So I read this tweet on Twitter. So the other day, and this guy, he mentioned the Queen of England, right? So he said that there's this woman, right, the Queen of England. She was at one point, the most powerful person in the world, most powerful. She had control and dominion over millions and millions of people. She was one of the richest people in the world. And she had her face on multiple currencies in different countries. I mean, you gotta be a big deal to have your face on a currency. Right? And she had it. Like, for some reason, I don't know why Canada had her face on their country, on their currency. Even though they were an independent country. As like, if I was an independent country, the first thing I'm going to do is get those oppressors off my currency. I'm gonna have my old people on my currency, but whatever. You Canadians, you guys figure that part out. Have you? I haven't, right? It's like I knew who she was. And Usually the big deal are in England and during her life after she died, to me, it's like big deal. Didn't bother me at all. Right? So, you know, I mean, if we think we're a big deal, are we as big a deal as the Queen? You know, that people are going to idolize us and come to our funeral like 1000s and 1000s of people are going to come to your funeral. Yeah, I don't think so. Probably not unless you're really famous. Oh, we do have some really famous people listening to the podcast, though. Maybe we do have some of you. Right? I don't know but I happen to start an exercise recently. That got me thinking about death a lot. Actually. That's where this whole episode is coming from. Okay. So I heard the speaker and he said that he does this because he had a near death experience, and ever since then he's, you know, trying to find ways to keep constant reminders that hey, look, I need to, I need to really live in the present, right, I need to make every day count. There's only so many times you can read the book Tuesdays with Morrie. I mean, yeah, you read it, you get remember, oh, yeah, life is coming. We got to live life, but then you forget about it, because life happens and you forget about it. So this guy came up with an exercise that he said to do, and I've started doing it. So this and here's how I would work. So he goes, we need to find out how many days left, we have to live average, right? So for men, the average age in the United States that we live to is about 80 years old. For women, it's around 82. So you take 80 minus your current age, whatever that is, and you multiply by 365, to find out how many days you have left. Now, if you're listening this and if you're over 80, congratulations, you got, you know, bonus time. Congratulations, that's awesome. But you probably think about death a lot more than somebody my age. Sorry. Anyway, so look, that's the rough calculation. If you want a more precise calculation, there's this thing called death clock.com, death clock.com, you can put into your, if you're a smoker, what's your weight, what's your body fat percentage, all this, it'll give you more precise number. And then once you get this number, you take a dry erase marker, you know, one of the ones that writes on the whiteboards, then you can erase it, you take one of those, and you write your number on the bathroom mirror, so that you can see it every single morning, when you wake up and brushing. And he got that number right there staring at you in the face. And every day, when you wake up, you got to go over there. And you got to erase the last number and minus it by one, right, so that you have this physical remembrance, this reminder that man, I got one day left or less, right, I got one day less to accomplish the goals that I want to set to achieve the things I want to do. To say I love you to my family and friends and whatnot and, and just enjoy my life. Right? Because I Oh, yeah, I'll do that later. I'll do that later. How will you see those numbers ticking down every single day? It can be very shocking. For one set. Now. I've been doing it for two weeks now. And it has definitely shifted the way I behave. I took the kids into bed more. Tell them more stories. You know, my my daughter is six. She's not gonna be six forever. And I.. I'll admit it, I sometimes I hate going upstairs to tuck him into bed because it's going up the stairs. It's going upstairs all the way around the house. The Big House has taken a lot of walking, toys on the floor and whatnot, you step on something in the dark. Ah, yeah. But ever since I started doing this, I look forward to it. I want it to come in. You know, she's always asking me for stories. I, she doesn't want to read story. She wants me to make up stories. So I don't know what to say. Right? I run out of things to say. But now I'm doing it again. Because the time is gonna come where she's not gonna ask anymore. And that's gonna be a sad day. But I don't know when that's coming. But now I see the clock ticking down, the numbers ticking down. So I'm like, Yeah, though, you know, I'm running out of time to tell stories. And I also spend more time cuddling with my wife, you know, I spend more time with her. Because those are the things that are most important. My wife and my kids and the time I spend with them. Those are the things that are most important. Not, you know, I mean, I love you guys. And I hope that you listen to this podcast and you listen to all the episodes and you share them with your friends. So that the numbers of the watches and the views and they're in the downloads all increase like crazy. So I hope you do that shameless plug. Right? But it's not the most important thing in my life. I hope it helps you. That's why I'm doing it. I hope it really helps. And I wish you did let me know right, your feedback. But to me, what's realistically there? For me the most important is obviously my family. And so I say no, a lot less to them. Right? Hey, Dad, can we watch a movie? Or cartoon? Come on guys. They want to do it. I get to hold them. I get to cuddle with them. I get to spend time with them. Yeah, let's do it. "Hey dad, can we go play video games?" Sure. Yeah, let's do it. Right. And a side effect of this is that my wife takes me for granted a lot less too because that number is freaking her out as well. She doesn't put her number but she looks at my number going down and it freaks her out. So she is also nicer to me. If you know what I mean. Okay. And as I get older, right, I'm noticing the days, they just go by faster, which is great for my account balance, right my trading account because of the Theta decay, the options decaying, it goes by faster. But this little number reminder keeps me thinking about the present, and helping me make the most out of every day that I have left. Right? And I urge you to try it. And even though, you know, one thing we have to remember is that 80 is the average, right? 80 is the average for the man to live in the United States. It doesn't mean we're gonna get to 80. And I had a very sad reminder of that this week. Because this episode, I want to dedicate it to a friend and a student of ours, Mr. Eddie So. I found out this week that Edie passed away recently in his sleep at age 50. So he went early. I mean, Eddie had his own tech startup, he was living in Silicon Valley living the life he had it, all right, he had money. He had success. He had a great family. But when he found options and option genius, he really found his passion. I mean, it lit him up. So much so that eventually within about a year, I think he quit his job to trade full time. And he even got a vanity license plate for his Bentley, you know, the the license plates where you can pay extra and you get letters on the back to spell something out? Well, his license plate read "Option Trader", which was really, really cool. You know, unfortunately, Eddie wasn't an option trader for too long. But it was a pleasure to know Him. So rest in peace, my friend, I'm dedicating this episode to you. And he's actually I've actually interviewed him before, and so you can listen to his interviews, or I think there's one on the podcast and on the YouTube channel. So again, right, even though we're supposed to live to 80 and beyond with the new technologies and all that stuff coming out, I'm looking forward to doing that. But you never know. So live in the present. Be careful. Spend time with your loved ones as much as he can, you know, don't sweat the small stuff and all that stuff. So until next time my friends, trade with the odds in your favor. Goodbye.

The real reason your wife doesn't want you trading, that's what we're going to talk about today. So I have actually figured it out. And I will share with you the reasons, as well as what you can do about it so that your wife not only does not fight with you about your trading but actually encourages you to do so. Now, before I start this episode, this might be one that you want to listen to alongside your spouse because it just might help, right might start some dialogue between the two of you, and if this is something that you are having issues with. And, you know, although I said wives in the intro, and in the title, this is for all spouses, it works both ways. You know, normally, in what we've come across, as we've seen men trading and wives, having an issue with the trading, or you could be the other way you could be a wife trading, and the husband has an issue, or one spouse has an issue with the other spouse trading. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Hopefully, I don't want to offend anybody. But that's what we're gonna talk about today. And like I said, if you can get your spouse to watch or listen to this with you, it might actually help you, especially if you had a problem with this now. I keep hearing this over and over again, from traders, like, Allen, how do I convince my wife to let me trade or at least to stop nagging me about my trading? Right? And I'm with you guys, right? I mean, with most things, I have no clue what my wife means. Unless she very clearly lays it out for me, because even though she expects me to I still, after even all these years, I still cannot read her mind. So I was thinking about this question, and we were on a drive, we were going on vacation to Colorado. So we had a lot of time in the car. So I turned to my wife and I asked her this. I'm like, Hey, this is a problem a lot of guys have, how do we fix it? What do I tell them what to do? And as soon as I told her this, she looked at me, like dumbfounded. She looked at me. And this is what she said, she goes, Don't you remember what it was like when you first started trading? I had to walk around eggshells around you. I would come home one day after work. And you would be all depressed and moping around and sad. And I'd ask you will happen? Well, why he's so down what happened? And you would say, "Well, the market was down today", and you lost money. Whoo hoo hoo. So the next day, because I didn't want to recap of that, right? The next day, I would check the market before I got home. And I would expect you to be happy because the market was up that day. But ah, no, I get home. And what do I find? I find you my faithful husband moping around sad again. And it was totally confusing. That's what happened? The market is up today I checked, and the market is up. Why are you still sad? And you would tell me "Well, baby, I adjusted my trade. I was going to be smart about it. And I just did like a real trader. And now I want the market to go down. But because it went up again, I lost even more money". She said she couldn't even tell me anything. Like she couldn't help me. She couldn't get mad at me. Because I was already so sad about it all the time. How do you jump on somebody who's messing up and feeling bad, and you just like you gave losing more money? She said that it consumed me that I was horrible to be around and that she never knew what she would get when she got home from work. Especially after a long day of work. She said that she needed somebody to talk to to commensurate with, right? She had a long day she wanted to talk to me. She wanted to talk to her partner. But she couldn't. Because I was upset. I was stressed out. And she says that I'd be watching those stupid stock shows with the crazy bald guy that kept screaming all the time. Yes, that is true. I used to watch that show every night when I was losing money. And I think I stopped and I started making money. I don't know if that's related or not. But that's a different story. And then after all that, then she let me in on a little secret. She goes, look, it's really simple. One of the main things that a woman wants is security. She wants to know that her man will take care of things and that he has them under control so that we won't be homeless or even have the power turned off. Right. That's what a woman wants. That's basic. Every woman wants that. And when you're losing money left and right, she says I don't feel very secure. Does that make sense? I was like, Yeah, that makes a lot. And as you get going on she's like Secondly, a woman does not want her man to be taken advantage of she goes, how many silly courses and videos did you watch thinking you're going to find the secret as if they're going to sell you a secret, right? As if there are any secrets, you kept thinking that the next course. So the next guru had all the answers. So you would get your hopes up, you'd get all excited. And then your hopes would be dashed when it didn't work out, and you just lost more money. Because you were just too emotionally involved. And lastly, every woman wants her man to feel good about himself. And when you were learning how to trade, you just took it too, personally, if you lost money, she says, I would degrade myself. He says I was putting myself down after every trade every bad day, I would call myself stupid. And she said it was just too painful to watch, and that she didn't even know how to help me, and that it broke her heart. So I guess we're looking at as traders, from our point of view, you know, this is something I'm trying to accomplish this is something that is really hard. This is something I'm learning. And with every trade, I'm learning more, even though you know, I'm paying my dues, I'm paying the tuition. But when you flip it, and you look at it from their point of view, it makes a lot of sense. My wife says, Look, I didn't care that you were trading, as long as you are happy and not breaking any laws. She says I don't care how you're earning money. In fact, I want you to do well, I want you to do amazingly well. So yes, women want their independence. But they also want to have the ability to not work if they don't want to. She said we don't want to worry about money. So we want you full to be successful in trading. It's not that we don't want you to be successful in trading. But you're just not. So it's hurtful. So there you have it, right? The problem is not that your wife, at least for most of you. Not that your wife disagrees with trading. The problem is that you are not consistent in your trading. And then once I did get consistent, once I got a better handle on my emotions, my wife started having fewer and fewer issues with my trading. And now she's my number one supporter. So there are times I go home and I'm stressed and I'm down and she'll figure it out. You know what happened, something bad happened. I'm like, Yeah, I lost money on this trade. And she will make me feel better. She'll make my favorite food, she'll do whatever. But it's not every day. And you know, so that's why she can help me when it happens once in a while. She's not shell-shocked anymore. And she's not confused about what's going on anymore. Right? So how do we get your spouse on your side? Well, I got some tips for you. All right. So number one, don't keep them in the dark. This is simple, right? You share your results with them, you'll be open and honest with them don't hide things from that you share the wins. And the losses, this is important, you got to share both. Okay. Number two, you focus less on making money. Right? This is counterintuitive. Don't focus on making money. But focus on not losing money. And I tell this to everybody in the beginning, like in the beginning, when you take any of my courses, I want you not I don't care if you don't make money, I want you to be consistent. I want you to say yeah, this is my result, result result result, I don't want you going shooting for the moon, I want you to just not to lose money. Because once you become consistent, once you have wins after win after wins and you're positive month after month after month. We can just tweak it a little bit. And then you can have the big month. Okay. What scares your spouse are the wild swings in your account, the roller coaster, right where you're doing well, well, well. What your spouse wants to see is a consistent increase in the account no matter how small why? Because that is what normal people, non-trading people. That is what they're taught to expect, right? You put your money in a mutual fund was supposed to do it's supposed to go up every month, and little by little it's supposed to go up. If your mutual fund was going up or not like this, people will not be interested in that mutual fund. Right. They're expecting things to go up. Yes, slowly, slowly, slowly, but they're expecting it to go up and that's what your spouse is expecting of your trading account. Even though that's not usually what happens in the beginning, right? So make sure that you have consistent winners, or at least don't lose money, just don't lose, right? I know that's harder, it's hard. But you don't want to be shooting for the moon, you want consistent results, and that is what's going to help your spouse. Number three, if you are considering a course, or coaching, or something of that nature, let your spouse see all the sales material as well as let her watch the webinar, let her watch the video, let whatever even makes sense to her, get their buy-in, because you're spending money on this thing they're going to spend is coming out of their pocket do, right, get their buy-in, see if it makes sense to them. Number four, if your spouse is willing, learn together, do it together, and watch the courses together. Now, understand her thinking is different from your thinking. Okay, but it is possible to work together. Now, you might not want to do it in the same account, you have your account, she has her account, you're going to do different trades, you're gonna have a different mentality. But even if it's the same strategy that you're using, right, you guys can do it together, even though the trades would be different, even if the strategy is the same, because one is more conservative. One is more resin, blah, blah, blah, right? I don't I'm not saying that you guys should be doing every single trade together in the same account where both of you have to say yes, on the trade. I mean, that's something beyond this conversation. Okay? Number five, keep your trading emotions away from the rest of your life. Now, this is hard. But don't let your trading dominate your life. Okay. And that's why I love passive trading because it doesn't take all day long. It doesn't take most of the day, you know, you learn it, you put it on their strategies that just work. And they don't take all day so that you have a life so that your spouse sees you doing other things. So you can do things that make you happy, like your hobbies, right? You can have a job, you if your job, you're not worried about it, you're not stressed at your job all the time because of your trades. Okay, that's one of the beauties of passive trading and why I keep pushing people Oh, passive trading, passive trading, right? If there was something else out there, that was better, I'd be like, go go do that, go do that. Let's all do it together, right? But there isn't, I haven't found it. This stuff works. And it works in a way for you to not only make money, when a lot of trades, be happy but have a good life. Okay, now, controlling your emotions, right, not letting the market control all of your feelings. This is hard, and it takes time. But once you have more confidence in your trading, your spouse will feel that confidence you will emanate a different energy out of your body. Once you're having more confidence, your spouse will feel that and then they will not freak out as much. Okay? Nowadays, if the markets are up markets down, my wife cannot tell from my behavior. Unless it was a really bad day, a lot of trades went bad, or a big drain that I was looking at, or something I really wanted to happen. It didn't happen. But on normal days, she cannot tell in the past. She could because I would be losing money every day. So she'd rely on the markets crazy today or might get Margaret was crazy a lot like that. That's what I keep telling her I'm Mark is crazy markets, volatile markets up markets down. It's like every day was bad. But now I have my emotions and my feelings under control. So the market is up. Great. I know what to do. the market is down. That's great. I know what to do. I know how to adjust my trades, right? I know how to fix them. I know how to balance them. I know how to do asset allocation so that it's not going to blow up my whole account. Even though I trade for a living. It's okay. Right? You'll get to that point. And now when I go home, it doesn't know what the market did unless she looks it up. Because I'm happy or sad has nothing to do with the market. Usually. Usually, right? It's still stressful. It can be but usually, okay. And then I have a bonus tip number six in the beginning as you start making money, right? Use that money to buy things that your spouse would appreciate. This is kind of like I would say a bribe, but it's not really a bribe, right? Because you're already doing it. And it's working. So you're doing the trades. It's starting to work. You're starting to get results. The account is growing. So I don't care what it is flowers, maybe something simple like that. It could be a weekend getaway could be something nice something small. I'm talking about small things, not about buying a car, right? I'm talking about, okay, you made a couple 100 bucks, great. Use it, to do something to appreciate your spouse, something that they would like, so that she can see. Right? She can see oh, wow, something's happening here, right? And share in the benefits of your trading. Just don't keep all the money in your account thinking I needed to grow. I needed to grow. No, no, no. celebrate the wins with your spouse. Okay, now, when I learned this lesson is a big lesson. Believe me, it doesn't sound like much. But this is a big lesson to celebrate your wins. So when I first learned this, I decided you know what, every time I have a positive month, I'm going to take my wife out for lunch. And that's what we used to do. Every month. If I made money that month, I would take her out to lunch. So we would go out to lunch, but a bit, right. That was assigned to her that I was doing well. So I didn't have to tell her Oh, I was up 6%. I was up 15% I was up point oh, 1%. I didn't have to tell her the percentage. I just had to say, babe, we gotta go for our celebratory lunch, had a good month, let's go, we're gonna go eat. And it would make her happy. Because I did well, I was positive, right? And it helped me to celebrate my hard work. Because I got to do something that I enjoy, which is spending time with her one on one. She enjoys it, I enjoy it. She's seeing that, hey, something is happening here. Good results are happening here. Good things are happening. She didn't like ask all 100 questions like How much money do you make and how many trades you do and what prevented blah, blah, blah. After a while she stopped. She was like, okay, you know what I trust you. I'm seeing consistency, I'm seeing results, I'm seeing that you're having a better control over your emotions and your your discipline and and you know, the way you the way you talk and the way you feel and how angry you get you don't get as angry anymore. I'm seeing this. And I'm happy that you're better. Right. Now, I don't know why we stopped. I think we stopped having the lunch when we had kids need to start that again. Because it is it's a big deal to celebrate the wins. All right. So there you have it, you got the three main reasons your wife does not support your trading. And you have six steps to help her do so. Alright, I hope this was helpful. I hope if you're watching it together, you guys can talk about it. Maybe I missed something. Or maybe there's more to it that you guys can discuss and talk about. And that's the only way to have some open communication. And to get this because trading is an amazing, amazing way in if you're the spouse, I'm telling you right now, let your files let your husband trade. Let him do passive trading, okay, not the other stuff that day trading and the crypto and all that stuff you don't know about that stuff. All right, I can't speak to that. But I can speak to passive trading. And we can show your results that it's working, we can show you results from students that are working, we have a hedge fund where it's working. So we are doing it, we back up our talk with our walk.  And if we can do it, if I can do it, your husband, your wife, your spouse can learn it too. And it's only a matter of time and effort. So if you support them in their trading, it takes one big whoosh off and our wishes but our wishes like the stress level right, it takes one more thing off of their mind where they don't have to worry about it. And that makes them better trader. Because they don't have to be afraid of you. That's one of the things I remember when I was trading is that I was always afraid of my wife finding out how I was doing. I would hide things from her. Even I don't know if I lie to her maybe I don't remember maybe once in a while, you know small little white lies about how I was doing. But I was doing it to protect her from having her be scared from having her get mad at me for losing more money. And then it hurt. Right It bothered me it. It took me longer to get better as a trader because of that. But once she became on my side once she once she decided and once she saw that I really wanted to make this happen. And I was serious. And I was committed. I was working hard at it. Then she came aboard and she got on my side and she started helping me she's like, What can I do to help you? And there's certain things that we have in our programs, where we teach people like here this is how you can use an accountability partner. This is how you can get your spouse or child or whatever, to help you become a better trader. And that's what she did with me. That's where I learned all that stuff. Right? So she started helping me every single day to become a better trader and together as a team. We did amazing and now you know it's come full circle and she's wants to trade. I taught her when we were on that trip right on the vacation I told you about we were in the car, when we got to our destination, we were there for a couple of weeks. And one of these you says, hey, you know, teach me how to do this, this trade that you're doing this new trade, I'm gonna go there cool. And we sat down, we figured out, I showed her how to do it. And she loves it. Right? So she understands it, and she's going to be doing it too. So we're actually going to be trading together we've done in the past, but didn't really, you know, she got busy and stuff. And now we're going to be doing it again. So it's exciting. It's fun, right? It's something that a family can do together, because they're I'm going to be we're gonna be teaching the kids how to do this stuff, too. Because we want their families or their futures to be secure. I don't want them to worry about it and be like, Oh, hey, I gotta go get this job that pays a lot of money. Because I got to take care of myself. No, I want you to be able to trade to take care of yourself. So that way you can go get whatever job makes you happy, even if it doesn't pay that much. So it all trickles down. Right. But again, that's a different topic. I hope this helps. I hope if you have any questions, please reach out. Happy to help you again. Until the next time, trade with the odds in your favor, my friends. Take care.

Allen: All right, everybody welcome passive traders to another edition of The Option Genius Podcast. Today I have with me Mr. Brad Janitz of Midland Trust. How you doin, Brad? Brad: I am doing great. Happy to be here. Allen: Thank you for spending some time with us. The reason I brought Brad on is because when we were starting the fund, we had investors were people that I was talking to, and they're saying, Hey, that sounds great. I want to do it. Can I do it with my IRA? And I do it with, you know, some other money I have in a retirement account? And to be honest, I didn't know the answer to. So I went back to my lawyers and other people that I've met in the hedge fund community, and I'm like, Hey, Ken, how do we do this? How do we set this up? And they're like, oh, you know what? Just talking to Brad. Okay, who's Brad, that talked to somebody? Oh, yeah. Just talk to Brad. And I'm gonna give you Brad's number. So I finally got Brad's number, I gave him a call. And he explained everything to me. So I said, Well, this is pretty cool. I think more people need to know about this. So I wanted to have Brad on the show, and have him explain how it works, basically, because what I realized is that you can use your IRA, for a lot more than just having it at your broker and buying and selling stocks and options. So that's what we want to talk about today with Brad, is that true, Brad? Brad: That is true. That is true, you know, so quick little summary of who I am, who Brad is, you know, the infamous Brad here. So, you know, I've been with Midland now for 13 years, this is my first job out of college. And really what we are, is an alternative investment custodian also called a self directed IRA company.  And really, what that means is, we allow you to put your retirement money to work and things outside of the stock market. Okay. And I will say when I went through going through college and was trying to learn about financial products, this was not something that I knew about. And then all of a sudden, I joined Midland and learn this whole new world of alternative investing and specifically alternative within IRA accounts. And so, really where this whole ideology comes from, is that there is something in the world of our IRAs called an IRA custodian. And IRA custodian is an IRS-approved company, financial services company that's allowed to hold retirement assets, basically, open an account for an individual, deposit money, and to deploy money at the discretion of the individual, do some tax reporting requirements and effectively kind of provide the landscape of investments that the individual wants to get into. Nobody really knows that this whole IRA custodian thing even exists out there. Because we've all just went to brokerages throughout time and you know, Fidelity's, and Schwab's and all those institutions out there that we're all used to, and they are great institutions that allow you to set up retirement accounts, start investing, but they are known to allow you to invest in the public markets, mutual funds, Apple stock, ETF, that kind of thing.  And, you know, and so, we all just kind of know the IRA custodian as also the brokerage because the big brokerages out there basically are allowed to play both sides of the equation, okay, leaving the IRA company and also the investment arm, which is the brokerage, okay. But then when you get into other types of investments out there, what I'll call alternative, but mainly private investments, so think real estate think, private investment funds, like a hedge fund, think startup companies like a bar restaurant or a new tech company, think precious metals, gold and silver, think cryptocurrency, all of those different avenues out there of investing, those aren't both the investment option and the IRA company. And so what happens is you have the investment side, and then if you want to invest IRA money into it, then you have to find somebody like Midland that operates as the IRA company side to allow you the opportunity to go into other investments.  Okay? And where most people probably don't realize is, you know, it takes a little bit of wherewithal, you got to know about these opportunities in order to really take advantage of them. And so and so you have to find these opportunities, and it really kind of takes a somebody that's a little bit more wanting to and willing to take control of their own retirement account to go out and find these new opportunities. No one were to you know, take advantage of them into your into your IRA account. Right? Right. Allen: Okay. So because like in the past I've had, like we teach at option genius, we teach people how to trade stock options. And in the past, we've had several people approach us and say, I want to do this in my hedge fund, what can I do? And they're like, Well, depends on your broker. Some brokers will allow you to do something some brokers will allow you to do other things. It really depends. There's no one size fits all. But even in certain situations, there are some strategies that you can do, but you can't, other people cannot do. So it's like depending on the person. And we've always, always told people like, look, this is your money, this is your IRA, right? This is your retirement, if you want to be able to do something, you should be able to do it your IRA, you know, it's not the law that is saying that you cannot invest in this stock option, or you cannot do this strategy. It is that particular broker. And so if you don't like what they're doing, you find another broker, right? In this case, you're saying that, as a custodian, you guys allow people to do a lot more things than just like you said, public stocks, bonds, options, instead, including hedge funds, real estate, loaning money, all these other kinds of things. But you guys are the custodian, not the brokerage. So if I have my money with you, then I can't trade that money, correct? It just sits in the account until I'm ready to invest it somewhere? Brad: Yeah, that's correct. So that that's a great, that's a great point in question. So with somebody like us, we are not a brokerage. Okay. So we're not nobody sets up an account with us to trade equities or options or futures contracts or anything like that. Okay, we are, we are kind of an avenue to get in to another vehicle of some sort. Okay. And so let's take a hedge fund, for example. Okay. So hedge funds can have lots of different types of strategies, options, strategies, future strategies, crypto strategies, long only long short, equity, lots, lots of different types of strategies, okay. And you're allowed to use your IRA to invest in all the, all of those different types of strategies. Okay, so then it comes down to the IRA company, allowing you to do such thing, which really just comes down to the comfort level of the IRA company that you have in place, okay. And so if you have somebody like such as Midland where we specialize in helping individuals get their money into hedge funds at the discretion of the individual, you know, and really how that works is, you know, they're going to, let's say, you have an IRA and a more traditional brokerage, like a fidelity or Schwab, you're going to set up that same type of IRA account with us here at Midland, transfer over whatever amount of money that you feel comfortable with deploying, so you know, that's completely up to you, and that you as the investor and the, you know, the investment that you're getting into, and whatever you have to agree upon, okay, and will be responsible for transferring your money over from your existing retirement account, then that money comes over to Midland, but then again, you don't do any sort of trading through us. So you have to find some sort of vehicle that you want to go into. And then there's usually a document associated with such vehicle, like, if you're going into a hedge fund, there's going to be a subscription agreement involved. And then it's our job along with the investment manager to make sure that subscription agreement is, is kind of completed the way it should to read that your IRA is making an investment to this private instrument. Okay? And so basically, you're giving us the IRA custodian direction to facilitate an investment on your behalf, then your money would then be deployed into, you know, said hedge fund for you to effectively be in, you know, whatever strategy you see fit. That hedge fund managers job is then to trade the strategy make money, and then but it's all done within an IRA account just in a more privatized paper instrument, rather than, you know, trading on a on a more tech training platform on public exchanges. Allen: Okay. Now, one of the questions I get a lot is, and people don't, they're unfamiliar with it. Is that "Can I have more than one IRA account?"  Brad: Yeah good question. So yeah, you can have as many different IRA accounts as you please. So there's just all the only thing that there is a maximum on is the amount of money that you're allowed to put into a set of retirement account, from your personal money into retirement accounts. Allen: Every year? So as the deposit? Brad: Yeah, yeah, each year, so its contribution limit, okay. So each year, you know, kind of a anywhere from 6500 bucks to 20,000 bucks, depending on your IRA type. But let's say you have a million dollars in a, you know, fidelity IRA account, you could transfer over 100,000 to an IRA and Midland 100,000 over to another IRA at Schwab, another Ira somewhere else. So you can have as many different IRA accounts as you want to deploy in a bunch of different ways, if that is what makes sense to you. So that's kind of the nifty thing of IRA accounts, it's very easy to move money in and out of them. And then you can deploy in lots of different ways, if that makes sense for you. Allen: Awesome, cool. Now, we've had recently we've had some issues with financial institutions going under. So I just wanted to ask, you know, about Midland and how secure you guys how many accounts you guys have, how long you've been doing this? And then the money that we have Have on deposit with you if it's not invested somewhere, is that secured? Brad: Yeah, no good question. I mean, that is a, that's on everybody's mind. I mean, it's honestly, what's funny is, you know, we never got this quote, I never, you know, my 13 years never got this question ever. And now over the past six months, it's, it's came to came roaring up. So, yeah, so so, you know, what's interesting about our business is that money comes in and leaves very quickly. So you know, so for example, we're never really holding on anyone's cash for an extended period of time. So, you know, when working with us, you know, again, we're going to transfer your money over from Fidelity, or wherever it's going to come over, and it's going to sit with us for usually about 24 to 48 hours before we, in turn, get that money allocated to whatever financial product that you're looking to get into. So I guess from from that perspective, you know, you get the peace of mind and knowing that really, you know, the money is really not sitting with us very long. So you don't really have to stress too much about that question. But with that said, we are regulated like any other banking institution, we are not a bank. So our money is held with third party banks, in which we mix and mingle depending on the health of those banks. It's like right now, a lot of our cash is positioned with a Capital One Bank, trying to kind of stay away from more of the community banks, given the nature of that, but we do choose FDIC insured banks, just to make sure that, you know, the protections are in place for the clients, you know, just in case anything does ever happen, that we need to be worried about. Allen: How many accounts do you guys have right now? Brad: Yeah, good question. So we have over 20,000 users. So that's 20,000 individuals that have set up IRA accounts with us to invest in something private, that's all organic clients, do we have bought, or sold any of our clientele, that's all people have chose to work with Midland to do something that makes up of about 5 billion in assets. And that makes up about 5000 different fund products that we have worked with over the course of our time. Right. So that could be hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, early stage ventures, real estate, all kinds of things. Allen: Right, cool! Okay so now the traditional brokerage, IRA custodian, they make their money on commissions and stuff like that. So how do you guys get paid? Brad: Yeah, good question. So we are, you know, we don't make money off the investment, we make money off services that we provide, which is the administrative work that goes into moving the money around and making sure that all the investments are properly documented. So really, what that is, is it's a flat 325 years, 325 bucks a year that we charge per IRA. And that's not really based on value. So $5,000, a million dollars, flat 325. So you do it's not baked in and the expense ratio, so it is a little bit more front and center, you know, so it's not hidden, a lot of other financial products. So it's front and center to you, you're gonna see it. And then we have some kind of ancillary fees. Take, we do charge $50 to establish an IRA account with us. And then anytime you buy an investment for the first time, it's a transaction fee of 1.5. Basically, what you're looking at is if you were to invest X amount of dollars into a hedge fund, now, you'd be $500 for the first year, and then 325 For each year thereafter. That's pretty much what you'd pay with anybody kind of similar to us. Right? Allen: I mean, that's not a big deal, right? You're making you're thinking about making like 100,000 or 200, or more investment, $500 is not that bad. Brad: Yeah, and stay stagnant, which is, you know, the good thing. So a lot of people, if you ever looked at your 401 K fees that you're charging, you know, a lot of people don't even know what they're charging, or what they're paying, which, you know, that's that's another kind of issue, but, but it always continues to grow. And so you start charging things, or paying things you don't really even understand you're paying and it keeps growing, and you don't even know why it's growing on you. So we'd like to be front and center with it. So everyone knows that they're paying us. And you know, and it stays flat. So it's not regardless of value. Right? Allen: Now, I'm kind of biased because I want people to invest in our hedge fund, right? So what is the process? I know we're signed up with us, anybody that comes to to invest with us is going to be working with Midland. That's who we're aligned with. So let's say I have somebody that says, hey, you know, I want to come in, I want to join, but I want to do it through my IRA. What is that process? How do I walk them through it? Brad: Yeah, so So anybody's Welcome to give us a call for staff to just like talk through their scenarios, we understand retirement accounts, or, you know, there's a lot of lingo out there that nobody really understands. And then also, you may have never removed a retirement account before. So you may just be a little squeamish on that whole process. So, first off, you're welcome to give us a call to just talk through your situation and we can walk you through the mechanics of what that looks like. But moral of the story what actually happens is that you will be establishing a Midland IRA account. So if you have a traditional IRA or Roth IRAs and other institution will be setting up that same type of IRA with us here at Midland, which is an online application process that you can go to our website to accomplish, and, you know, roughly five minutes, all right, and then when you go through that application process, you're going to initiate the movement of money from your existing retirement account. Okay, so you'll just input your existing account number and say, Hey, I have an account at Fidelity, here's my Fidelity account number of yourself, I'm transitioning, or here's how much I wish to transition from Fidelity over to Midland, okay. And then that gives us authorization to go and request those funds on your behalf. Okay, so then we'll pull those funds over, bring it over into Midland. And then at that point, your cash is sitting on with us. And that transfer process usually will run a course about three to five business days. And while that transfer process is running its course, then we will actually be trying to sort through the documentation associated with the hedge fund. And, you know, presenting that to the client for completion. You know, one thing that we've learned is that completing documents associated with private investments can be very cumbersome to somebody that's never done it before. Or even if you have done it before, it's very cumbersome. Allen: That's a lot of paper. Yeah. Brad: Yeah and so we just tried it, we tried to present it in a digital format, we actually take it upon ourselves to pre fill most of it for the client to where they just have to review the documentation in their inbox, and then just kind of click a couple buttons and say, yep, this looks good, this is what I want to do. And then once they execute that document, we push that document off to the fund manager for their review. And then once we get the money from Fidelity, we will call the client for one last verbal authorization and say, Hey, we're about to send your money off, to be invested this what you want to do, they give us the blessing. And then we send wire the money from us over to the investment of their choosing. And then they're often running from there. Allen: That's cool. I actually like that the personal touch we actually get on the phone. Yeah, I like that. Brad: Yeah. And you know, it's, you never can be too careful, especially with lots of money around here. So it's kind of another layer of like, identity protection, just to make sure we know who will work with. All right. Allen: And how long does that whole process take? Brad: Yeah, full process about seven days, kind of give or take a day or two. But that's, that's generally what to expect. And then after that, you will have online access with Midland, so you can follow the investments as they kind of run their course. And then if you ever need to get tax forms down the road, you can log into your Midland account, to facilitate. And then if you ever want to add additional funds or distribute funds for any reason, you can do that too. So anything that you would ordinarily be able to do with, again, a more traditional brokerage, you'll be able to do those same actions with the Midland account. Okay. All right. Allen: Okay. All right. Now, now, I know we've been talking about IRAs, I'm assuming that's Roth IRAs, and regular IRAs, are there any other type of accounts you guys work with? Brad: But I would just say, so the two other types would be employer plans be it SEP IRA, which self employed pension driven in a simple IRA, which is kind of similar to a 401k. It's, it's more of a more designed for, for small businesses, but again, they're more employer sponsored plans. The other types are kind of accounts, I would say, that we work with the most is just people that have old 401k is out there, that they would like to rollover into IRA accounts to do this. Okay. And so if you do have a 401k, out there, usually does need to be with the previous employer, okay, in order to be eligible to roll that money over. But if you do, you can roll up 401k directly into an IRA At Midland, again, you can do just a portion or a whole thing, it's up to you. You can roll that money over into a Midland account, and then use that Midland account, again, to facilitate into whatever investment you want to do. Allen: Okay, wait, yeah, for no, for the self employed, you know, the SEPs, and simples they allow you to put a lot more money in. So those are.. Brad: Yeah no those are, those are great accounts. So so the two more popular ones would be so the SEP IRA self employed pension, which is a little bit of a, an easier, cost effective version, okay. And then you have what's also called a solo 401 K. It's basically a 401k for somebody that's self employed but does not have employees, okay? Because once you have one employee, a 401k, just totally changes from the complexity and testing and all these other rules that you have to worry about. And so 401k is specifically for individuals that want to put away a lot of money. And good thing about 401k They have Roth components to them, so you can actually put away a lot of money up to $60,000 in Roth money. It's very powerful tool. And then also, if you ever want a loan against that, you can take a loan up to $50,000 sort of just kind of allows you some flexibility if you want to put away money but yeah, it's a SEP IRAs is very simple. There's very similar just doesn't have the doesn't have the loaning tool, and then a couple other little things. smaller nuances to it, but both of them together, if you want to, if you if you're a small business owner, and you really want to save some money on taxes, or just put a lot of money into retirement, you know, it's an easy way to get 60 grand and an order and to a retirement account. So cool. Allen: Cool. Cool. So that's all questions I had, is there anything that I did not ask? Brad: I think you nailed everything. I mean, I think just, I guess one little less kind of common is that no shoe being in the in the hedge fund space, it's, it's really growing in popularity, especially now, after you know, everyone put money into kind of the, the cheap, ETFs forever, and they just went up and then everything just kind of fell off a cliff, I feel like alternative investments, you know, are now growing and growing really fast in popularity. So good space for you to be in. And you know, if anyone has any questions or curiosities about this stuff, I'm an open book, feel free to reach out to me and we can have a chat. Allen: Awesome, sweet. Yeah, I mean, like you said, I do see that people are becoming more aware of this kind of stuff. And I think it's part of, you know, people like you doing interviews and getting the word out there. We still have people all the time telling us Oh, I don't know what to do, you know, my IRA, I can't, like, ya know, you're you're not that limited as you think you are. This just takes it to a whole nother level. So this is, you know, the self directed IRA. And I think it's something that everybody should be looking into, at least, you know, so you can do a lot more with it than just, you know, buy your ETF like, Brad: Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, yeah, people like me, that, you know, provide the IRA product, but also people like you that are coming up with new and interesting products for people to invest in. So I do think at the tag team, you know, we provide the avenue, but there needs to be solutions out there for people and if, you know, if, if individuals like you are being entrepreneurial and creative, just provides more people opportunities to access the marketplace. So, so I think it's a dual effort. And, you know, hopefully people find it interesting. Allen: So, Brad, how do people get a hold of you? Brad: Yeah, so I'm the only brand that works in Midland trust. So you can just go to Midland trust.com and kind of track me down that way by giving us a call. And I'll just kind of leave it at that. If you want to shoot me an email. It's B as in Brad, Janet's je n AI tz At Midland. trust.com. Otherwise, yeah, just go to our website, you know, track me down and the only Brad, alright? Allen: Awesome. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for being here. Brad: All right. Thanks, Allen, for sharing. Thank you.   JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://freeoptionsgroup.com Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Why don't most people who try trading succeed at it? You probably heard the numbers 90, 95, somewhere around there percent of people fail at trading, then they give up and they leave and they lose their money, right? So we have at least for me, what am I methods are one of my missions in life is to help people get over that problem. And we have to make it as simple as possible. But I have noticed that there are four pillars that everybody needs. Four things that you need to be successful. All right, so let's go ahead and get into it. The thing is that it doesn't have to be just about trading, you need these four pillars and just about anything in life. And so if you have ever succeeded at something, right? You have probably already attained these four pillars, or you've used them somehow, some way, and you already know what they are. But when it comes to trading, for some reason, we think it's totally different. Things is, if it gets unique. I don't especially, I don't know what it is, but we kind of forget what the pillars are. So let's go through them and talk about how they directly relate to trading. Now, there are four pillars, right, these are the four things that you need. Two of them are completely mandatory, meaning without these you will not succeed, there's no way ever, the other two are not mandatory, but they help a lot. And they speed up the process. And they make it a lot faster, they make it a lot easier, they make it a lot more fun, and they make it a lot more profitable. Okay, so what normally takes people years, without, if you only had the first two, it could take you years and years to be successful at trading, when you have all four, it could be in a lot less time. Now look, you cannot succeed without the pillars. But even with the pillars, it does not guarantee you will succeed because it's still trading. And there are still other things that are more related to you, versus the things that everybody can have, if that makes sense. Okay, there are some limitations that every single person has, there might be something that's stopping you personally from achieving success. But these are the four things that I can say that everybody needs to have in order to succeed. Now look, when you start trading, you start on the ground, right, you're on the ground floor, you don't know anything, you don't know what you don't know, that's one thing. And you want to get on top, you want to get on top of the markets, you want to get on top of your finances, you want to get just achieve, right? And so you need support. You need the four pillars 1234 pillars, again, with two of them, you can get by, right? You might have a gap in the middle, you have one on one side or on the other side, and the gap in the middle will be sagging, kind of, but it can still survive with only one you're gonna fall off. And there's no way you're gonna stand up with three you might get there with four you definitely most likely will. So what are they? Number one, this strategy? This is pillar number one, this is the strategy. This is where most traders start. This is what they want to know first, like what do I do what to do? This is knowing what to do. And so if you are a passive trader, that means you know, covered call one strategy naked put credit spread, strangles, straddles, iron condors, diagonals, ratios, back spread, there are so many of them, right? There are so many strategies out there. Most traders, they grab the first strategy they see, and they try to make it work. But that is the wrong way to do it. The problem is not all strategies work for all people. Now you can say you know what, I'm going to learn every single strategy. And I'm going to master all of them. And I'm gonna get really good at all of them. Could be, but they're not just these few strategies. There are lots of other strategies out there as day trading. There's real estate, there's crypto, there's swing trade, there are all kinds of different strategies, and there's no way you are going to be an expert at all of them. And no way should you want to be an expert on all of them. Because that's not how success happens. Success happens when you focus. All right? So for example, buy and hold is a strategy. And it works. If you have 40 to 50 years. It's true, right? The stock market and the indexes, especially the indexes, they are created in a way that over time they are going to go up. That's just the way they work. That's the way they're created. Because they keep taking out the bad stocks that are holding the index down and they replace them with stocks that are jumping, right? So over time, it's going to continue to increase but it's going to take you 40-50 years to actually make any decent amount of money on it and be able to retire probably. If not, if that doesn't work for you right, 40 to 50 years, then this is not a strategy that will work for you. If you want to wait, that's fine, do it, it's great. You know, success is almost guaranteed. If that's not a thing, 40-50 years, then you need to find a different strategy. So step one, is you have to find a strategy that works for you. Okay, it has to match your risk appetite. What do you mean by that? Well, some people are more conservative than others. Some people like to go in 100% on one trade, some people like to put in 1% on one trade, right, they just like I'm gonna dip my toe in. So the aggressiveness or the conservative of the strategy has to be tailored to you, depending on how you feel and how you are, if you are very risk adverse, you don't like gambling, then day trading, not going to work for you, right? If you are a gambler, or like a big time gambler, and you need excitement, excitement, excitement, passive trading, where you're doing trades that are very boring, you know, they work but they're very boring, might not be for you. Right, you might have to shift over to something, even though you might agree with the passive trading philosophy, you might have to shift to something a little bit more frequent. So you have to change the strategy. Account Balance also is a big deal. You know, how much money do you have to play with as your account grows, your strategy can grow or you can add to it, to change your strategy, hedge it, etc. Discipline, how disciplined you are? This is another one. Passive trading works for me because I'm not that disciplined. Right? And so it works for me, because even if I get the trade wrong, I can still win. Okay, experience. There are some strategies that are for people that have a lot of experience. Iron condor, probably not the first strategy I would recommend for somebody, right? It's like, hey, why don't you sell some spreads first, you know, sell, sell one spread, then you can do the condor. Once you understand the basics, that kind of thing, time devoted, how much time do you want to spend on your trading, you wanna sit there all day long? Well, then yeah, more active style is for you, you want to spend a few minutes a day like we do, then a little bit more passive, definitely more passive is going to work for you. What are your goals? How much are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to triple your money every year? Well, then you have to do one strategy. I don't know if there's any strategy out there like that, that can continuously do that every single year. But if you are, if that's your goal, then you have to be a lot more aggressive and that'll dictate what strategy you choose. If you're okay with 20%, you know, 10% 5% a year strategies, definitely totally different. And the time to result? How fast do you want your result? Right? Are you willing to wait several years, then your strategy can be different. If you want it right away, strategy is going to be definitely different. So these are the different things that have to mesh your strategy has to mesh with you because if it doesn't, then it's going to cause internal problems. It's going to cause psychological issues with you, and you're going to make mistakes, you're not going to follow the plan, you're not going to do it properly, you're not going to follow the strategy properly, and it's going to lead to losses. All of this stuff has to match. Step number two, you have to verify and be sure the strategy actually works. What? Really? It has to work? Yes, it has to work. And not all strategies work. No, not all strategies work. I'm sorry to tell you that. Right? You have to do some research. Like how many people are doing it? Are they having success? How long has it been around? If it's a strategy that just popped up two months ago? I ya know, sorry? No, no way. I want a strategy. If I want to do something, I want a strategy that has at least two years worth of real money results. And people have approached me and they said, You know, I want to trade for a hedge fund, I have a great strategy is working really awesome. I'm like, Okay, how long have you been doing it? And then they go quiet. Well, I back tested it. No, that's not that's not real money. That's not real trading. You know, and then there was another guy that I had been doing for six months, and I've had all these wins. I'm like, That's great. When you get to two years, give me a call. After you've been trading for two years plus with real money, then I'll talk to you about maybe investing my money with you, or letting you trade for our fund. Not until that. Okay? Is the strategy very simple? Or is it complicated? The more complicated it is, the more room for error, the more experience you're going to need, the more time it's going to take to make sure everything is I's dotted T's crossed. Right. Where did you hear about this strategy? Did you hear it about at some random post on some crazy website? Or was it actually like a legit trader, right? Who did you hear from? Who's the source of this strategy? Somebody that you know is actually making money from it? Right? Or, again, some random stranger on a Facebook post or something? Do they have any proof of this strategy? Does it work? These are all the things you have to look into and verify and make sure. Now the strategies that we've been teaching are passive trading. The only way we teach them is if we've done them ourselves with real money for a long period of time, right? There are lots of strategies and new strategies are introduced every day. I mean, they're the same, but they're little tweaks and they come up with different names and blah, blah, blah, well, if we haven't done them for ourselves with real money and tested them in different markets, we don't teach them. That's it. It is like, Hey, I'm not going to experiment with you, I'm going to experiment with my own money. And then I'll tell you what works. That's my job, right? That's why I'm here to tell you what works, what doesn't work, there are more than a million ways to trade, you only need one, you only need one strategy as long as it works. And it has to work for you. Right, this is where most traders mess up, they choose a strategy that is too difficult for them, or does not match their personality. And then they never master it. So they might have wins, but then they give up losses, and they have a big loss. They might do well for a little bit, but then the market changes. They don't understand why, what happened. But eventually they give up and they quit. So that's it. That's number one. pillar number two, is what I call the trading plan. This is the how to implement the what the strategy, right, this is how you do the trade. So let's say you decided, hey, I'm going to do covered calls. That's great. That's a strategy. You know, it works. You know, lots of people are doing it. I mean, here, you know, Warren Buffett says he's been doing it with billions of dollars. Okay, that's pretty good. I think that's, that's proof that it works. But we don't know how he does it. Right? That's the trading plan. How does he do the covered call? Does he sell at the money options? Does he sell out of the money options? Does he sell in the money options? Does he do weeklies, does he do 30 days expiration? Do they do a 180 days expiration? Does he look for 2% a month, 5% a month? I don't know, that's all part of the trading plan. That's what you have to find or come up with and test. So a good plan will incorporate all of these steps. This is how we identify what we're going to trade the underlying security. This is how we're going to know that it's a good time to place the trade, right? Like our setup, this is the actual trade that we're going to place the strategy. If it's a covered call, then which options are we going to trade on that strategy? What timeframe? What is our return our goal, all of this stuff, these are the steps one by one by one, you have to do this, okay, first you do this, then you do this, then you do this. That's all part of the plan. Now, also, as part of the plan is the timing. When do you get into the trade? When do you get out of the trade? What are you looking for? What do you're not looking for risk management? What happens if the trade goes bad? What happens if the market changes? You have to know in advance this should and has to be part of your plan? You cannot go into a trade without knowing what you're going to do if it goes bad. And it can't be well figured out? No, you got to know in advance. Otherwise, it's not a good plan. Your asset allocation? How much money do I put into every trade? That's a very big component of it. Right? It's part of being safe. And your goals? What is your ROI? You have to know how much money can I make on this trade? Is it good enough? Is it going to help me get to my goals? Does it have to be perfect? In order for me to get to my goal, then that's not a good enough ROI, right? Or is it too much? What are you aiming for? So there are millions of trading plans out there. Most of them suck. And if they did not suck, then there would be everybody was making money, right? a trading plan must be complete. And it must be time tested with real money. It should be working in up markets down markets, sideways markets, high volatility markets, low volatility markets, bear markets, bull markets, all of the above everything and anything. I want plans that have stood the test of time. Right? Maybe they don't work in a crazy scenario, like a great recession that we had in 2008 2009 maybe doesn't work then fine, put on the sideline for a little bit. But most of the time, 90% of the time I want this thing to work otherwise I can't rely on it. Because I can't guess if it's gonna work or not. I wanted to be able to work right? Most of the strategies that we trade they just work that's it. Because they are set up to work in all the different markets. Now most strategies are tailored for bull markets. That's most of them are like that. You know the even the covered call the naked put these are bullish strategies. So when the market is going up, they make money and everybody's a genius. Anybody can make money in a bull market. All right. And most plans work in bull markets, right. But they gave back all of it back when the market shifts. So if the market changes, this bull market, you know, plan is not going to work anymore. Now I look for plans that have worked for at least 10 years. I want to I want a 10 year plan. I know I told those guys two years, but I want at least a 10 year, if I'm going to be trading it consistently, I want a 10 year plan. And I want to know it with real money, no back testing. Okay, that's what I'm looking for. Now, when the market shifts, it happens at a time that most play market traders at home traders, they don't even realize they don't know. It's like, oh, the market shifted, market changed. Okay, what do I do now? What do they do, they keep doing the same strategy. So when there was a bull market, they were doing this strategy, and they were putting on trades, and it was working, he knows where he is where he's working. So now they're like, I don't know, they're addicted. They're in habitual, whatever it is. But then the market shifts, and they don't anything to do, they don't know what to do. So they keep doing the same thing. Even though it's not working, even though they lose money, or lose money again, and again and again. And they're like, oh, man, this trading thing doesn't work. Yeah, because you're using the wrong plan in the wrong market. Okay, so they just run out of money and quit. That's it. Sorry. Remember, a good plan works in a bull market, or a bear market. That's a good plan, you know, a great plan works in all markets. And if you have a great plan, then you only need one plan, because they're gonna work in all the markets. There might be some times from time to time that you're like, hey, you know what, yeah, this thing is getting a little bit crazy for me, I'm gonna take, I'm gonna step to the sidelines. You know, that's, that's how you also save a lot of money. That's all how you stay in the game. By not taking excess risk, the market gets too crazy, you get on the sidelines, that should be part of your plan to when to be trading, when not to be trading, that has to be part of your plan. Okay, so once you have a great plan, you match that with a strategy that you enjoy. And you can be successful, right? It's not that hard. But how long will it take to choose a strategy, find a plan and then test the plan with real money. It normally takes years and years and years. And that's why pillars three and four are essential. Okay? Because remember, you got to have one, and you got to have two, you got to have a strategy, you got to have a plan that works With that alone, you can go and be a good trader. But if you have pillars, three and four, it just almost cuts that time in into a fraction of what it would normally take, which is usually. Okay, so let's go to pillar three. Pillar three is the guide, or the coach, the guide is the is essential to your journey, your trading journey. If you look at any of your favorite movies, what happened in your movies? Well, they had a hero or heroine, and they had a problem. And then they had a guide, or a teacher. Right? It was a guide character, a mentor, whose role it was to help the hero or the heroine. Make sense? Right? Think about it. You can have Luke, you can have Frodo you can have Rambo, Neo Batman, Lightning McQueen. You know, even the cartoons, they need coaches. Right? They need mentors. Okay, so think back to when you were younger on a sports team? Or if you didn't play sports when you were younger. Think about any sports team for little kids. Okay? Did they ever just like, Hey, kids come together? Here's the ball, go figure it out. No, every team has a coach. Hopefully the coach knows what they're doing. They know the rules they've played before they played currently. And the better. The more excited the coaches. The more interested the more into it the coach is, the better the team does, right? Yet when it comes to trading. We all think we can do it on our own. Ah, yeah. All right. I'm just gonna open an account. Put some money in it. Press these buttons. I'm gonna be a billionaire. Yeah, I love the idea. I will hear that. Oh, easy, but it's not. Right. Now. Look, if you go to Wall Street, and you get a job, any firm any trading firm out there, right? Are they gonna like oh, hey, welcome first day. Yeah, yeah, okay, you're gonna have a lot of fun today. Here. Here's a bunch of money. Go figure it out. No, right. I got a good look for it. Make some money. Come back to us. Let me know how you do. No, they're not gonna do that. You know, they're gonna teach you. They're gonna assign you a mentor who is then responsible for you if you screw up it is on his head. Right? He's responsible, he's gonna make sure he's watching you like a hawk, make sure you don't lose the firm's money. And he's gonna teach you what to do and what not to do. And guess what, he's got a mentor. And then they got a mentor, and they got a mentor, and he goes all the way up the line. There's nobody on Wall Street that does not have somebody on top of them, coaching them and mentoring them. So why do at home traders, retail traders? What do they think they can skip this pillar? It's perplexed me for the longest time. I mean, I was there, right in that shoes. And I think maybe it's just because it's more sexy. You know, it sounds better. That Hey, I did it on my own. I didn't need anybody. Right? We go into trading for mainly the same reason. We want to make more money. Right? That's where you go to trading. And what are you gonna do with the money? The most common thing I get is I want more freedom. I don't want anybody telling me what to do. I won't be able to do what I want when I want. And we talked about the three freedoms. Right? That's great. So that is counterintuitive to what it takes to be successful. Because yes, you don't want anybody tells you what to do. But you need somebody to tell you what to do. Because otherwise you don't know what to do. And then you lose the money. Does that make sense? So it's like, we want one thing, but we actually need the opposite. So we have to put our ego on the side, and take the sexy part out of it would be like, You know what? I'm gonna be okay. If I don't do it on my own, you know, because when you go to the bank, and you deposit money, they don't ask you like, Oh, hey, did you make this money on your own? Was it really hard to make this money? Did you blood, sweat, and tears suffering to make this money, if you do this, awesome, we'll take it, we'll deposit the money. But if you made it easy, like if you had a guide, and that guide, told you what to do, and you just did it, well, we're not gonna take your money, because your money is not good. Are they  banks are gonna do that, no banks are not gonna do that. No way, no bank will be doing that the bank don't care, right, you got to buy a car, they don't care how you got the money, they just want the money. So the easy path is to get the mentor to tell you what to do. And then when you make enough money, and you learn the skill, you don't need that mentor anymore than you don't need him. And then he can't tell you what to do anymore, you fire him, right? Or you find another mentor. That's how it works, you move to the next level, and you find somebody at the next level to give you more mentoring, the mentoring never stops, to be honest, never stops. Okay? If you want to do it yourself, you might be able to, eventually, after many, many years of trial and error, and many, many 1000s and losses. It's true. I mean, I understand, because I skipped most of this pillar when I was starting out. And I mean, it took me over 10 years, 10 years, to get to the point where I can get to my I can get my students, I can get to them in one year. So what it took me to learn in 10 years, I can get my students to that same point in one year or less. Because I've been through the potholes and the potholes. And I know the mistakes and I know what they're thinking, I know what they're doing certain things, right. And I can tell them, hey, don't do that. Or hey, watch out for that. A check this out. Right? And if they listen, then yes, they will get there much, much, much, much faster. But then when I was starting out, I thought that I didn't have the money. I can't afford a mentor, man, these coaches are expensive. I don't have the money for that. I lost a lot more mistakes, than it would have cost me to have 10 mentors. I gotta hire lots of mentors, with the money that I lost. Okay, so a, you know, I'm your mentor right here. You're listening to this, I'm coaching you, I'm coaching you on this, find somebody that knows what they're doing. Find somebody that's doing what you want to be doing, having the success you want to have, and learn from them. Alright, that is pillar number three. Time goes by too fast. Right? We think oh, man, I'm still young. I don't have to retire for another five years, or they're retired on the 10 years. Oh, I got money. I got fine. I got time. You do? You do? You probably have time. And like if you listen to any my other episodes, you can probably say that you know what? We're gonna live longer and longer longer. So you have plenty of time, maybe. But still goes by too fast. He goes, we don't know. I mean, you'd be gone in a blink of an eye. But even if you have all the time in the world, wouldn't you rather have the rewards now? Then five years from now? 10 years from now? Right? Wouldn't you want to have the life you desire now? And if you have to listen to somebody, heaven forbid, the guy knows what he's talking about. You listen, and you get the results now and you don't make all the mistakes. It makes sense. I hope so. So save your time, save yourself the agony, get yourself a mentor, there is no glory in figuring out on your own. All right, let's go to pillar number four, the community. So I recently attended a fund managers conference, where Jim Rogers was one of the speakers. Now, Jim Rogers is a co founder of a quantum fund. That's what it's called. And he's made several billions of dollars over the years. So he made billions and then he quit. And he went and traveled around the world did all these things, investing on his own money. And while he was speaking, he was telling us, you know, I think this is going to happen. The mark indicates I'm investing here, I'm missing here. But he made like a off the cuff remark, like a really, you know, just like a throwaway thing. He said that when he started, and he was talking about how old he is. But he said, when we when he started the quantum fund with George Soros, there were only four or five hedge funds at the time in New York. Right? I mean, the hedge fund was still a new concept, and there were only a few of them, and that they would all be able to go out to dinner. He's like, Oh, yeah, all those fit in one dining room. And he just started, how about some news? Did you catch what he just said, all the hedge fund managers, the guys that will be competing with each other, the guys that are trying to get better returns than each other up each other, get the, you know, they want to get the all the investor money for themselves. They would hang out at night, and go to dinner, and talk shop, they would share their ideas, and they will share their trait. If you read some of the books that these guys have written other hedge fund managers or mutual mutual fund managers, you can see that they actually do this. In New York, they get together, they share ideas, they talk to each other. Right. And if you think about it, go back to any book on Wall Street. Any book that you might have or read in the past, if it's about Wall Street and how it works. You'll see a similar vein. So there's the book, The Big Short, anything from that that's a more recent one, right? All the way to go back in time. One of my favorites is reminiscence of a stock operator by Jesse Livermore. He was one of the greatest traders day traders. plungers is what he called it of all time. And they all do the same thing. They would get together, they would talk to each other, they would share ideas. And whenever they need information, they just call up their friend at another firm. Right? They all work together. Because these guys they go from company to company to company anyway, so they make friends with each other, or they've gone to school with each other. So they know each other. Right? Oh, hey, hey, did you see the stocks going up? What's going on? Oh, I heard this and this and this crazy. Oh, man. Okay. Hey, if you hear anything else, let me know. Okay, cool. So then they gotta tell somebody, Hey, I just heard this news. Oh, yeah. No, no, that's not happening. This is happening. Oh, really? Okay, cool. I'll call you back. And he goes, Hey, this isn't happening. That's how they make money. They share the information. Now, is this legal? I don't know. As long as it's not insider information. It's perfectly legal, right?  They also hire people, and computers and whatever, to see what each other are doing. So if there are some firms that are like totally quiet, quiet, they want to other other firms want to know what they're doing. So they hire like, a way to spy on each other. And then they get their information, and then they do it that way. So at a at a hedge fund, and I learned this when I started my hedge fund, the broker that you use is a it's called a prime broker. Okay. One of the benefits of having a top prime broker is that the broker is connected. And they know everything that's going on. And they can tell you this, they can tell you what's going on. You just call them up, say, Hey, what is unique about this, you're gonna think about this. I want to get into this, who do I talk to? The broker will tell you if you give them enough business, right? So if you want to learn more about this, you can watch. There's a there's a show called billions, actually called billions. The first couple of seasons were about the hedge fund, and it got into all different kinds of crazy drama and stuff. But I was watching it for that, like how do they run the hedge fund? What's going on? How do they deal with each other? I don't know how realistic it is. But it was cool to learn and see. Right? So then, let me ask you, if these hedge fund guys, these big traders, billionaires are talking to each other, like they go to Davos every year, you know, and that's just one conference that these big investors go to. And what do they do? They talk to each other. They share their biggest ideas. They're like, look, this is what I'm investing in. This is what I think is gonna happen. This is what I think is gonna happen. They share their ideas with each other. Now you and I, we're not going to get invited to Davos anytime soon. Right? So we have to wait for like CNBC or Fox News to go there and cover it. And we might get like a little tidbit on this. And now we're not gonna get the real juicy stuff, because we're not big enough to be in the room. So if these big mega whales share and talk to each other, and don't worry about the competition so much, why are you trying to do it yourself? I don't know, why, why you shouldn't do it yourself. That's what you got to answer. Who is out there that you can bounce your ideas off of, right? Who do you know that is better at trading than you are, will take your calls and work with you, or give you advice. Or even if they're not better than you they're least as good as you are, they know what you're doing. And you guys have a understanding that you know what each other is doing. And you can help each other? Do you have a community of like minded traders that have similar goals, trading in a similar way? Because that is pillar number four, this is a shortcut. Not only that, but it makes it a lot more fun. Because without a community trading is very, very, very, very, very lonely. And you're going to miss stuff, you're going to miss a lot of things. You cannot watch all the news, you cannot watch all the attention, you cannot pay attention to everything. So if you have a team, you succeed, right. But it can't be just any community, it can't just be any team of people, they have to know what they are doing. So you can't just go to some random group on Facebook, or Reddit, or discord, or whatever. Right. That is why the best communities of traders are very hard to find. And they're very hard to join. Because they want to keep out people. Right? They have enough people that want to join, they have to keep out people. That's the main goal. Now, thanks to the communities in our coaching programs that we have. So our coaching programs, we create a community for each one. My students keep me on my toes. Seriously, I am constantly learning new things from them. Even though I've been doing this for close to 20 years, they still point out new things. And they go hey, did you check this out? There's a new update on the software. And you can do this and this. Oh, wow. That's really cool. Oh, hey, did you know this was introduced? Oh, that's really cool. Because, you know, I've been doing stuff my way. And I've been, I'm gonna keep doing it my way until I find a better way. And so when they see something, they're like, Oh, hey, we could do this. We could do this. I was like, Oh, wow, let's take a look. Right. For the longest time, we've been trading oil options. And just recently, they introduced micro options on oil. Now a couple of years ago, they came out with weekly options on oil. I was like, yeah, no, I don't know, you know, and my students were the ones that introduced that, like, "Hey, can we take a look at it?", there wasn't enough volume, and the weekly eventually went away. But now there are micros. And so we are learning how to do those, and how to use those and how different they are. And we find out that yeah, you know what, we can use these, we can definitely use these. Right, our communities, our trading communities, and the ones that we set up for our coaching programs. They give us a safe space, to ask questions without getting ridiculed. And to give feedback to other people without people think oh, he's a know it all, you know, the things you notice everything Oh, he's a dork. No, we help each other. That's the point. And we root for one another, right? Because we want all of us to succeed. One person posts a trade, other people might do the same. We all want to succeed, right? We all rowing in the same direction. And that's what makes a good community. So then here are again, the four pillars, just to recap, that you should have to learn trading as soon as possible. Number one, you got to have a strategy that works and fits your individual style of trading. What works for you might not work for the next you. So you might be in the same community or neighborhood or meet up. But he might be doing something totally different from you. So you really cannot learn that much from him. Right? Number two, a battle tested trading plan that you will follow is not gonna do any good. If you don't follow it. If it doesn't match you, right doesn't match your goals doesn't match your time doesn't match your aggressiveness. All the things that we talked about earlier. If he doesn't match you, you ain't gonna do it. And you might be Oh, I don't have discipline. No. I mean, that might be true. But most likely, it's because it doesn't match. Right? It's a lot easier to follow something if you enjoy it. And it makes sense to you. And it doesn't make you all freaked out. Number three, a mentor or a coach that can help you avoid mistakes and shortcut the learning curve. What could take years can be done within months.  And that's what I've seen happen over and over and over again with different students. And we've built our programs our way it's like hey, If you just you know, I know what strategy works, I'll give you my trading plan, I will be your coach and your mentor. And I will give you a community. And that's how we set up our coaching programs, we give them all four pillars, you get this, you get this, you get this, you get this, we do it all together. And so in a matter of months, bam, you know exactly what to do, how to do it. And you know how to do it and handle in different situations, and you become consistent very quickly. That's what these four pillars do. And lastly, the fourth pillar is a community of like-minded, caring, similarly trained traders. Right? So if you have a community of four people, one guy's a day trader, one guy is trading, crypto, one guy is trading Forex, and the other guy's trading options. There are some things you guys can talk about. But when it comes down to your strategy, you're not really gonna be able to up to there. That's just the way it is. So you need like-minded, caring, because you have to care about you, and you have to care about them. Similarly trained. So you guys know the same strategy, you know, that if you make a mistake, they'll be able to point it out to you and say, Hey, you didn't do that part. You didn't do that step. Oh, that's what I've been messing up on. Yep. could be as simple as that. So those are the four pillars. I hope this was been helpful. If you need help with any of them, you can reach out to us and trade with the odds in your favor. Take care.

Last week I was at a conference. And they had a lot of great speakers, a lot of fun donors. And there were two people that were legit billionaires that they had invited to speak. One of them was John Pennington. The other one was Jim Rogers. Jim Rogers is definitely the most or the more famous. He is the one that he started the quantum fund with George Soros way back when, and at that time, they were, they were only like, according to him, there were only like four or five mutual funds or hedge funds in the world. At the time, nobody really knew what a hedge fund was. And so they started that they made billions of dollars. And then he decided, hey, you know what I'm done. So he took his money, and he left. And then he wanted to travel. And so he was trading his own money, he's investing his own money. And he got a couple of motorcycles for him and his wife, or his girlfriend at the time. And they took those motorcycles, and they drove around the world. And then he wrote a book about it, you know, talking about the different stuff that they learned from the travels and the currencies, and the macroeconomics and how politics works, and how the black market works, and all these different things. And I was, I was very young, when I read that book. And it opened my eyes. I was like, Man, this is the best book I've ever read. Because not only did it talk about travel, which I loved, it also talked about macroeconomics, and it exposed me to that. And I'm like, Well, this makes so much sense. This is awesome. I love how things work. I love how the world works. And then I was like, Man, this guy, so rich, how can he travel around the world? You know, what does this guy do? And I real and I found that he's a hedge fund manager. And that was the first time I've ever heard those. So I'm like, oh, I want to find out what this is. And then I realized, Oh, my God, that's what I want to do. I want to be a hedge fund manager. And since then, I've always had that in the back of my mind. Eventually, though, I gave it up. I'm like, Yeah, that's a lot of work. And I don't know if I want to treat both people and this and that, oh, yo stuff. And then this conference, when I saw it, I had a ticket from a year ago, but I wasn't gonna go. But then they announced that he was going to be the headliner. And I was like, Ah, this is it, you know, my fund is launching this is like, is like fate. It is a full circle, it's going all the way around, like, this is where I got started with the idea. Now I'm actually doing it and these guys will be speaking I can see him I can meet him maybe. So I had to go. And these are the things that I learned from these two fellows. Both of them are very smart, both of them, some of them, they said the same stuff, they overlapped. So that was like man to billionaire saying the same thing. Maybe there's some to that. But you'll see that these are their interpretations. These are their thoughts, their theories, some of this border lines on, you know, conspiracy theory, to be honest. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt, see what makes sense. And hopefully, that you guys will be able to benefit from this as well. So first guy, his name is, like I said, these are my notes, you know, all the thoughts I put here, their their thoughts. I'm not sure if I agree or not agree, I'm not talking about that. I'm just reporting on what I heard. And I give you any advice, I'm not selling anything, right? The first guy, his name is John Pennington. And he got rich by creating a real estate fund where they would buy real estate, and land on real estate and then to borrow money to lend on real estate. And the company got so big that they took it public, when they when they went public, he retired. And now he, you know, just sits around and thinks about economic theory and investing money, of course, but he doesn't really have a day job. So he can think about all this stuff. So we're gonna talk about what he said first, the biggest thing that he came up with, and, you know, his whole thing is that you look at everything that's happening in the world, you look at the different news events, and they don't make sense a lot of it. And I'm gonna go through some of them. But if you think about it, and say, hey, you know, what, how are these things all connected? Are they connected? Sometimes they start making sense, if you have to peel the onion and look under the hood a little bit, you know, and sometimes you have to guess at what's going on. Because this guy, you know, he's not, he's not in the Army Air. He's not in the politics. He's rich, but he's not that connected, where he's in the government. He knows exactly what's going on in all facets. But he can sit back and take a look and try to figure things out. So what he says is that, you know, things don't make sense by themselves unless you put them all together, and then they start forming a pattern and then people in power are not stupid. You know, it doesn't matter who the president is. There's somebody going to be talking about how stupid this person is. The Fed has been bashed over and over and over again on every single network people are saying how stupid they are. But the media wants us to think that they are stupid and the talking heads and the gurus need to have somebody to bash but these people would not have been in these positions unless they are very, very smart, you know, they didn't wake up yesterday and be appointed to their top positions. So that being said, number one thing that John says is that the Fed has the number one mandate, it's not to fight inflation. It's not to keep employment low. Like they said, their number one secret mandate is to protect the dollar at all costs, the dollar needs to be used, and it needs to be strong. And for the US, the dollar is the best product in the world. If you think about it, it doesn't cost any money to make, they can make as much as they want. And then they can help set the price like they can dictate how much it's worth. And when you have something that everybody wants, because it's artificially created demand. But that you can set the price and you can make as much as you want, you rule the world. And that's what the dollar allows the US to do. And so the Fed's job number one is to make sure that people cannot live without it. And I'm going to go through how they do them. So currently, we've talked a lot about people you've hear in the news about the reserve currency, the dollar is going to lose a reserve currency. Well, currently 58% of the world's reserve currency is the dollar, all trade 50% of all trade is done in dollars. Our number two is the euro. The Euro comes in at 20%. While China comes in lacking at 2%. So a lot of people Oh, China's going to take over the dollar reserve currency. China is going, well. Yeah, no, it's at 2%. So to go from 2% to over 50%, it will take a lot of different things. And you'll see later on what the what the thought process is there. So the BRICS, right, let's talk about the BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, these guys make the bricks they've been meeting for years, they're trying to come up with their own currency, trying to replace the dollar, they want to get away from the US. And they've been doing this for years, it's not a new thing. The problem is, according to John, that they don't trust each other. You know, you have all these countries, they have something in common, which is they want to get away from the dollar. But they don't trust each other either. So which country is going to be in charge, which country is going to be responsible for printing the money for for safeguarding the money, whoever that country is, is going to be the one that dominates all the other countries? They're going to be number one who knows, right? They're gonna be player. So people think, Oh, he's got to be China? Well, Russia might have a problem with that, you know, India is gonna have a problem with that. I don't know about Brazil and South America. But definitely India sees itself as a world player, and they want, you know, and Putin doesn't want to be second to anybody. So that's the question there until they address these issues. Brakes are really a non issue. Now, we also have Saudi Arabia. So Saudi Arabia has been playing very nicely with Russia, but not with the US. So Saudi Arabia has been not playing very nice with the US, right? They even tried to sell their dollars, not in US dollars, or their, their oil, not in dollars, they wanted to sell it in Russian rubles, or they wanted to sell it in Chinese yuan, or their own currency, whatever. And so a little while ago, Biden, you know, paid them a visit. And he met with the prints or whichever one was there. And according to the media, nothing really happened you know. Biden went and there was no reaction at all. There was nothing big that came out of it. So it was ah, Biden, you know, nobody cares about Biden, he's just wasted time. Well, you know, according to John, if he was Biden, he would have gone and talked to the prince in private, and he would have reminded the prince, about how they have 1000s and 1000s of American troops that are living and stationed in Saudi Arabia, protecting Saudi Arabia, basically being the army and defense force for Saudi Arabia, which costs a lot of money, the billions of dollars that we sell them in arms for guns and bombs, and planes and drones, all that stuff would go away, if the US stopped dealing with Saudi Arabia, and the oil we buy from them would also be going away. And so, you know, you kind of have to remind some of these people sometimes and so if Biden had done that, then the smart thing for Saudi Arabia would be to continue to move and, you know, stick with the dollar, which is kind of what Saudi Arabia did. Because after this visit, not right after, but shortly after, they transitioned back to the dollar, and they shut up, they stopped talking about a different currency. So it was interesting. Again, these are small, little items, right? These are news events that you see in the news. But by themselves, maybe they don't mean anything. But as you can see all of these put together, and I get a whole bunch more, a bigger pattern seems to emerge. Then you have China, China and China and Taiwan. Right. So we have imminent, you know, and everybody's talking about it. Even Elon Musk yesterday was talking about it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're going to China is going to take Taiwan, maybe it will well, we don't know when. And according to John, it's not happening anytime soon, for a number of reasons. So one of the reasons that everybody knows is that the US Navy is the most powerful in the world. At this point, it still is. And the was the Pacific Fleet is the one that is they're monitoring their, their around Taiwan, they're around Australia, and around that whole area, and they will be the first to respond. But that's the only fleet we have. Right, we have other fleets as well. And we have submarines, which really nobody else has, like we. So that is the secret weapon currently. It's not the nuclear bomb. It's the submarine, which is interesting.  And you want to hang on to that, remember that point, right? And the Navy, out of all the army forces, right? They are Navy is the most expensive to maintain, with the, the ships and the sailors and going back and forth, and the planes and you know, all that stuff. And so there's really nobody else in the world at this point that has committed and is able to keep a Navy as strong as ours. And so that is why the US patrols, all the oceans everywhere. You know, if there's pirates, us, we'll take care of it. And if there's a problem with the Suez Canal, or whatever us ends up taking care of. if there is a war with China, right? If they take over Taiwan, the US and said, Hey, we're gonna we're going to protect Taiwan, if there is a war with China, all Chinese ships, everywhere around the world will be under fire. Basically, there'll be a blockade around China. And so they will only be able to ship their stuff overseas overland, which they're trying to do by building all these are they called the forgotten the Silk Road. They're building these projects to get, you know, transportation overland, instead of by sea, because they know they don't control the oceans, right now, all their stuff, comes on ships and containers, and then goes to different ports. That will stop. If there's a war. The US Navy, also guarantees the safety of Saudi Arabia's oil. Most of Saudi Arabia's oil and oil generally moves by ship. Right. So this is going back to the the Saudi one, the Saudi slide, where, hey, Mr. Saudi guy, if you go off the dollar, guess what, we're not going to protect your oil ships anymore. So they might be attacked by pirates or other countries or whatnot. Because you know, Saudi, you don't really get along with Iran very much. Iran has a tiny, a navy, but you Saudi, you don't. So who's going to protect your ships from Iran? So these are all little things that we need to keep in mind. So that's that. Next we have Russia. Okay. So Russia claimed recently that it's under attack, and it will fight back with nuclear weapons. Now, most people you think that is like, oh, man, he's talking about Ukraine. Putin is talking about, you know, Putin was not talking about Ukraine. Putin was talking about something else. So the Nord Stream pipeline, if you guys know what that is, was a oil and gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Now, Trump had made a big deal about it and said, No, no, they shouldn't have this pipeline. Germany should not allow it, blah, blah, blah. But he went through anyway, Russia built it Germany was okay with it. And it was sending gas and oil from Russia to Europe. But then something funny happened. They blew up. Like, boom, now there's this huge pipeline, massively buried under the sea or under the ocean is at the bottom. I don't know if it's on the floor, or it's under whatever it is. But now, it's not usable. Like it just blew up. Somebody blew it up. Who the heck would blow it up? Right. Who has the power to blow up a pipeline at the bottom of the ocean? I don't know. I mean, was it the sharks? probably know, right? Who is it? Who knows? And so now you have Russia saying hey, do that I'm gonna attack you know, so who is Russia talking to? And you know, was that another signal to Russia and China and Saudi Arabia that hey, look, don't push us don't mess with us. These, like I said, could be conspiracy theory, could be true. Who knows? Right? We also had Biden canceling the Keystone pipeline. Right. So this was something that was started back in, I think it was under the Obama administration. They were looking at it, and they stopped it. And when it got approved later on, I think Donald Trump approved it. And then now Biden cancelled it again. Why would he do that? Why would he not buy oil from Canada? It doesn't make any sense. Canada is our partner. They're like the quasi 51st state right? There not causing us any problems. It's cheaper. It's right here, we can get all the oil we need and become energy independent. We don't have to buy any oil from Saudi Arabia anymore. We have enough oil between what we produce and and Canada to be self sufficient. Why would he do that? Well, without the pipeline, we still buy oil from Saudi Arabia. But we buy it in dollars. Right? We tell them what we're going to pay it for it, we give them our dollars, that they have to then go and use and spend, and they have to proliferate the dollar. So it makes the dollar stronger. That makes sense. So it gives them another reason to stick to the dollar. Then we have, what about anything else that could challenge the dollar? Right? How about Bitcoin? Could Bitcoin challenge the dollar? That's what a lot of people have been saying? That's why Bitcoin was created. So that, you know, no one currency, no one country could control the currencies? Well, we, John, I actually heard I went to this conference last year, as well. And John did a talk about the what he calls the Bitcoin cage. And there is a video on our YouTube channel about the Bitcoin cage, where it talks about how possibly the Fed is manipulating the price of Bitcoin, because they don't want any competition. And how Bitcoin is so small that it's very easy for the Fed to manipulate. And so for that reason, if that is true, Bitcoin is nearly not going to go up in price very much it might go down, but you know, it's just going to hang around. And it's never going to be able to replace the dollar. So that is something if you guys want, you can you can watch that as well. Now we go to gold, right? So if you go back in history to World War Two, the US had all the gold. And so automatically, there was negotiations involved, but the US and the dollar became the reserve currency. And the US had all the gold. That's why the United Nations is in New York. That's why everybody does everything in dollars. And so it was the strongest currency at the time. And it was backed by gold. So you could actually go to the government and say, Here, here's my dollar, I want $1 with the gold, and they would give it at one time, though. It we came illegal for people, individuals, citizens to own gold. You it was illegal for you to have gold coins, it was illegal for you to have bullion. Why, if gold is bad, if the dollar is backed by gold, why can't I own gold? Why? Because the US government was printing like crazy. They had the power. They're like, Oh, we're in charge. We can do our what? Yeah, nobody knows how much gold we have. Let's just pray as much as we want of this stuff. And they've started printing and printing and printing. Other people notice this. And so at one time, France, they sent two ships to Manhattan, you know, and they said, Hey, we got all these dollars, we want to exchange it for gold, please, you know, take the dollars, give us the gold loaded up on our ships, and then we're gonna go back to France. And then the next day, literally the next day, Nixon goes on TV. I think he's on TV or the radio, not sure. And he announces that the US is going to temporarily stop giving out gold for dollars. He took us off the gold standard, and it was supposed to be temporary. Okay, so they weren't gold back. That went away. We never went back to the gold standard. Now we are what they call Petro dollars, because all of oil has to be traded in dollars. They just have to. So if there's a country like let's say, I don't know, Sweden. Sweden wants to buy oil from Saudi Arabia. They don't go to Saudi Arabia and say here, here's money, give us the oil. They have to come to agreement with Saudi Arabia, then they have to go to the Treasury or the Fed or who somebody in the US to buy dollars. They have to exchange their own currency into dollars.  Those dollars then get shifted into the Saudi Arabia account at the in the US. And then Saudi Arabia then sends the oil to Sweden. So all the currencies, all the exchanges, everything in oil has to be done in dollars. So that's why they call it Petro dollars. Right. And the US wants to make sure that continues. So we have now the next iteration. So we do have no longer gold backed by anything. So what else is going to happen right now in the past? When, when it became illegal to have gold? What was the reason why they say, Hey, you know, we don't want people to have gold? Well, number one, because they were printing too much. So they didn't have they didn't want that. But the government claimed at that time, that it was only the crooks the thieves, the mobsters the mafia, that was using gold. You know, normal people everyday, you and people you mean, we don't need gold? Why would you need gold, you're just normal guy, you can just use your dollars your cash, you know, it's lighter, it's easier to carry. But you're gonna carry all this gold, you're looking at stolen, you got to store it. Like what do that, you know, you don't need that stuff. Just use dollars, just use cash, and just use paper. And only the crooks are the ones that are using gold. So that's why we're making it illegal for anybody to have gold because we want to stop the crooks. That was the reason. Okay. Now, we have the next iteration, which is, so we have the US digital currency. So now this is the future, right? A digital currency, kind of like us crypto would be cheaper to make easier to control is easier to create. And it even goes a little bit further. It can track everybody and everything. It can track everything you do. Everything you buy, everything you use everywhere you go. I mean, this is like deep, deep, deep conspiracy. Like they can track every single thing that you do. Right, they could probably shut it off and on. Like if they wanted to, like they could make your money like, like, if you're, you know, wanted by the government or whatever. They can be like, oh, yeah, this goes money can be used. Boom, there's a switch. And now all of a sudden, you're broke, you have no money, and you can't do anything with it. Right. So I'm laughing, but it's kind of scary. It's really scary. Now, according to John, at first, the government is going to say, hey, look, we're coming out with this new currency. You know, you can use either one, you can use cash, you can use your dollars, or you can use the new digital currency, it's just gonna be easier for you, you know, it's like a, like a credit card. You know, you don't have to use it just real. It's real simple. It's much easier to maintain, it'll be cheaper. Everybody can use if you have a choice, you can do this one or this one. But eventually, there will come a time where they are going to say hey, you know what, you know who the only people are that use cash, drug dealers, smugglers, mobsters, crooks, right. Sound familiar. And at that point, they will outlaw all Fiat cash currency, you won't be able to have it anymore. You have to turn it into the government. And they will give you whatever digital currency they come up with. Stuff like this is already happening. India did this a few years ago. They got rid of all their bigger denominations. So they had like, I don't know what it was like a 10,000 rupee bill. And they made everybody turned that into the government. And then you got smaller bills, because they were saying that only the smugglers and the crooks were using the bigger bills. So everybody had to get rid of their smaller bills, paying the butt. But they're doing this. Jim Rogers, right, the other billionaire. He later mentioned that China is already doing the digital currencies, they already have one. And you have to use it. If you want to buy ice cream, you want to go in a taxi or do something small. They don't take Fiat cash anymore. You have to use the digital currency. Because they're, I mean, it's coming so they're doing it, they're pioneering it us is probably watching I'm copying them, they're gonna do the same thing. And then one more thing. Notice we have a banking crisis right now right banks are failing banks are in struggle, some banks are getting bailed out some banks are failing. Who decides? Right? The Fed? Well, which banks are being allowed to fail? The ones that deal with crypto. Why? The Fed doesn't want any competition. Right? They don't want to they don't want to continue to waste their time and effort can kind of manipulating Bitcoin and all that stuff. They can take out the banks. Then nobody's gonna be trading it you won't be able to it's just gonna die on its own. So according to John Biden's biggest mistake, right, be the biggest mistake he's made is that he kicked Russia off of Swift. Now, Swift is basically the banking system, where all transactions are conducted in dollars. So if Russia needs to send money to Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia and us and send money somewhere else, everything is conducted in dollars in Russia, and Russia was kicked off of this as part of the sanctions. So now, if you are an ally of the United States, or if you need for your neutral country, you're thinking you're like, man, they don't like Russia, they kicked them off of Swift that just made it really difficult for Russia to do business with anyone. They could do the same thing for us, they don't like us, you know, we get another crazy president, they kick us off. And that's not a good thing. So that did give the BRICS and other countries more reason to think about, okay, we need a separate currency, we need our own thing. We don't want the US to be in control anymore. So that was a big mistake. I don't know if they're going to read what they're going to do with it or what the future is going to be. But that was what John said. Now, one more big thing is the Fed and inflation, right? So if you watch the news, you watch any of these stock shows everybody was saying the same thing, oh, the Fed is behind the curve Fed is behind, you know, the fell asleep at the switch. They're supposed to keep inflation down. But they didn't do anything. They let inflation get all the way up to 9%. And then they started raising rates, and they're raising rates so quickly, by law, everybody's bashing? Why would the Fed allow inflation? Now, they have more data than anybody else? They know what's happening. Right? They get the data first. Why would they allow for inflation? Inflation, results in higher prices? Right? Everything goes up, that leads to people buying fewer things, which leads to a recession. Would the Fed actually want us to go into recession? I don't know. If we go into recession, we buy even less things because people are getting laid off. They're not making much they're being careful. They're not making frivolous expenses and frivolous spending, right? So they buy even less things. And where does most of our stuff come from? Most of the stuff in your house in the store? Any store you go to? Where does it come from? Made in China, made in China. So if we start buying stuff, China suffers, Chinese people get laid off, because they don't have enough manufacturing? already? Right now. You can look this up. Men in the 16 to 25 age group. They're unemployed unemployment rate is 25%. China's economy is not doing as well as they say they are. Right. They say China says total unemployment is 5%. But this age group, males 1625 or so 25% unemployment. This is the group that causes revolution. This is the group that gets angry. You look at the Arab Spring, you look at the French Revolution. Look at Russian, you know, thingy, you look at the Tiananmen Square, who are all those people, they're youngsters. You know, people in their 40s 50s 60s, they don't grow, they don't have a revolution is these guys who don't have a job have nothing else to do. They're angry. They're young, they feel they can do anything. They're the ones that start revolutions. So if America Titan tightens the belt on spending, China suffers dramatically. China might go into a recession, China might go down, right? And China and Chinese, they have a lot of people that they need to feed. They have a lot more things to worry about, than Taiwan. Does that make sense? And then handling this, what are the Chinese going? What are the Chinese going to do? They're going to be going into debt to feed their people. They don't want these guys on the streets. They don't want all these men to be angry and meeting and talking. They want them to be happy and so they might just give them money. And how lockdowns COVID, lockdown zero COVID policy. Oh, well, that was.. You know, don't meetings no get together zero COVID Ah, yeah, see, stuff starts to make sense. What do we have zero COVID Three years or two years after COVID went away. Interesting. Ah, see? Okay. All right. So that was John penny. I agree. A little bit conspiracy, but it starts to make sense. Now let's go into John Jim Rogers. So Jimmy here. He was a partner with George Soros at the quantum fund. They made billions together. And then he took his money and he left literally anywhere around the world twice. I told you that he had one book where he took motorcycles anyone around the world. A few years later, he got married, and he got a car. And they drove around the world for their honeymoon. And then he wrote a book about that to both of them, I highly recommend both those books. And now he manages his own money. And he's, I mean, he's, he's getting up there, right? But this guy is wicked, wicked, smart, very smart guy and his mantra, his mantra is, you find where the money is. And you go, and you pick it up, working, overrated. Trading, market timing, now he doesn't do. He's an investment. So he finds something that if it's really cheap, and it's cheaper than it costs or cheaper than it should be, he'll go and he'll buy it. And he'll sit and wait. So the price goes up. That's how he made all his money. When there are problems, that's where he invests.  So right after a country has a revolution, right after a country is finishes a war, that's where he says, is the most opportunity, because that's when everything is cheap. That's when they're most spending happens, because they have to rebuild everything. So he goes into those areas, and he buys. So what does he think? What is he investing in right now? Not much, according to him, everything is very, very expensive right now. So he's not buying much at all. He's doing a few things. What he is doing is he is buying Japanese ETFs. So currently, according to him, the Bank of Japan, kind of like the Fed. They're printing money all day long. That's all they do. They're printing money, printing money, printing money, they're using that money to prop up the Japanese stock market. So they're buying Japanese stocks. And so he's like, hey, you know, you got this buyer, you got this floor in the market? Why don't I just buy stocks, too. So he's buying Japanese ETFs. And he's gonna keep buying them and holding them until the Bank of Japan stops because when he stops buying, then they're gonna fall, right? Because there's nobody else left to buy. So that's his strategy there. He's also buying stocks in Uzbekistan, maybe even in Kazakhstan. Now, I know, that's not something that we're going to be doing, most likely for most of us, but that's what he said. And then he's looking at things that are falling in price there haven't reached the bottom yet by commodities. So he's like, you know, a lot of commodities are getting much cheaper, kind of like sugar gave one example of sugar. Because I'm, he's like thinking of getting it once it reaches the bottom. Now, he also wrote Jim Rogers did a book on commodities, and the supercycle of commodities and whatnot. So if you're interested in that, you know, picked that book up, it was really good. What else did he say? He said that the yuan, which is the Chinese currency, he said, it will not ever be the world's reserve currency because it's not convertible into others. That's the Chinese issue. They don't want to be converting it for some reason. So the yuan will never be the reserve currency. And then he says that all countries are working on a digital currency. So we heard that with the first speaker, right? That US is working on a digital currency, China has a digital currency already that is being forced. Because of that crypto, Bitcoin Aetherium. All those, there's no need for them. And they're going to be going to zero because the countries will simply not allow them. So that's his thought process on that all Kryptos are going to zero. And then he did he somebody asked me a question about AI. So he did say AI is going to be huge. But he doesn't know how to invest in you get now this the next day is his biggest the biggest thing that he gave us the biggest takeaway, this is his biggest emphasis. And probably the most important for all of us, that the next bear market when it comes, he doesn't know when it comes. But the next bear market is going to be the worst of his life. It's gonna be even worse than 08-09 with the Great Recession, it's gonna be much bigger than that. And the reason is that there is way more debt than back then. Consumers have more debt, countries have more debt, and the world has more debt. It's just there's a lot more spending a lot more debt than ever, ever before. Europe has debt. At that time in 0809. China had no debt at all. They didn't have any debt, they were running a surplus. Now they have debt, which they did not have before. So really, he's like, you know, who's gonna come to save us if there's a bear market, if there's a downturn, nobody, nobody's going to be able to save us is going to be every country for themselves. He doesn't know when this is going to happen. But the one tip he gave to know when this has happened is right before it's going to happen. There will most likely be a blow-off market top, meaning that the market is just going to shoot up and it's going to go hyperbolic at some point. And then it's going to stop, turn around and then drop. So that is the signal for most downturns most bear markets is that the market is going to route is going to rally and it's going to get exhausted. But before it gets exhausted, it just goes crazy. You know because everybody's out man you got a and yet again it's FOMO fear of missing out over and over everybody just putting all their money and all their money and all their money in then there's nobody left to buy anything just preference he doesn't know when it's gonna happen because he's not a treatment. Okay, so and that is it.

I wanted to talk about, tell you, and show you basically how we made over 180% in the first four months of 2023. You heard that right. We made conservative trades and we've made, and by the end of April we made 32 trades and the total result was over 180%. Actually, the exact number was 180.42%. Now that's pretty remarkable. And then it gets even more remarkable, because we had 32 trades, all of them were winners, none were losers, and none of them lost since the beginning of the year. Now, I don't know how long this streak is going to keep going. And I don't know what the record is for her like most winning streaks in a row. But this one is pretty remarkable. And I do think it's going to continue. Now a little bit of background. This is for our weekly actually, it's not even a weekly. It's a one-day to expiration trade that we do on the SPX, we've been doing this for a long time. We were doing this for several years. But something occurred in 2022. That allowed us to not only upgrade it but to make significant changes to the system. So that not only do we get more trades, that we also get abilities to not lose money on every trade. So I wanted to explain that a little bit and show you what we're doing. So basically, it's a one DTE or one day to-expiration credit spread on the SPX. Though what that means is we're only trading SPX, which is an index is the S&P500. And we'd put the trade on today, and it expires tomorrow. So it's one day, it's basically overnight risk. And that's it. And we are aiming for around five to 8% per trade. Now, as you can see the numbers I gave you, we did 32 of them, and we made 180%. So you can do the math and figure out how much we average per trade. And like I said, these are very conservative traits. And they make money and they've won, right? So in February, we actually released this to a small group of people. So we, we explained this concept to on a live event we had, you know, a lot of people come in and watch. And we showed them what we're doing. And we said, hey, if we want to actually teach this to people, because we want to do this same strategy in our hedge fund, and I need to create training for it, right? Because I need to train the people that are trading at the fund. And so I said, Well, I'm going to be creating the training anyway, why don't I let some of you guys in so you can do it for yourself. So we've had about 35 people into the program, it's sold out like like that. And all of them are having phenomenal success. So it's been really exciting to share this with people. And we are probably going to share it with more people because it's just been so much fun. And because of the numbers and the liquidity and the volume, we're going to be able to trade it for the fund anyway. So I don't see any reason, at least right now why we cannot let a few more people in so they can do this for themselves. Like I said, it's been phenomenal. Everybody's been winning left and right. And the numbers are just crazy. So basically in February we showed them and we were explaining like Okay, so this is a a one day to expiration trade on SPX you do a credit spread, and we have a set pattern of how we trade it. Now, the most interesting thing is that, in 2022, the CBOE which is the Chicago Board of options in the CME which controls the SPX. They got together and they released weekly options for Tuesday and Thursday. So until then, we had weekly explorations that were happening on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But they introduced Tuesdays and Thursdays so now we have expirations on SPX that happen every single day of the week, that enabled us to do two things. Number one, it gave us more trades, right? Because if it's a one day trade, if you want to do it on Tuesday, you can't because there's no expiration or like, if you want to do it on Monday, that expires on Tuesday, you can't do it, because there's nothing expires on Tuesday, you have to go to Wednesday, that gives you a little bit more risk, right? Instead of just one day, now you're doing two days. So because of Tuesday, and Thursday expiration, now we have more trades that we can do. And we realized that because of this new thing, we can now adjust these trades, because not all trades always work out. So far, the four months of this year, it has been fantastic. But you know, we're gonna have a losing trade, right? It's just normal is trading, you're gonna lose. So we've identified several different ways of potential adjustments. You know, if a trade goes bad, how is there a way to either get our money back and not have a loss or get adjusted in a way where you can still even make money. So what we wanted to do, because these are weeklies, and there's so many of them, so many of the trades, we figured what if we can just get back to breakeven on any losing trades, because we have so few losing trades. And we actually found it, we actually tested several different adjustment strategies over and over and over and over again, until we found one that actually worked. And we were like, Oh, holy cow, this is amazing. So we went back to several years. And we said, Okay, if there were daily explorations, would this adjustment would have worked? And the resounding answer was yes. So let's take a look at the numbers for last year 2022, there were 88 trades total, seven of those trades lost money, right? So you have 81 winning trades, you have 77 losing trades, 88 trades total. Now, if you did not do the adjustment, and you got out at the stop loss, meaning, you know, if you lose a certain amount you get out of the trade. That's what how that was our previous trading plan that we put the trade on, if it loses, we get out at a certain stop loss. If you had done it that way, the result would have been a yearly gain of close to 150%. So that is still phenomenal, because, you know, 150% in a year Wowzers. But we went back and we looked at the adjustments, and said, Okay, if we had adjusted these would the adjustments would have worked to get us back to break even? And the resounding answer was yes. In every single one of those seven losing trades, we would have very easily gotten back to breakeven. And on some of them, we even made a little bit, but I'm not going to count that, right? So we got to breakeven on those trades. So those seven trades we no longer have losses for. So what was the end result? Well, if you only take the winners, and you don't have the losers, we would have made close to 450% in 2022. Now that is way Wowzers. Much bigger, Wowzers, right? 150. Yeah, that's, that's wonderful. You know, most hedge fund managers would would cut their arm off for that kind of return in a year. But now we're talking even bigger returns. So that's why so many people are excited. That's why I'm jumping up and down like I can't, like I'm very, very happy with this. I'm you know, I was like, Man, this might be the best strategy I've ever come up with. And I can't, I can't wait to show it to more people. And so we're working on the whole process of making it better, streamlined. We're building a curriculum for my own traders, as well as for people that want to do this on their own. And, you know, so it's going to be exciting. And the thing was last year, like I said, there were 88 trades total for the year. But they did not introduce the Tuesday and Thursday trades until the middle of the year. So the first half of the year, we had fewer trades. Second half, we had more trade. Now this year. 2023 is the first year first full year of expirations every single day. So you can tell so far in the first four months, we've already had 32 trades. And for the first three months, we were on a tear and then April kind of slowed down. We only had four trades in April. But so far we've had 32 trades so we've had 30 trades every four months. That's you know, we're on pace for 120 trades this year. Now, so far we haven't had any losers, you know knock on wood, but if we do and we can break even on those, we're still going to have a fabulous and we're already up 180 person Time. I mean, you could probably quit right now, it'd be like, Yeah, I'm done for the year, you know, I'm happy. But we could keep going for another three fourths of the year. And May, we've already had one trade, and it worked. So it's still undefeated, the system as of 2023, as I, as I'm making this video, and we're going to keep updating, and we are keep going to improving it. So we actually have something that is going to make it even better. Now, the thing that makes this really work is a signal. Because you have to know okay, hey, when do we put the trade on? Now we're looking for the most successful trades, right, we're looking to put the odds in our favor as many ways as we can. And so this is not a trade that we put on every single day. In order for it to work, we want to have the best possible setup. And what we've identified is there is a specific way to identify this setup, meaning that we only put the trade on we only do a trade if we get this setup, right? That setup is being told to us by a specific proprietary indicator that we have, that we created this indicator, and if it gives us a signal, then and only then do we put a trade on, if we get no signal we do not put a trade on. Does that make sense? So that's like the secret sauce. So you get the signal. Okay, put the trade on and follow the trading rules. So eventually, you know, you have you have How do you manage and watch the signal? How do you see the signal? How do you put the trade on? How do you manage the trade? And then if you need to adjust, how do you do the adjustment. So there's really three pieces to this, you need all three of them to do it well, and the signal is what makes it starts at off. So it's really exciting, we're actually coming out with an improvement to the signal, which it's I mean, the signal is basically a calculation, right? It's a formula. So you add this number, you add this number to this number, you divide, subtract, square root, whatever, whatever. And then it gives you a number. So if the number is over one, you have a signal, if the number is less than one, you don't have a signal, and you don't put the trade on. And it'll also tell you if you're going to do the call spread or you're going to sell a put spread. And then the strategy tells you how much money you should make and all that stuff. So it's really exciting. Again, so far, we've already had 32 trades for the year, in the first four months, if that continues up at one 80% I'm, you know, what is when at times four? 720%? Yeah, there's, there's no way I can tell you that we're gonna make 720%. Possible, yes, but have no winning trades and stay consistent in the number of trades. I don't know. I mean, if we do it would be, that would be astronomically amazing. Am I just like, Yeah, I'm done, I can't do better this, I get over there. This is it, you know, I'm just gonna do this rest of my life. So we'll open it up small batches, and then small batches so that we can monitor it and we can make sure that it's still working that it doesn't get oversaturated SPX is so large. And you know, we're looking at other ways to do it too. Can we do this on SPY? Can we do this on the on the futures? And can we do this on other indexes, so we'll have other opportunities to trade this. But for now, it's only in SPX. And so I don't want to over saturate it. Now we do have some students that are doing like, you know, four or five contracts. We have some students doing over 100 contracts on every single trade. And then the more money you have, you know you there are different ways that we talked about where you can put more money to work in this trade without paying a lot of fees and still being able to do it. So I don't think we're going to oversaturate for a little bit. But I want to make sure that everybody that joins, has a good experience knows what they're doing, is properly trained, etc, etc. So, that being said, if you're interested, click on the video, click on the link, watch the video, and sign up for the notification list. And maybe I'll see you in the program. So that's it. And I'm hoping for another 180% for the next three months. And maybe we'll make another update if we do probably make another update video. But for now, get on the list to get notifications. And until then, trade with the odds in your favor. Take care. To join the announcement list or get more info click here: https://optiongenius.com/marketpower

Hey there passive trader, have you ever thought about what it would be like to be a Billionaire? Or even if you could become a billionaire? I know, I know, it's pretty far fetched. But today, I want to talk about my plan to become a Billionaire. And you'll see that it's pretty easy. And something that's pretty replicatable by just about anybody. Alright, so a few days ago, I was thinking about it, I was like, yeah, man, it'd be really cool. If you know, it wouldn't be possible if I could become a billionaire.  And there's mostly, most of the billionaires out there that we know of, you know, the Forbes 500, or whatever Fortune 100, whatever the different lists that they're on, but the world's richest people are billionaires, because they have taken a company public. So if you take a look at Elon Musk, or Warren Buffett, or Mark Zuckerberg, they are not, they don't have money, they don't have the billion dollars sitting around. It's the stock that they own of the company that they started that they took public, that's worth billions of dollars. And so they're worth billions of dollars, because that stock is worth billions of dollars. Now, if their company goes out of business, they're not a billionaire anymore. So I don't know, you could argue if they're actually worth billions or not, right. And in fact, these type of people, they don't like to sell their stock. So it's very difficult for them to actually get the money out of the company out of the stock, because for example, you know, let's say Warren Buffett starts selling his shares, let's say he wants a billion dollars to, I don't know, buy the moon or something. Right, but he needs the money, and he starts selling his shares. Well, people are going to know people are going to notice he has to tell. He has to disclose it. Because he's a public company, and he's the CEO. So people are going to know and they're gonna be like, Why is Warren selling shares, oh, my god, something's going on. And everybody's gonna start selling their shares, and the stock is going to tank, right? Same thing happened with Elon Musk, this is a real life example, when he wanted to buy Twitter, he had to sell his Tesla shares, some of them, because he didn't have the money sitting around to pay for the Twitter shares. So he had to sell enough Tesla shares, to not only pay the taxes on everything that he's selling, and the gains that he's making, but then also pay for the other shares for Twitter. And so the stock price of Tesla, when he started selling was, was at around about 285, close to $300. And when it was done, he was at about $100, one on one. So if stock price dropped from 300, to 100. And that's why it's not a good idea for these guys to be selling their shares. Now, that's not the type of billionaire that I'm talking about. I don't want to be a stock market, going public-type billionaire, I want to be the guy that actually has the billion dollars in assets, something that I could sell pretty easily and have that money converted into billion dollars. Right? So how do we do that? Well, there are three things that you need to become a billionaire.  Number one, you need to have an investment vehicle something to put the money in, that's going to give you a good return. Number two, you need to have time, because it's going to compound and grow. And then number three, you have to have some money to start with, the more the better, right? The more time, the better, the more money you have to start with the better. And the better the return that you get on your investment, the better. So the reason I was thinking about this is because, if you've seen my other episodes and stuff, you might know that I'm starting a hedge fund, and it's getting ready to launch pretty soon. And I am putting in about $700,000 of my own capital into this fund, at least in the beginning. And I plan on leaving it all in there. I leave it you know, I don't want it to be I don't want to take it out. I'm just gonna leave it in there and let it grow and grow and grow. And so I was like, Huh, I wonder how much it could grow to? Right? So that's my starting capital. That's the money I have. I have, of course, other funds, but we're only talking about this. And so I was thinking I'm like, Okay, how much money can I make? And really the goal for the fund is to make about 20% per year. Now, the strategies that we talked about, we can make a lot more right than 20% a year, but I want to be conservative and even 20% a year is most people will say that's not conservative, that's very aggressive. But because of the strategies we're using and the money we've made in the percentage that we've made in the past, I'm pretty confident that we can make 20% a year minimum so I don't want to shoot for the moon. I wanna say Oh, Okay, if that's what I can make reliably, predictably year after year, that's the number I'm going to go with. Let's a little be, you know, a little conservative on this. So let's say that I'm going to make 20%. So those are the top two things I already have, right? I have my starting capital, and I have my return on investment. Now, what do we need? We need time? So how much time am I going to put into this? Well, the reason I was thinking about this is because I had been to an event that was.. it was about regenerative medicine. And really, the basic of it is that with all the new technologies, and the new treatments that are coming online, people are going to be able to live longer and longer than they ever had before. Right now, in the US the age range or the agespan lifespan for the average man is somewhere in the 80s. In the next few years, it's probably going to grow and continue to grow. So I was thinking, you know, I'm probably going to live or I goal, my plan is to live to 120 and still be healthy. I want to be a healthy 120. I don't want to be an old and decrepit at 120. But If I can stay healthy, then yes, I would love to live to 120. So that is my goal. And currently I am 46 years old. So if you do the math, 120 minus 46 is 74 years. So I have 74 years left of life. I haven't even hit my midlife crisis yet. But I actually, I haven't hit midlife yet, I did have the crisis already. So hopefully I'll get another one. But I have 74 years left. So now all we got to do is the math. So I'm over here at this website, which is investor.gov. Okay, now investor.gov is a government website from run by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. And I'm going to put my numbers into the website and see what we come up with. All right, so initial investment is 700,000. Monthly contribution, I'm going to do zero and if you want to use this, this calculator yourself, it's at investor.gov. Let's just put that out there investor.gov. And this is the compound interest calculator. All right, length in time in years. So let's do 74. Right, at estimated interest rate, I'm going to put 20, because that's where we're going to make every year interest rate variance, I'm going to put zero because we'll just make it and then compound frequencies annually. So we're gonna do 20% a year. So if I put in $700,000, into my fund, and I leave it there for 74 years, and I make 20% a year. Now, obviously, when I'm 100 years old, 120 years old, I'm probably not going to be running a hedge fund. I don't know if the hedge fund is going to be around for that long. If it is, it'll be you know, maybe my kids grandkids, great grandkids running it, or we'll find this as a succession plan. And somebody else will take over hopefully and, and learn from us, and they'll continue it or have to find some other type of investments. But this is just, you know, just just for fun to figure this out. So those are our numbers. And I'm going to hit Calculate, and you're gonna see if I can actually get close to being a billionaire. So go ahead, click Calculate. And the results are in-- it says here in 74 years, I will have oh, that's a lot of numbers. Okay, those are the hundreds, those are the 1000s or the millions. And these are the billions over here. So this is telling me that in 74 years, I will have $506 billion. That's half a trillion dollars. And this is real spendable money that I can take out and spend it. Not, you know, because I took a company public and the money is stuck in there. $506 billion in 74 years. That's crazy. Because if the math if the health people are right, the doctors are right, and I can actually live to 120, and I can actually make 20%, which I think we can. That's insane. I don't know if I'm going to be the richest man in the world at that point. But $506 billion, who knows what's gonna happen to 74 years, but that's a ton of money. Oh my god. Okay. What if we make it a little bit, you know, a little bit less. So how long would it take me to get to a billion. So if you look at this, it's saying here that the numbers are showing that in 40 years. 40 years from now, I will be worth over a billion dollars. So I'm 46. So that's 86. 86 years old. If I make 20% a year, and I don't have any more money. I start with the 700 and I just leave it there make 20% a year. I can be worth a billion dollars in 40 years. In Age 86, which, even in today's timeframe is doable, I can probably live to 86. Right? My father's still alive. He's 80. So 86, even in today's health standards, it's doable. So becoming a billionaire is not that difficult. I mean, the numbers are just there, the numbers are mind blowing astronomical, will we make 20% every year? Probably not. Some of yours will be more, some of yours will be less some of yours or lose money. But if you can average the 20, then you can do it. Now, obviously, everybody doesn't have $700,000, some of you actually have more. Some of you have less, some of you have no more, but not everybody's goal is to be worth a billion dollars. So you don't need to start off with a massive nest egg. The real thing is you need to start with something, and you compound it and let it grow. And the billion dollars was just, you know, a crazy thought. I don't think I'm ever going to be spending a billion dollars in my lifetime. And whatever I can make on that, if I take it out or put it in, like the interest on that. That's crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Nobody can spend that much money. At least I know. I can't, you know, so even if you were let's say you only had 5 million. Right? That's all you had $5 million, and you made 20% a year, that's a million dollars. I don't think I can spend a million dollars. Now, obviously, you got taxes and all that stuff, too. But you know, even if taxes are 50%, you got $500,000 a year to live off. Most people would be okay. $500,000 a year. So you only need $5 million to live like a billionaire. So maybe your goal is not to have the billion dollars, but you just want to live like a billionaire. I mean, yes, you could have multiple houses, you could have a yacht, you could have horses, you could have a Lambo and a Ferrari, and you could buy whatever clothes you want, and fly private, you know, all of these things nowadays can be rented, you don't have to buy them, you don't have to pay full price for them, you can rent them or take a loan on them, and you make the payments and 500,000 a year would let you live like a billionaire. And you only need what $5 million in investments earning 20% a year. And with passive trading, yes, you can make 20% a year, we have people doing much, much better than that. So it's definitely doable. It's definitely in the realm of possibility. Even though it doesn't seem like a billion dollars does not seem like the realm of possibility. But it could be in my cards as possible. So anything is possible. It depends on the vehicle that you're using to get you to your financial goals. And that's it. So you find the vehicle that works for you, it can take you there, you just put in the time, let it run a lot of people they take the money out, you know, if it makes a little bit or they get scared or the market drops, they take the money out of there. Oh, no, I can't. But you gotta leave it in there, keep it, let it keep growing, you know, pretend like you don't even have it. And you just do your thing, live your life. There'll be ups and downs. And that's life. Economics, ups and downs helped up and down, family up and down. All kinds of stuff job up and down. But you just let the money sit there, do its thing, let it grow and grow and grow. And then eventually, you'll have so much you won't know what to do with it. So that's the goal for me for you. That's what I want for you. That's my goal for myself. And so that's it. It's my plan to be a billion dollars or billionaire. And remember that it's very simple, right? The plan to be a billion dollar. If you want to be a billionaire. What do you need, you need three things, you need a starting capital, you need time, and you need an investment vehicle that's going to give you a good reliable, steady rate of return. The higher the better, the better starting capital, the better. The more time the better. And if you have all three of those, you can get $2 million, you can get to 10 million, 100 million, billion dollars or more. Half a trillion if you live long enough. Okay. There you go. Folks. That's it for me today. Just a reminder to trade with the odds in your favor, make sure you subscribe. We'd love to hear from you. Leave comments if you can. We always love to hear from from our listeners in our in our watchers in our viewers and our readers and all of our friends. So keep trading trade with the odds in your favor, and we'll see you next time. JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance

So this week, we have two different high ranking Republicans who want to raise the retirement age in the United States. That's what we're talking about in today's video. If you enjoy these type of videos, if you want to learn about retirement and how to make more money so that you can retire more comfortably, please go ahead and subscribe to the channel. Appreciate that it would really help get the message across, we can get more information to you. So now let's talk about what's going on. So earlier this week, Nikki Haley who is running for president, actually, she's running for the nomination to eventually run for president. But she's a very high ranking Republican, big in the circles and she made a comment that she wants to raise the Social Security entitlement age when you can collect social security higher than 67. Now, it used to be 65. Now it's 67. She wants to raise it even more. And then on the talk shows CNN asked Nancy Mace who is a Republican Representative from South Carolina if she agreed with that. And then she was like, yeah, definitely, we definitely need to do this because Social Security is screwed up. The Republicans and the Democrats have screwed it up, and we need to fix it. Now. Nobody's going to argue that it needs to be fixed. But with Nikki Haley's version, she wants to change the retirement age, not for older folks, but for people in their 20s. Right, because people in their 20s don't vote Republican. So yeah, okay, that makes perfect sense for you. But yeah, there's a problem there. It needs to be fixed. Social Security is, I mean, we've been hearing rumors about its demise for years, is it gonna happen not happen? Eventually, somebody's gonna have to come in and fix it, because we don't have any other options for most of the people in this country. Now, unfortunately, we're not the only ones in this boat. France this week, President Macron he almost single handedly passed a bill or  law, whatever, that they are going to raise the retirement age in France from 62 to 64. And that has led to massive protests, and strikes all across the country, the garbage sanitation workers they're on strike, there's garbage piling up all over the country, the bus, drivers union, they're on strike, buses aren't running all kinds of crazy stuff is happening, because people are enraged. People are scared. People are. I mean, they that's the biggest fear that people have. They're not fear of death, they're not scared of public speaking as much as they are afraid of running out of money in retirement, and becoming a burden to their family or somebody else. And it's very legitimate, you know, I'm going through a personal issue right now with my father who, for the first time in his life has become dependent, he has some back issues, he can't move. And it's driving him crazy that he has to be reliant on nurses and help and other people to even move around to even go to the bathroom. And it's mind blowingly depressing. You know, if you have read the Passive Trading Book, which you can get up passivetrading.com. If you read the book, you know that Social Security was not supposed to be gotten in the sense that when they came out with Social Security, they set the retirement age at 65. But at that time, most people didn't live to 65. And so yeah, they didn't really want you to get in Social Security, right? But it was good for votes.  Now, people are living well past 65. So almost everybody gets Social Security. And it's only getting worse. I mean, I'm 46, myself, and I plan on living to 120. So I mean, let's say if I got in, and I started working at the age of 26, or 21, whatever, right? And I'm going to retire at age 65 or 67. I'll have put in a certain amount of money, but then I'm going to take money out from 67 all the way to 120. So I'll be taking a lot more money out that I put in, and so will everybody else. And so yes, somebody definitely has to be done with Social Security. But I for one, am not sure that the government officials, even though they're elected, these politicians are the ones that should be creating this stuff. Yes, they have people that are experts, supposedly they're advising them, but it comes down to the lobbyists, right? Whoever's got the biggest lobby, Wall Street, the banks, investment companies, they're the ones that are going to set the policy and it's really a shame, but that's how it works. So here's what you need to do and here's how it should be. Okay?   The proper way to look at social security is that it is the cherry on top of your retirement planning sundae. So you got your ice cream, you got your hot fudge, you got your nuts, I love my nuts, and you got your whipped cream. The cherry on top is Social Security, you might get it, you might not get it, but you shouldn't need it. Too many people in this country are only living on Social Security, that's the only income they have, they have no savings, they have nothing else. They're only living on Social Security, and their life is miserable, they're already miserable. And it's only going to get worse because they might raise the age of social security. Or they might lower the benefits or a combination of the two. That's scary, right?   If you need a certain amount to live on, you got your medicines, you got your rent, you got all your stuff, and then you have less money coming in automatically. Now these are folks, they can't go back to work, because they're too old. Or they're not capable, healthwise, or whatever reason they can't find a job. You know, these are the people that are working at Walmart as the greeter. Yeah, that's an easy job. You stand there all day, but your knees hurt like crazy. And it's not fun. And I don't want you know, my father or my mom or anyone else to be actually having to do that. So what do we do? What do you do? Well, it's laid out in the book, passive trading, you need to take advantage of what's out there, you need to take advantage of the situation now, as soon as you can.   Today is the only day you have, you can't do it tomorrow, can't do yesterday, you need to start today. And so you can watch the other videos on this channel, you can head over to option genius.com. You can listen to other episodes of our podcast, but you have to get started. Right? There's nothing else. And if you're having trouble, reach out to us last for help, say what do I do, we're coming out with more and more products that are speaking to the market. And one of the ones that we're thinking about, and I put this out to one of our groups, and I said, Hey, look, I'm thinking about doing a workshop, you know, maybe 3-4 hour workshops, I'm going to cost a lot of money. And basically the title is How to retire on one stock. And people went nuts, they're going, Oh, my God, that would be so amazing, I need that I need that that would be so great. Because it's all about simplicity. That's what we teach anyway, you know, you're investing you're trading should be simple. If you cannot explain it to a six year old, it's too complicated, right? If you have to tell them all the way when this when this X goes through this line, and this thing chops up, and then this beep goes off, then and I put this trade on, and I can I have to get out. It's too complicated. It can be simple. And it doesn't have to take a lot of time. We have people doing it all the time. And we're actually starting a hedge fund that is going to be doing it exactly the same way that we teach it. So if we can do it with millions of dollars, I'm sure you could do it with your account. And I'm sure you can figure it out. And you can learn because we're willing to teach you we're going to teach you exactly what to do. So yes, the Republicans and the Democrats are going to be talking about this, you're going to you're going to hear about this, in the future, as the elections come closer, it's probably going to be a debated topic. If not, it's going to happen, eventually, something is going to change has to change because the government, unfortunately, they're paying out a lot in Social Security. And they're not that good at investing the money. So yes, they could probably print a lot more money and fill it up with Social Security or some old bonds or whatnot. But that's just going to put the country deeper and deeper in debt. And if that continues, eventually that's going to stop as well. And then the country will go broke and then Social Security will go broke and then it'll just be worse. So hopefully, whatever they come up with, they don't kick the can down the road, they fix it, they solve it, they do the issue, but I have Well, I'm not holding my breath. For these Republicans to kick, you know, dissolve it. They're probably just gonna keep kicking the can so it makes good headlines. You know that, oh, hey, we have a problem. We have a solution to this problem. Yay. And for those of you who are voting for us, it's not gonna affect you. Yay, it's gonna affect your kids. Oh, wonderful. So they're, they're going to suffer. But at least you don't vote for us. So we're good. That's what the Republicans think. Democrats are gonna think the opposite. They're going to try to come up with some other way. But something has to be done. Hopefully, it will be done better than worse than, you know, something good is gonna come out of this. But in the meantime, don't hold your breath. You need to take action. So hopefully, you've already started. You know, you're putting money away. You're saving money you're investing, learn to trade. Start with one strategy. Maybe it's a covered call, maybe it's a naked put, whatever it is. Is pick one strategy, we have plenty of them to choose from, and start working it, start making some money and compound it and watch the other videos, watch our podcast to see how that money works, how the strategies works, how it compounds, and then we'll need that silly little cherry on top. I mean, the way that I don't even like those chairs, to be honest, though it's all processed, it's not a fresh cherry the sauce on it is like nasty. So I don't want my my my Sunday my beautiful ice cream sundae messed up with that cherry anyway. But in terms of extra money, sure if it's around, when I'm 67. And who knows, maybe 69. So I don't know when they're going to change it. But for now it's at 67. If it's still around, sure, I'll take it. But I'm not holding my breath that is gotta be there. And I'm not planning to rely on it. And neither should you. So ask yourself this question. You know, do a thought experiment Einstein used to do these all the time, right? What is going to happen if you CANNOT collect Social Security? Ask yourself that question. This is a thought experiment-- financial planning, retirement planning thought experiment? What will happen to you If you do not, CANNOT collect Social Security? Whether it's not there? Or you don't qualify? Whatever. What's going to happen to you? When are you going to retire? If are you going to retire? Will you be able to retire? What's going to happen if you can't work anymore? What's gonna happen? It's not fun to think about. But you have to, because nobody's going to care about you, like you, nobody's going to take care of you, as well, as you'll take care of yourself. And you do not want to be dependent on others. Okay, I hope I got through. I hope, really, that it hit home, and that this message works and you start getting to business? Just do it just start. Even if you lose some money in the beginning, that's okay. People do. It's normal, you know, when you're learning something new, it's not gonna be perfect, you're not going to get it right, every time of right off the bat is going to take some time. And that's the problem that people wait too long to get started. We have emails almost every week from somebody, well, you know, I'm going to be retiring in a year, and I want to learn how to do this stuff. So yeah, that's great. I wish you would have started 20 years ago, right, then you would have really had a big ass nest egg, and you wouldn't have to worry about anything. But even if they're 6465, and they're starting now, hey, they got plenty of time to learn this stuff. And it's simple. It's not easy. It's simple, simple to understand. And then you got to learn it, get through the experience, put the trades on, master some strategy. And then you don't have to worry about Social Security. You don't have to worry about what the politicians are going to do with it, and your life will be much better. There'll be less stress, less headaches, and less worry. And that's what I want for all of you. So with that said, I wish for all the trades to work out in your favor, but if they don't at least trade with the odds in your favor. Take care. We'll see you next time.

How to be a black belt spread Master? Black Belt. Hiya! Like karate, right? Black Belt, that's the best belt you can get. So how can you be a spread Master with a black belt? Let's talk about that. First thing we got to do though, is go over the disclaimer, of course, trading involves risk. It's not suitable for everybody, you can lose money, you probably will lose money. So don't risk too much. You don't want the spouse kicking out of the house. Right? Got it. Okay. So blast from the past, right? Karate Kid, the original, with Mr. Miyagi, that one rules. I love Jackie Chan. He did great. But the original Karate Kid, the original Miyagi, it was just KickAss. And I'm gonna have to tell you a little bit story here. Karate Kid. My parents actually took me to see this in the theaters. And I loved it. Right made kind of dates can tell Joe live, but I loved it. The original one is just classic story of this guy. He's a little bit nerdy, He's skinny, he moves to this new town, he doesn't have any friends. He meets a girl. And then he gets picked on by this group of dogs, you know, and they know karate. And they're beating him up over and over and over again. And then finally there's this guy, this, this this wreck loose, right? This guy who just takes him under his wing becomes like a father figure to him because he didn't have a father and teaches him how to defend himself and teaches him karate and karate used for defense. That's a very horrible, horrible accent. But, you know, that's what Mr. Miyagi teaches them. The Karate is for defense, and it's about life. And it's about meditation and being calm and peaceful and, and all these things he gives them shows him how to do respect, right? How to Give respect. And that's what karate is about. But the thugs, all they're talking about is no mercy, no mercy, right. Karate is to win and beat and pummel and, and destroy. And so we have the rest of the movie. And eventually, hopefully, you know, hopefully, you've seen the movie. If not go watch it, but I'm going to spoil it for you here. There's a karate tournament. And, of course, the Karate Kid wins in amazing fashion. Right? And then there's Karate Kid, Part Two. And so he goes to Japan, I don't I can tell the whole story. But that one was good, too. So if you haven't watched them, the originals, you gotta go back and watch them again. And then now on Netflix, they have come out with a new series called Cobra Kai. So I guess they wanted to make more money from the Karate Kid. Right. And so they brought back all the actors. And they have a whole new series, where it continues the story. It's I think it's like 30 years in the future. 30 years have gone by since the original Karate Kid movie. And you see all the actors have grown up, and they're all there except for of course, unfortunately, Mr. Miyagi - Pat Marita because he is unfortunately he has passed away. But all the other actors are there. And that was I've been watching that. And it was it was cool. And I love the I mean, the acting is really bad. To be honest, the acting in the series is pretty bad. The story is like, you know, but I love how they showed the other side of the story. Like in the Karate Kid movie, you see everything from Daniel San's perspective. He's the kid who's just moved here how hard it is for him. You know, he's got a single mom, his mom is annoying. He's trying to make friends. But he's getting beaten up all the time. You see it from his perspective. In the Cobra Kai series. It starts you off. The main character is the main thug, the one that was torturing Danielson. And it shows you from his perspective. And he's telling the story of how this kid Daniel came to his town and messed up his life. stole his girlfriend, beat him in the tournament, made his sensei hate him, all this kind of stuff. So I loved how they showed both sides of the coin, the flip. And I mean, he was it was really well done that that part was really well done. Anyway, why am I telling you all this? Because after I saw the Karate Kid, I of course, wanted to learn karate. Just like after I saw Top Gun. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. And after I saw Jaws, I didn't go swimming for years. But when I saw karate kid, I wanted to learn karate. So I told my parents, I want to learn karate, I'll put me in a glass swimming in class. So they did, bless them. Right? And so I joined a karate class. And I'm i You see they have these belts. So you want to of course you start off as a white belt, meaning you know nothing. And then you get a different color belt as you grow and you get better and better and better. And eventually you get to a black belt and then when you get a black belt, it gets even higher. From there you can get degrees of black belts. So I started off as a white belt. No On nothing, and they started with basic stuff, right? How do you throw a punch? How do you do a kick? How do you block a punch? How do you block a kick? How do you block this and that, and so you got four or five or 10, you know, basic moves, and you practice. And that's what we did. That was the whole glass, practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing, maybe you do a sparring with somebody else a little bit, and very, very slow motion. But you're practicing the same moves over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Eventually, I got tired of the same moves, and I'm ready to move up. So I go to my sensei Sensei, as your teacher, I go to my sensei and Sensei, please show me some of the moves for the next belt because I want to practice at home, and I want to get really good so that I can I can take the test and I can go to the next belt. And he what he told me is that I already know the moves. What are you talking about Sensei, what I found out was that the moves in karate are generally the same at all the belts. The thing is that there is more complexity at the higher levels. So what he showed me is that in slow motion, he stood in front of me, and slow motion, he threw a punch, and I blocked it. And I was able to block it, because that's what I learned as a white belt, he did a little kick, and I blocked it. But then he did a little bit faster. And he put me on my butt. Right, because I didn't know how to block it, even though I should have been able to block it. And then he moved to the side a little bit. And he punched me from the side and I didn't know how to block it. And then he hit me from the back. And he didn't I don't know how to block it. And then he had, you know, he hit me with to like, combination really fast and I didn't know how to block it. Even though I knew the moves, I didn't know the combinations, and didn't have the speed to block him. So then he told me to do the same thing to him. And he used the same moves to block everything I did, it didn't matter how fast I did it, or what side I did it, he was using the exact same moves that block the basic block the basic, you know, the basic kick, and punch and all that stuff to beat me. It was just the same thing. So that was his lesson for me at the time he goes, You need to focus and work on perfecting the moves that you already know, before you go to the next level. And so he sent me back, right, and do the block, do the kick faster, faster, better, better, crisper, more productive, more provision. So in the Karate Kid movie, if you if you watched it, you remember it you know, you remember wax on wax off, wax on wax on paint the fence up and down, paint the fence up and down. Those are the moves that Mr. Miyagi was teaching Daniel son, and he made him do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, until he got so good at these basic moves, that he was good enough to go into the tournament and fight and win. You know, it was the same moves in Mr. Miyagi, he didn't have any belt. So he didn't tell Daniel San that okay, now your white belt now your green belt, not your Brembo. He didn't have any moves. He was just teaching karate, or Karate, I guess if you say if you say it properly. But it wasn't about going from belt to belt. It was just learning. It was about learning how to do the thing. Right? So now when we talk about credit spreads, we're talking about learning the trade, learning how to do it, it's about learning the thing. So if you're a basic trader, and you want to get a really, really good trader, is there extra stuff that you got to learn? No, the moves are the same. The rules are the same, the basics are the same. There's more complexity, definitely at the higher levels. It gets scarier when you're dealing with larger numbers. You know, when you're not putting 500 into a trade, but you're putting 50,000 into a tray. Yeah, you can scare the heck out of you. That's more complexity. But the work that you got to do is the same. The basics are the same, you keep doing the same thing. punch, kick, wax on, wax off, that's all the same. It's just more complexity at higher higher levels. So you got to do the work. Right. Now you take a look at Bruce Lee, the master of karate, right, the king. He's known to say that I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 different kicks once but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. Because if you focus in you excel and you expert at one particular thing, you can beat anybody else that that's not proficient at it. Okay, so even correct and even Bruce Lee did the same thing. The same exercises the same you gotta master the basics. Every time I start losing money. The first thing I do is I stopped doing everything. complicated. And I go back to the basics. Just take out everything, go back to the basics. This happens in everything I do, whether it's trading, or whether it's with my family, whether it's with marketing, whatever I want to do even like chess, you know, if you're if you're a good chess player, you start doing all the gambits, right, you start doing all the moves. But there might be a time when you start losing over and over and over again, and you're like, I don't know what to do. If you don't know what to do, you go back to the basics. Right, go back to the beginning. And then you build up again, slowly, slowly, slowly. So just like in karate, just like in chess, just like anything else that you want to learn, you got to do the work. If you want to be a master, if you want to be a credit spread Master. And that's what I want you to be in this program. That's the reason for this program, you got to put in the work. And that's why we do it over and over and over and over and over. And yes, it can get methodical it can get boring. But that's how you become a master. That is how you become a credit spread black belt by doing the same move 1000 times 10,000 times being able to put on a trade in your sleep, being able to have the rules ingrained in your brain so that you can recite them. And then eventually, I want you to be so good that you can teach other people, you can teach your kids you can teach your family you can teach your friends, your co workers, you can teach them how to do this stuff. That's how good I want you to be a black belt, credit spread Master. That's the point of this program. That's where I want you to be at the end of the program. And we're going to do it by putting in the work. So if you're with me, here Yeah, we're gonna do it. We're gonna get you there. That's that's without without any doubt in my mind that I can get you there. You have to put in the work. And you already know what that means, right? So if you're ready, let's do this.

Turns out that a million dollars is not a big deal anymore. It's not enough to be a millionaire, or is it? I don't know, we'll talk about that. So, there's a new survey that just came out. CNBC reported on it, that's how I came about it to see it, it's put out by a company called Natix Is, I don't even know how you spell it. Natix Is Investment Advisors. That's their name--  financial company, they did a survey. And they asked millionaires. And they asked us a 16,017 millionaires who already have a million dollars in assets, right. And they asked them about what they think and how they feel about the economy, their future retirement in the year 2022. Unfortunately, most of them, a lot of them said that they are not very secure in their financial footing. In fact, 35% of them. 35% of these millionaires said that it will take a miracle for them to retire securely. Now, imagine that.. you're a millionaire, everybody's told you, well, hey, the goal is to get to a million dollars, you know, so that you can live in luxury for the rest of your life. You can stop working, quit the job, sell your business, whatever, and just relax and enjoy the rest of your life. But the people that have this million dollars are saying, Hey, we got here, but it's not enough. So my goodness, why, what happened? Well, turns out that million dollars is not what it used to be anymore. So anybody that goes, Hey, I'm a millionaire. You no big deal. Sorry, but big freakin deal. It's not enough. In fact, in in the world, right now, there are over 21 million millionaires. 21 million, that doubled from 2010 to 2020. And it keeps going up, right. So it's not a big deal anymore. And then 58% of these millionaires, 58% of them said that they will have to work longer than expected. So if they were planning on retiring at age 65, like most people do, it's gonna they're gonna have to work longer. Even if you have a million dollars in assets, according to this survey. Wow. That's insane. Right? And it could be any number of this, right? So there are economic threats growing, you know, inflation is there. The public debt is huge for the government, almost every government has tons and tons of debt. And that makes things harder for us. Because taxes go up and all kinds of stuff happens. Inflation is eating away at the money that you have, right? Interest rates are at super low points, even though the interest rates have risen, right, you go to the bank, in my have a very high interest rate account savings account, I'm getting 3.5%. So that's fine is decent, but it's a lot less than inflation. And so I'm losing money with my money sitting in the bank. 2022 is just a tough year for retirement right market was down over 23%. S&P, so geez, what do you do? Well, that is the normal way of thinking, right? So let's say you save up all your money, or you give it to an investment advisor, and then they grow it for you supposedly, right? And then when you retire, you're supposed to take out 4% of that and live off that now. $1 million 4% of that turns out to $40,000 a year. Now, yeah, you do get you know, some benefits in here and there and Social Security and whatnot. But still, you want to live on $40,000 a year? No, I don't know. I mean, I live in Texas, and it's pretty cheap to live in one of the lowest cost of living, but still, yeah, 40,000. You're like poverty level here. Even here, right? You live somewhere where it's a lot more expensive. I mean, forget about it, you can't do it, you're gonna keep working. So most people out there have a very hard time, even with a million dollars to be able to retire. And it's really sad. On the other hand, if you know how to do passive trading, you don't even need a million dollars. And we have other episodes and other videos that show you how to do the math and look for the one about our retirement calculator. And you can figure out that it doesn't take a million dollars to live a really, really good life. I mean, let's say you have a million dollars, and instead of the measly 4%, that, you know, you're supposed to take out what if you could actually make 10% on that?  A year? If you can, if you can take your million dollars and make 10% a year, that's $100,000 plus whatever benefits you get from the government, most people will be like, hey, yeah, that's, that's really good. I can live off that. And that's 10% a year. Right? We like to look at it and say, Hey, we want to make 2% a month, 2% every single month, that's gonna be a lot more than 10% a year, right? That's 24%. So now we're not looking at 100,000, we're looking at 240,000 for the year. And that's relatively simple to do. It's not easy, but it's simple. We can explain to you within 10 minutes, and you'll get the picture with examples would be like, Hey, you do this, right, it'll make you to present and it's very conservative, it's very saf, right? And that's on the low end, that you can actually do better. You can do other strategies that generate more. And so it's really insane, that even in this country, right now, in this year, where everything is good, like one of the richest countries in the world. Notice I say, one of if not the richest, I don't know if it is anymore. But things are changing. And it's not the way they were 10 years, 20 years, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, right? So we have to adapt, as well, we have to adapt our finances, we have to adapt the way we think about our finances, the way we think about money, we cannot be afraid of money. We have to know how it works. We have to know how to invest it. And we have to take it away from people who don't know what they're doing. Financial Planners, investors, Wealth Advisors, if the person you give your money to to invest is going to take that money and give it to somebody else, why do you need the guy in the middle? You don't. He's just taking his fees. He's getting wealthy off of you. He's paying his bills, also you and most of the financial planners and Wealth Advisors that I know, are not really wealthy in themselves. So it's like, Hey, why am I taking advice from the blind, it's the blind leading the blind. Now, if you had a financial adviser who was a multi multimillionaire, and he got that way, not by managing money, but by actually investing, then yes, he's the guy you give the money to, to, okay, that guy knows what he's doing. Right? He's the one you want managing your money, because he's done it before he knows how to do it. And he can do it again and again. But the average guy, the average financial guy off the street, these are working Joe, just like you are just like most people are. And there's nothing wrong with that he's trying to make a living. But he's not an expert. Just because he watches the news all day doesn't make him an expert. His company has experts, the company he works for, right, he probably works for a larger or he's in, he's aligned with some larger company. That gives him information. But still, he couldn't trade his way out of a bag. Now, oftentimes, I've talked about the guy that's in my office next door, he's a financial planner, he has almost $100 million under assets in management $100 million. And he charges a 1% fee, about average. So this guy, he makes close to a million dollars a year managing other people's money. Now, it did take him maybe 20, I think 20 - 30 years to get to that level. But that's a pretty nice income. Right? And he doesn't trade very well. Now, me and him, he knows I trade. He knows I teach. And so we talk about stuff. So he does stuff for his clients. And then he does stuff for himself. So he does actually trade for himself. But it doesn't trade very well. He's lost almost $500,000, just last year. And he's losing more this year. And the year just started. So you know, just because you are a financial advisor, just because you get all these reports, and you know, the words and the jargon and the lingo. And you know what earnings are and all that stuff doesn't mean that you're a good trader, doesn't mean you're a good steward of other people's money. So these guys, they take your money, they give it somebody else. And that's what he does. Right? He invested in different funds in different mutual funds and different index funds and in bond funds, and he does all that. And so people are happy with him, because they don't know any better. Right? So as long as he can do kind of close to what the market is doing, people are happy and they keep paying him. That's the business he built. That's wonderful. That's great. People need that, right? Everybody else everybody can't trade for themselves. There are people out there that need to just turn over the money to somebody else. And if you can find somebody, you can trust somebody that knows what they're doing great. But most of these financial planners did not. They're not rich, number one. And number two, they didn't get rich by investing their own money. They got rich by charging fees. And so he's okay, my friend next door, he's okay with losing 500,000. I mean, he's not happy. But he's not going to go broke, because he's making close to a million dollars in fees. So for him, you can he doesn't spend that much money, right? And so he's okay. And he works maybe three hours a day, five days a week. So for him, it's a really good life. That's how it is, right? So if you are a millionaire, right? You cannot expect to give your money to an advisor and be able to retire. Well, at least most of the people on this survey that we're talking about, feel that they cannot. And in fact, there was a number here at the bottom says here about 36% of these millionaires feel 1/3 More than 1/3 feel that they will never have enough money to retire, they will never be able to retire. So even though they did everything right throughout their life, they save save, save invest as fast million dollar millionaire, right? Moneybags, they won't be able to retire. And that's really sad. So hopefully, I can get you to start pastor trading. You know, it just starts with one trade, pick one strategy, just put one trade on, see how it works. Right, reach out to us, we can show you some videos, we can show you some examples. There's so many things that we're working on, we're bringing stuff out there, we already have a lot of stuff out there. Just try it. Just please try it, see how it works. Okay, you owe it to yourselves. And then once you learn how to do it doesn't take very long. So it's not like you have to quit your job and be trading full time. Okay, if you're trading more than half an hour a day, I mean, you're probably doing it wrong, you're doing it too much. You're taking too much time you're doing it wrong. So realistically, yes, you can make a lot more than the experts can make for you. That's number one. Number two, if you do the old way, you need to over a million dollars to retire on time with a million dollars, you'll really never retire. But with the passive trading way, with a million dollars, you can retire, you can retire today, with a lot less, because we can show you how to make more. And when you make more, everything becomes easier. But the trades themselves are very simple. So why most more people don't do this. I don't know. I couldn't tell you. I'm out there preaching and that's why I would really love it. If you would share this with other people that you know if you know anybody that is struggling with retirement struggling with their finances, right, like, Hey, I don't know what to do, I'm getting older, right? You're in your 50s or 60s, and like retirements coming, I don't know what I'm going to do, please share this with them. Let them hear it. Tell them if you've been trading for a while, share your experience and be like you know what this stuff actually works. If you know it works, if you've been able to do it, if you haven't, and stuff is not working for you, please reach out to us. And we'll point you in the right direction. Okay. And then, if you are in that category, of somebody in this survey where you are very, very wealthy, and you don't have time, then maybe reach out to us. And we can point you in the right direction of some advisors that we know that would be able to help you that are very, very good at what they do, and that they can actually help you and manage your money for you. But they are actually really, really good at trading and investing for their own money. So we know that they can handle your money, because we do in our network. And in our customer base. We do have several people who are investment advisors, wealth planners, financial planners. And so we know they know their stuff, because they've learned it from us. They learned how to do the passive trading, so they can actually help you. So if you need somebody like that reach out to us as well. We'll try to hook you up and connect you. All right. So this is my warning. This is a sad day that you have to be more than a millionaire to retire on time. Or even if you are a millionaire, you might never retire. That's that's pretty sad. So today's just some sad news for a lot of people out there. But hopefully for you. This has been an epiphany, you know, a light bulb gone off like hey, maybe I can do something about this, maybe this passive trading stuff I should look into, and I hope you do. Alright, so until next time, may trade with the odds in your favor and take care

Today we are going to be talking about and answering a question that we get asked a lot and option genius, which is what is the fastest way to get good at trading? Because, well, let's face it, everybody wants to get rich quick, right? Now, passive trading is a great way to get there consistently, and to be profitable pretty quickly. But to get really, really good at it, it does take time. So in today's video, and yes, I said video, I'm gonna explain that in a second. In today's video, we're going to be talking about four different methods that you can use to speed that up some of these would people you already know in order to use, and I'm gonna talk about a fifth method that can really turbocharge the process that most people don't. So first of all, I gotta say, Hey, why did he say video? Well, if you're listening on the podcast, I am making this also as a video, and it's going to be on the Option Genius YouTube channel. So if you like to watch videos, and you want to learn about trading options, hop on over to our YouTube channel. And please subscribe and like and post a comment or two, because it really helps and we're trying to boost up our YouTube channel. Now, if you are listening on the podcast, no worries, because I am going to be drawing on my screen on my whiteboard a little bit on the on the screen, but I will walk you through it, so don't feel like that you have to say you're missing out on anything. Okay, so let's get to work. So for this example, I want to come up with some guidelines. Because we need to codify this right? So we're going to say that our hypothetical trader, maybe it's you wants to get good at trading as fast as possible. And he's like, Oh, how do I do this? Okay, well, first of all, I tell you, step one is to pick a strategy, that's always going to be step one, right, you got to pick a strategy that works for you that you understand, and you want to get good at. Step two is find a trading plan that is really good, that actually works that's consistent that you find probably from somebody who's already doing it, and doing it well and having success with it. So you know that the plan works. And then number three, is putting in the reps is just doing the thing over and over and over again. And that's where we're gonna talk about today and how to really speed up that process. Because wanting to pretty pretty fast, right? I like this strategy. Okay. And then I got this plan. Here you go. Here's the plan. Thank you. I got it. All right, now let's implement, and let's learn how to do it. So that's the process that takes the longest. And for some people, it takes years and years and years to never master it. Some people, they get good at it really quick. I want you to be getting good at it really quick. And so we're going to be talking about how to do that today. All right. So for this example, we're going to say that a trader is looking to learn how to do credit spreads, okay? Because most people when they start, they're like, hey, you know, I like the credit spread. Makes sense. I want to do it. A lot of people tell us they want to learn credit spreads first. So let's say we're going to be talking about credit spreads in this example. Okay. And now let's say, for the credit spreads that we're going to do, we're going to be using $1,000 in each trade. Okay, so we got $1,000 per trade. And so that is the amount that it takes to do one trade, right? So then, what do we do? Well, we got to start putting in the reps. We got to start working, because they're doing the thing. Okay, so I'm going to draw some lines here. Okay. Now, we have a trader that has, let's say, $5,000. Okay. So he's got $5,000. He's got a small account, he's looking looking to do well, right. He's looking to get good at it. Now. For $5,000. If you have $1,000 per trade, how many can you do in a month? Right? How many trades can you do in a month? Well, obviously, you can only do five trades. How about in a year? Well, if you do five trades times 12, you can do 60 trades, right? And then how about in 10 years? Well, in 10 years, you got 600 trades. All right. I apologize for my writing. I'm not. I'm not used to writing with my mouth. So you have a trader with a small account, and he's doing $1,000 per trade. He's doing five trades a month, and we're only talking about monthly, okay? We're not gonna talk about weeklies here. So, in a year, he's put on 60 trades, which is a decent amount of trades, that's a lot of trades. And then in 10 years, he's got 600. So he's got 600 reps under his belt. Now, obviously, you don't want to take him 10 years to get good at something. So we're gonna have to speed that up, right? So what if you think oh, well, what if I have a lot more money? Maybe, maybe I can, I can do that. So what if trader number two has 50k in his account, you have 50,000. So yeah, 10 times as much money. Right? So now we're looking at that and we're saying, oh, okay, well, I can do 50 trades a month. No, not really. You really don't want to be doing 50 trades a month okay, that's gonna be, especially with the real money is just, you're gonna be all over the place, it's gonna be hard to find it's gonna be a full time job, if you can do that. So, realistically, now I would spreads I like to go eight to 10. More than that, I feel like I start missing out on things, I started missing the news and some events, I started not being able to follow everything. And so I'm going to limit it and say, you know, maximum we can do even with 50k is 10 trades in a month. All right, so now in a year, you got 120 trades. So that's twice as much experience twice as many reps as trader A the first guy, right? And then after 10 years, you got 1200 trades, 1200 reps under your belt. Now that's, that's a pretty good amount. But that takes, again, 10 years to get there. So what do we do? How do we even speed this process a little bit faster? Well, you can do something that a lot of people poopoo at, but it really helps. And it's called paper trading, or virtual trading. So write your paper here. Now, with paper trading, you can do a lot more trades, right? So instead of 10 trades, you don't have any limits. So maybe you do 25 trades. Now, could you do 25 trades with the 50k? Yeah, you could, but then it's with real money. And I'm assuming you're just starting, right? So I don't want you to get ahead of yourself and lose a lot of money really quickly. I'd rather get your reps when there's nothing on risk when there's nothing on the line. So we're going to do paper trading, we do 25 trades, you can even do 30 trades, maybe even 50 trades if you're really crazy. But I would say probably 25 trades. And so in a year, 25 times 12. What is that? We're looking at 300 trades, that's 300 reps in a year. That's a lot of trades, okay? And then in 10 years, you got 3000. Now, why do I have three or 10 years here? Because it does take 10 years for you to go through all the different market cycles. Okay, that's why it's really important. Because you can't just do good one year and say, Oh, hey, I'm an awesome trader. No, I'm sorry, you haven't seen everything. You know, in 10 years, you've seen probably a bull market, you've probably seen a bear market, you've seen several corrections, you've seen sideways markets. So you've seen a little bit of everything. Okay, in one year, you really haven't seen anything. It might have been a bad year, it might have been a good year might have been sideways, you know, it might have been volatile or low volatility. So you want to be able to trade in every single market environment, you're not going to get really, really good, unless you've traded for about 10 years to see all the different market hookups, right, you want to know what to do in a bull market, you want to know what to do in a bear market, sideways market correction quick up and down moves in the market, you want to know how to do that, you won't get that experience unless you've traded for 10 years, or unless you take option number four, right? So option number four, I'm going to call it back testing, B, A, C K. Now this is probably the fastest way to get really, really good. Okay? It's not real money, obviously. But you can in your mind, simulate it and you can get experience super, super, super, super quickly. So let's say, you know, over here, you're limited by time the 5k guy, he'd only do five trades a month 50k guy does 10 trades to paper trade guy in a month, you can do 25 trades, because he has to trade it and he has to wait every single day, right? You put on a trade today or you put on 10 trades today, you got to wait till tomorrow, then the day after then then after then the day after. And you gotta wait for them to finish with back testing. You don't have to wait as long. So I'll give you example, I looked at a strategy on how to trade a two week strategy. So it was a two week strategy in a specific instrument. It was the SPX. And I came up with the plan. Somebody shared it with me. I'm like, Oh, that's great. I want to go back test this. So when you back test something, and if you're going to really work it and put real money on it. I want to know how this is going to work over the last several years, not just one or two years. I'm going to go back like 10 years. Now this one because it was the way it was set up, we can only go back for six years. So I went from 2016 started there and ended at the end of 2022. So I went for six years of trading. Now this was a two week strategy. So there were 25 trades in every single year. Right?  How long do you think it took me to do all those trades? It took me four hours. took me four hours. First to do 25 times six, that's 150 trades. So I got 150 reps. Now even if it was a monthly trade, that's fine, right, I would have more reps than paper or money or low money. So that I would have more reps doing that than any other way of, of trading. Because that is the name of the game, putting in the reps, right? When you are catching the ball, you just you just gotta catch the ball. When you're throwing a pitch, you know, you get good at aim by just throwing it over and over and over. And again, and you really do that in just about anything, there's no way you're gonna get good on the first try. I know my my 10 year old he gets mad when he when he's not good at something right away. But luckily, you're not 10 years old anymore. And so you understand that it takes time to build those muscles to understand what to know what to do. And that takes reps doing it over and over over experience, right? That's what you need, though, the more experienced you are, the better trader you'll be. So how do we build that experience? Back testing is the fastest way to get there. Okay, so let's say in the first month, let's say you back test only on the weekends, and you only have a couple hours. So in a couple hours, you can say hey, you know what we're going to do credit spreads, right? So I'm going to stick I'm going to pick one stock. And I'm gonna go back 10 years, and I'm gonna put a trade on every single month, I'm gonna put a trade on, and then walk it through and let it expire or take it off, then I'll do the next month, then I'll do the next one that a new month. How many trades? Can you do? Well, you 12 a year, but you could probably do five years worth in an hour. Right? So what is that 60 trades. Okay, so let's say you do that eight days out of the month only on the weekends. So 60 times eight. You'd have 480 trades 480 trades in one month, compared to 25 with paper trading compared to 10 compared to five. So you can see the reps are incredible. And then in one year, 480 times 12. Let's say you do it for the whole year, you got 5760 trades. So in one year, you've done a lot more trades almost double than you could have done in a whole 10 years with paper. That's called speed. Right? That's called being efficient, productive. So what is my answer to what is the fastest way to get good at trading? You probably think it's back testing? No, it's not. Because true back testing is still not real trading, right, you still have to learn how to get the discipline, you have to know how to handle your emotions, you have to be under control. So the fastest way to get a better trader is to do all three, to put on as many trades as you can and be comfortable with, with real money. That's number one. So we're going to do real money. Okay, number one, we are going to do paper trading, we're going to put trades on with paper, because you could put more trades on. And you're also going to be doing back testing on the weekend. So that is my prescription for you. All right, put real trades on so you understand how the market works, you understand the discipline, how you handle it, put on paper trade. So you get really good at the software, you get really good at trading different different stocks, looking for them, finding them, managing them doing the process over and over again. But then you build up your confidence with the back testing. And that's where you get 1000s and 1000s of trades. And that's what's gonna make you really, really good. So if you can do all three of these, not just one, not just two, but all three of these. That is the fastest way to get good at trading. Okay, now, it's up to you. If you want to do the time, put it and put in the effort. If you haven't do it, it'll be worth it and you'll get the results much much faster. Otherwise, it might take you some time. might take you a few years. All right. So that's it for today. I hope this helps. If you have any questions, please reach out to us. And remember to trade with the odds in your favor. Take care

Why do real estate investors love passive trading? That's what I want to talk about today. So a couple weeks ago, I attended a friend's real estate conference in Dallas. And it's mainly for folks who like to buy large, real multifamily and commercial real estate, with a focus on how to attract investors. So they're buying these big properties or using investors to give part of the money so that they can go and do their thing. Well, while I was there, my friend, he already knows what I'm doing. I've known him for a few years, he asked me to get on the stage, and share with everybody what I do and how I trade. Because as it turns out, a lot of real estate investors love passive trading. Because I mean, it just makes sense to them. Right? Right out of the gate, like there you explain to them? Oh, yeah, that's just like real estate, right? Now, whenever you hear the word passive investing, you think real estate, passive trading is a way to trade the stock market, but in a way, that doesn't take a lot of time. So supposedly, when you're passive investing in the real estate, you put the money in, you invest, but it doesn't take a lot of time doesn't always happen. If you've ever done any kind of real estate investing, you kind of know that, right? So when it comes to real estate, there are four main benefits, right? So there's the cash flow, because hopefully, money's coming in every month from rent, right? Then there's appreciation. So hopefully, again, the property value is going up every year, little by little, sometimes it goes down. But you know, a little bit every year is normally what it technically happens. There's amortization, this is where you know, you have a loan, you have a mortgage, and every month you pay the payment, and then the amount goes down, the amount of the equity goes up, and the amount of the loan goes down. So you own a little bit more of the house every month, that happens automatically every time you send out. So there's amortization, where equity is going up. Then number four, you have depreciation. This is a temporary tax break from the government. Because normally, you sell a property, you have to pay taxes on it, but it with depreciation, you can tell the government, hey, look, the value of my property is going down. So every year you get a tax break. But then when you sell the property, then you have to pay it all back. So it does help with your taxes while you own the property. But eventually, you do have to pay it back. Now I love all of these, right? Especially since you can get all four and more from passive trading. How let's talk about it. Number one - cashflow, right, we get monthly or even weekly cash flows from weekly options from selling options. And what's better, we don't have to deal with tenants, toilets, or termites. The big three tiers of real estate, right? No tenants, no toilets, no termites, no worries about folks moving out in the middle of the night and property being vacant for months. No worries about them messing up the place and spending money to fix it. No buying insurance or property taxes, right? We don't have to pay for homeowners insurance and renter's insurance on our properties and paying property taxes every year, whether there's any making money, not all that stuff. So basically, it's a much more peaceful experience in my mind, right? Number two is appreciation. Right? Yeah, our stocks go up, right, usually a lot more than real estate. I mean, sure, they go down too. But if that happens that let us buy us cheaper, right? We get to buy the stocks cheaper when they go down. And so our cash flow continues anyway, we're still even if the stock goes down, cash flow still going, we're still selling options. But if it goes down, we can buy more. Number three amortization. Well, that was you know, equity going up, we don't recommend taking out a loan to buy our stocks. So instead, what we can do is we can start with a lot less, a lot less money, right? So you don't need 10%, 20% down actually, nowadays, if you're an investor, you need 20%, 25%, depending on your credit, and they get credit checks. So to start with passive trading, nobody checks your credit, you're gonna have bad credit doesn't matter. And you don't need 20% down, you start with a little bit, you can start with 500 bucks, 1000 bucks, 5000 10,000. Any amount, right. But if you want, you could use margin. Now margin is a loan to buy stocks. So you can borrow up to 50% of the amount you need, right?  Now, if you have more money. So if you have a larger account, I think it's roughly depending on the broker, but I believe it's about 125,000 in your account. If you have that then you can apply for something called portfolio margin, which will pretty much let you buy your stock with about 20% down Just like real estate, and again, with no credit check, that's pretty cool. Then we have number four, right depreciation, well, our stocks do not depreciate. But depending on what you're trading, you can get 6040 treatment on your taxes. And that's basically 60% of your gains are going to be capital gains long term, and 40% will be short term. It's called 1256. That's the section of the tax code. So your broker or your accountant will know, it's like, it's a this is 1256 trades, they'll know it. But this is for the options we sell. Now, the stocks we own, we want to keep them for a long time. So if we sell those for more than a year, after we bought them, then we do get the long term capital gain treatment. Now, there are two more benefits to passive trading, that real estate doesn't have number one-- costs, it costs a lot more money to invest in real estate, that typical deal requires title fees, realtor fees, appraisal fees, loan fees, closing fees, and a whole bunch of taxes, right, all different types of taxes, local, county, city state, all TIF stamp taxes, they still have those, right? You have fees when you buy. And when you sell. Now, with passive trading, you don't have all those taxes, all those fees, you just pay the Commission, which in many cases can be zero, or less than $1 per option. So a lot cheaper to do, the cost involved is a lot cheaper. Number two liquidity. So to sell a single family house, it can take you months, a larger property can take years, even if you have a buyer ready to buy the house, it can still take a month or two months, right? They have to get the appraisal, the title, all that stuff, they have to get the loan, even if they have the cash, it still takes time to do the closing and the title and all that stuff. To exit an options trade or a stock position. I mean, takes literally seconds. And it is cash sitting in your account instantly. Now, I just recently closed an account with over $4,000 to transfer over to my hedge fund. Right? Took me about a minute to close all my positions. I had the money transferred to my bank within two days. So it was in from from exit to bank. My hands - two days. You can't do that in real estate. Right? Oh, and there's actually a third benefit that I forgot to passive trading. And that's how we know about the probability of profit. When you're getting into an options trade, you know, in advance, What are my chances? What are the statistics say, on all of our option trades before we make that, when investing in real estate? There's no really way to know if you're gonna make money or not. You hope so? That's why you're doing it right. But I'm pretty sure you know, many people who have lost money on real estate that thought that they were gonna make money, but they didn't, right. I mean, he was like a sure thing property, right. But he didn't, I'm one of those people. A friend of mine approached me and said, Hey, I got this house, I want to buy it, I want to fix it up and flip it and we're gonna make X dollars. And I'm like, Okay, it looks good on everything on paper look great. We ended up losing 30 grand, because it wasn't just a house and all that stuff. And you have to know what you're doing, right? And my friend at that time he This was his first property. So I made the mistake of going with a newbie guy. But we learned we both learned and we went on and then we've done more since then. That's because I have nothing against real estate, right? I own a bunch of it, I own will own more. But it's just a harder way to start. And there's nothing close to being passive. For sure. I mean, even with my friend, he was doing all the work, but I was still going out there to the property looking, trying to find stuff, you know, looking at costs. I mean, he was not passive for in any way. So if you're a real estate investor, okay, keep doing what you're doing. If it's working, you're making money, awesome, do not stop. I'm not telling you to stop. I'm telling you maybe take a look at passive trading. It's very similar to what you're already doing. And it's easy to find the time for, right? Options trading is becoming more and more and more popular. Every year that goes by more and more options are being traded. And as more and more real estate investors find out about it. They're coming over in droves. I mean, I have a friend of mine, who owns a very large internet business about real estate. He's well known in the industry. He's a big name. And he has a site where you go there you become a member and they'll tell you of all these properties that are for sale that are not on the MLS. They're not actively on the market. So he's been in real estate for a long time. He comes up to me and says oh, I want to get into options. I'm Like, what are you talking about? You're already busy. What are you doing? Why do you want to do that? He goes, Man, I got plenty of time. And another real estate friend of mine told me about this thing called Iron condors. Do you trade those? I'm like, of course, I trade those, you know what I do. And so we talked about it. And we went on and on. And he's been trading those for years. Because while you're trading in real estate, the deals don't come all the time. Right, it takes gotta look at a lot of deals, to find one that really works. So in the meantime, you could be putting on your trades doesn't take a lot more time, it takes a lot less money, it's a lot less headache. So that's it. That's why I think that real estate investing is pretty close to passive trading. I mean, there's differences, of course, like everything else. But if you are a real estate investor, you're gonna find that passive trading comes pretty naturally, you're already going to understand it pretty well. And it's got the same goal, right? You got an asset, we want to cashflow that asset, we want to keep the asset, right. The thing is, ain't nobody messing up your asset. It will go down in price to go up in price to go down and go up. That's the way it works, doesn't matter because we're keeping the asset and keeping the stock. You keep cash flowing the stock. Right? So there we go, my friends, I want you to always be trading with the odds in your favor. And if you're buying real estate, I'm sorry, but you cannot know the odds. So come on over to passive trading. And then you can also be working with the odds in your favor. Take care. Bye bye

Allen Welcome passive traders to another episode. Today, I have a big announcement. And I have a first for the podcast, which is really interesting. I'm going to tell you the first before we get into the announcement. The first is that for the first time we are having a husband and wife, team, actually, we're going to find out if they're a team or not. But they're both traders. And they're both doing well. And they've been doing it for a while. So I wanted to get their opinion on how trading works in a family how trading works in a relationship, how to not get on each other's toes. So I have today, Mr. And Mrs. Matt and Margaret Ambrosi. Welcome, guys, thank you for doing this. Matt Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Allen Now, the big announcement, we probably should have done it better and differently. But Matt is now full time as an option genius coach. So we are very happy to have Matt on board. And he's already made a big difference in several people's lives. He's getting more, more happy comments, or, you know, people coming together to have a wonderful he's doing he's getting more than I am. So I think I got the right person for the job. And if you if you see Matt, or you hear the voice, and it's kind of familiar, we did do an interview with Matt back in episode 110. So 110, and that he actually gave us a story of how he got started what he was doing. And at that point, his job, his role, or his, his goal of trading was mainly to replace his current income through trading options. So I think he's, he's come a long way since then, as a trader, and just emotionally and as a person. So, guys, welcome. And Matt, thank you again, for coming on board the team, it's been really awesome to work with you and to see you take the reins, and you know, it's only made the company stronger and better, and our customers are loving it. So they're really excited. Matt I really appreciate that Alan, you know, I couldn't be more excited. I mean, I have a real passion for this. And it's a real dream to, to do a job and and really fulfill that passion. So thank you. Allen Yep, yeah, I mean, you know, one of my mentors had told me he's like, you know, in your programs, you should have a lot more interaction with the, with the students. And I'm like, I don't have time for that. He goes, well, then you need to get a coach, we need to get some other coaches on board. And I'm like, Okay, where do I find these people? They're like, don't you have students? I'm like, yeah. You know, but they're all trying to retire. Like, they'll try to quit their jobs. He goes, No, I bet you there's some that are really good at teaching. They're really love people. And they would be happy to do this on a full time basis, or even like a part time basis, and just help other people. And I was like, huh, and I thought about that about and Matt was like almost one of the first people I thought of and I'm like, Hey, let me give him a call. And I'm sure he came out of the blue for you. And you were shocked. Matt So I mean, I really enjoy, I really enjoy helping people at the core of my being. And, you know, I just love seeing the light go off in people's minds when they see a trade and they see it work out and they see that everything's a possibility, just like it was for me. So I'm really excited to be part of it. Cool. And then Margaret a this question is for you. So he comes, he comes to you and says, Hey, you know, I've been working at Costco for I don't know, what, 1415 years or something. Yeah. And he's like, he's like, I just got this other job offer. I'm gonna What do you think? Yeah. Margaret There's a whole story. There's a whole nother story. When he got that call, because I mean, we were definitely both shocked. But I think what you just said reminded me of what a good coach Matt was before he even worked at Option Genius. Because when we we started at let's say, when we got married seven years ago, we we were both on the same page about being financially free. And what what does that look like? Matt was definitely more of a researcher in terms of he would read a book, he would, he would give it to me. And so I think we were on, we've been on board on the same page, what to do. And then when we found you, and started learning your methods, we both latched on to it. So when you caught him, I think I was just excited because I knew it was something he really wanted to do. I had already seen him in a coaching role with me and his mom and his sister of trying to like the backend stuff, right? The things that are the charts, the systems, getting your platform set up. Those are things that are challenging and takes a lot of time. And so I was like, I think I was super excited. I knew he could do it. I knew it'd be great at it. And so I just thank you for giving him the opportunity because it's really been wonderful for him to do this thing that he loves anyway. I mean, he was already before he worked for you, in the mornings before he would go to work. Its full time job was studying and learning. And so, yeah, it just was really exciting. Thank you for that. I guess we had the trust, right. The trust was already there. So. Allen Okay. Yeah, now he's doing wonderful. And, you know, he's gonna be trading at the hedge fund as well when that happened. So that's going to be exciting. So a whole new level. So awesome. Cool. All right. So let's get into you guys. All right, so the trading couple and it's not just I know for Matt, you know, he's not just a trading couple. He's got the whole trading family going on there. He told me that he and his wife and his mom and his sister all get together and have trade night. What is that? Matt So it just kind of started, you know, my, my parents live in South Carolina, we're in Georgia, and my sister is up in Massachusetts. And it was a good way. They were always interested in what I was doing. And they always wanted to learn what I was doing. So it just became natural that I would say, hey, let's just have a call. And we'll talk about it. And then I showed them how to, you know, do the platform, and you know, they had all their feelings about whether they're going to do it correctly. And all the all the fears, just like I had when I started, and I was like, Okay, well, we just started going through it. And we started meeting kind of regularly on Fridays. And it was usually Friday, like, nine 930 in the morning. And we'd meet for about an hour and we talk about it. And then it just kind of progressed and was like okay, let's do this next Friday, okay, let's do the next Friday, let's do the next Friday, next Friday, and then just became we'd call it trade top Fridays. And you know, and then started being like, if we miss one, you know, let's say my sister couldn't make it. She'd be upset, like, Oh, I gotta I gotta make it or my mother missed it, she would be upset. So we, we were there every day, you know, and then Margaret would come in here and there and it just kind of evolved. So it was really a really great experience. And then it kept us really connected. I mean, in ways that I wouldn't think you know.. Margaret And you get to learn other parts of your family members and their personalities that you didn't know before. Allen Mm hmm. I can imagine. Yeah. I mean, people's personality comes out when they're like, frustrated, or when they're Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You were saying that a little bit earlier that your mom kind of surprised you, you know, going all aggressive on you. Matt She still does. I mean, there's like, I'm just like, you know, she'll tell us like, Oh, she did something. And then she'll like, say to my sister, oh, I got out of this trade. She's like you did? What? How do you get out of that trade? You didn't tell me about it? And it's like, yeah, they're like, they go back and forth. But it's all in solid, good. You know? Margaret Yeah, once she has the parameters, then she, she'll get a little bit more risky that she said, a differentiated, she told us it's like she's at a different age where she feels like she can take a little different risk than we can. Yeah. So it makes it makes a difference. Matt That's interesting. It also goes back and forth. I mean, my sister, she put on a trade, she was getting into a new trade that we're doing. And then my mother was like, kind of hesitant about getting into it. And my sister just went ahead and did it. And then my mother's like, Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, like hours later, she she's like, I'm like, what happened? She's like, Oh, I put a trade on. Like, because my sister went ahead and did it. So they kind of play off each other. So Allen that's cool. Because normally, it's the opposite. You know, it's like, the older you get, the more conservative is like, oh, no, I don't want to lose that or lose. The younger people take more risk, but over here are flipped. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. But that I love it, how you're using something to bond, you know. And it's so rare nowadays, especially everybody's spread out across the country. It's like, oh, yeah, we get together on Thanksgiving. Yeah. Okay. Great. You guys get together every week. That's I love it. That's, that's wonderful. Yeah. I think more families need to find something in common like that. And like trading? Yeah. I mean, because the way we do it, everybody can find their own little niche, you know, yeah. Everybody can be conservative or aggressive or whatever. And yeah, I love it. Cool. So, um, how did you guys get into trading? Matt Oh, well, I mean, it was always long term for me. So I was learning about long term investing through reading and then while we actually, Margaret yeah, since you were 29, he started investing. And then we went to one seminar together. And there was a man who was sitting next to us, and he said, uh, you could self manage your portfolio. And we looked at each other and we're like, never worry, That's too scary. It's too risky. We gotta leave that to the professionals. There's reason that people get paid money to do that. And he made it seem like it was no big deal at all. And I think he was he, yeah, that was a pivotal point. And then after that, We went to a couple other seminars together. And then I think the the really the one that we learned about options was three years ago. And at that one, we I had never even heard the term option. I didn't know what an option was. We went to go find out about long term investing and how to value stocks in order to know if it's a good purchase or not. And then at that seminar, we just sat back and because they showed us how to do an option, and and then after that we met found you and he because he was looking for people who did a similar strategy. And then it after we Yeah, so that's how we got into it. Matt Right. And they, they basically started this seminar off with an option. And we're like, Oh, I thought we were coming here to long term invest. And I didn't, you know, we didn't know anything, how options work. We're trying to figure out how it did right there. And then this guy's like, Oh, I just made $7,000. And you're like, show me how you're just like, whatever you just did, like you have my attention. How did you do that? And I was like, on a, I was possessed to figure it out. I mean, Margaret, she's smarter than I am. In some ways, yes, definitely. She was like, this is a funnel, like, marketing, marketing funnel and Margaret figure it all out. And thanks for just calm down. Matt It's just she sat back, I'll relax. And I was like, I'm trying to figure it out. And but we progressed. And, you know, it really opened the whole a whole new world, really. And then, you know, we met you. Margaret And it's just a progression to back up to because that's where we started trading with our family with his mom and sister. So after we learned that strategy, and we were all trading together, that's where the, the trade top Fridays came from. So that was kind of a cool thing that came from that. Allen Okay, so from the beginning, you guys were like, Okay, we're doing this together. It's not like, you know, because Margaret, you have your own company. And if anybody wants to know, she does great videography, and photos for real estate agents, and you guys are located where? Margaret Just north of Atlanta. Allen Just north of Atlanta. So if any realtors are out there. Margaret And I'm glad you mentioned that, because honestly, the reason I want to trade is because I am getting older. I've been a creative for 20 years, and the old body isn't getting any younger. So at some point, I will not be able to schlep video gear and photography gear around, and I want to have some home, what gives me the security and knowing that I can bring in my paycheck that I'm accustomed to it on my own. But we definitely talk about our strategies together. Allen Right, exactly. So, okay, so But you said like, okay, so he's working full time you have your business, but you guys still decided, hey, we're gonna go this road together, we're gonna learn together, we're gonna go the seminars together, we're gonna talk about it. And then do you guys trade in the same account together? Or is it separate? How does that work? Matt We kind of did in the beginning. And then we realized that it was best to have separate accounts, we do everything we talk about everything together. It's just I think that's really smart. Everyone's different. But I think for us, it works that we have separate accounts, because it kind of gives you the flexibility for the trading the fit your personality, and everyone's personalitie's different, you know, even though we're married, we're different personalities. So that reflects in that account, I think. Margaret And the cool part is, we both fund each other's accounts. So when there's money that we have to put into the account to get it started, we weren't going at an equal pace, if that makes sense. Matt Right. So like, for example, I would get a bonus from Costco, I'd split that bonus, put it into our account separately, she would get a bonus, she would put that money into our accounts, and then we're trading the strategies under those two accounts. Allen Okay, so do you have any joint money like a joint account? Margaret Not for not in a brokerage account? No. I mean, we're, we're each other's beneficiaries. But yeah, right. And I think part of that, too, Alan comes from me at I was not married for 36 years, and I am very customed to taking care of myself and producing my own income, and having my own money, you know, just to be quite frank about it. I want to make sure that I can take care of myself if anything ever happened to Matt, but we definitely we know what each other's logins are. We know what the money's in there. So that part's very open. It's not like they don't share the information. But I think that's a good point about having a different trading style because I am a little more aggressive than Matt is, and we learned that we didn't know that going in, but I will jump into things a little quicker than he does and he wants to be Yeah, wants to have all the information. Matt Those are things we learned about it To think that I was not as conservative as I am. But I realized that I'm a very conservative trader. I like to know everything about everything before I jump in, and sometimes that can hinder you, Margaret, she's like, let's get to it. Let's figure it out. And she jumps in. And I'm really admire that part of her. I really do. Margaret And as long as it works out, Matt she's I say she's measured, you know, she doesn't just jump into things. She's measured about it. Allen Yeah. But like, Margaret, what you said about the, you know, having, I guess, I don't know, for for a lot of women, it's a it's a fear. But it's also about a sense of security. And a lot of our customers are, you know, are the customers that come to us, and they come in, they're like, you know, my spouse doesn't want me trading, or when my spouse would rather have me working, because that paycheck comes in regular. I remember when I first started, even, even though I was, in the beginning, I was horrible. I lost a lot of my wife's money. But after I got good at it, she still was not comfortable with the trading, because she would be like, Okay, I don't know, if you're going to make money every month, you know? Because that's just the way it is. And so she's like, Can you do something pleased to have something regular come in? And that's probably the biggest motivation behind the company option genius. Was that, hey, even if I have a little bit, you know, obviously, I'm supposed to be a small little one person company. And is like, even if I have a little bit like, like a, you know, like, five $6,000 coming in a month. Okay, cool. She'll know that, you know, because she still wanted to work. So she knows something's coming in. But that's, that's just, I think it's ingrained in a lot of spouses that are not generating an income on their own that, hey, I need some consistency. So that's been a big for a lot of people. That's a big, you know, switch. Like to go from Yeah, my wife my husband makes or my wife makes x dollars per month to Yeah, I don't know, if he's gonna make any money. Margaret Yeah, I can see how that would be difficult. Because I mean, we're still both bringing in incomes and trading at the same time. Yeah. Matt Yeah, it's a big shift, a mindset shift. But I think the thing about trading is that, you know, when you're working a static job, you have that income, like you said, it's coming in monthly, you can rely on it. But the real benefit of trading, I think, is that you don't see used to see money as you exchange your paycheck for time. And in trading. You can just, you can just make money, and you don't have to sit there for that time. No, it's, you look as money is finite, in your mind, okay? When you look at trading, you work with trading, it's like, it just opens up to you. Margaret It's more of an energy like it goes out comes and goes out. Exactly. Yeah. Matt So I'm trying to say, Allen interesting. That's a good way to look at it. Yeah. So then have this written down? Okay, I'm gonna ask it or I don't know if which one of you is a better trader? Margaret So how do you define better? Allen I guess, who makes the most money? Matt I will say that I wrote this in a lot of books. And I believe that to be true as a women's are much better emotionally, as traders, I believe that I really do because guys are gonna over are like our macho, we just gotta just get in there and do it. And, you know, but in general, I think women are much, much better emotional trading style. Margaret I will just say last year, Matt made more money than I did. But this year, I've made more money than Matt did. So there you go.. Matt But I'm built for the long. Nothing short term with me. We actually nickname each other Margaret's short term, and I'm on long term, Margaret Yeah, I like short term, you know, I'm an entrepreneur. So I like to see things happen in a timely fashion. I live and breathe it, you know. And so I had do struggle with the long term stuff. One day, I would be curious to see what it would like be like to do long term put that. We'll see about that, you know, I like I like the shorter term gains. Matt But yeah, I mean, that's all part of your personality. So we I think we play off each other very well, you know? Yeah. Allen Yeah. It seems like you guys have a good balance. So then, like, if there's a disagreement, then how do you guys handle that? Or is it just, you know, you do whatever you want your account? I'll do whatever I want to my account. Margaret Yeah, well, we talk about what strike prices we're going to be at, and where, you know, kind of idea of what we both want to do. And then we may be a couple points different from each other. Matt Yeah, but we stay within the rules. And I think you know, the great thing about the strategies that you teach and that we've learned is that there's some flexibility in that, okay, as you get better as a trader, it's just not the rules, right? You know, it's just not like, Oh, get out here. And that's it, there's a little bit of flexibility, I think as you get better as a trader, you get more experienced behind you, you're able to kind of fudge the lines a little bit, if you will, not in a bad way, but be like, okay, you know, I know this, I have a little more experience, I can become a better trader. So it's like, that's the whole flexibility part. Margaret Right. And I think, too, just just thinking about how sometimes Matt will stay in a trade longer than me, and I'll get out quicker. Here's a good example. So this month, in our oil trading, I have tripled up, I've gotten in and gotten out three times, and he stayed in the whole time. You know, and I know, during the classes, there's a couple of other people in our class, when we're on the queue that do the same thing. And then some people will sit and so I think it just depends, and I don't know that it would work as well. For us, if we had one account, I just love having our separate accounts, where we get to talk about what we're gonna do and then have the freedom to.. Matt I think the key is that we talk about it. Yeah, I mean, if you don't talk about things between each other, it's just not gonna work. Yeah. So you're like, Okay, you're gonna go that at least I know about it, right. And then you can see how it works out, right. And then at least you know, what, what's going on, you know, it's different, if you just have a count, and you're just doing your own thing, and you're not talking about it. Margaret The, the emotions part is very real. And I don't think you can really understand that until you start to become a trader, and you see where the trade is. And you get to know yourself better, where in the beginning, we were a lot quicker to get out of a trade if it went a certain way. And now we've learned a little bit more of the rhythms, we know each other's rhythms. And so we don't we don't freak out either way, quite as much. Matt: But you got to look at it. Like in totality. I mean, nothing's the end of the world. Right? And with trading, you may lose money, and you probably will, okay, everybody's lost money. And experience is not cheap. Right? With that happening. It's, it's okay, you know, if nothing is, you treat money as, okay, you can be lost, and it can be one. And the whole idea of trading is getting consistent as a whole thing. And it's like, as you get better and better as a trader, I really believe in my core, you try everyone's trying to build that consistency. Okay, and you have to match your personality to that consistency Margaret: Do you also mean make money? Because that's my goal. Matt: Yes, consistently, or us to make money. But you need to be consistent to do that. Allen: So yeah. Well, like I say, In the beginning, it's not about making money. In the beginning, it's just about not losing money. So knowing what you do properly. And like, even if you don't make any money, that's okay. But you don't lose it month after month after month. Okay, I know, it's annoying, but that's a good thing. And then, you know, we could just do a little tweak here and there, and then then the the profits start taking off. So I totally agree with that. And see, because a lot of people that sell options, they'll tell you, Oh, yeah, you know, I have great months, and then I have a big loss. And then I have good months and have nobody wants to be on that roller coaster. Because eventually you're like, man, what am I doing? Matt: I mean, do you want to go make money in the beginning of the year, at the end of the year, you've lost money or just break even? It's, that's frustrating, you know? So the whole goal is to, you know, especially what you said in the beginning, it's very true. Yeah. Allen: So now you guys said that communication was key. So do you have any rules around that? Do you have like, do you like get together and say, okay, besides the trade trade talk, you know, when you have that, do you actually sit down and be like, alright, half an hour debrief, what do we do this week? How are we going to improve? Or is it just, Matt: I think I know what you're gonna go to. I think, I think, for us, and this is just for us, but a big part. And a lot of people think it's a dirty word. But a budget, we always had a budget always kept us in line, you know, and it's like, whenever we've kind of rapidly spending, you know, and aren't talking about trading, we're just talking about life and your budget, it always get us back on the road, so to speak. So that was a big piece of our communication. So it's just knowing that we're kind of on the road. So I think that flows into your trading and it flows into your communication. So I think that's a really big piece. Margaret: Yeah. And I would say like specific rules about communicating around trading, we've never said anything. It's just kind of happened organically. And we will, you know, there's there certain parameters that you teach in your class and we get in at a certain time and when we do that, we will talk to each other that day, and then we check it both together, generally in the morning, and we'll just kind of go Oh, or Yeah, and commit Write together or celebrate together. And then that I think, I guess that's the organic piece. We just check in with each other in the morning. Matt: Be like, Fine, quick text during the day, you know? Yeah. Margaret: Yeah. Because Matt is watching it for his day job. And he'll text me if something, you know, hey, keep your as open. This is happening or, but yeah, so I guess that's it like we wake up in the morning. We look at it, we chat about it, and then throughout the day, he'll text me. Or maybe if I'm doing something, I'll text him and say, Hey, have you seen? And he always says yes. But yeah, that's it. Okay, Allen: Cool. So what happens when one of you wins and the other loses? Matt: That's a good question. Well, yeah, I've lost before I've lost my I lost. I lost before. And oh, yeah. Oh. Yeah Margaret: Jog my memory. Okay. So I'm going to just tell myself here in the beginning, before we found your class, and I'm not just saying this, because this is true. So it's just true. We cannot say how much of course we lost $5,000. So $5,000 is, is a lot of work for me. And I, I am the one who had funded it that month, to the account, and Matt lost it. And we we realized then, that that was really tough. That was tough on me, it was tougher on me than it was him. And actually, our trade talk Fridays, were really good, because they had also lost the money. And I had lost a little bit, but not as much. We were all just really disheartened and frustrated. And I think I think I was a little mean was a little mean, Matt: Slightly slightly. Are you sure you can do this? Well, yeah, feel the weight of that. Right. Yeah. I mean, if you're not, your wife's out there, she's, she's busting her butt to bring in money, and then you just lose it. It's a lot of you feel the way that, you know, you gotta really dig deep and be like, okay, emotionally and you know, everything about to have the confidence to keep going, right? And you got to search and really believe in yourself that you can, you know, like I said, it's not the end of the world, but you have to get through there gonna be times like that. That happened. Margaret: It made me quit trading for a couple months. Yeah, I got really nervous. And then I said, okay, and then actually, that's is that that's about the time we found oil, wasn't it? Like we found oil sometime after that? It seemed to be a little exactly what you're talking about earlier, it wasn't as much of a roller coaster. And that has changed it for me. Allen: Okay, so was there anything else besides finding that strategy that was able to get you through it? Because like, I mean, emotionally, that's a it's a big hit. Right? And did anything change between the way you guys communicated the way you guys traded? Matt: No, I think Margaret took a little hiatus. I'm the type that I never, I never give up on thanks, I will just take it to the death, you know. I'm like, I just keep going no matter what, just get out of my way. No matter how many hits I take, I just keep going. And I leave it all on the table. So I just I knew I was going to keep going. But again, the key and I don't be, Margaret: but you. You did try it a little more conservatively? Didn't you? Matt: Sure. Yeah. I mean, you learn your lessons, you get burned out a little bit, you start to kind of, you know, you remember and you're like, Okay, I don't want to have those same feelings. But let me cautiously kind of figure it, learn from your mistakes, if you will, you know, and treat a little bit more conservative pay a little more attention. What can I learn from that experience? And I think that changes everything. Of course, you know, the strategies that we do, are a lot better, like I'm able to manage our trades so much better. I think that's important. Margaret: I think that's key. And I think that's key for me, knowing interesting that we have better management strategy now makes me feel a lot more secure, and a lot less emotional, and more. What's the word? I'm looking for sure. That Matt and I can both do the trades and not lose that $1,000 chunks anymore. Matt: More confident? Yeah. And I think I've read this before, and I really believe it is that you are your first really job is to become your risk assessor. And then you're a trader. Yeah. So it's like it's really important that you this all we do is assess risk all the time. So I think it's really important to, to focus on that. And once you get better at assessing risk and managing, just become a better trader, but you just kind of have to go through those things. I mean, when I first started trading, they're like, Okay, your first loss is your best loss. And I was like, what does that mean? They don't want to lose you. And like, they said it all the time, like, Oh, your first last year about like, Who is this person? Like, why did he say that to me? I don't want to lose. But it is true. Like, it teaches you things that you just, you think, you know, you like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna get out of that trade, I know what I'm doing. And then you get burned. Everyone's got to touch the stove, apparently, at some point, you know, it's like, Oh, don't touch the stove. It's hot. But of course, we gotta go touch it. But that's just life. I mean, and it's how you react to those situations, I think. And you don't you don't tell yourself that you're not? How are you going to respond to that? Is very important. You know, in all aspects of life as a trader anything. Allen: I mean, a lot of people, you could say that, but it's not as easy when you're going through it. You know, the first time Oh, first time you do it, it's like, ah, people behave in all crazy different ways. Matt: Yeah. Yeah, it's just, you're gonna have to, I guess this, the best way is to do the best you can to bring people through that experience. All right, you can tell them that it's it probably will happen. But how you react to that situation? It's good to kind of tell your future. Margaret: We're model citizens is that? Allen: Well, I mean, they say that, you know, most divorces are caused because of money issues and problems. Yeah. You know, and a lot of people do not see eye to eye on money. And they don't talk about it before they get married. They don't talk about their goals, visions, whatever, or even how to balance it, you know, like, oh, yeah, one is a budget person. One is a non budget, I'm going to spend whatever I can, but it's like, a lot of people have these issues. And it's, it's great to see that you guys are same page, you know, same goal, same like, okay, hey, you guys talked about it ahead of time. Yeah, like, this is our vision. This is the goal. How do we get there, we'll change you know, like, we'll go on a different path. And we'll try and we'll try this. And like, you guys first started with the passive trading course. Right? It puts in the calls and, and then you say, Okay, let's graduate to something else. So then you guys added the oil program. And then you guys have been doing that. So you just added to something. Now you guys have even you know, got you got your own Airbnb now. So congratulations on that. Margaret: Thank you. Allen: So you're diversifying? So yeah, you're trying different things. And nobody says that you can't right. So you should you should work and in us every strategy available to get to whatever your your dream is. So in that sense, you guys have done a bunch of different things. How do you handle it when you disagree? Margaret: Like disagree on? Allen: On the path, disagree on maybe a tray disagree on let's say, you guys did the Airbnb? Maybe Matt would be like, yeah, no, I don't want to do that. And I want to put more money into trading account. Because we already know we're doing well here. Matt: I hate to disappoint. But I don't think we disagree on too much. If we do, it's like, you know, we do. I'm not saying it's easy enough. I mean, marriage is not easy. But we have their situations, I think it's important to you just you take a pause. You kind of realize how you're dealing with it personally, how you're, what you're thinking, what you're you're feeling, and then you come back to that person and you talk about it. Margaret: I think to just thinking about our investments so far, we do things that we are confident in our knowledge base around so I've had a real estate license for five years. And I shoot real estate and I understand real estate. So when I said Hey, Matt, let's buy this, Airbnb. He was like, Okay, sounds like a good investment. You've done the numbers. I trust you. Matt: Yeah, I do. I trust that she's, I've seen it, she's she's in that field, she does the work. She's always trying to figure it out. And I, their word really is trust. I trust her that she's going to do the best she can with it. Margaret: And I think it's about Yeah, I think it's likewise to you, because I trust that he's, he's read. If you could say our library of books, it's literally every book I've ever heard of on finance and investing. And multiple copies probably down. And so I think, I think it all comes back down to we, we because we both feel like we have studied different things. You know, and now Matt learns more about real estate and I, I give him all the credit because I always was interested in retirement and investing but I didn't know where to get started. And so because he had a knowledge base, he kind of brought me up a little bit faster than if I had then what I was able to do on my own right. So that's powerful. And then because I already trusted him so much and then we got to go to all the seminars together. It just build that built that foundation and so now we really don't disagree on Matt: I think part of also is like, I never wanted to push that on Margaret. Yeah, like my interest, right? I have interest in finance. I never wanted to push that it's an interest of mine. Real estates and interests of her. She doesn't push that on me. I don't push that on her. So it was, it becomes organic when you are you, you're interested in yourself, right? You're like, okay, you know, Matt's doing something. I'm interested in that I want to see a little bit more, but it comes from her. It doesn't come from me telling her Oh, you got to check this out. You should check this out. Yeah, that's important. But ultimately, it's gonna be her decision. Right? Yeah, Margaret: You start to for me, I started doing the numbers. Whoa, you can make this on a trade in two minutes. And I make this on how many? How many hours? Does it take me? Yeah, that's a no brainer. Allen: Cool. Okay, so now, so a lot of our customers they've been through. And unfortunately, like, they've gone on a path similar to yours. But I would say that you guys, you know, if you've, if you only started trading, like three years ago, you guys have taken a shorter route than a lot of our customers. Really? Yeah. So they've been trading for multiple years, still trying to figure out like, Hey, how can I make this work? How can I become consistent, profitable, I've tried, you know, XYZ strategy, and this and this, and this, and they've bought cores, and they've been videos and seminars, and, and they still are looking for that something, to get them over the hump, to get them to be like, Oh, finally, I'm actually making some money. Finally, like you said, they're confident that they can, you know, the month is going to start, I have a strategy that works. I'm confident I'll probably make money this month. But they're still not there yet. And because of that, because of them, you know, trying and investing in course, investing in Seminar investing in another doohickey. You know, they have all the things you can buy, like, Oh, hey, you know, that you can buy this indicator, and the indicator will tell you exactly when to buy and when to sell is only $3,000. You know, they're like, Okay, I'm gonna get that, you know, they get it and then they don't doesn't work. And then the wife or the other or the husband, either way, the spouse is like, I can't believe you're wasting all this time, all this energy, all this money on this trading stuff when he doesn't frickin work. You know, you've been trying for years, and it's just not working. It's all a big scam. Right? And that's the big girl. Yeah, it's a big scam that nobody can do this. So what advice or tips or anything? Would you suggest for a trader in that position where their spouse is maybe not very receptive to them continuing to trade? Where the spouse is like, you know, can you just give this up? You know, just spend time with me? Just, you know, Matt: Yeah. I'm gonna let you go first. And I'll go after. Margaret: Okay? Because we, we were not in that specific scenario, I just keep going back to it has to be the trust. So how are you going to build trust with your partner, not when they don't know what you're going through? And then I would say you would have to have some sort of mentor, and to be honest, that is you that that is you for us. Right? So we I remember, when I got the calculator that you sent out of this is where if you this is what you need in order to make the monthly income that you want on the percentage of money, and this is how much money you need in your account. And you've done it, like you've gone before us, we know it can be possible. So we're trusting that what you say is true. And we've seen it and especially now that that works for you. So I think finding somebody that you can put that trust into and having if your partner is not going to be in that with you, at least show them who that is that you're learning from or what they've done. And if if it's if it's not Alan Sama, then make sure that they've got a good record of what they've done. So that, that your partner can have trust in that you're learning from somebody that is credible. You know, the first thing we learned from had learned down the road from somebody who had learned from Warren Buffett, and so, you know, I don't really care about names of people, that doesn't impress me, but when you actually know something that impresses me, and that gives me the assurance to bet on myself. And that's what I would say, would be my advice. Matt: Yeah, I mean, I always went into investing, especially as I, you know, started to learn about options. I was like, I don't want to hear about oh, you can make all this money. You can do all this and everything's going great. I wanted to go and be like, show me how to do it. Right. And then once you show me how to do it, I believe you. And that's just who I am. And I think most people maybe are like that they want proof and they but more importantly they want to be be able to do it themselves, some people don't. But if you're into this and you want to learn, and you have to go into mindset be like, show me how to do it. And then you get the confidence that you can do it yourself, and then you can be able to teach other people. Allen: Okay, nice. Next question I have here is that you guys have been doing this for a little bit together? Are there anything thinking back that you would do differently? So basically, the question is, like, you know, are there any tips that you would give to a couple starting out? Or lesson or something that you felt? You know what, we didn't do that? Right? Maybe we should have done it differently? Margaret: I would. I know that $10,000 was a lot for us, when we bought into your class. It was 100% worth it. And I wish that we would have done that first. Matt: Yes, I think in this world, you know, you don't want to believe it, but you really pay for what you get. You know, it's a hard truth. Lots of people want to be like, oh, I want this for, you know, low money, or I want this, but you got to really look at is it? What's the worth of it? Right? Is it going to be? Margaret: And are you willing to do the work? Matt: Are you willing to do the work? That's a lot of people like, I think the advice I give people is like the least tell yourself before you think something is not worthy, or it doesn't go up to your expectations, at least go through and do the work of what has been laid before you. Okay, so you have all these lessons, and you have all everything, but you have to can you really tell yourself that you put on all the work, when you haven't gone through the class, when you haven't gone through all the, you know, really dug deep to get everything out of it, then you can say whether you want to continue or not, whether it was a failure, whether it was not at least do that. And I think it's important for people that start out, set aside a small amount of money, right? And maybe agree that, okay, if you lose this small amount of money, it's a good idea. Fine, it didn't work out. But at least you agreed on that. And then give it a shot. Yeah. Right. And then maybe if it didn't work out, and you want to go further, we examined it at that point. That way, you know, it's not like a, I lost everything. And it's the end of the world type scenario. At least I gave it a try. You know, I followed my dreams to figure out this on my own. And if you at least put in the effort, you can tell yourself, Margaret: I would like to give your wife major kudos. Since you said you lost a lot of money in the beginning. That's a good woman to keep if she kept supporting you to go forward. Allen: Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm very blessed. I am amazingly blessed. So I just give you a short version of the story. I had just been laid off. And so the question was, and we had just been married recently. And so the idea was, Okay, do I go and get another job? Or do I try something else? And, you know, I had been dabbling with trading. But I was like, maybe I could do this full time. So she's like, Okay, if you think you can do it, go for it. And, of course, I did not have any money. She had money from that she had saved up from working for several years before we got married. So she's like, you know, I have all this in savings. You know, try it. And so then she got a second job to support us. So because I wasn't making anything, so she got the second job. And she's working. She was a nurse. So she was working like three days a week at the at the hospitals, 12 hour shifts. And then on the other day, she would be, they have this thing called home health, where the nurse actually shows up to your house. So she would be driving around town, going from place to place to place, you know, giving injections and IVs and medicines and all that stuff. So very draining, especially with all the traffic and everything. And yeah, and I proceeded to try everything like day trading and futures and forex and commodity options and everything is like nothing was working. And I was down over 40 grand. When I finally actually, I think what turned it around was that she found out because I was hiding it from her. Like I wasn't telling ya that she came on to check the mail. She checked the statement. She's like, where's all the money? Oh, like, oh, yeah, about that. So it was either Yeah, you know, it's like, okay, either go to go get a job right away. Turn this around. Or, you know, if you don't do one of those things, we're probably getting split, right. So I was planning like, I was getting my resume ordered together. And then I found selling options. Like I discovered that Hey, there, there was a trade I did that was actually it worked. And I'm like, Well, what is this? Let me follow up more and then I got into it and I showed her how to do it. She was like, Okay, you have something here. So you'd like you said I did Didn't I put like all the money aside? You know, I stopped playing with all the money. And I took a small amount. And I'm like, Okay, let me see if I could just do something with this, instead of the big amount. And that gave her pause, like, okay, fine, you know, he's not gonna lose all the money. And if I lost that money, then yeah, go get another job. And that's it, end of story. But luckily, I showed her she understood it, it started working. And then you know, then the rest is history from there. Margaret: I can imagine there's some pretty real feelings going on around that. That's Allen: Very stressful. Yeah, very, very stressful. Because she wanted to know what I was doing. But she didn't have any background in finance. You know, her family never talked about investing or anything. So she didn't really know anything about it. Slowly, slowly, I started telling her. And then the funny part is, she would come home, like, and she'd be like, Oh, hey, she got interested, right? And she would come home and she goes, Hey, I checked the news and the markets up today. And I'm like, Yeah, but I'm, you know, I'm in. I'm in calls today. Oh, there she goes, Oh, no, oh, that's too bad. You know? And then two days later, she'd be like, Oh, look, I checked in the markets down today. I'm like, No. I mean, Puts today. She would like she did, she wouldn't know if I'm gonna be happy or sad. But she was nuts. But yeah, so and then after a while, then it got good. And like I said, you know, she wanted that stability. She didn't want that up and down. She's like, I need something stable income, so I can quit the second job, take okay. And then she was able to quit the first job. And then so it worked out. But yeah, it was a long, hard road. And I did not have the mentor that you mentioned, you know, so that was one of the probably the biggest things that if I could have found somebody that could have just pulled my hand be like, here, this works, just follow this plan. Margaret: You know, that's why we got to shortcut it. Yeah. Allen: But.. Matt: I think that is a hard thing. Because you're always trying to search for, you know, they're always there numerous or many mentors out in the world, it's like, is trying to find who's true, right? That's it's very difficult. And you you have a guard up, everyone's got their guard up. And they're always kind of like, is this person trying to take me or, you know, I don't feel right about this person, I maybe feel right about this person. I mean, just look at FTX. I mean, that guy that was like darling, and crypto. And then they find out he's, he's, you know, a Bernie Madoff. So it's like, it happens over and over again. So that's kind of how I got into trading. I was like, show me how to do it, and see if it worked, right. And you're not only a mentor, but you show people how to do it. And then you can build trust in yourself, rather than, you know, of course, a mentor is wonderful. And it will shortcut that process. But you can learn about this stuff. And then you, you make yourself your own mentor in a way, you know, it's like you just kind of be like, Okay, I have the confidence now. And then you can go on. Allen: Yeah, I think it all comes down to confidence too. Because like, if I look at it, you know, we have several students that in any strategy that you pick one strategy, and then there's somebody there that's been like, Oh, hey, I did you know this much percent? And I'm like, wow, that's better than me. And there's another strategy. Oh, I did this much. And I'm like that better than me. And I know that, like, what everybody's doing better than me what's going on? You know, but I think that's part of it is the confidence. There's like, and this will tell you something about me, like, you know, I came up with the rules, right? So I came up with the test and testing it and failing, and I forgot what they call it. But it's like, you know, you, you try something and then you fail, and you try and you're failing, you chaired it. So in my mind, you know, all these rules are made by me. Right? So I was like, I don't know how much I can, you know, like, really? I'm gonna trust myself. I don't know. It's scary. But then somebody else comes and goes, Oh, Allen, you know, he's the man. He knows what he's doing. I'm just gonna go 100%. And they do. They do better than me. And I'm like, I don't get it. Matt: redo my rules. Allen: I just need to, I just, like, forget it. I just give you guys my money's like here. Matt: But I mean, in all seriousness, as well, I mean, people, they come in these programs, and everyone has so much to add. I mean, that's how you get better. I mean, there's people that are just like, oh, yeah, I did this way. And you're like, Oh, I didn't think about that. And it's like, if you're open to that, and you receive that, then it makes everything better for everybody. And I've seen that over and over again, where somebody will just say, Oh, I found this way to do this easier. It's like it's constant learning. All of us are constantly learning constantly getting better constantly trying to achieve and go go better. And that's a wonderful thing. Allen: Yep. Yeah, we had an hour. Just recently, we in our passive trading group, somebody had put like, Hey, I don't know how to do this. And I'm pretty sure it's in it's in the core somewhere. But then another student was like, oh, here, let me make you a video. And he just made a video. Yeah, this is how I did it. It's like, Oh, wow. And they asked another Oh, how about this, he made another video. It's just, you know, everybody's helping each other because we all have the same goal. And it's like, Let's just all work together. And, you know, we're all on the same path. Matt: Yeah, it's like, it's always true, you surround yourself with the right people, and good things will happen. I mean, it's just just got to be able to do that, Allen: you know, it's like, amazing, we had some really cool students, helpful, you know, just to go out of the way for each other. It's really, really nice. So then, okay, so my last question for you guys. And I don't know, maybe you guys like, maybe this is a problem that we've seen people have, but I don't know if you guys are gonna be able to answer it. But how can a trader have their spouse support them in their trading? So like, you know, if, you know, one of you is the trader, or you want to do something, how can you get your spouse to have that confidence in you? That you can do it? Does that make sense? Yeah. Because like, I know, with my wife, in the beginning, she didn't have any confidence. And then later on, you know, the numbers kind of spoke for themselves. But one of the things I did was when the back testing software came out that we that we use a lot, I showed it to her. And she was like, Oh, cool. I want to learn this, too. So we would sit there, and I gave her the rules. I think we were talking about credit spreads at the time. It's like, okay, so this is kind of how we find a trade. And I didn't have like, first set out rules yet. It was just, you know, ideas. I try, sometimes they do this way, that way. And so then I had her and I told her what it was. And we would look at a chart and be like, okay, hey, what do you what's the trade? And so she would pick her trade? And then, you know, we would we would go through it. And then I had already done it my way, you know, and it would always come out where she was actually more profitable than me. Same trade, same stock, same timeframe, if we had done it her way, we would have made more money. That's the thing about the confidence. He knows, like, when you see your wife who doesn't know anything, she just numbers, you know, she doesn't matter. It's like, I don't know, maybe I'm not cut out for this. But then, but then later on, there was a time where I got into like, a, like a rut, you know, so I wasn't I wasn't following the rules, the discipline became a problem. Because our trading doesn't take a lot of time. And so when you're just, you know, stuck, you don't have anything else to do, you kind of start over trading, and you're messing around with stuff. And so I had her, and she came, she's the one that came up with this. She's like, you know what, every single trade, you're going to write it down. And you're going to tell me, and I'm going to come upstairs at one o'clock every day, I'm going to ask you questions about every single trade, you know, and I forget exactly what they were. But it's in one of our products. It's like, you know, what's the goal? What's the plan? You're going to adjust it or you're going to get out when you're going to do it? Where's it now? And why haven't you done what you're supposed to do? You know, and so because of that, because I knew she was going to come? Right? I would have everything ready before she came in. So if I had to get out of a trade because it was down or I needed to do an adjustment, it will already be done by the time she got in. And so that degree of holding me accountable. It really I mean the results just went skyrocketing higher. That's really smart. So that was.. Margaret: something that you said yesterday on our call on our oil call really has stuck with me about every day that you wake up you have a decision to stay in that trade or get out so that's the day that you're making a decision. And it's not Yeah, so that it just hit me this morning because we had the the market was down a little bit this morning. And we talked about it like what what are we going to do so I like that idea of having an accountable Matt: Well, it's important because you're you yourself are going to be emotionally different each day for whatever reason, just as you as an individual that but now you have your wife or someone who was account recording accountable is going to come in and keep you straight. I think what every what everybody needs Allen: Yep. Either either spouse or buddy or accountability partner or something like that, that you can trade with. Trading buddy, I like that. Cool. Okay. Is there anything else that you guys wanted to share with our audience? Margaret: Hmm, you can do it. You can absolutely do it. I think if I could have told myself which I had zero knowledge background in how what what was a brokerage? Let's just start with the simple step. I did not even know the difference between brokerages I did not understand what a brokerage account was. So if I could Tell Margaret, even just five years ago, what I will be doing today, I would not have believed it. And that once you start looking at your money, you know, everybody always says nobody cares about your money more than you do. I think our age group needs this knowledge. Because with the advent of you having to figure out your own retirement and not having pensions, it is extremely important for us to know that and we didn't have any knowledge that is out there. You know, we didn't we weren't 20 and Tiktok. And Instagram rails were out there where you could learn some of this stuff. You know, we're where we're younger people already know so much more than I knew when I'm in my 20s. I think there's a group of us that needs the hope that comes from knowing that you can manage your own money, and you can make money and you can help your retirement, it doesn't matter if you're in your 40s. Matt: No matter really what age you are, I mean, my mother's 80, right. And if she was, you know, I used to stay at Costco all the time. And I said this many times where they're, they're older people that give out samples or they're in the job. And there, you can see that they're in pain. They're standing all day long, and they're like 70, and 80 years old. And if they just knew if they knew how to do a simple strategy, or trade or just learn it, in which they totally can, yeah, or be shown that and, you know, they can believe in it, that would change their life. And they change their comfort, not later on and be right now. Yeah. Which is so powerful. So it's really it goes to, that's what I love about trading, it can help all age groups. Yeah. Right. And you're right. No one cares about your money more than you do. And I look at like, life's risky. Everything's at risk. So you owe it to yourself. You think trading is risky. Give it a shot. Everything's risky. Yeah. Right. So you got to overcome your fears. See how things work? Believe in yourself. And just go for it. Yeah, because we're only on here one turn, you know, Margaret: Why not? Give it a shot? Allen: Well said Well said, you guys, I really thank you for this. This has been a pleasure. And I really appreciate your time and spending some time and sharing intimate details about your lives and your relationship with us. It's it's been a blessing. Thank you so much. Margaret: Thank you for asking us. Yeah.

Does your personality make a difference in your trading results? Turns out, it makes a huge difference. And so today I want to talk about two different personality types. And I want to talk about the pros and cons of each and how to tell if you're one and how to improve your trading based on which personality you are. I bet you've hardly thought of the possibility of your personality having an affect on your trading results. But scientists have. And they have that one personality is better than the other. In this episode we talk about those findings and how you can improve your trading no matter what your personality. JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://freeoptionsgroup.com Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Hey there, this is Allen from Option Genius. One of the most common questions that we get at Option Genius is, "Allen, I want to know more about options trading, What books should I read?". And so I made this short video for you to tell you some of the top books that I think should be in your library. There are hundreds and maybe even 1000s of books on there on options, but not all of them are worth your time. Okay, so I wanted to save you some time, tell you the ones that I think would be the best. So here we go. This is the first one. Now these books are in no particular order. But this one is "Options as a Strategic Investment".  Now this one is the heavy hitter. Okay, you can tell this is thick, it's very long, it's very detailed. This is like the Bible of options trading, okay, now, you're not going to make it through the whole book in one sitting. And you might never make it through the whole book. I've tried it a couple of times falling asleep. But this is not meant to read cover to cover. This meant this book is meant more as a reference book, at least that's how I use it, if I need something, or if I need to look up something, especially when I was starting out with options trading, this one was very helpful. You know, it was it's a good source. There's a lot of good material, a lot of good examples in here. And it covers just about every single thing about options related in here. So if you're just starting out, and you need one book as an introduction to options, this one might be a little bit too technology or jargon heavy, but it's a good one to have with you. Okay. Now, second book I have here is called passive trading, how to generate consistent monthly income from the stock market in just minutes a day. Now, this is the book that I wish I had when I started trading 15 years ago. Okay, now, to be honest, I have written this book. So I'm the author of this book. So I'm a little bit biased. But you can tell it's a decent sized book, this is not the goal for this book was not to cover every single strategy and every single way to trade options and everything about options. That's what this book does. So we don't need to recreate this book, what I put in this book is what I need, or what I think you need to make money the fastest way possible with options, okay? The the how to think about it, why you need to start trading options, and the strategies that you should use to really simplify your trading, and really get going and making money quickly as quick as possible with Options. So that's why I've written this book. That's why it's on my list, because I think everybody who trades options, at least if you're, if you're just starting out, you definitely need to read this book. Okay. And the other thing is that it talks about doing it in your spare time. So that is a whole different philosophy. We don't talk about buying options in this book, I tell you exactly why that doesn't work, I show you how to sell options in a way that doesn't take a lot of your time, so that you can actually make money from the stock market, but still have your time to do whatever you want. Because that's really the goal of making money, right? We want money for freedom, we don't want to make money just so we can work longer hours. So this is what this book shows you. The next book we have here is called "Generate Thousands in cash on your stocks before buying or selling them". Now, this book, I've used maybe the first two or three chapters, and the rest of it is about indicators, technical indicators, technical analysis, stuff that I don't use, I haven't even read. But the first two or three chapters have made me a lot of money. And so that's why they're on the list. Now, the strategies he talks about in the first couple of chapters are basically naked puts, and how to trade them and different ways you can use them. And like I said, it's made me a lot of money in the past. So that's why I put the this book on the list. Okay. Now, a lot of books out there, talk about the different strategies, but they don't tell you what to do. If your trade gets in trouble. They just broadly glance over it. So this book here is options, "The option trader handbook - strategies and trade adjustments". So this book actually goes into more detail about what to do when your trade goes into trouble, how to adjust your trade, and it covers different strategies and covers a couple of different adjustments for every single one. Now, it's not the same thing as watching a video or watching somebody actually do the strategy and think about it and tell you why they're picking one adjustment over another one. But when you have some ideas of what different adjustments you can do, then if you're trying to get into trouble, you can analyze them and see which one you like better, which one you think will work best for your bad trade. And then you can go with that and hopefully it will work out so it's a it's a good book if you don't know anything about adjustments. And it's definitely something you should have. Just in case a trade goes bad you don't know what to do. You can pick this up and look for ideas. Okay, now, for those of you who are iron condor traders, this one is is profiting with iron condor options, strategies from the front line for trading in up or down markets. Now, the reason why I chose this one, and it's not a very thick book, because it doesn't cover everything about iron condors. And if you want to know what an iron condor is, and if you're an individual investor, how to trade it, we actually have a course on iron condors that goes through all the details, adjustments, everything you need to know. But the reason why this book is on the list is because the fellow who wrote this book says he's a hedge fund manager, he runs a hedge fund, and he trades iron condor as his main strategy. So that means he's doing millions and millions of dollars worth of trades in the iron condor. So from his perspective, if you're an iron condor trader, this one was really cool to read to see how he does it a little bit differently than us individuals how much harder, he has a time to do the iron condor. But how he's still able to make very good profits, even though he's trading in the millions of dollars with iron condors. So this one was a cool fundraiser. Okay, the next one. Now, this book might be out of print, it's the complete guide to option selling, this one might be out of print. But if you didn't pick it up, us, it will be a good book, if you're interested in futures options. Now, the title is, you know, the company guide options selling but they don't talk about stock options. In this book, they only talk about futures options. Now, the reason these authors wrote this book was because they had a management fund, like a management company, so they wanted you to give them the money, your money, and then they would trade options for you. That's how they made their money. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes, and they blew up, meaning they lost all of the money for their investors, and they went out of business. So that's why I'm saying that the book might be out of print, because they don't need to use it anymore as sales piece, but it still has some good material and good information in there if you're looking to trade futures options. But keep in mind that the strategies in here work, if you have a lot a lot of money. Now I've tried trading these with a smaller amount of money, like you know what a normal person would have, they didn't really work out. So I had to test and tweak them in order to make them work. So if you aren't going to use this, the book, you need to know that they might not be ready for just, you know, follow along exactly as they say in the book, because, like I told you, this book was meant to be a sales piece. Not exactly, to give you a complete A to Z explanation of how futures options work. Okay, but it is good for futures options, it gives you some good ideas and some good things. So that's why it's on the list. And then lastly, I have a book for all you option nerds. Now, I have not read this book, I don't think it's necessary to understand everything about option volatility and pricing to make money with options. Now volatility, yes, pricing, maybe not. Because pricing is something that, you know, if you can, if you're trying to sell an option, and they're only going to pay you $1, that's all you're gonna get, you can decide yes or no. And if it makes sense for your risk reward on your trade, then maybe you'll take the trade. But, you know, if you want to really get into the weeds, and really understand volatility, and pricing of options, and how they're priced and why they're priced on certain days, so much, and how to take advantage of that, again, if you're playing with a lot of money, then that really helps if you're an individual investor, you're not going to worry about that so much. But this is a very, very jargon intense book. It's very dense. And it's good if you really want to get into the weeds. So that's why I have that one. Now, again, all these books are great. In the beginning, I think this is the only one you really need. Because that's the way I've written it. That's the way you know, this is like, okay, so we have all this information out there. You have all these different strategies out there. What do I start with? What do I do? Well just read this one. That's the way it's simple. That's why I've written it today. Hey, from A to making money as fast as possible. What do I do? That's why I've written this book. So hopefully, this helped. These are some of the books out there that I think can definitely help you. I've tried to bury them. But hopefully this helped. And if you have a book that I missed, or I left out of the list, please put it in the comments down below. Let me know what book you think should be on the list. And so when I update the video if we get enough of the same if everybody if several people say this book help them. If it's not gonna list we'll go ahead and add it. No problem there. All right now, take care and remember to always trade with the odds in your favor.

Picture this, you're a prizefighter. A boxer.  And your opponent is the reigning champion, large, strong, fast and deadly. If you win your payday could be huge. But if you lose, you might lose it all. Do you get in the ring? Well, if you're a trader, you get in the ring every single day. So let's talk about how not to get knocked out. Hey there passive trader, how do you think about your trades, and your trading can make a huge difference if you're going to be profitable or not. And I want to share about how I think about my trades. And I think that it's going to help you as well, because I've shared this with my students. And they it was really, you know, a different paradigm shift for them. So I want to say, Okay, well, you know, people don't don't see it this way. So I want to I want to talk about this. All right. Now, trading is more of a mental game than anything else, of course, you got to know what you're doing. But the mental aspect is what really separates new traders from professionals. And I've always said that trading is about 90%, mental, and 10% skills so if you have not become consistently profitable yet, it might be that there are some skills that you're missing. But there's a really good chance that there's the mental aspect is also holding you back. And it's actually something we spend a lot of time on, on our coaching calls with our programs with our students. And it's one of the reasons that we see people come into our programs that have been trading for a while, but they haven't received or achieved the level of success that they desire, until they start working with us. Because then you have a coach and the coach can look at what you're doing and how you're thinking and pointed out and be like, you know what, maybe if you change this, or you look at it a different way that he can make all the difference, right? It might be just that one thing that they're probably doing that the coach understands this is what's the problem. And once you fix that thing, boom, it automatically flips a switch, and then they become profitable really quickly. So that's why in this episode, I want to talk about the mental game, and really how we think about our trading as a whole. Because what I've seen is a lot of traders, they get bogged down in the minutia, they don't really look at their trading as the big picture. Right, they don't look at it from 10,000 feet above, and they're there in the forest, you know, they're looking at all the trees, and they can't see the clearing, they can't see the pasture, they can't see the big picture. And every single tree is a trade and all the trees and all the trades to them look the same. And they treat all the trades the same. So I want to talk a little bit about how I look at and think about my trading. Now to do so, we got to go back in time back to the future. No, back back to the past. Back to my youth when I was a little kid and I used to play this game called Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Right, it's on the Nintendo Entertainment System, which I think they make new ones now they don't make the old ones anymore, but they make the little mini versions travel versions. So this game is still around people still play it. Now I spent hours days probably the hundreds of hours if I'm truthful on that game. And if you don't know it's a boxing game, you know, like the fighting. Boxing, you know, the one guy fighting another guy. And if you remember, Mike Tyson was the heavyweight champion of the world and nobody could really touch this guy. I mean, the guy was was a monster monster like crazy crazy guy, right? So it is really a great metaphor because Mike Tyson is the market.  Okay, truth of the matter is you cannot knock out Mike Tyson and you cannot knock out the market right? The market is just too big. So the market is Mike Tyson cannot come out and you're just this little itty bitty guy right we're just we're just at home traders right? We're just a little people. We're not even like big prize provisional trade Wall Street guys that have billions of dollars like those guys, they go against the market they might win we're just we're just little guy right? Even in the game your name was Little Mac and if you look at the game you were like about this big when Mike Tyson was like about this big so he was like 10 times bigger than you the gay and your day was even Little Mac so what about positive encouragement right up late i Big Mac know this Little Mac tiller, you're never gonna be able to knock him out. But you still want to win the match. Right? You still want to win the boxing fight. And the way that you do that is not by knockout. But you do it by points. And you in order to win the fight. Basically that means that you're going to be profitable for the year and you might be beat the market averages. So that is the goal. That is the overarching big picture. That's what we're looking at. We're looking at, hey, I want to win the match, I want to be profitable. And I want to beat the averages. That's my match. So in order to win the match, you have to win enough rounds. You get, each round is a month. Okay? So each match or fight has 12 different rounds. Now, you need to win more rounds than you lose, and you need to avoid getting knocked out. Right. So January through December, every every month is around, so we got 12 rounds in our match. So 12 Round bout, okay, and we're going to win by two things, we're going to get points. And if we get enough points, we win the round. If you win enough rounds, you can win the match, but you have to avoid getting knocked out. Okay, so when you are profitable for the month, guess what, you won the round, you win enough rounds, and you got a chance at winning this fight.  And you get these points. To win the round, you don't have enough points. You get these points by making small hits, small base hits, right? We're just jabbing, jabbing, punching, jabbing, punching, blocking, jabbing, jabbing, punching, punching, maybe maybe a cross, maybe maybe an uppercut if you get lucky, right? These are all the trades that we put on. As passive traders, we're trying to hit singles and doubles. We're not looking for grand slams, we're not looking for knockout punches. Because even if you hit Mike Tyson, with what you think is a knockout punch is not going to knock him down. And he's going to knock you off bases of balance. And if he hits you with one of his big punches, you're gonna go down, you're gonna be in a hospital, it's gonna be over game set, match or whatever TKO not even TKO just want one hit, boom, you're done. Right? So that's what we're trying to avoid. Hopefully, you're not getting knocked out completely if you do get hit. And maybe you can, you know, dust yourself off and get back in the ring and be like, yeah, we're pulling me out a, pull me out, right. But a lot of traders, they don't understand this concept. And so they get knocked out. And they might not even be able to get back in, it's over. They give up trading because it's too painful. They can't handle it. They're knockout becomes permanent. And they are knocked out of trading for good. So we want to make sure that you do not get knocked out. That's the biggest thing when you're fighting Mike Tyson. Okay, and how do you not get knocked out? Well, he's going to be temperamental, he's going to be crazy. He's gonna get all excited and come at you like crazy every once in a while. You avoid that by using a trick. Now, in the game, you had to know the tricks. Okay. So the trick with Mike Tyson was that, you know, you hit him and you hit him and you hit him and you hit him. And all of a sudden, he makes a little move. It's a tell. And when you see him make that move. It basically tells you Okay, now he's coming. He's about to get ready. He's about to come at you with his big, big uppercut, to knock you out. And it comes super fast. It's like, you know, split seconds, I usually the move Oh, no, get out of the way. Because boom, if you don't, you're gone. So as soon as he starts making that move, you gotta get out of the way. You can't be in the way because, boom, you're on the floor, right? So you gotta get other way. And if you do, then you can start hitting them again, boom, boom, boom, and it is like starts over. That's kind of what the market does, right? It's kind of like the stock market does. Markets make big wish moves up higher, wish down higher, either up or down? And then it gets tired. So here's another metaphor for you. Right? We're talking about boxing and as the market but how about the market is like an elephant. So when an elephant is mad and stampedes. That's my elephant noise. It starts running around. And then you of course, you don't want to get in front of an elephant when it's damp eating and is running around. But eventually, the market, the elephant gets tired. You know, it starts panting, it gets tired. I don't want to run around anymore. And then it stops and maybe a standstill or you know the market goes starts going up and down a little bit or you just find a bottom and find the top and it just calms down a little bit right. I'm sure you've seen this with the market. We have periods with like high volatility, and then things calmed down and you think, Oh, it might be over. Sometimes it is. Sometimes the market gets jazzed up again. It comes at you again. And so that's what Mike Tyson used to do. He would try to knock you out. Right? And then he would calm down And then he would let you hit him a few more times. And then you're trying to score as many points as you can, before he dressed, it knocks you off again, and then you get out of the way again. And then if you do that enough times, you can actually win. So you got actually beat Mike Tyson. Now, truth be told, I don't know what actually happens at the end of the game, because I was never able to beat Mike Tyson. But I know that I've been through several years of trading where I have come out ahead, and I have won the match. Right. And it's, it's a phenomenal feeling, you know, to show my guns here, my little want to be guns. In me, it's such an amazing feeling to be able to know that look, I can go into the market. And I can just extract money, and I can be self confident. And I can know that I can take care of my family, you have that confidence in yourself that, hey, look, I can go into the market anytime I want, and just take money out, right? But the trick is to manage the trades properly. So you have to know when you should be punching. And when to get out of the way. We cannot control the market. But we can avoid the uppercuts. And this is how you do it. So you don't look at every single trade as an individual event. Right now, when you're taking notes, and you're looking and you do the analyzing. They're like all different things, right? It's like, well, this trade this trade this trade, but don't look at them, as all individual events, they are all part of something bigger, you won't win on every trade. So don't try. Yeah, that's right, I'm telling you did not try to make money, okay, you're not going to win on every trade, don't try. Remember, your goal is to win the round, not land, every punch, there's gonna be punches where you miss, there's going to be punches when you try to hit him, and instead he hits you instead, and you're going to have a loss. That's okay. Because if you try to make money on every single trade, well, you're gonna go crazy, right? And it's gonna be too stressful. Plus, it's not possible. So you look at every round as an event every month that you're trading is an event. And then you look at the entire match the entire year as an event. And that's how you save yourself. You look at the big picture, the eyes are always on the big picture. The eyes are always I don't, are always I want to win the match. Not I want to land this punch, right? So I look at all my trades as a group as a collective. So if I've already made money in a month on four or five trades, and then I got this one tray that might be losing money, I asked myself, What do I want to do? You know, What are my chances that I can make this trade work? Do I even want to mess around with it? There are some times when I don't? Or do I just want to get out and be done with the month and win the round. Now remember, we call this passive trading, right? So I want to do as little work as possible. So if I put on trades, and they're doing great by themselves, and I can get out perfect, but then I put on a trade and it starts not behaving, it starts making me do work, like watching it and analyzing it and trying to adjust it. I don't want to do the work. So if I've already made positive trades on one side, then I have this one one trade not acting properly, I'm going to take a look and say, Okay, how much money have I made so far? How much money am I down on this one? What happens if I try to get back? You know, what's the difference? What is a percentage? Like? How am I going to be up? And if it's not worth it, which most of the time it's not, I'm just gonna get out of that trade. I'll be done for the month, and I won the round. Geez. Right. That's the most important part, winning the round. So if you win the round, and the next and the next, eventually you can win the match. But if you start messing around and playing with every single trade that's going bad, and you try to adjust your way out of it, or you don't do anything at all, because you're like, oh, no, he's gonna turn around, you let her run all over you, you get that there's a chance you're gonna get hit by the uppercut. Not only do you lose the round, but there's a good chance you're gonna get knocked out so badly that the whole match is over. Right? Even if you don't get knocked out completely, you get knocked down three times it's TKO, right? technical knockout. You don't want that either. Not only the match, but in this case, your entire boxing career. Your trading career could be over if you take a big enough loss, and we don't want that. So we don't want you losing all your money or suffering the one large knockout loss, right? everybody complains, and when it comes to trading and selling options, they're like, Oh, I win, win win, but then I give it all back. That's what we'r talking about. How do we avoid that? So you go into every single month, and every round with the goal of just getting enough hits to be profitable. And if you don't win that month, no problem. It's a long match. You got 11 more rounds to fight, right? Big picture, big picture, think of the big picture. So let's say it's the first trade for the month, okay, and it's going bad, nothing, man, first trade, and I'm already going bad. But then you think about it, you know, like, I got several more trades I'm going to do this month, do I really need to fight this one. Or maybe I just get out and take a loss because I can make it up on the next ones. Because my goal is to win the round, right? You can do that. Or let's say you've already been successful on several trades for the month, then you definitely don't want to have one loser, take it all back, you don't want to give back all your gains all your work, right? That's the biggest gut punch you can get is if you've already made several trades, you've already put in the work, you've already made money, you're positive on it. And then you got one trade that you try to mess with, or you try to adjust or play with it. And it just causes you to have a large loss, and you give it all back that you made, and maybe even more, that feels horrible. And you don't want to do that because you want to win the match. Right? The big picture. That's the whole point. That's the goal. That is how I think about my trade. So every single trade is not a life and death situation, you're gonna have 1000s and 1000s of trades over your career, and you're not going to win on all of them, not even close to all of them. Or we don't even want to why bothered, we don't want that stress. So you don't need to worry about it. Don't let your losing trades cost you the round. And get this, you don't even have to win every round either, right? That's where it gets really, really big picture. And there's one more step that gets even bigger picture. You don't have to win every match, either. Right every year doesn't have to be super profitable, there are going to be years when you lose money, sometimes we just can't help it, there's nothing we can do. The market is a market, it's going to it's going to hit us and you're gonna take it you gotta take losses, you just have to make sure you don't get knocked out so that you can come back and fight the next fight. Right. And with passive trading, you're going to win enough rounds, sometimes it just happens automatically, because the stats statistics are in our favor, right? You're just going to win it, you're going to win loss arounds, and you will win enough matches so that overall your boxing career will be a very successful and will be a very lucrative one. Over time. I keep saying this over time the math just works out, play the trades properly, and you'll win in the long run. So there you have it folks, proof that kids do learn from video games. So if this was helpful, I would love you if you could do me a favor, please subscribe and comment so that more folks can find our content. You know, so we can spread the word about passive trading and help more people and it means a lot to me as well. So until next time, trade with the odds in your favor. And watch out for Mike Tyson's uppercuts.

Do you have a problem with trading discipline, or not sticking to your trading plan, or not getting consistent results from your trading, or even getting stuck like a deer in the headlights when a trade goes bad. Let's go ahead and solve that right now. On the other side of the intro. All right, so what does brushing teeth have to do with trading successfully? Everything. But you didn't know that. Right? And it's the key to improving your trading, which I'm going to show you right here, right now. This is why we don't stick to our trading plan. Wait, you do have a trading plan, right? Because you don't want to be trading options without a proven trading plan. One that actually works and is proven to be profitable, not just something you saw on some random Youtube video with something that is actually tested with real money over several years in up markets down market sizes and markets everything and you know, hey, look, this works. Other people are doing it. Other people are using it, you need to do the same thing. If you don't have such a trading plan, contact us. And we can help you. Okay, go to our website, or email us or contact us here, leave a comment, do something we'll get to you, we'll get help, right, because we have these plans, we've been doing this. So if you don't have a plan, get a plan. Today, I want to talk about why we don't stick to our plans, why we don't stick to the rules. And there are many reasons. It could be lack of discipline, could be going with your gut, it could be your technical analysis telling you that the trade is going to turn around. I don't know, maybe a little birdie told you that is all going to be okay. Right? And on and on and on. There's so many different reasons why, you know, we're supposed to do something in a trade and then we do the opposite, or we don't do anything at all right? It doesn't matter the reason that's irrelevant. What matters is that this is the reason for what I call roller coaster syndrome. This is where you do well for several trades, you're going up the roller coaster of profit doing good, then all of a sudden you fall. And you give it all back and maybe even more, then you do it again. Then again, and hopefully you don't have two drops, right in a row, which could knock you out completely. And you're like, oh, man, this trading stuff doesn't work? Well, it's because you're not doing it right. So if you've been trading for a while and you're not consistent, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Now, if you're newer to trading, and you don't know what the roller coaster syndrome is, that's great. You're lucky and hopefully you never do as long as you follow what I'm about to tell you in this video. Okay, let's get back to brushing your teeth. How do you brush your teeth? How do you take a shower? How do you put your clothes on? I don't want it in my head. I'm not asking you for specifics. Okay. What I want you to do is realize that you do those activities the exact same way. Every single time. Every single day. Like clockwork, think about it. How do you brush your teeth? How do you take how do you how do you take off the toothpaste cap? How do you put it on thing what handy you use? Where do you go you go left to right right to bag you do the top top you do top first bottom first tongue first. What do you do? It's always done the exact same way. You're putting your pants on the the one leg always goes in first, whichever one you choose, but that one goes in first every single time. Why? Because you're used to doing it. Because it is a habit. Yeah. So look, our brains have tens of thousands of thoughts every single day. Right scientists have studied this and they get come up with the number, whatever, it doesn't matter what the number is. But what matters is that the majority of these thoughts, almost like 89% of them are the same every single day. And that's why we don't have brain overload. Right? That's why we can do things in a normal way over and over again, without having to think about it. Because subconsciously, the brain is working. And it's doing it is thinking, the brain is thinking, well, we don't realize, and those things happen. We make them happen with our body. So, you know, gonna get in the car, what do you do, sit in car, put coffee down, put seatbelt on, right on this way. Press, press on the brake, hit the little button that turns on the car, you do it every single time. So our brain handles all of that for you. You could probably put your car on blindfolded, because it has just become a habit, you've done it so many times. So what you need to do to improve your trading is to make your trading rules, a habit. Following the rules becomes a habit, no more thinking about it. Make it subconscious. I don't know what the subconscious is, maybe back here up here, I don't know. It's somewhere in your brain, make it go there make your rules go there. And less thinking, more trading by the rules. So to do that, right, to have it become a habit. Scientists have done lots of studies. And recently they did this really massive study. And they determined that the average person on the average task needs to perform that task 66 times in a row to make it a habit. Now I know in the past, people have said, Oh, yeah, you need 30 days in a row to make it a habit. No, it's not. This study blew that out of the water. They haven't actually, you know, it's actually scientific. Now, they did a whole study. Now, that's average 66. The more complicated the task, the more repetitions it takes. And for some people, it took over 200 times to form a habit, but it can still be done. That's the good news. Right? So then here it is, this is what you need to do in two steps. Number one, you got to make sure you have a trading plan that works. Number two, you do the 66 trade challenge. What is that? Well, I'll tell you, it's simple. The next 66 trades you do, you do them by using your plan, no deviating no using your gut, no praying. No birdie is flying around telling you what to do. Take the plan, follow the plan. No deviating doesn't matter what the market does doesn't matter what the Fed does not it doesn't matter what the company is doing. Follow the plan 66 times in a row. Why is that? To make it a habit. And what happens if you break the streak? What did you get to like number 60? And then you decide oh, no, I gotta go with my gut on this one. No, you start over. You do another 66. But, but but but but but but isn't that hard? Oh, but trading is supposed to easy? Yeah. It's hard. Making money from trading is easy, but only if you do it right. If you're not following the rules, you're not doing it right. And until now, you're probably not doing it right. Because that's why you're not consistent. So you take it from somebody who is consistent, right? This is what I do. This is what I do. Trade that follow the rules, okay? And then give you the rules. And then you tell me, I didn't follow the rules. Why not? That's why we have this, right. \ That's why I'm talking about it to figure out another way to get you to follow the rules. So I've come up with this 66 trade challenge. That's it. But wait, you went into trading? Because you wanted freedom? Right? Yeah, man, I don't want to be stuck to my job. I want freedom. I want to make my own decisions. I want to follow the markets. I want to trade, bullish bearish, all this stuff. You want to be able to make your own decisions. Fly by the seat of your pants. Well, sorry to hand it to you. But trading plans are restrictive. Okay. You're not a robot. We know that. And you should be able to change your plan when the markets change, right? Wrong. No. So here's the truth. This is a big truth. So so listen in, okay. Trading well means that you follow a process that is proven to work. There is no freedom in that. You follow the rules, and you benefit. Then, with that benefit that is where you use and you go and you used to get your freedom. But trading itself is not freedom. Trading well means being restricted. That is the truth that no other trading educator tells you. The more methodical, boring route your trading, the better you will do. So if your trading plan is good, it will change for you. It will handle the fluctuations in the market, it'll tell you what to do, it'll already be in the plan. If the market changes, something happens, the trading plan will be like, "Okay, if things go up, you do this things go down, you do this, if things go sideways, you do this. If volatility increases, you do this". That's the job of the trading plan. If you're making decisions on the fly, it means your trading plan is not complete. But you don't change the plan in the middle of a trade. Right? So that's it. Take the 66 trade challenge. And if you can make it through, your trading can be changed forever. If you don't, you just keep trying. You do it again, you do it again. And this doesn't have to be with real money. These are no I'm not talking about real money trades. I'm just talking about trading with a habit. Right? So if you want to put on paper trades, that's fine. As long as in your brain, you think this is real money? And you go through it exactly. No cutting corners, no forgetting about a trade No, none of that lack of discipline stuff, right? Follow the rules. That's it. And you don't have to do it for the rest of your life. You just have to do it for 66 trades until the habit is formed and it will be automatic, and you will automatically be doing it for the rest of you. But it will be subconscious, there won't be a problem, it won't be a pain, you just get used to it. Okay, so this is the solution to lack of discipline and the roller coaster syndrome. So now you know. Question is, what are you going to do with this knowledge?

Mark: Well, look, it's really it's a, it's a long journey. I've read your book, I've read many books, I've been in this game for a long time. It's very difficult to sum it up in literally minutes, I suppose. But after reading a book just recently, and listening to all your podcasts a lot lately, I've delved into a lot of it and taken many, many things out of each person's story, which I can resonate wholeheartedly with. But I probably got into Options back in 2006. And I've probably come and gone with it a lot. I've started and stopped, due to various reasons, obviously, life, I've got kids and family and work commitments and stuff like that. But it's always been, I suppose, a hobby. But trying to make that jump or trying to get into it. Full time is obviously difficult for lack of funds or lack of time and effort. I don't know, there's always seems to be something that comes up that stops me from progressing. Having said that, I'm a pretty committed person. I'm pretty disciplined. I've been doing it now for a long time. But like, if you look through him on the table here, I've got trading stuff sitting everywhere, notes. Mark: I've crunched the wheel so many times I've done the shiny diamond thing. I've gone from one program to another. I've spent numerous amounts of funds on various programs and different services such as yourself. I don't know this Option Genius has been around in my life, I suppose, on and off. So I don't know like I've all I'm a big advocate for what you say and what you do. I've wholeheartedly believe that I've been selling options for a long time I've done credit spreads, I've done strangles I've done butterflies, I've done covered calls, I've done a lot of those strategies, or centered around selling options. And I've been doing it for a long time. But for some reason, I just can't seem to break through the ceiling, I just cannot seem to be there to go from this hobby, like training interest that I seem to be involved with, to getting to that next level. I suppose I when I found out that we're going to do this call. Set last night I sat down I tried to write out things that would be good to discuss or to ask you. And I've got like all this paper sitting you have all these notes that I've made, as you would have seen in my email, it was quite lengthy. I think one of the assistants said all that email is probably the longest one I've ever received, that I really okay then.  Allen: Like, you know, because we get, we get lots of emails every day and some people, right? Some people write two paragraphs, but when somebody goes in deep, and they really share their, you know, their soul pretty much. It's like, Hey, I've been doing this and this and this, and this, and I don't know what's going on, then, like we you can feel it when somebody is really, really wanting to make it work. And so those most of those get passed on to me. And when I read it, I was like, alright, you know, we need to we need to talk about this. Because if you've been doing this for years, then like, I have not doing my job. I've let you down in some way that because you know, you shouldn't still be feeling that way. I know. But it's not uncommon. You know, we come across many, many people that come to us and say, hey, you know, I've been doing this for a long time. But you know, it never clicked for me. But you will.. Mark: Yeah, I can see that. So many people that you talk to, you know, have the same they're trying and trying to trying to find the right system, the right setup the right, whatever it is just can't seem like I feel to break through that ceiling. Like you're stuck underneath the water. You're swimming hard. You're learning this, you're watching that you're reading this you're researching. You're looking at the charts to pair with analysis, paralysis, all that stuff. And I've made lots of trades. I've done lots of trading. I've been I've been I won't say successful because clearly we wouldn't be on this call otherwise, but I've made money, but I've also lost money. I've got scars, I've got all that stuff I've had I've had losses, but still here I am battling looking at all that stuff that you talked about in the book in that book really resonated with me there's a lot of stuff in there that I thought I can do this. I know I can do it. Why am I doing it? Why it's just what why does it elude me so much? Is it just a pipe dream and more and more just a duck on the water swimming and just never gonna get there? I don't know. Allen: So you know, when we when we got the email, when they forwarded to me, they asked me like, hey, what do you think the problem is here? Does he not know enough? And my answer to them was No, I think he knows too much. He knows too much. That's part of the problem. I'm just guessing here and I wanted to try to get to the root of it. But you know a lot of the times when so there's there's different things that you need. Everybody needs different things to in order to succeed in anything. Obviously, you know, you need to know what to do you need to how to do it. You know, you have to practice you have to put in the time. You need somebody Do that can actually has doing it like coach that's teaching you, you need a team or a teammate or somebody to do it with. These are all different things that that can help. But a lot of times we come across people that have been, you know, bouncing around from program to program, like you said, they know all the different strategies, they know everything, they know how it works. Some people come and they know it better than I do. You know, so they're, they're telling me that, oh, the Vega this is this and the Gamma and the theta and the row and all this other, you know, they're touching on the Greeks, and they're managing by the Greeks, and they're doing all these complicated stuff. But they're like, it's still not working, why is it not working? So I think, if it can work for somebody else, it can work for you. And I firmly believe that in just about anything, except maybe sports, you know, should somebody else could dunk the ball, maybe I can't dunk the ball. But in trading, a lot of it is I think, 80 to 90% of it is menta. Mark: I've totally, totally, totally. Allen: So there might be something that is holding you back, or, you know, maybe like I don't know, so let's get into it. So now you've mentioned a couple of times that you haven't gotten to the next level. So tell me what is the next level? What is the goal that you're trying to get to? Mark: Well, I think the goal is the same for everybody's, you know, everyone's trying to make income, like, right, I have a I mean, I'm in I'm a cop. So I work in a profession that I see myself coming to a fork in the road. I've been doing this job now for over 14 years, for 10 years. And before that I was in a private industry, we had a family business. So I understand all the dynamics of running a business, how it operates. We had a family business for over 30 years. And long story short, we got out of that for various reasons. And then I got into the government sector, which is a totally different psyche altogether, which took me some time to try and come to terms with. Having said that, I've forever in my wife, and I've come from a family that has been heavily invested in property, shares, businesses, and stuff like that. So I've always had this belief that I can do something with my life that will be able to produce constant income money have investments, like I've had investment properties, and I've done the share thing now on the option things for a long time. And I'm not destitute, I'm not desperate, I have a house, I have three beautiful children and family sort of stuff. But I want to go to the next level I want to be able to provide, I want to be able to teach my kids trading, I want to be able to show them how to invest all the money stuff, like all that sort of thing. I feel as if I'm promoting this stuff, yet, I haven't really truly succeeded myself. I haven't got to the level where they can say okay, Mark, look at you've got all this great stuff, and that show me how to do it. And when they do ask me, I'm sort of thinking so I will not really, I can talk about it. I've read about it, and I'm doing it, but I really haven't got what you think I have. Having said that. Getting back to the trading side of it. I think I want to have this as a business, I can see the potential in it as you can do from home. It's all in front of you in the net. I don't have to go out I don't have to be injured tree. I understand that. I do know a lot about it. I understand all those things you just mentioned with the Greeks and what not right? And I probably do, I probably do know too much. And I do want to keep it simple. I do say to myself, when I'm doing it, just keep it simple. Why do you need to have this indicator? Why do we need to be having that? I totally agree with what you've promoted and talked about for so long. And I think I was probably watching on Option Genius probably before you even started doing podcasts. But over the years, I've come and gone. I've been involved with and I've been with other things. And I've on and off as we mentioned before, right? All right. Does that help answer the question? Allen: No. So what what what do you mean by the next level? Is it an income? Is it is it a certain amount of money in the account is a certain amount of money every month? Where it is it that you say okay, now I've arrived now I have achieved my goal? What what is that number so that you would be able to be like, Yes, I feel happy though. Mark: Okay, so I've sort of thought about that. And I've put a number down to 10k. Now that's a pie in the sky dream. That's a pie in the sky dream. I know. And that's a long way off being achieved. I would just like to be able to see some consistency, all that stuff that you promote consistent, being profitable, and I can do that. But then as you know, you get one or two trades that wipe you out, wipe it back to zero and then it got to start again. Right? So just not we're just not getting that constant. Right? What do they call it.. Allen: Okay, so 10k is the goal. Now, it's not a it's not a it's not a pipe dream. It's so 10k is the goal. If you got 10k every month, you'd be happy. You'd be like okay, I've made it you know I'm accomplishing And that this stuff is actually working. Finally, this stuff is actually working if you were making 10k a month. So tell me, what is it that you think is keeping you from doing that? Mark: Well, clearly a lack of funds at this stage. But I have had numerous accounts where they've had a substantial amount of money in there, but I've just brought it right back down to just doing one lots, until I can see the consistency and seeing that, the, that my trading works, it's consistent, well, then we can scale up. So I'd rather than that, so I'm happy to do just one month a month, which means I'm not gonna make 10 grand in the near future, right, those types of trades, but we can scale that up at a later date. Allen: But what do you so if you were to say, hey, Alan, give me this one thing, and I know I can make tons of money. What is that one thing? Mark: Well, I suppose it's like a business plan, isn't it, like a franchise to follow a step by step thing, do this, do this, do this, do that put it on, obviously, there's a little bit of, there's gonna have to be a little bit of a thought process and feel for the market. But I suppose I need a plan. Like I know how to put the trade on, I know how to do a credit spin on it, for example, but I suppose I need a set of rules or business plan or like something to follow. So that way, I can just follow the recipe for a particular day, not particular strategy, but it's very hard to identify it or pinpoint it down to one thing. Like I've written all these notes in the book and pages and pages of all these things that you're discussing the iPad and whatnot, and try to answer those questions myself. Like, what am I looking for? What's stopping me I've written here a recipe, a plan, a template to follow rules to follow or to abide by tools, treat it like a franchise, for instance. So that way, I'm not deviating to another thing. So I have it on my wall and write down Am I following those particular plans? Does that is that sort of answer the question?  Allen: So do you not have any trading plans right now? I mean, you said you were in different programs and everything so did you do you have any that you've been using as a guideline as a framework? Mark: The cover I've written things down in the past but I suppose sticking to it, or having it visible is difficult. I suppose someone to write one with me or for me to say right this is a trading plan. This is what you need to have in it to follow I suppose I haven't really been given a choice like if it says write a trading plan, write down this stuff, write it down, but I suppose I just want to try it like this is what's going on my head just put the trades on just put the trades on work with the probabilities. Yeah, it should work out. Allen: Okay, and are you conservative or aggressive? Mark: I believe I'm conservative in the sense where at the moment like with the one loss, so like, if I was aggressive, I'd be going right I'm pretty positive this trades gonna work of two or five, or 10 lot but at the moment, it's like let's just hold back and do one more being conservative. I think I can be aggressive if I need to be but on how Allen: And how much percentage return are you looking to make? Mark: I knew you're gonna ask me that question. And I don't actually have a percentage. I've just I suppose a bad way of saying it but I just keep putting the trades on and hope that the probabilities work out so I don't have a particular percentage amount that I've got Okay. When you ask that question Allen: obviously so obviously you know, just putting the trades on hoping they work out that's not working. So we're gonna have we're have to refine this What strategy do you think most appeals to you? Mark: Well, obviously I've been working on the credit spread that's probably the one thing that I've done the most of the credit spreads like I've done in many others, but that's the one that I've probably done the most so in the last few years. Allen: Okay, and are you keeping track record of all the trades that you've been doing? Mark: No, I don't. I have written them down in the past. I do try to follow that put it in a journal, but over time, it just becomes cumbersome I suppose like it's writing it all down. I don't I don't stick to it. It's probably the kind of problem there. Allen: So what you said is you want to franchise, and in the franchise are going to tell you the first thing is to document everything you're doing. Because we cannot tell what's going wrong if we don't know what you already did. So having a firm plan that says okay, I'm gonna put this trade on and writing down why, why am I putting this trade on? Because it's moving higher because it's got news coming out because it's high. It's, you know, very volatile right now or the IV is off or whatever their reasoning is, you put the rig, you put it there, you write the trade, you record what happened, why or why did not work out. And then after you do a whole bunch of these, you can go back and look at it and say, okay, every time I do a trade that's at, you know, 35 Delta, it works wonderfully. But every time I do any other Delta, it doesn't work. So I'm just going to do that 35 delta. So if you want to find your own trading plan, then this is how you do it. Now, this is a long way to do it, it's going to take a long time, because you're going to have to test different things and try different things and see what's working, what's not working. But it would be one way for you to create your own plan based on what you find you're more comfortable in, because some people they come in and they tell me, hey, you know what I want to do Credit spreads, and I want to do 2025 Delta spreads, some people don't want to do five Delta spreads, you know, so everybody's comfortable with different things. And then based on the amount of credit they get, then we can figure out okay, how do we how do we manage the trade, some people should be not managing the trade at all, they should just be getting in and getting out at a certain amount. Some people, they can go ahead and say, hey, my trade is going bad, I'm going to, you know, adjust it or do something else with it. So depending on what we're thinking, when we get in will dictate what we do when we're in the trade. Mark: So now that I know what I do for trades, there are particular entry signals that I looked for, like I don't just go and find a stock and then look up a chain and then play delta and put it on. I do have, like, for example, I think there's market volume, I use volume. So obviously, when volume is increasing, I'll have them put on a put trade, obviously, when the stocks turning or progressing. And obviously over the three averages, like you say, things like that. So there are particular indicators, and not too many I do try and keep it fairly simple, I believe, before I put anything on, so I do try and put the weight in my favor. And the advocate of that, of course, by using those some small indicators to try and get it on sideways or progressing in the in the direction that we think it's going. So I do look at that I'm not a big person, I'm gonna use a 35, Delta, or 45, or whatever. Right? Okay, I understand the Delta side of things. But it's more about volume, I suppose at this stage and what. Allen: Okay, so that that's good to know. Right? So I mean, what I would do is, I probably have a sheet, kind of like a checklist, you know, so get it out of your head, and onto an actual piece of paper, where every single trade you have to mark it off, you know, the volume is high, yes, you know, movement is this way or whatever, whatever your your things are, you check it off. One, two, three.. Mark: I actually have done that I can attest that I have done that I've written down, like when the bar gets lower than the level of bar, it's time to get in or when a turn when it points up. It's getting. So I have written most things down in the past. Yes. Allen: So that'll be your trade law right there. That's if you do if you have the discipline to do that, before you put in the trade, you'll you'll know at the end, okay. You know, just go back to that journal and be like, Okay, what worked and what didn't work? What are the patterns. And that's kind of the stuff that I was doing originally, when I was first starting to figure this stuff out, is look at every single one. And now I have my my checklist, where if there are two or three things that I cannot mark off, I don't put the trade on, because I know that hey, there's not enough, you know, these things are really important. I want them, I don't want to put a trade on without everything checked off. Allen: Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to lose, like you still lose on the trade with everything checked off. But like you said, you know, we're putting the odds in our favor. As many times if you have a checklist, like you said you did. That's your journal right there. And so before you put on the trade, you just mark it off, you know, check, check, check, check, oh, I can't check this one. Then later on, after the trades are done, you do 2030 trades, at least, then you can go back and look at and say okay, I lost on these three trades. What is the pattern I lost on these five trades? What is the pattern? And you might find a pattern, you don't have to but you might find something that say okay, these indicators, you know, they're not working or they are working. The other thing is, I mean, it's, it's really simple, right? You find the strategy that you want. And you said, Hey, I found the strategy. Second step is to find the trading plan, that you think you think will work and then is just test it and trade it and do it over and over over again. But the important part is that you have to stick to the plan. Do you think you stick to the plan, or is it? Is it a discipline? Mark: Tell me, tell me, what got you out? I've read your book or listen to your story. What part got you through that ceiling? Obviously, we're doing the same thing as we all do for such a long period of time. But there must have been something that clicked or something that you did or something did you get into? Was it a program for you? Was it someone that you got? Hold on What, what got you to that next level that we all tried to get to? Allen: It took time, it took discipline, there were a few things that really helped me. One was really sticking to the rules that I had set up. And really, it's about, you know, when it comes down to it, it's about putting the trades on with the odds in your favor as many ways as you can. And I learned about that later on, you know, having different different levels. But what I started to do, and the ones that I really started doing well on, and in the beginning, were iron condors. For some reason, that strategy really, really clicked with me. And I was like, Oh, my God, I gotta work. No, no, it doesn't work right now. But he's like, you know, that strategy really worked. And it was like, Oh, I can adjust it. So I might never lose money in the trades. It's just really awesome. But I still was having trouble following the rules. Because, you know, you have to work that. So there were there were a few ways. Number one is my wife got involved. Allen: So every day, she would, like I would have a list of all of my trades, and I would have all the rules, like when I needed to do what, so every day at a certain time, she would come upstairs because I was working from home and she wasn't she wasn't working. So she would come upstairs. And she would ask me, Okay, let's go through every single trade one by one by one. And so she'd be she'd have her notes. And she's, okay, this trade on Russell. Where is it now? And they go, Okay, this, it's up this much money, or it's down this much money? Okay. When are you going to adjust? Well, when this happens? And they said, where is it now? Say, Oh, it's right here. So do you have to adjust it? No, not yet. Okay, cool. Next one. All right. I did this. Okay. Why did you do this trade? And when are you going to adjust it? Should you have adjusted it? Yeah, I should have adjusted already. Why didn't you adjust it? Ah, I don't know. She's like, Oh, what the hell are you doing?  Mark: All that is basically you got your wife involved? Allen: I mean, not just involved, but she was holding me accountable. So I had to answer because she doesn't need to know anything about trading. But she just needs to look at my rules and ask me the questions like, hey, what's the trade doing? Is it up or down? Why have you not? What are you going to do about it? And if there is something to do about it, what are you going to do? So it's just asking yourself those questions every single day. And it helped. I used to do that on my own. But I would always ignore the answers. Because I didn't have anybody to answer to. It's like, oh, I'm a trader, I'm the boss, I make my I'll make the decisions. But when she came in, I knew I had to answer to her. And if I don't have a good reason, then I'm putting her money on the line as well. Right? I'm putting her future on the line as well. So we would have a discussion about that. So I knew in advance, I knew, Okay, she's coming at one o'clock, I need to make sure I got everything right. I'm doing everything right. Otherwise, we're gonna have an argument. And so I needed her. Like, in the beginning, I wasn't, I was I lost a lot of money. And so the only reason that I didn't have to go out and get a job was because she was patient with me. But it was part of it was like, she's going to be the boss, right? Until I turn it around. And until I break the ceiling, she's the boss. She's going to tell me what I can do what I cannot do based on how I'm doing. And so I call that my one o'clock, you know, fire drill. It's like every day at one o'clock, I still do it. I go through every single trade and I look at it and say okay, is this trade up or down? It's up. Okay, good. Allen: What happens if it goes down a little bit? Am I still going to be okay? Yes. Okay, move on to the next one. And so I don't have time to do that on 100 trades. So that's why I limit the number of trades I have. But every day I go in and I look at it and I monitor it I know where each trade stands. So that before it starts to get into trouble, I know and I can look at it and be like okay, this one I need to monitor this one I need to adjust early or this one I need to maybe just exit it because it's not acting right. It's not acting properly. So It kind of gives me you know, so having that while you go in every day and look at each trade, and everybody does that. But in order to you ask yourself the right questions, and then you have to do what you need to do. So just monitoring the trades, and just checking on them is not enough. You have to know, okay, this is my plan, and I have to do this, then you have to stick to it. And then if you have an accountability partner, or if you have a wife or a child, or whatever, if somebody comes in and asks you, hey, you were supposed to do this, well, why didn't you do it? And then you have to answer to them. So when you have somebody else there, that automatically, I mean, that instantly made me better, like instantly, the first day, second day she came in, you know, I just I just started following the rules, because I knew I had to, I had to give her an answer. So that was one of the things that did it. Allen: The other thing was that I realized that this is a long term game. And so you've read the passive Trading Book. So I wrote that book, because I saw that if you're only selling options, eventually, you don't like the options can go against you. So what I mean by that is, in the financial crisis, when we had the financial crisis in 2008, there was everything was just going up and down. And so if I had options on if I trades on those trades lost, and then I could never get that money back. That's when I realized that, okay, you know, if I want to play the long game, if I want to be in this forever, I cannot let something else knock me out. I cannot let a COVID 19 pandemic knock me out, I can't let the financial crisis I can't let you know, the President making some decision and sending the stocks down, knocked me out. And so I started building up the foundation of stocks, and using those to generate capital on those. And the idea is, hey, I want to own the stocks as my foundation. But I want to use options as basically like a rocket ship, you know, so I wanted to boost the returns. So I'm gonna have conservative stuff in the in the main portfolio, you know, where I have the stocks, and I'm making money. Mark: I totally agree with all right. Yeah. Allen: So, you know, that was now Mark: I totally agree with all that, definitely. Allen: So you can't start off that way. Because it takes a lot of money to own that stocks. So in the beginning, you do have to get good at picking one strategy, getting good at it, just following it and being disciplined, and saying, Hey, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to follow it along. Now, again, long term, picture wise, every month, you're not going to make money, every trade is not going to make money. So you have to have that in your in your mindset that, hey, sometimes it's gonna work, and sometimes it's not. So there's lots of lots of little little things that you can improve on it. But the biggest thing that I'm seeing is that you have to follow the plan. Mark: So Allen, do you think that I would benefit? Like I know you're selling plenty of courses, promote what you promote in the book. And I totally agree with all that, I get it on one side. But if I was to do another course, such as yours, I my fear is, and we're just going down that same rabbit holes, as I've done before, hence why I'm confused as to why I can't seem to break that ceiling. If I was to go into a course such as yours, this one that you're the passive trading and whatnot, I worry that I really fear that a year I am going into it again, I'm doing another course. But I understand the strategy. I think now I need more of a coach, maybe I need maybe that one on one, maybe maybe that's what I need. Or maybe there are things that I'm not happy to admit to that I do that I need to be changed. I need to be molded stead of going down this direction on to be heading over in this little bit direction over here with my trading. I understand the why thing. That's a great thing in my voice. She's a great supporter of me. I am trying to I'm trying to get out of work. She works. I'm trying to get her out, keep trying and trying and time is your course gonna sit me on that path to freedom. Allen: So it's like, you know, I mean, I'll give you an example. Like when people go to college, right? They everybody's told go to college, go to college, some people they go to college, and they just they just party the whole time and they don't get anything out of it. Some people go and they study, study, study, study, study, and they get a good job. Some people go and they make lots of contacts, you know, they they meet, they make lots of friends. They meet lots of teachers so that when they get out, they know a lot of people and they have a good network and then that helps them so it's really up to each person individually. Now I would love to say that yes, every single person that takes my course makes them million dollars. But that's not the reality. You know, people come in, life happens, they take it seriously, they don't take it seriously. And, you know, that's, that's one part I cannot control. So I cannot tell you that, yeah, you know what, it's going to work for you just because it's, I'm amazing. And I'm a wonderful person, and it's just gonna work. 90% of it is on you, I can give you everything I know, I can do it with you. But again, the markets have to cooperate. Number one, and then number two, it has to click for you, you have to do it, and you have to practice it. And you have to stick to the plan. A lot of times when people come into my programs, and they tell me Oh, hey, you know, I'm doing XYZ, I'm like, but that's not what I have in the plan. Allen: That's not what I have in the program. They're like, yeah, no, but I'm changing. I'm like, okay, but have you done it my way? No, not yet. But then why did you join my program, you could do your own way. Without my program, you don't need to pay for my program, right? If you're going to pay for something. And if you believe that, hey, yeah, this guy knows what he's talking about this thing works, I think it works. If you're going to pay for it, then just follow that step by step by step and don't change it. Unless it works.  Allen: When it starts working, then only then would you say, Okay, now I'm going to, you know, change it up, because I think I can, I can be a little bit more aggressive, or, hey, I want to be a little bit more conservative, or I want to change it up a little bit. But you don't do that until it's always working. So the problem is that people that have been doing this for a long time, they know all the strategies, they've listened to many other coaches, you know, they come in, and they're like, Well, you know, I don't like that one thing, I'm going to change, I don't like that thing, I'm going to change. And so they start doing it their own way and they don't listen. And so you can't take stuff from this course and this course and this course and mash it into a Frankenstein, and then tell me "Oh, it didn't work?" Well, because I don't know why that guy told you to do that. And I don't know why that other guy told you to do that. Or the only thing I know is if you do it this way, you'll get the similar results that what I'm doing. Now, if you add and change it, then I can't help. So, you know, like you're saying that we have, I think there's like four pillars that I tell people that people need. So if you want to learn how to do something, you need these four pillars. Number one is you need the right strategy, which you've already said is, hey, that's the credit spread, right? Number two, you need the trading plan that works. So number three, is you need other people to do it with because you're doing it all alone, like you said, you know, you might need a wife, if you don't have a wife or partner like that, then you can have a community or other students that are doing it the same way. Allen: And then number four, you need a coach that can actually show you what he's doing, because he's still doing it. And he's actually doing it right now, instead of somebody that said, oh, yeah, I was a market maker 30 years ago, and I don't trade anymore. So I think those are the four things and depends on which everybody needs. So the coaching part is the one that takes the most time. And that's why those coaching programs are the most expensive. Allen: In my passive trading course. You know, we give you the trading plan. It's like okay, here, this is the plan, these are the rules, you follow it and, you know, good luck. But there's no one on one coaching. There's no group, you know, where we are, where we're doing and looking at the trades. And so when we have that passive trading course, it's a cheaper course. And so people would join it, and they would go through the modules. And some people would have a lot of success, some people wouldn't. So I said, What, what's the problem? Why are they not? Why is it not working? And I realized that it would help if they could just spend a lot more time with me. And so we created that credit spread mastery course, where every week, we get on the call, and we're just looking for trades, we're managing trades, we're adjusting trades, doing it together. So the point of that is, here's the rules. Here's the trading plan. Now let's do it together, over and over and over and over and over and over. And so once you have that habit of doing it the same way over and over and over the other, the other ideas, the other habits kind of die off. So I've seen that that program does deliver results. So we back it up and we say hey, look, if you're in our program, and the program doesn't work, like you don't if you're not profitable in our program, then we keep you in the program. We keep working with you. We keep you in the class until you become profitable. And so even if the markets not cooperating That's fine, we'll learn how to manage it together. And then we'll stay longer in the program, if you'd have to be.. Mark:  So with your target trading alum, obviously, it does take a type of market. And obviously, that's why through the last six months with Covid whatnot, it would be easy Earth to do that type of training, because obviously, it just went straight up didn't keep they're still on put, credit spreads the load of was money for Jim, in a market such as what we're in now, which is up and down, up and down. It's far more difficult, isn't it? Allen: Currently it is more difficult, doesn't mean it's impossible. So we do have to dial back our, we have to dial back our expectations. So last year, the year before, you know, making 10% a month, 7-8% a month, not a big deal, it was pretty simple. You know, put the trades on most of them work out in anybody, and everybody was making money. Like any you know, you could buy anything, and it was going up any everyone is making money. This is a market where you have to be really good at selection, trade selection, and management. So you have to know when things are turning around, and when to get out before they get really bad. Allen: So the trade management, sticking to your stop loss is very important right now. And those are things that most people get afraid of, you know, so it's like, okay, I put the trade on, it should work. And then oh, no, the stocks turning around, what do I do what I do, and they don't do anything. So if your thing is part of, if you're doing as part of a group or in a program, then be like, hey, we need to get out, we need to get out, get out, get out. Some people let people know, Mark: There's that mental component, that's the biggest part. And as I've gone along this journey, if all these years, I've realized more so in the latest year, it's not about the strategy. It's not about all that stuff. That mental side of it, it's 80-20, Mark Douglas, the book, the trading zone, I listened to that over and over and over again, and various other podcasts and whatever other things, but trying to pull the trigger when you're in a loss is it wasn't so hard, we put this trade on, it was gonna work a met the probabilities, it was all looking good, it was under the over the top of the averages. I had volume, blah, blah. But all of a sudden, now I'm underwater again. And here we go again, and then I've got to pull a trigger to get out to take that loss. Mark: And I have taken some big losses in the past, I've had to pull the trigger, just recently with the weekly trading system. And when that I mean, there's Solomon says, I've been there for a couple of weeks, again, I've been on and off over the over many years. And all of a sudden, now I'm having to pull the trigger again to get out because we lose money. Like it's hard. It's another scar, isn't it another scar, not a scar, it's another get back down there. You know, I don't want to see you do any good. It's difficult, you know, and that's that mental side of it is arguments or trading? Allen: Yep. The emotions, you know, the emotions have to be kept in check. So there's different ways that you could do that, you know, one, one of the ways is people say that you divorce or divorce yourself from the outcome. So whether you win or lose, doesn't matter make a Mark: ..difference? Exactly what I totally agree with that. And that skill is very difficult. Allen: Yeah, your job is to just follow the plan and stick to the plan. And if you can do that, eventually, over the long run, it'll work out, you know, maybe you have losing trades, that's fine. But over the long run, it should work out. So too much of it, like you said, you know, like, oh my god, I'm, I'm going to be negative again, oh, my God, I'm gonna have to pull the trigger. And oh, my God, you know, when you have that kind of reaction, that compounds and it just makes it all, it makes it much harder to get out of the trade when there is a loss. The other there's one lady, she told me something that really worked for her. She goes, You know what, this is not my money. This is God's money. And what what are you talking about as God's money? She goes, Well, I use this money. And I use the gains from the money to do good. Because they use it for charity work. So she's like, I don't need the money to live. Because I have enough income I have enough. You know, I have I have money coming in that I live off of. But this is my trading money. And so I take the money that I make, and I give it away to charity, and I do good things with it. So it's really God's money, and I cannot lose God's money. There's no way I can lose money. And so if I'm if I'm going negative, that the trade is losing, I get out right away because I don't want God mad at me because it's not my money. So that's another way you could look at it. That you know, again, it's it's taking yourself out of the outcome, you know, and it's not like okay, it's not under my control. So you've got the wife coming in and asking you what you're doing and why it's working or why it's not working and being accountable. You have you know, not looking at the outcome just getting better as a trader, just hey, I need to do my skills, whether it wins or not, that's not up to me. That's up to the market, I can't control that. But I can follow my plan. That's up to me. The other thing is, you know, not looking at it in emotional point of view, like, Hey, this is not my, maybe this is my kid's mind. Maybe this is, you know, God's money, however you want to look at it, but it's not yours. So if you lose it, it's bad. Like, that's the worst thing to happen. You know. So there's, there's three different ways that you can mentally overcome the different obstacles. But again, I think one thing that we haven't talked about yet is to simplify, right? So you've done all the different strategies, and I'm sure, you know, some of it is creeping in. And, you know, it's like, oh, you know, I got to do this, or I'm going to, I'm going to wait for this indicator, or I'm going to wait for these Bollinger Bands, or the Fibonacci, or the technicals, or any of that stuff, the more you simplify it, the easier it becomes to actually follow through with it. And so I think, you know, just one strategy, not chasing after the shiny object, you know, it's like, Hey, make a decision. If it's spread, spreads, and that's the only thing you focus on, and you get rid of everything else, you stopped listening to everything else, you unsubscribe from all the emails, you know, whatever, whatever service that you choose, like, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to follow this plan, I'm going to, you know, if you've taken a course, maybe you've already taken a course, you have a course that you've tak`en and be like, Okay, I like this course, I'm going to follow this course, we'll get rid of everything else. Just go through it. Master that and don't do anything else until you know what that is, until you get the results that you're supposed to get it. In the beginning, when I started screwing up, like I would learn something, and then I would do good for a little bit and then I would mess up. And then I would do good, then I would mess up. So I was like, What the hell do I do? Well, I would always go back to the basics. I would imagine that I don't know anything. And I would go back to step one. Okay. What is a call? What is the put? What am I doing here? What is the strategy? How am I supposed to put it on? What are the rules and I gotta follow them step by step by step, not like, oh, you know, I'm gonna, I think this stock is gonna go down or or, you know, there's a Fibonacci retracement level, and there's some support here. So I don't have to adjust. No, forget all that stuff. I don't know any of that stuff. All I know, is the strategy and my trading plan. And that's it. And so that was, you know, you go back to the basics. And that will change your mentality of it, like, Okay, how do I manage the trade? How do I deal with this? Allen: Again, if there's other things involved, like stress, you know, if you're under a lot of stress, you're going to make the wrong decisions. If it has to work. If I have to make money this month, from my trades, you're going to make the wrong decisions. It's not going to work out in the long term. So there was a there was something another trick that one of our one of our students taught me. And now everybody can't do this. Most people can't do this. But what he does, is that he takes whatever money he makes trading this year. He will live off that next year. So when he's trading next year, he doesn't have to live off that money. Because he already has the money set aside from the last year. If that makes sense. Mark: You need a big bankroll sounds like a real estate agent. Allen: Yeah, you need Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was. He was a politician. But, um, he has obviously, other people's money then. So I mean, he did have, you know, he had, he had a large account to do that. But eventually, that would be the best thing to do. You know, you have you already know your expenses are covered. Right? Now, you're only focusing on the plan and focusing on on just winning and just trading properly. It's not it takes the emotion out of so whatever you can do, whatever trick you can use to get that emotion out of it, that will make you a better trader. One, one more thing that that that that I've seen is happening to me is, the more you do it, the more of a habit it becomes. So if you do, you know, 50 trades, that's a lot better than five trades, but 500 trades is a lot better than 50 trips, if you do them properly with the right practice. So eventually, you get to the point where Oh, it's just another trade. It's not a big deal. It's just another trade. There's another one coming. So if I get if I hit my stop loss, yeah, it hurts. I hate it. But it's Just another trait, you know, I'm going to move on, move on to the next one, move on to the next one, because every month is a different ballgame. So you start over, you get to start over again and again and again. And so that is another trick that you would help in the long run. But again, you know, you have to, in before all of that happens, you have to have the confidence that this actually works. Mark: So what do I truly do believe in? Allen: Yes, you say that you say that. But then you also say that, you know, I can't do it. It's not working. It's not working. But you, you you've heard it that it works, you want to believe that it works. But I don't think you have that conviction yet that it works. And so the only way to get that conviction is to get it done for yourself. Right? And so it might be that you take a maybe you take a step back, and you go even simpler. And you say you don't want not the credit spreads, how about I do something like maybe a naked put, right, in a naked put, I'm going to make money if the stock doesn't go down. And it'll expire. And then I'll sell another one. And I'll sell another one. And I'm going to sell it far out of the money. So that I just when I just make that 20 bucks, or that $30 or whatever it is that small amount I'm just going to make month after month after month trade after trade I'm going to make and if the stock drops, okay, no fine, I can buy the stock, no big deal, I'll buy the stock. And then I'll sell covered calls on that stock. And so the covered call will expire, and I'll make something the covered call was expired, the next month will expire, and I'll make something so you build up that confidence that you know what, there is a way to do this. That's another option, you know, if you want to go that route, so you really got to figure out like, okay, you know, it's a, it's a personal thing, I wish I could just tell you that, hey, this is the one thing you need to do. But for everybody, it's different. And unless I spent a lot more time with you, unless I see all of your trades, unless I see you know, your emotion, how you handle the emotions, I won't be able to tell you. So that's kind of like in our in our program, what we do is we tell we give everybody a spreadsheet, and we say, hey, look, you have to fill out the spreadsheet, you have to put every single trade on the spreadsheet. And then they shared with me so that I can go in and I can look at them. You know, I could look at the tray. And I'll go in I'll see like, why did he do this trade? This doesn't make any sense to me. And I'm calling this Hey, John, why did you do this tray? Allen: And he goes, well, no, that's not gonna work. And he goes, okay, okay, fine, I'll do it. All right, done. You know, and if they're doing all the trades, right, then it's probably working. And most of the time, it's not working, like if they're not making money, then we can identify, Okay, what are what is not going right? You know, there was one of our current students, he was doing several trades, and he was still negative. So I looked at his spreadsheet, and I'm like, Okay, what's going on? What do I see, and his trade entries were great. You know, he was picking the right stocks, he was doing it properly. But whenever he lost, he would lose a lot more than he should have. He just wasn't getting out early on time. And so that was the biggest thing is like, you're not getting out. This is it, you know, your losses are too big. Doesn't matter how many trades, you win, your losses are still too big, you're still going to be negative. And so we worked on that. And then over time, he got better at getting out earlier and earlier and earlier. But he had, you know, he had somebody to look at that and to point it out, and to hold him to it. So that eventually he did it over and over and over again. And then by the end of the class, he was positive. He was like, Yeah, I fixed it. Again, that's all you need to do. That was he needed that one thing, everything else is simple. The training plan I could give you, you know, you could go do it on your own. But the discipline part of it, that's sometimes where we need help from somebody else. And so whether you know, it might be a wife might be somebody else, it might be a trading partner, somebody you work with, it might be a coach. So I think that might be one thing that you could implement. Mark: So just quickly, what what's the key points in a trading plan make like entry criteria, stop losses or that sort of stuff. Is there anything else that I can many points or rules should be in a trading plan? Like what I try and put a trading plan together, that is doable and simple to follow. To look at rather a complicated bloody list of all this crap, what would be a good trading plan? Allen: So, you want it to be simple and easy to implement. But you don't want it to be too simple, where it's just broad, like anything can happen. So, you know, I've seen people that have a trading plan that says, I'm going to do an iron condor on this stock 45 days to expiration, I'm going to sell a 10 Delta calls and sending out the puts. And that's it. That's my whole plan, and I'm just gonna sit and let it expire. That's a trading plan. It's very simple, right? You know, what you're going to do you know, what you're going to how you're going to do it, you know, what you're going to trade it on. And you know, when. And so now that pretty good plan doesn't work. So whoever's listening don't don't do that one. We've back tested that, and it didn't work. But there are, there are times there are several months where it does work, just because it has, you know, 80% probability, but over time, it doesn't. So that's the basics, you got to know what you want to trade, you need to know the strategy, you got to know what you want to trade. And then you have to know what constitutes a good setup. So when it comes to credit spreads, you mentioned credit spreads. So I like to do that, depending on the size of the of the trade, if it's a you know, maybe a $5000 $10,000 trade, then I'll go into I can go into a stock, or I'll go into an index ETFs are good, too. But they're their strikes are a little bit smaller. So you got to do a lot more contracts. But if I can go into a stock that has, you know, five point spreads, and I do 10 of them. That's a $5,000 trade. That'll work. Allen: So you can, what do you want to trade? And then what's the proper setup? So for me, again, I like to keep it simple. So if I see a stock that's trending, as moving up, or moving down, then I'm happy to trade it. Because I'm, I'm more of a trend follower, you know, so there's people that think, okay, if the stock is gonna go up, it's going up, it's going to keep going up until something big changes, there are other people that think the opposite. They're like, Oh, if it's going up, they just kind of come back down, because it's gonna do reversion to the mean. And sometimes that works. And sometimes it doesn't. So I don't really buy that I just like, hey, if it's going up, then it's telling me that it wants to go higher. So that's basically what I'm looking for. In a setup, I'm looking for the stock to tell me what it wants to do. So if I see a stock that's jumping up and down, no, I don't know what it's doing. I don't know what it's telling me, I can't understand the language, I'm not going to trade it. If it's going up, then I'm going to play it bullish. If it's going down, I'm going to play bearish. And sometimes, you know, it turns around and you get banked, but most of the time it's going to work out. So that's the kind of setup I'm looking for. And then over the years, you know, we've added other things to look at, you know, how do you make sure that all of your trades are not in the same sector? Right now, you know, right now, oil has been doing well. So all of the oil companies were doing great. But then they all turned around and went down all together. So if you have 10 trades on in different oil companies, that's not that's not diversification. That's the same trade. And so if they turn around, I'm going to turn on together. So that would be one way of putting the odds in your favor by having you know, only a small portion of your account in one sector. So you have to separate that. How do you diversify by time? You know, so not putting all your trades on on the same day. That's another way to do it. So you diversify by time. So there's so many different ways that you can do it, some of them might make sense to you some might not. And then, you know, we have other students that come in and say, Well, I do it, you know, I look for this also in my trade, like, Okay, if that's what you want to add to it, then add it. Don't subtract things that I've given you. But if you want to add to it, one student said that he likes to look at the weekly chart, I usually look at the daily chart, see how the stock is doing. He likes to look at the weekly chart as well. Allen: So I'm like, Okay, fine, you can add to it, you know, if it doesn't hit your criteria on the weekly chart, then just means you'll have less trades that qualify, but it's not gonna it's not going to put you into a trade that's going to hurt. So when you're basically you just have to figure out what you think is going to work. And then you have to test it. So back testing, and paper trading are really really, really helpful. Especially back tests, Mark: I find paper trading useless. To be honest. You lose interest very quickly. It's very easy to lose in that type of trading. Yeah, go ahead. I've done a little bit of paper trading and I've just found that I find okay, it's gone the wrong way. But I got it wrong. You just let it go. Because it doesn't mean anything. It has no significance, does it? Start with money trading? Yeah. You've got a connection heavenly with the with the live trading, because actually, it's not your money tied to it. Allen: It's not your money. It doesn't matter what the style of the trade does, you're only focusing on becoming a better trader, the goal is not to make more money, the goal is to become a better trader. Right? It's kind of like playing poker. It's like when you when people go to play poker, right? They'll professionals, they'll tell you that if they play their hand perfectly, and they lose, they're okay with it. Right? If they play, if they mess up, and they still win, they're still mad at themselves. Because I didn't play it right. I didn't play my cards, right? Even though I won, I don't care, because long run, it's going to hurt them. If they keep playing incorrectly in the long term, it's going to hurt them. So that's the goal to become the better trader. And the end results, the profits will take care of themselves. So paper trading is practice. That's all it is. Right? If you didn't need to take that on board. It's slow practice. Back testing, I prefer back testing way better than paper trading. Because you can go really quick. You know, if you if you come up with a plan, like okay, these are my criteria, I got these seven criteria on my trading plan. I'm going to enter when I see this, this and this. I'm going to exit when this happens. I'm going to adjust it this way If this happens, okay, I got that right and down, and that you can even just come up with your you can just guess No, I think this one's good. This one's good. That's my plan. Okay. You pick. You pick a stock, spy. Great, perfect. You go back to yours in time. January 1, put the trade on. How does it do? Oh, it made money. Awesome. Cool. February, how do you do made money? Great. March. Oh, we lost a lot of money. Doing it, huh? Okay. APR, how do you do? And then just do it month by month, I want back testing one month or one trade, you know, might take you five or 10 minutes. And so you can get years worth of practice in just a few days by back testing. And you'll find that Mark: It's something that I've never done is back testing. Is there a particular software that's adequate for that sort of stuff? I've never really looked down that line. I've heard about it. I've listened to it, but I've never actually really done it myself. Is there anyone ticular that would be worthy. Allen: The one that I use, the one that I use is called the option net explore. option that explore? Yeah, and I think I think they're based out of Great Britain. And so basically, it's, it's an options selling platform, you know, so it looks like your broker's platform, you put the trade on, and you go through it day by day by day. And it doesn't do it all for you, you actually have to look at it every single day. And if you want to make changes, you can make changes to it. That's what I like about it. There are other software's that you just put in the strategy, you press a button and it'll tell you "Oh, you made money or you lost money". That's not the point. We want to get better as a trader. Right. And so this one is like, Okay, I put the trade on, click a button. Oh, stock is down today. Do I need to do anything? No. Okay, next stage. Oh, stock is back up again. I don't have to do anything. Next stage. Oh, stock is down again. Oh, no, I'm at an adjustment point. Okay, what adjustment am I going to make? I'm going to do this adjust. Okay, cool. Let's see, did it work out? Go there forward today forward a day forward a day. Oh, expiration day stop. It worked. So it's, it's just, you know, there's no money, right? It's just about becoming a better trader. It's just about getting the practice doing it over and over and over again. So that I think would definitely help you as well. Mark: Okay, so one of the things obviously, we talked about discipline and the mental game, what's probably the best thing to follow, or to train your mental strength, like, as you said, like a paper trade or a live trade, you should be able to make that same decision, then in there without any emotional war. What's the best way to get to that level of trading where you whether you win or lose, it's just business as usual? Allen: Yeah, I've done to you have to divorce yourself from the outcome, whatever, whatever that takes for you. For me, in the beginning, it was getting my wife because I knew how I would have to answer to her. Mark: And scary Allen: I didn't have it. Exactly. It has to be scary. Because if you do it properly, she cannot get managed. Right? It's like, Hey, I followed the rules, babe. I did everything I was supposed to do. It still didn't work out and she'll be like, Okay, fine. That's no problem. But if you do not follow the rules, that's when she gets manage. And that's when it gets scary. So yes, you have to make it scary for you not to follow your rules, because a lot of us a lot of US traders, like, if we lose money, yeah, we don't we get mad about it, we're like, oh, man, I lost money, we feel bad about ourselves. But it doesn't hurt enough. You know, it's kind of like these people that say, Hey, I want to lose some weight. You know, so they make a goal, I'm gonna lose some weight, I'm gonna lose some weight, they tell everybody, and they do it for a few days, and then they give up. But then there's this website, that what, what this website, basically what it does is, you have to pick a, maybe a political party, or a person or some organization that you hate, you actually hate them. And you have to put up a lot of money and say, Okay, if I don't stick to my goal, this organization is going to get $5,000 or $10,000. So that makes you because it's now becomes a different level. It's not about just the money, or about doing the thing. It's like, okay, you know, let's say, for example, I don't want to give my money to anybody like the Save the whale Foundation, right? I don't want to, I don't want to give my money to the whales, I hate whales, I want them all to die. I don't want anybody to save the whales. So if I don't lose 10 pounds, they're gonna charge my credit card $5,000 and give it to the whales, and I hate whales. So I want to do whatever I have to do to lose that money to lose that weight. You know, because I don't want that well to be saved. You have to want something more than what you have. So there's, that's another psychological trick. No, in trading? We sometimes we get used to it, you know, it's like, oh, last? Oh, well, you know, we get used to it. And it just, we gotta it's just the mental part of it. Mark: Definitely, definitely, it's a huge part of it. Something I didn't I didn't realize, until much later down the track of trading, how big a part of mental side of it really is. Allen: I mean, if you find trying to avoid is difficult. Yeah. So if you find yourself having a problem with discipline, make it simpler, cut it down, make it as simple as possible. Find the trade that you know will like you know, the naked call or the naked put the covered call, these are very simple trades, they're really hard to mess it up. Right? On the naked put, if you get assigned the stock, hey, that's great. I just bought the stock much cheaper than it was before. And I'm going to own it. So you want to you want to do it on companies that you're going to own you want to own for a long period of time. That's the only way it really works. You can't you can't be selling naked puts on stocks that are just, you know, going crazy. That's the wrong way to do it. So you know, if you can simplify it, if you can find some way to have somebody else monitor you, and hold you to your fire, you know, hold your feet to the fire like, hey, you need to follow this, why aren't you doing this? Or, hey, it's not my money. Right? I'm doing it for somebody else. This is my kids inheritance, right? I cannot mess it up. So I have to follow the rules. One guy, when I was in, just after high school, I became an agent, a real estate agent. And as an agent, as a brand new agent, they tell you that you have to do a lot of things that you don't want to do. You have to talk to hundreds of people all the time, you have to cold call, people say Oh, Hi, are you doing? Do you want to sell your house? Oh, hi, do you wanna say, Well, you know, they have to keep doing things that you don't want to do. So it was like, okay, in the guy, the guy is like, hey, most of you guys are not going to do it. But if you want to be really, really, really motivated, what you need to do is go out and buy a fancy sports car. Sounds like what you're talking about, what do you do a fancy sports car? Because yeah, you need to go out and buy an expensive sports car so that you have that payment that you have to make at the end of the month. And so that is going to make you work your butt off because you have to make the payment. And as I go I mean, I understand what he was saying. I was like, No, I'm not doing that. But then eventually I didn't make it as a realtor. Maybe if I did do that, maybe I just didn't do the work that he told you to do. I just didn't do it. It wasn't the reward wasn't worth it for me. Mark: It was up to risk, I suppose. Yeah, Allen: I mean, you know, so with your training, you got to figure it out. Is it really worth it? Is the goal that hey, I want to quit my job. Is it I want my wife to quit her job. I want the kids to have this vacation or whatever it is. You have to burning. Yes, just eat you up every single day. You have to really really, really want it Mark: Explain to me how and it's burning me. Allen: Then the discipline has to stick. Because if you want it, but you're not disciplined, and your losses are too big, then it's it's not there yet. So I think, you know, if you don't have a trading plan, I'll just give you the training. You know, I mean, it's not that hard. It's not it's, it's the training plan helps. But it's up here. And it's the practice just doing it over and over and over again and having confidence in the plan. Because then if you have confidence, you'll stick to it. If you don't have confidence, you're going to change it, you're going to you're going to add things to it, you're not going to follow it, you're going to forget about it. Like with the paper trading, that's exactly what that is, you know, so it's not real. So, oh, well, I'm gonna ignore it. I'm gonna forget about I'm gonna do that.  Allen: That really resonated with me Allen's that that point, like, go back to the paper trading, treat it like it's somebody else's money, and then make it work. Don't look at it as just as being as a fake account, that doesn't matter. Allen: I mean, I wouldn't Yeah, I would prefer you do back testing, it'll be much faster. Mark: To look at that I'll get, I'll get onto that particular site that you've made. Yeah, Allen: That'll give you years of experience in just a few days. And so, to me, that's like the best way you can do it. But if you know, if somebody is listening to this, and they can't afford that software, paper trading is free. And you can do it. Just Just treat it seriously. Treat it like real, and just follow the plan. And you'll see, because if other people can do it, you can do it. I'm talking to you. You're a very smart man. You know, if you understand what a strangle is, and and all the other things you taught me, you know that you told me, Oh, you're doing this. And we're doing that. And if you understand that part, you can get this. It's nice. Not that much. Mark: I know I can do it. I know I can I honestly believe in my heart, that of all the work and the discipline. Part, probably not so much the discipline, I suppose. But the tenacity that I have. I know I can get there. My wife, she just can't understand why I'm not there yet. She says you've worked so hard at this for so long, why aren't we living a better life than what we are now? Not that we're destitute and desperate, we're not we're doing we're doing fine. We both work with secure all that stuff. But I want to take it to here. I don't want to be just going through life normal and just crunching the wheel everyday living in a rat race. I've done that I want to I can succeed. I know I can do it. I've just got to find a way through. It's why we're here, I suppose. Allen: Yeah, I hear you. I feel it. You know, I was I was in your shoes for a long, long time. But, you know, part of it is sometimes, and I don't like talking about this too much. But the whole nature of options trading it, there's a lot of money to be made by teaching people how to trade options. There's a lot of people out there that don't trade options that teach people how to trade options. And they have no clue what they're doing. They're putting out information. You know, we've had people that joined our program, and then took our stuff and start selling it. And they don't know they never used it. You know, they're just oh, I learned this. And I learned this and I'm going to start become a coach. But you don't do it yourself. Right. But somebody else listening to that guy doesn't know that he doesn't know how to do. And so it calls into question like, okay, all the stuff that you have been learning. I hope that it's been correct. But we don't know. So that's another thing. Like, if you feeling overwhelmed, if you are feeling like Man, I've learned so much. And I'm studying this guy, and I'm studying this podcast, and I'm listening to this, I'm listening to that. Sometimes what you need is just a vacation from all of it. Mark: I have done that over time. Now I had stopped that period of time where I felt like it's too much or I've had a few losses. And in some of this during that time it says walk away for a while, take a break. And and at periods I've gone No, no, I've got to keep that I've got to keep at it. I've got to keep moving forward. But then I've probably learned as time has progressed, that it maybe just walk away for a few weeks, even maybe a couple of months. Just go and do something else for a while. But I always gravitate back to it. I always keep coming back.  Allen: You can come back, you can come back. But what I'm saying is that don't make it too complicated. If you're listening to too many people, if you're listening to too many voices, then it just becomes too overwhelming. And even listening to so many like success stories, you know, everybody has success stories. If you just listen to that and say oh my god, this guy's making this much money. This guy's making this much money. He's good. Why can't I do it? What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I you know, am I stupid? Or am I First or what? It's, you know, everybody has a different path. And so, you know, sometimes you just gotta stop listening. You know, no more marketing gimmicks, no more marketing emails, no more webinars, no more, none of that. Focus on that one thing that you decided to do, you know, pick that one strategy, it's like, I'm going to focus on this strategy, this the only thing I'm going to learn about this, the only thing I want to listen to, and you go back to the basics, you start from scratch, you keep a record of all of your trades, you figure out the pattern, what's going on, you learn it, and then you just go from there and build on that. And I think.. Mark: So what did that, that comes back to that trading plan doesn't have a number of headings in there? Why did you went up? What day did you enter? Where was your stop loss? Why did you not take it out? I suppose there is a number of things that can be headlined in your journal, then you would have to account for as the trade progresses through to the end. Allen: Yeah, I mean, we have a we have a presentation, a video that we show people. And basically, what I did was I took nine years of credit spread trades. And I put them, you know, like, these are all my real money trades, if I started with $100,000, and I put 20% into each one. So you know, 20,000 20,000 to five trades, right? Of all the trades that I did, I looked at I went back nine years, I looked at all the spreads that I did, if I had done that and put 20% into each trade. Now, every month, I didn't have five trades. So I didn't have all the money invested. If I started with 100,000, at the end of nine years, I had 1.1 million. So that tells me that, okay, you know what my trading plan kind of worked. Right? The trading plan worked, the strategy works, you gotta give it long enough. Some years were really good. Some years, we lost money. But over the long term, with real trades, I was able to make the work. And so you know, in terms, a lot of people say, oh, I need to learn adjustments. Okay, that's one way you can increase your odds. If you learn adjustments --true. But if you want to just go back to simplicity, just make it as simple as possible. Put the trade on, if you make 10%, you get out, you lose 25%, you get out. Now, you know, I mean, I could teach you a hundred other things to add on to that. But if you want the simple, the simplest way to do it, find a credit spread that works that looks good to you. Try to make 10% temporary, you make 10%, you get out, you don't get greedy and try for 15 or 20, or whatever, you make the 10 you get out you make 25 or you lose the 25% you get out you don't you never lose more than two and a half times what you could make. And that was that's your plan right there. That would work. That's what I was doing before. So you know, I got a history Hey, yo, a real money. This is not back testing. Just this is real trades. It works. So, you know, the problem is, we don't always stop when it's down 25% We don't always stop when it's up 10%. You know, there's been many times when I started when I was when I was getting started. I was up 10% on a trade. And I'd be like, you know what, no, I'm going to make 14%. Allen: If I go to 40, if I let it go to expiration, I'm going to make 14%, I want the 14% I don't want to. I don't want to get out of the trade now. It's only got a week left. You know what's going to happen in a week, a lot could happen in a week. And then that thing would turn around, it would take back all the money that I made, and it would give me a big loss. And those are like oh my god, my stomach. Somebody just punched me in the stomach. Oh my god, I've got to die. Because not only did you give back all that money, but now you have this huge loss you're sitting on and you feel like you're the stupid schmuck in the world. So, you know, just stick to the rules. You'll feel better about yourself.  Mark: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Definitely. That's what I made on a set of rules. Just follow. Allen: Had this helped? Mark: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it's been good is there's been a few aha moments. And yeah, I just got to stick at it and take into paper trading thing. I think I'd definitely take that on. Have another look at that and try and treat it differently as opposed to just artists fake money. So to practice again, doesn't matter. The wife thing I might have to get her involved and as much as she doesn't really want to be involved in training. She's not interested in one or the other. But I'll have to probably get her into look over my shoulder and as you say, Make me accountable, more accountable. I suppose. I've got no trouble Follow the strategy. I've got no trouble following above averages and looking at the deltas and stuff like that. I think it's more the discipline thing is probably.. probably the key thing and taking that 25% loss rather than thinking like that, we'll come back, we'll come back, like now at the moment, look at the market, we're in the moment. It's not easy, peasy, no, it's gonna bounce, we're gonna bounce, we're going to bounce, but it's just keeps going down doesn't, we're in a bear market. Allen: You have to trade the market that you have, not the one that you want. So that's where that's where your your setup will keep you out of trouble. You know, so you want to like I said, you want to have the odds in your favor, as many as possible. So if you have all the indicators, or whatever your whatever your checklist is, you know, you got to make sure that they you check them all off. Otherwise don't do the trade. Mark: Yes, just want to get back to the COVID times when the market is frustrated off again. Allen: I don't think those days are coming back for a long time. This is the new normal, you know, where the Fed is the most important part, the Fed is.. Mark: I know inflation over there is raising interest rates is obviously a big thing in the States at the moment. But over here, we're having similar things happen as well. inflation's like interest rates, rock bottom for a long time. But now we're starting to move back up again. And it's really shaking things up. And people, I think, probably a lot of overextended over a period of time, because everything was so cheap. And now everything's starting to go back up again. everyone's freaking out. And it's obviously shaking the markets up this bear market downturn? Allen: Yep. Yep. I mean, it was, you know, we could see it coming. You know, we could, you could predict it be like, hey, when they start raising rates, stocks are gonna stop going up. They have to go down. So like, I've been predicting it, like, Yeah, we're gonna have a bear market, when they announced, hey, we're thinking of raising rates in the US, you know, when the US Fed announces that, we're thinking of raising rates, that's going to be the top, that day is going to be the top and then it's just gonna go down. And that's exactly what we've seen. So, you know, there are still there are some things that we're looking at, like, Okay, if we see this, and if we see this, we might be putting in a bottom, but I don't think we're there yet. And this volatility is something that we're gonna have to get used to the ups and downs. So, you know, that means when you have a trading plan, and it's been working, but then it stops working, because the market changes, then you as a trader, you have to trade with, you have to change with it. So you have to either trade a different plan, or get a different strategy. So, you know, like, like I said, in the financial crisis, I knew a lot of guys, and I was one of them, that was just doing iron condors all the time, every month, iron condor, easy, easy, 10% every month, but then the market changed, and the condors didn't work anymore. And there were people that didn't adjust, and they didn't change themselves. And they lost whatever money they had, they had to go back to work. You know, they just couldn't make that change and shift. So now we're in a more volatile market. So having resources on your side, you know, having a community having a coach or other people that are trading working with you, it's more important now than ever before. You know, Mark: Now, I think it's been very worthwhile today is reading that was fantastic. It's sort of revisit, there's so many things that have resonated in there with that. It's listen to podcasts, and people's success stories has been fantastic. And what you said today, certainly put a lot of thought in my head, where I definitely need to revisit a lot of those points that you've made today. I know I can do it. I know I can do it. I just just got to break through that ceiling. And I suppose I'm still going to do that. Allen: Yeah, I mean, by talking to you, I know I can tell you know, you have the desire you have everything you need, is there just there's just something there's just one or two little tweaks that we got to make up here. Once that clicks, then then it's gonna start working. That's all that's all it is. And.. Mark: I suppose to claim is definitely one of those things, the wife and the perpetrator. There are three things I've probably taken out of today's discussion. Allen: Yeah, and if you do the right thing, you know, she doesn't know she doesn't have to know how to trade. She just has to be able to ask you the questions. Like, Hey, let's go through every single trade. What's going on in the trade? And what are you going to do if it goes bad? You know, and when. And if you haven't done it, why, why didn't you change it? Mark: Follow the 25% loss   Allen: Yeah, if that's if that's the thing, then die she comes in, and she's like, Okay, what's the trade? Apple? Okay? When are you gonna get out? When I'm down 25% Okay, where are you right now? I'm down. 27% Why are you still in the trade? Okay, I'm getting out right now. And then that's it, that will keep you at your losses to around 25%. And so if your gains are 10, and your losses are 25, you should you shouldn't be profitable. You know, the numbers just worked out. Allen: Again, markets a little bit crazy right now. But once things, once thing settled down. It's gonna, you know, everything's gonna clip again. So even now, like we had, in you mentioned, the passive trading formula course, you know, we had a, we had one of our students on this week on the last call, and he said, Yeah, you know, I did nine credit spreads this month. And they all won. You know, even in this craziness, he had nine trades, they all won. So, you know, there's still people doing it, it's still working. So give me give me give me give me like to take like two things, you're going to do two steps, like two activities or two takeaways that you get that you're going to implement? Mark: I think I'm gonna revisit the pilot training, I'm definitely gonna look at that and try and utilize that more. Okay, sure. And I keep thinking the wife, I've got to bring the wife in, but I don't want to do that. That's, that's gonna be hard.  Allen: Why is it gonna be hard? Mark: Well, anyway, she's not interested for a start. But if she.. Allen: Is she interested in the money? Yes? That's it. She doesn't have to care what you're doing. You just have to ask you questions. You know, and it's just, you know, like, for as a man, as a husband, you want her to be happy and you don't want her mad at you. And that's the that's the emotion. Right? So if it's if it's the wow factor. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's the will factor. Oh, damn well. Okay. All right. So I hope this has helped you. I want you to stay in touch. Keep me apprised of what's going on? And if there's anything we can do, please let me know. Mark: I'm definitely going to be in a much better place. Next time we talk. JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

So a common question that we get is, when you sell a credit spread, can you get assigned? And so the idea is that, you know, if I'm in the middle of a trade, what happens? Or at the end of the trade? What happens? So there are different connotations here. So the answer really is yes and no, because in trading, nothing is black and white, right? Nothing is just on the line. So let's go through this a little bit longer. So you would think it's a very easy answer, but it's going to take a little bit of explanation. So number one, there are two types of options, right? There's the European style option. And then there's the American style option, the European style option cannot be assigned early. So you stay in a trade, nothing happens. And then at the end of the trade, you'll see what happens, right? So early assignment does not happen. These are index options, SPX rut and a lot of futures options. So you'll have to check which future option you're trading to find out if it's early assigned, or European, or American style, American style options can get assigned early. So there's a risk of that happening whenever you're trading an American style option, which are options on most stocks, just about every stock, and just about every ETF. So again, first thing you know of, is there going to be early assignment. And that is going to be determined on if it's American style or European style. Secondly, what causes early assignment? Well, if you're in the money, there's a good chance of getting assigned. And if there is very little time left. So if there's only a few days left in the trade, or until expiration, there's a good chance that you can get assigned, of course, it's not guaranteed. But if there's a lot of time, chances are very little that you will get assigned. And if you're out of the money, most likely you will never get assigned. But again, there's no guarantees. Okay? Now, a lot of people wonder is like, Okay, if I let my option, my credit spread, go into expiration, and the short strike is in the money, but the long strike is not what happens, then? Well, again, we'll say that it's a American style option. Let's say you did it on a stock or an ETF, right? So can you get assigned? And the answer is yes. If it's in the money, you will probably get assigned. Okay, now, that's not a big a fear, or a big thing happening, as you might be afraid it is. A lot of newbie traders are totally scared about assignment. And they're like, oh, no, I don't want to get that high. Sorry, I don't know what's gonna happen to my account, I might not have enough money, blah, blah, blah, yeah, don't worry about it, it's not a big deal. Even if you don't have enough money, there'll be a negative sign in your account, you'll get a margin call. And all you have to do is just get out of that stock position. So if you're assigned stock, you just sell it there. If you're short stock, then you just buy it back, and you do an exit order. And it's all taken care of the day after. So usually, if it's assigned on a Friday, let's say expiration is on a Friday, then on Monday, when the market opens up again, all you got to do is just exit. If you don't exit it, your broker will do it for you. So yeah, I mean, it won't be as good a price and you don't want that. But if that happens, then the broker will will get you out. So it's not as big a deal as people think it out to be. So again, can you get assigned with a credit spread? If it's American style, you can get assigned early, before expiration, if you go into expiration, and your short strike is in the money, most likely, you will be assigned almost all the time. Doesn't happen every single time. But usually, if it's in the money, there's a trigger at your broker, and it's it's gonna go into assignment. Now, how does that work on the money center? You know, the money side of it? Well, it depends on how much it's in the money. So let's say you sell a $5, wide spread, okay, you sell the 100. And you sell the 105. Okay, let's say it's a call spread. So you sell the 100, you buy the 105, the stock ends at 101. So it's $1 in the money. So that is how much you would lose, you would lose that $1 In the money. But you got a credit. Let's say you got a let's say you got $1 credit. So now you're still at breakeven, but you get assigned the stock. Right now you sold a call. So you have to give up the stock. Right? You have to get rid of you have to sell the stock because you sold a call and your call got assigned. You don't have the stock because it was a spread. So now you would be short 100 shares for every contract. Okay? So when the market opens, it'll show that you are short 100 shares and then you just have to buy that stock back and you'll be out. Really, you need to find out what the PNL is after you get out of that stock position. Now, sometimes what people do is they say, Hey, you know what, I don't mind buying the stock, I'll sell a put spread. And if it goes in the money, I'll buy the stock. You can do that. A lot of times you can, you can do that. And that will be fine. So depending on what you want to do, depending on how your process is, but yes, you can get assigned early in a spread. Again, if it's in the money, and there's very little time left expiration. So those are the two things to look for. Or at expiration. If it goes into the money, can you get assigned? Yes. All right. So again, it's not a big deal. It's not the craziest thing in the world, it happens sometimes, if you don't want it to happen, all you got to do is exit the trade early. And that's it, that's probably the best way to do it. You don't want.. if you're if your short strike is going to be in the money on a call, unless you want to be assigned. Just don't do it just get out early, and you'll be fine. So again, you know, I always say that, whatever you're afraid of sometimes you got to experience it once, right? So if this is something that is really causing you a hang up really doing like really scared, well, then I would say you probably do like a one point widespread. If you could find something that's a one point widespread or something, do a really small trade or short, like not very expensive stock or something and let it get assigned. Just do it. Just let it let the fear out. Let it happen, whatever you're afraid of let that happen. And you'll see what happens. You see Oh, wow. Okay, no big deal. Click, click, click out, done. You know, yes, you might lose a little bit money because you let it go too far and you're on the wrong side of the trade. But the world didn't end your style, your account didn't blow up, you know, the brokers not sending the police to knock your door down and take your house or anything like that. So no big deal. Just let the worst thing happen sometimes and you know, in a small way, not in a big way and small way. Try it out and see what happens and you'll learn something again. Thanks for Thanks for visiting and showing and watching. (He) didn't show me anything but yeah, thanks for visiting. I'll see you again in the next episode.

Do you have questions about trading? And about Options? Or maybe investing? Well, if you do, ask, and we'll get you an answer. So in our Facebook group, which is a public group, anybody can join, you can go there by going to freeoptionsgroup.com, FREE-OPTIONS with "s" group.com. You can go there. And there's a post called the post of 1000 questions. And really, the idea there is for you to ask your question and get them answered by somebody who actually trades. Because when you go online, you never know who's going to respond to you. Case in point, we got a question from Mark Baumgarten. And thank you, Mark, for your question. I'm gonna go and read that in a second. But, you know, Mark asked this question, and somebody responded to him and gave him the wrong answer, even in our group. So, yeah, you never know what answer you're gonna get. And you know, if he's gonna be accurate or not, so, you know, this post, I think it's a good way for you to get an answer. And like I said, you know, I'm making this to answer the question. So we're gonna get, do our darndest to get you an answer. One way or the other. You know, if we'll make a video about it, maybe we'll just shoot you a couple line email or message you on Facebook and say, here's the answer. But if you have any questions about trading, I'll again, can give you personalized investment advice. That's not our job, right? You have financial advisors and planners and Wealth Advisors for that. But if you have a trading question, then go ahead and post it in the program, or sorry, in the group there, and we will get you an answer. So here's my question. It says: "I have bought a leap call expiring about 24 months out and have been selling weekly calls on the leaps for the last six months. Has anyone had problems with this strategy? What are the pitfalls to watch out for? So great question. Basically, what Mark is describing is a, you can call it, it's called a couple of different names. "Poor Man's covered call", is one name, "Synthetic Covered Call" is another one. Basically, what he's doing is he's doing a covered call on a cover call is where you own 100 shares of stock, and you sell call options against it for the income, this is the same thing. But instead of having the 100 shares of stock, he's using a long dated meaning far from expiration call option. Now the one thing I don't know, Mark, is what strike your call option is at normally, with a poor man's covered call, you want to sell a covered call that is deep in the money, because you want it to not fluctuate in price as much because of the option, right? So options are not stocks, they do evaluate, they do go up and down due to volatility, the stock price will not do that as much. So there, it's definitely different. In some ways, the theory is the same, you know, you have an asset and you're selling options against that asset. In this case, it's a long call. So 24 months out, that's plenty of time, and you're doing weekly, so that's good. So you have, you know, four expirations every month, the idea here, and the goal is to get your money back on the long call. And if the stock goes up in value, hopefully that long call makes money. So you can sell that at a higher point as well as get your money back. And then I've seen people make 20, 30, 40% in a year on this type of strategy, compared to a covered call, which might make you know, 15, 20% in the same timeframe if the stock rises, so you can make more the benefit. And the thing that appeals to people is that you don't have to buy those 100 shares. So you have a greater percentage return because you have less money invested. And so this also helps people with smaller accounts. Now, you can also use margin and buy 50 shares, and then use margin to buy the other 50 shares to do it. But this works out too. I don't particularly I'm not a big fan of the synthetic covered call, because we never know what the stock is going to do. And especially in a market, you know, the cover call and the synthetic cover call are good strategies and bull markets, you know, when the stock is going higher. We are not in a bull market right now I don't know if the stock is gonna go sideways, it's gonna go up, we're gonna go down most likely, it's gonna go with whatever the market does. And my opinion is the markets probably gonna head sideways to lower from here, but it goes up and down and up and down and rallies and decline, so.. the thing is, you don't want to be called away. So you don't want your short call to get in the money, which is a problem. You don't want too much time decay to affect your long call. That could be a problem. As you know, the months go by and it gets closer and closer. Now you went out 24 months. So I mean, you paid a hefty premium for that. You paid a lot of money premium. I would look at that versus okay, depending on what the stock is, I would look at that because if there was a lot of volatility you might have overpaid, but I'm gonna assume that you didn't. Now, the pitfall is if the stock goes down, if the stock itself, the value goes down, your long call will also lose value. Now, if you own the stock, you don't have any problem, because even if the stock drops to very low, you can still hold on to it, yes, you have a paper loss, but you still hold on to it, you can still sell covered calls against it, you can still do covered calls against it. And it might take a year, two years, three years, four years, five years. But eventually, it might recover. And until then you still have that asset that you can still cash flow by selling the covered call, with the you know, the long call, you have a deadline, right? Every day that goes by the value of that asset is going down, you're losing value, so you have to recoup that. So a lot of people say, hey, you know what, I think 24 months might be a little bit too long to go out. But you know, if you're talking about, hey, I don't want the theta decay that might be working, I would definitely back test it. You know, I haven't, like I said, I'm not a big fan of these. I've tried them in the past, I haven't gone out 24 months. So I have the most I gone out was about 12 months. And so they did work if the stock was generally in an upward slope, in stocks where we were going sideways, I was losing value on the on the call option every month. And so it was it got harder and harder at the end to recover from selling call options, what money I could make what I was losing on that long call. And if the stock drops, then you're actually collecting less premium, right? Because let's say the stock drops from 100 to 50. Now each option that you're selling is also worth less, so you're getting less and less, and it doesn't recover the loss-- it doesn't recover the loss on the call. So that can be a big detriment in your pattern. So if you if you suffer a large loss, we had, you know, Facebook meta has been down 60-70%. So on a stock like that you would be down big time, you'd still be down if you own the stock, but again, you still own the stock, and there's a chance, you know, eventually it might recover and go up, and you can wait for it. With the long call, you cannot wait. So that is the biggest problem. Some of the other people were saying, hey, you know, you got to watch out for the stock to drop to zero. Well, that's, of course, you know, anything. Yeah, there was that. Steve was replying that, you know, his experience with the LEAP call moves around enough to negate the income from the weekly call. So yeah, you know, it just it fluctuates enough that the volume or the premium that you're getting from the sold calls, doesn't equal to the negative Theta decay. And there were a couple other replies here. So I think you know, that would be the biggest fallback, you know, it's a, it's a good strategy, if you don't have money in the beginning, if you're if you're just getting started, it's a good strategy to go from there. But if you do want to get into covered calls, I would probably recommend instead going to something a stock that's even cheaper. And then starting with something like the wheel, you know, where your selling points. And then if you get assigned, then you sell the covered call right at the money and use leverage and margin to do that. Other than that, I haven't seen too many professional traders or even long term traders that are not professionals rely on this strategy for a long period of time. It's more of a beginner strategy. You know, when you get started, you don't have enough capital. After that, like, I've done covered calls on stocks that I've owned for eight years, 10 years now. And part of what we say at passive trading is that you want to build a foundation, right? You want to own high quality, good stock names that pay you dividend with the synthetic covered call, you don't get the dividend. And every time there's a dividend paid out, the company loses value. And so the stock on your option will drop. It's actually supposed to drop every time you take money out right as paying a dividend. As a shareholder, you collect that dividend as an option holder, you pay that dividend. So you don't necessarily pay out of your pocket, but the value of the company drops and so your call option will drop in value. That's another one. But if there is a large downturn, you know, you're going to take a big hit, your value will go down very quickly and you will not be able to recover. If you do own the stock, then you have plenty of time to wait and let it come back up. One of the most infamous for me anyway, covered calls I did was on Las Vegas Sands. And I think I bought the stock around 17 and the stock ended Going all the way down to like $1.75 or something, you know, but I held on, I sold some of it. But the rest of it I held on and it recovered. The business was rumored to go out a bit. He was rumored to go out of business, but they they were able to save themselves. And then eventually, I sold the share somewhere like 40-$50. So yeah, I made money off of it. But yeah, it took like six years, right? With a synthetic covered call strategy, you don't have that option. So it's in terms of a bull market, great time to use it. In terms of a bear market, not so good. There are other strategies out there that you can make way better returns on, you know, I would probably look at the covered call. Now the cover call, the credit spread, would be a choice that most people would probably go to over this better returns, you're in and out, you're not stuck in the same trade for 24 months. And you're not stuck in the same stock. Right? So unless I own the stock, and I can wait it out. I don't want to be in an option trade for more than a month at a time. You know, there's just too many variables and too many things that can happen. I don't want to be long options, or even short options more than a month at a time. So that's my two cents on that. Hopefully this will help you mark, you know, it's not that it's a bad strategy, it works, it's just that there are other ones that are probably better off to accomplish what you want to accomplish. Because it's not a covered call for me. It's "Hey, I own this stock, I bought this asset that I'm going to own for a long period of time, I'm going to sell covered calls because I want to reduce my cost basis, or I just want the income", right? "I want the income coming in every month". With a synthetic covered call. It's not about income, it's about the return, you're trying to make a larger return. There are better ways with other options, strategies that you can make a better return and take maybe less risk. So that's my two cents there. Again, if you guys have questions, you know, go to free optionsgroup.com, find that post. It's called 1000 questions, and go ahead and put your question in there and we'll be happy to get your answer. Thanks, guys. Trade with the odds in your favor. Take care.

Allen: All right, everybody, welcome passive traders. I have one of my good friends with me today, Denny is going to be here. He's going to be talking about trading life in general, and everything that he's learned along the way. Denny, you know, we've, you've been in our programs for a little bit now we've seen your success. And I'm, we're friends on Facebook. So I see you with your posts from Hawaii, sitting on a beach house and all that and we're on the coaching calls, you're always you know, you're always making me jealous. You're always like, "well, I'm going to Hawaii next week, or I'm going on vacation. I'm going golfing". I'm like, Come on, man. So I'm glad that we finally got to talk, you know, thank you for thank you for taking the time to be out here and talk with us. And I can't wait to learn from you. Denny: Okay. Well, the way I you know, the way I originally got hooked up with you is I saw one of your marketing deals on the internet. And I thought, you know, well, you know, let's give this a look. And so I talked with Cory and and I said to her, hey, look, you know, I've got I said, I'd like an honest answer that if I come in and buy the program and everything, and I've got $10,000. Is it possible for me to make $2,000 a month on the $10,000? And she said, Well, we've got people doing it. She was very honest. You know, and then so so I got in on the oil deal. One. I think it's blank check trading is that was the oil is. And boy, I learned a whole lot. The first year, I was just sailing along making money hand over fist. And that was when oil was not very volatile. And it was just making, you know, moving sideways, which is perfect for if you want to trade oil futures, you know, it's perfect. Allen: Yeah. Yeah. All markets are our friend.  Denny: And, and then all of a sudden, oil shot up. And I think it was November two years ago might have been three. Now I know I've been doing it quite a while. All of a sudden, I went in. And I looked and the market had dropped. And I and I was in a position where I was going to end up getting a margin call. So I liquidated my position was $4,700 that day, and I'll be damned the next day, boom, it pops right back up. And that was the day after Thanksgiving. And then on the next call, you talked about the Friday after Thanksgiving is not a very high volume deal. And so one big guy in there can make the market he can make it drop, you can make it rise, and I fell prey to that because I didn't know but you know, you can learn from your mistakes. And I made made plenty of them. But now I make money every month. Allen: That 4700, did that wipe you out? Denny: Out? No, no, I had 10 Okay. Okay, so I started all back over. And it took me it took me damn near a year to get it to get it back. And in the meantime, you had your program on stocks. Okay, so I signed up for that. And I fooled around with the stocks for a while and I went back to oil because to me, it's a little more passive where I can put a trade on and I will look at it once a week you know, and I feel comfortable with it. But then what happened is we got get them the next chapter Benny Alan COVID here. And my advertising agency that I own I do direct mail advertising for automotive industry. And I don't know if you've been reading but the car dealers don't have any new cars. Allen: Yeah, they don't need advertising. Denny: So, I my business the first year of COVID was down 2,000,400 and some $1,000 Right now, the second year is about 2.8 million and now we're into the third year of the car shortage and so far this year I'm down $1,976,000 From where my normal years would be so I went from a mid six figure income guaranteed down I collected my Social Security check with my wife, okay. And so I go okay, let's start fooling around with your knowledge with oil and with stock options and get yourself a little income so I took $25,000 out of our savings account and put it into my tasty works account and I make on an average trading two ETFs and oil and I just started doing spreads on weekly options in oil and that I've been doing okay on it but you got to watch that a little quicker because you'll, you can get caught up in a margin call on everything pretty quick on that. But since I have no other job, okay, I can watch it. You know, I just make sure that that when I go to the golf course on my daily trip I've got my phone with me. And I can hop in on the tasty works phone app and protect myself if I need to. But what I learned most from you was paid.. Allen: So how are you doing there? So you're like, Okay, so you Alright, so I'm following the story. Right? So you were you were learning like, you've been in our program, I think two years. So three, three, okay, three. So you learn how to do the oil you were doing great. And then you had one bad day where it crashed and you basically went back to zero and you had to start over? Right so that at least you didn't lose it you had you know you get back your gains then you know COVID hit so you had to basically all hands on deck for the business trying to figure that out. Now you're at the point where like, okay, you know what, I got this stuff that I know how to do let me see if I can make some money on the side. So you've been trading oil you've been doing you said you doing 2 ETFs. So what are you doing on? Yeah, what type I do? I do SPX and (inaudible). So what strategy are you doing on those? Okay, well, Denny: Let's go back to my educational background. Okay. Okay. I have a master's degree in Environmental Engineering. My master's thesis was the statistical modeling of dam failures due to excess runoff. Okay, so I'm a numbers guy, a numbers game, I understand standard deviations, regression lines, Bayesian coordinates, you know, all of this fancy mathematics that all of these indicators that when they write them, you know, I know how they get there. So I started looking at the stuff and I started looking for patterns, because standard deviation and stuff like that is nothing other than patterns, okay, that create a probability statement of the same thing occurring, okay. So, I started looking and I found the correlation between the VIX that, you know, on the CMOE, right, the VIX, right? And what happens with it? And so, I take the VIX and say it was it traded at 2588 and open this morning at 2588. I can't I can't remember exactly what it is. I go in, and I divide the VIX by 16. Now, why do I divide by 16? Allen: I have no idea. Denny: There are 256 trading days in the market. Right? The square root of 256 is 16. Okay. So I take the 68 divided by 16. And that gives me a percentage that's 87% accurate as to the upward or downward movement of SPX or rut on a daily basis. From what it opens that not what it closed that yesterday. But when the opening bell dings like, this morning, yesterday, right? Close to 1806. Okay. But this morning, when the bell rang, it was 1843 just for a short period of time until the CPI stuff caught up in the rear end dropped out of it. Okay, right. But so what I do is I go in and take what it opens at, and take the percentage and what it opens at, say it's one point it was 1.61 today, so you take 1.61% of the opening bell, and you subtract that from what it opened that and you add it to what it opened that and you gives you a high and a low rate. Okay? Allen: Say that again, do make doing so. Okay. The VIX divided by 16. Okay, then what do you do that? Denny: Okay, you multiply that the 1.61% Okay? Times when it opened that, okay, and that comes out to roughly what, close to 30 bucks. I don't have my calculator here. Okay. So you would take, you would take it and if it opened at 1843, you take the 30 off of that, that would be 1813. And then you take the 1843 and add the 32, which would be 1873. So that means that you've got an 87 point something percent chance that the right is going to close somewhere between the 1813 and 1873. Okay, okay, so now, we wait until the Between 1030 and 11 o'clock central time, okay. And the reason that I wait until then, is if you look, the market goes in and opens it bounces up and down. And if it's on the way up between 1030 and 11 o'clock you have what what usually happens and happens most days is a mid morning reversal of some sort where people are in taking profits or, or getting rid of losses. So okay. And at that point, it gives you a direction of the momentum of the market for the rest of the day. And the rest of the day barring no news or anything, it pretty much goes sideways or slightly up or slightly down. And I go in and sell a put put spread or a call spread at the bottom or the top that was ranges away from the way the momentum of the markets going. And I do that on a daily basis. Allen: So if you think is going down you sell calls if you think it's going up you sell puts at the end of that range. So is that like you said 87% So what is that like as like one and a half standard deviation?  Denny: One and a half standard deviations?  Allen: Okay. All right. But but why do you do the VIX because what does the VIX have to do with the rut? The VIX is based on the VIX, SPX the VIX Denny: Gives you the volatility, the market as a whole. Allen: Right. But it has to do with the volatility of the SPX, the RUT has its own.. Denny: Okay, okay. But the RUT is based on 2000 stocks, okay. And vix takes into account the volatility of what's happening in the 2000 stocks, the Dow Jones and the standards and poors. The way they calculate the bets, Allen: Okay, because I thought the VIX was just only on the SPX the 500. The large ones. Denny: Yeah, yeah. Well, but it is, but they just weren't right. There's yeah, there's a there's a correlation between what's happening in SPX and what happens in RUT. Okay. Allen: Yeah, they're, yeah, okay. Right. They are correlated. So it just it just happened correlated workout, right?  Denny: And it's just and it's just like if you want to see what's going on with gonna happen for disaster time, with the SPX. Go in and look at what's going on with QQQ. If QQQ is dropping, you better watch yourself on the SPX, with about, I forget what percentage of the SPX is Fang stocks now? Right? Yeah. Okay. Allen: So how long? How long have you been doing this? Denny: I've been doing for about four months. Allen: Four months. Okay. And you back tested it? Denny: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I spent a couple, couple $100 and got some good back testing software and back tested it. And if you go through the thing and wins about 80 some percent of the time, okay. Allen: And how much are you trying to make on each trade? Denny: Okay, I'm trying to make 4% Three and a half to 4% on a trade, okay. Allen: And these are weekly trades or daily trades daily. So you want the SPX, Denny: The SPX, the SPX has a closing every day. Okay, Allen: So these are at the close. Yes. Okay. Denny: And the rut has Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So I only trade the rut on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Allen: Cool. So now your results been so far? Denny: That I'm doubling my money every month. Allen: Wow. 100% every month? Denny:  When Putin cut the pipeline off, okay. And the market and the rear end fell out of the market that day. I was at my computer when it started happening. And I closed everything out. If if I hadn't closed it out, I probably would have lost about three or 4000 that day, but I don't you know, what I do, Allen is I take a future value calculator, okay. And if this month, I want to make $10,000. I plug in $10,000. And I put three and a half percent of $10,000 times 21 or 22 trading days. And I print it out. And it tells me how much I need to make each day in order for that to occur. And then I keep a spreadsheet that I'm plus or minus off of the predicted number that I was supposed to be asked. And I adjust my trading from there now like right now for this month. So far. I'm up 900 bucks as a closing day. So I'm actually today is the 13th. Yeah, and I'm actually to where the tweet where I should be on the 20th of them. month. Okay, so if I think the markets going to be a little volatile or, or there might be some bad news coming, I can lay off, okay, and skip a day and see what's happening. Okay. That's where what you taught me is the patience. Is that it? You don't have to do it every day. Allen: Right? Right. So okay, so you're saying that you're doubling to 25? Every every month or no, Denny: Not doubling how much I want to make God, I got 25 in there, but you're trying to make you want to make if I want to make 10 This month, I put 10 up. And with the whole idea that I'm could lose all 10,000 of it. Allen: Okay so you're only using 10. Denny: Yeah, but I'm only using 10. If I lose, I lose the 10 then, you know, I'm a big boy. You know, we try again next month. Allen: So like, today's the 13th, you're only up 900. So you still got a ways to go before you get to the goal. Denny: No, no, I'm up 900 over how much I should be up. Allen: So you've already made the 10. And you made another 900? Denny: No, no, no, no. Oh, hold on a second. Okay. Okay, I started out, okay, with 10,000 in the account, okay. And I go to a future value calculator and I plug in, say three and a half percent. Okay. And I plug in 21 days, okay. Yeah. Well, that'll, at the end of the month, if I do that I shouldn't have around $21,000. Okay. And what the future value calculator says is that on day two, I should have 10,300 and some dollars on it. Okay, and then day three, I should have close to 10 Seven. Okay. So I go down what the day is what it says where I should be to achieve the deal. And I'm up 900 Okay, over that. Allen: I say okay, okay. Okay, so you're on pace. You're better you're better than doing on pace to double Denny: Yeah, right. I'm, yeah, I do what's called a phase and betting deal. Okay. Yeah. And so.. Allen: So that's what you're doing on the SPX on the RUT, and you're also doing oil. So how do you put in oil? Denny: I don't know oil, I buy maybe two to three contracts okay of the weeklies now, okay, and do a credit spread on them and try to make, you know, 4 or 500 bucks on the credit spreads and let them expire worthless. Okay. And, and then and the only and I'm only trying that because I know how to make money doing the monthlies and, and getting in at 45 days and, and monitoring it. So I'm a natural born tanker. Okay. Right. And, and, and it can cost me money at times. Okay. But, you know, I guess I'm fortunate that I'm not looking where my next meal is coming from. Allen: Right. Cool. So like today, you know, we have SPX is down 4.3% Today, big moves, they move down. So I'm assuming based on what you said, when you got in on SPX had already started moving down, so you sold calls today? Denny: Yeah, I sold calls I sold about 4090 and 4095. Allen: Okay, and then basically, you didn't have any trouble today? Denny: No and yesterday, yesterday went up. Okay. But when I went when I entered it, it was going sideways. And it was more advantageous on the calls yesterday. So I sold 4185 and 4190 yesterday, okay. And, you know, they they expired worthless okay. Allen: And is there any time you do both puts and calls? Denny: Yes. Yep. It looks like it's going absolutely sideways. Like I say, enter my trade between 1030 and 11. And I usually go to the golf course about one o'clock. But before I go to the golf course, I pull my account up and I look at it and the pit looks like it's going sideways. Then I create an iron condor and I go in and sell puts. Allen: And then what about a stoploss you have any? Denny: Yeah, I put stop losses in on everything. Allen: What percent? Like how do you know when to get out? Denny: I put 40% Okay. Allen: So 40% loss. Denny: Yeah. Allen: Okay. Cool. And so you're pretty happy with that? Denny: Yeah, you know, until it burns me I guess I will you know, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for it. I'm you know, I've done this long enough now that I know that nothing is failsafe. Allen: No, but you're doing this in a time that it is pretty volatile. You know? I mean vix today was at 27. But yeah, even so the VIX is kind of low for what's going on and all the stuff that's happening with the Fed. And, you know, we're still in a bear market. So we're still getting these wild bull market, not not a bull market rally, but a, like a whipsaw rally to go up, and then we, we hit back down on a dime. And so it still it has been very up in Downy and so well, having a you know, the strategy that you're just like, hey, I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna play day by day and not worry about at night. I think that makes a lot of sense. Denny: Yeah. You know, and, you know, I am a very, very avid reader. Okay, so I read Barron's, I read the bestsellers, Business Daily, and stuff like that, not because I think that they are going to enlighten me on anything. But what I have read is, there's a lot of guys in there that tell us about the history of the market. Okay. And for every bear market, you know, usually lasts nine to 18 months. And there's usually four to five mini rallies in there that everyone is calling the bottom of the bear market, and then it drops again, you know, and so, if we understand that, you don't get too overly enthused with the rising SPX or a Dow. Allen: Yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, that comes with experience or like you said, you know, learning and education. Cool. So what do you see going forward? Like, what's, what's next for you? Denny: Man? You know, I just enjoy doing this stuff. You know, I mean, you know, I'm in the twilight twilight of my life. You know, I'm 76 years old. Man. I'm a real young 76. I mean, I'm very mobile. I play, play golf every day. Right now, while we're speaking. I'm in Duncanville, Texas at my grandson's tennis match. He just, he just won his doubles match. And so about a half hour he'll start playing singles. So we'll watch that but.. Allen: Yeah it's a little how, I tell you that. Denny: Yeah, 95 right now here but you know, my normal week is yesterday was Monday I was in junior high volleyball and Flower Mound, which is 30 miles away from where we live. But today I'm at varsity tennis in Duncanville. That's not bad. That's close to where I live. Tomorrow. I got off then Thursday. I got junior varsity tennis. That's a home meet. And then Friday night, I've got got varsity football and Flower Mound. Okay. That's almost every day of the week. I'm doing something with the grandkids. Allen: You're going golfing every day and you're still trading every day? Denny: Yeah, and I'm trading every day. No, and you know, thanks to you. You've shown me ways that I don't have to sit there and stare at a computer. To make money. Allen: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, that's not the I really like what you're doing. I like your style. You know, it's like, okay, you know, put a trade on, let it work, and then go enjoy my life. Denny: Yeah. Doesn't work. So what, you know, there's another day. Allen: Yeah, but the return is good enough that, you know, you get compensated, even if there are losses, the you're, you're playing with bigger numbers. So it's like, hey, if I can make 100%, then yeah, I can lose 20, 30, 40%. That's okay. Yes. Because I can still make much more than that, you know, in the stock market. They're like, Oh, wait, you know, you shouldn't lose more than five or 10% of your account? Well, you're only making 10% a year. So obviously, you don't want to lose more than that. But if the numbers are bigger than you can take bigger, bigger, bigger bumps, so.. Denny: And I'll tell you, I'll tell you what I use I still I still use your option trading Google Spreadsheet. Allen: For the credit spreads, yeah. Denny: Yeah, I use it every day. Allen: Yep, makes it simple, right? Just calculate Yeah. Denny: The only thing is I went in and change changed the 25% to 40%. Allen: But I like it because it's like simple, you know, and I'm sure people listening to this. They're gonna be like, Okay, what do I do again? So it's like, just gonna recap. You know, you wake up in the morning, you see where the SPX and the RUT are opening, right? Yeah, take a look at the VIX. You divided by 16 and then you add that.. Denny: That's your that's your percentage movement in the ETL. Okay, that's Allen: A percentage move of the SPS. Okay. So you multiply that percentage by the open. By the Open, and then that you find your range. Denny: That will give you the that'll give you the movement, which, so say it's 1843 and say, say your your divide by say, say it's say VIX is 32. Okay, okay. Okay, you divide by 16. That's two to 2%. Okay, so say.. Allen: Okay that's percentage. Okay, yeah. Denny: 2%. So say right, opened at 1800. Today, you take 2%, that's $36. So then you take 36 off of 1800. Okay. And, you know, that puts you down to 1764. And then you add 36 to the 1800. And that gives you 1836 yeah. Allen: We have a 87% probability of this range working out for the day, it's not for the month, whatever it is for the day. And that works out to be about 1.5 standard deviations. So we've got the range, that's about one and a half standard deviations, that's 87% probability about that. And for you, it's been working pretty good. And you set it at a 40% stop loss. Oh, and then the other thing is that you get into the trade about an hour and a half an hour, hour and a half after the market opens. And so.. Denny: And the reason of the hour, hour and a half is it took me a while to realize this, the market tends to at times gap up or gap down. Okay. And then about an hour to an hour and a half later, it kind of self corrects itself. Allen: Sometimes that Yeah, yeah. But they say, you know, the opening bell is usually amateur hour. And so yeah, I mean, I could have told you that I don't trade the first hour of the day, you know, markets open markets open about 8:30 here Central time, so I don't trade before 10 o'clock, which is exactly an hour and a half. So I do that.. Denny: Yeah, that's when I'm looking at the momentum indicators and everything.  Allen: And then you let your trades expire? Denny: Yes. Allen: Okay. So you got that going on. And then.. Denny: Well the good thing about it is trades good, you can't get out of it anyway, because you've made all your money by about two o'clock and go in and try to close the trades. It says that say you get the message just some of the bid ask or zero. Allen: So, okay, so you got that going on. And you got the oil, weeklies gone. So that keeps you busy. That keeps you diversified. You're making decent amount. You're happy. That's awesome. I love it. That's that's what this is all about, you know, Denny: Keeps going to Hawaii. Yeah. You know, Allen: Yeah life is good, right? You're hanging out with grandkids you got you still have the house in Hawaii, you go on vacations, everyone, wherever you feel like it. So I like it.. Denny: In two weeks. I'll be in New York City. Allen: That's great. Cool.  Denny: Going to see Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden. Allen: Very nice. So did you do any kind of trading before you came across us? Denny: Yes. And I lost my rear end. Allen: Oh, no, that's not good. Yeah. Denny: I was way too aggressive. Okay, and not patient. And that's when I was gonna get out of the equity market completely. When I saw your oil deal, okay. And, you know, and I figured I had a better chance at oil, because it's something that we all need. And it's something that's not going out of style. Even if we go to all electric cars. What people don't understand is that two thirds of the pharmaceuticals and all of the plastic comes tomorrow. And that's none that's going away. Nope. There's going to be a demand. Allen: Yeah. In fact, you know, even with everything with the more solar and the more wind power they bring on, the world is still using more oil now than we have, like 10 years ago, the demand continues to increase, just goes up and up and up every year. So yeah, it's not going anywhere, anytime soon. So we're going to continue to trade even if demand starts going down. It's such a big market that we'll be trading oil for, you know, for the next 20-30 years.  Denny: Yeah Allen: That's, I mean, it's a different so basically, the you are trading equities but then when you found out and you learn about how we sell options, that kind of really flipped the switch?  Denny: Yeah that intrigued me. Okay. First of all well, my background before I got into the advertising thing was I owned a car dealership. Okay, I owned a Ford dealership. If you know anything about car, guys, we're super aggressive and we love leverage. And when I saw options, and I saw the leverage available, I said, this is my ticket. Allen: So then, why are we still at 25,000? Why don't we go more? Denny: You know, I've got a, I've got a wife. Okay, that funny story, okay? All donations came in and bought me out. I guess it's 28 years ago now. And I got a very sizable check. And the day I got that check, my wife reached over and she grabbed that check. And she said, seed money only comes once in a lifetime. And this is going for our old age and for fun. I go, Okay. Well, one of the ways that I've stayed married 52 years, is that I always get the last word. "Yes, dear". So, she, in the money, she basically watches it, okay. And, and she thinks that, you know, a lot of what I'm doing, although I'm making money and stuff like that, on on a basis is a little bit too risky for her, her deal. And so that, you know, that's what she has given me to play with. Okay. Consequently, I have pointed out to her recently, that because of that money, she's not had to buy any groceries out of her retirement account. For her Social Security check. I played for all the plane tickets wherever we go. This trip to New York. I've got $1,000 in Hamilton tickets invested. And she didn't have to pay for any of that. So don't you think it's about time that we started looking at adding more to that, you know, so that I think by the end of the year, she might, you know, lead me forward a little bit more. Allen: Do you have other investments and stuff elsewhere? Yeah, yeah, money's coming in. So it's not like you need this to live off of   Denny: No, no, no, no. Man, like, it's like I said that when my COVID that stopped an annual mid six figure income. I mean, on a normal week, before COVID. I was, well, on a normal month, I was doing 800,000 to 1 million pieces of direct mail a month. But that so you know, it's a good sized business, okay. With annual revenues, anywhere from two and a half to three $3 million. And, and I'm a one man show. I have no employees in that business. You know.   Allen: So it's still running, you still run that business? Yeah.   Denny: Yeah. In fact, I just got a job today. I mean, you know, they're, they're doing  infrequent, you know, I mean, you know, I might have made 30,000 bucks for the whole year doing that, you know, which, you know, that used to be a week sometimes, you know,   Allen: You know, so let me ask you this. Are we going to see below MSRP prices anytime soon?   Denny: No, no, no.   Allen: How about MSRC? Like, I'm seeing prices that are like way above like, double MSRP. Yeah, I'm not paying.   Denny: As soon as the chip shortage is alleviated, and they start to get inventory sometime in the next 18 to 24 months. They'll have inventory again. Oh, wow. But I don't know if you've seen what's happened to the used car market?   Allen: No, it's taken off like crazy.    Denny: Yeah, I mean, you know, my wife has macular degeneration now. And so, leasing a car is unless you have a business purpose. leasing a car is a bad investment. Okay. My wife had macular degeneration, we didn't know if she was going to, they were going to be able to get it stopped and whether she was going to be able to continue to drive. So the car that I'm sitting in right now is her car. Okay. And we leased it, and it had a $21,000 residual on it at the end of the lease period. And we were, you know, we were gonna turn it in. And then I pulled up what the value on it was, the retail value on this car was 31,000. So I went down to the Ford dealership, and broken but check for the car. And they can't want me to lease another one. I know. Thank you, you know, and so and that's happened all throughout the industry. And it's consequently forced the US car prices way up. And so what's going to happen two fold things going to happen. Matt, real quick, I know that you know, either way saw your day on this, but this is interesting. Once the inventory, get levels get up, all these car dealers that have these massive use car inventories are going to have so much water in their inventory. And water is excess pricing to what the current market book value on the vehicles is. In other words, if you can't sell it for what you own it for, you're gonna lose money. Right? And, and a lot of these big-- you live in Houston, I live in Dallas, a lot of these big dealerships that have two and 300 guards in the ground, are going to have a million and a half to $2 million in water in their inventory. And they're going to have to get rid of them. Okay. And so the rear end will fall out of the used car market. And you know, so right now consumers are getting screwed on automobiles. But the dealer has his day of reckoning coming due.   Allen: Yeah, but if you need a car now, you're screwed.   Denny: You need a car now you're in trouble. A buddy of mine went looked at a Subaru Outback with 19,000 miles on it, that it was a year and a half old. And they wanted $35,000 for it.  Allen: Yeah, yeah, don't get in a wreck. I mean, my car I've been thinking about my wife is like, can you just get a new car, please? I'm like, No, I like it. You know, I'm trying to get it up to 200,000. You know, miles on it. Yeah, trying to get there. I mean, it's fine. It works. You know? It's comfortable. It looks fine. From the outside. Everything is comfortable. It works. You know, it's nice Toyota keeps running. But she's like, can you get some bigger? I'm like, Alright, so we looked around, and I'm like, Man, I don't want to pay this stuff. You know, it's not even. It's not like we can't afford the payment or anything. It's just from where it used to be to where it is. Now. There's no difference. The car is the same. You just charged me a whole lot more for no reason. Just because yeah, there's a you can. So yeah, yeah, no, I don't want to play that. Denny: Yeah, their day of reckoning is coming.  Allen: We'll be alright. Well, do you have any advice for our listeners, people that are learning and trying to figure out like you found your way, right, you found your niche in trading, and it took you I don't know how many years you were trading for two years. But how many years? Were you looking before? Before that? Denny: Oh five years, I probably probably five years before I found you. Okay. And two years, two years of.. Allen: Learning and testing Denny: Not doing what you told me to do. And getting and getting burned, to realize, to realize that the things that you teach patients, you know, just the little thing and Think or Swim your standard deviation deal, you know, saying, Oh, you've got a red line there. That's not good. You know, just those little things, you know. So the biggest advice, the best advice I could give to an individual, be patient. Don't try to hit homeruns. You know, the age old adage, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered, is so true. It's like one of my rules on the SPX. You know, a $5 spread. Okay, a $5 spreads on the SPX is 500 bucks. Okay. So if I'm trying to make 4% to 5% a day, that means I'm looking to get 20 cents. On my credit spread. That's it 20 cents. Okay. And if you look at what the delta is on that, it's usually 12 to 13, which puts me in a real advantageous position. You know, so don't get greedy. Just let time be. let time be your friend. Allen: Right? Yep. And that actually might be a shortcut for you. So you don't even have to worry about the VIX. You just go in to get the 12 Delta.  Denny: I'm in the process of doing about a year study on this, okay. Because I back tested it using the Delta. Okay. And some wild market swings, it comes out that it doesn't work out. Right. Okay. Yeah. Allen: But the thing is, it's hard to back test it because you're saying that you go in after looking at it visually and being like, Okay, I want to be on this side or I want to be on that side. You can't do that. Unless you do it manually yourself with a like a software that I like the one I use where you got to go in day by day by day. If you're one of those programs where you just put in the numbers and you Just let it run, it doesn't work. Denny: You've got to plug them in yourself. Yeah. And it's time consuming. Especially if you're doing dailies. Yeah. Because you got you got 256 for every year. Allen: Yeah. And I mean, like, you know, when we when we back test a new strategy, it's like I want to I want you know, a good 10 years of data, you know, I want to see the the ups and the downs and the flats and the recessions and the bulls market and everything. I want to know that it's going to work long term, not just for a couple because I've been burned on that too. You know, I, I back tested different strategies like the butterfly on McDonald's and a butterfly on a Walmart and they worked great for five years. For five years, they made money. I went in there with guns blazing. You know, I took like every money out of money I had at the time at $25,000 on one trade, just want Dre put it all and boom, blew up. And I'm like, what happened? Oh, my God, man. It was a fluke. I'm gonna do it again. Next month, next month, boom, blew up again. You know.. Denny: Those butterflies and iron condors look great. You sit there and you look at the leverage you've got on that you go, Whoa, you know, but you know, you got to think, why isn't everyone doing it? There's a reason. Allen: So, there's lots of little tweaks behind it. Yeah, yeah. This has been fun. Denny, I'm gonna let you go. I appreciate you. And if there's anything you need, please reach out to us. We're always here for you. And thank you for sharing your wisdom. Denny: Okay, well, you know, I mean, I just want to tell you and your listeners that your program has definitely taught me a lot and made me a lot successful. Faster than I ever would have been. Allen: That's awesome. That's good to hear. Make my day. I love it. I love it. JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

What is an accredited investor? How do I become one? And why do I want to become one? It's a great question. So let's talk about the why before we get into what it is and how you become one. So as you know, you know, we talk a lot about trading, we talk a lot about passive trading, investing in the stock market selling options. But the goal, the long term goal is to not be a trader. It doesn't make sense, right? Like, what are you talking about, the goal is not for you to be a trader for the rest of your life, unless you want to, right? Now, if you look at the passive trading manifesto, and the goals of passive trading, there are three freedoms that we're trying to accomplish. Financial freedom, time, freedom, and choice, freedom. And choice freedom gives you the choice of doing what you want, when you want. And if that means that you don't want to trade, then you don't have to trade. Right? Now, if you do decide to continue to trade because you want to, then that is perfectly fine. That's your choice and more power to you. But if you don't want to, then you shouldn't have to. So that's where this accredited investor comes in. Because the point is, for us to increase not only our monthly income, basically, you know, the more income you have coming in, when you have money coming in, that pays for all your bills, you can essentially retire and you have financial freedom. But we need to also increase our net worth, so that we can have other opportunities to investing, where we don't have to be active or you don't have to be trading, even though it's called passive trading, you're still doing it. Right?  Now, it's a lot less active than day trading, or stock trading or any of that stuff. But you still have to still do something. There's nothing totally, totally passive, even, you know, regular passive investing is still takes time and energy and learning and all that other stuff, stress, a lot of it. But that comes with the territory. So the goal as the way I see it, and the way I'm trying to live it and I try to teach it to my students, is that we want to use trading as a very safe, but very quick way to get us to first financial independence, where we have enough money coming in from our assets that pay for all of our expenses. Once you get there, then you are not beholden to a job, then you're not both beholden to the economy, your recession doesn't matter, right? Because you have enough money coming in, you have a skill, you can go into the market, and you can extract money, at will. And that's what we teach. That's what passive trading is all about. But once you get to that point, you want to keep going further, and you want to become what's called accredited investor. So what is that? Well, an accredited investor, according the SEC, is someone who has either $1 million in net worth, not including their house. So if you're a millionaire, and you don't count your house, you're an accredited investor officially. Or the other thing is, the other criteria is that you've made if you're by yourself, you've made $200,000 In the last two years, and you're going to keep doing that. So your income is over $200,000 a year by yourself, or if you're married, it has to be 300,000 for the both of you over the last two years, and going into the future. Now, look at the numbers. If you're making $300,000 a year, and you're not worth a million dollars, that's a problem, you should probably work on that first before talking about whatever we're doing here, right, your your expenses are way too high, you need to worry about that, first get your debt down or get your build on or whatever it is. And then you know, get to that million dollar net worth requirement. Now again, we're not counting our primary residence. So if you have a business, if you have other properties, if you have cars, you've shoved jewelry, if you have notes or anything that you have anything valuable antiques, all that stuff counts in this million dollar net worth criteria, and it's basically up to you, you know, so if you think something is worth $100,000, even if you can't sell it, but it's still worth 100,000 You can't be crazy about it. You can't say well, you know this pen, I want a million dollars for this pen. No, that's not real, right. Not realistic. But if you have something that's illiquid, something that is valuable but illiquid, maybe it's like a baseball card collection or antiques or something like that, that you know, is worth money but only to the right buyer. You can still qualify that as an asset. Now why do we want to do this because there are certain investments that are only open to you if you are an accredited or above investor. So there's that accredited investor list and I are the criteria that I told you about. And then there's also a couple other criteria above that one is called qualified. The both of them are called qualified. They're called different things. But the step above accredited is 2.1 million in net worth. And then after that, it's 5 million in net worth. So first, go for the accredited, that's the goal, then 2.1, and then 5. Okay, once you get there, a lot more things open up to you. So if you want to invest in private placements, or in real estate deals, or in syndications, you have to be, in most cases, at least an accredited investor. Now, the reason you want to do that is because these investments, while they don't make as much money as we can, trading passively, it still is a passive investment. So you're not having to do any work. Right? So, for example, I was looking at a investment recently, that is a real estate development, basically, this guy wants to create or build 200 apartments, and he needs the money for the down payment, the rest he is going to get from the loan. But he's got a construction company that plans to get the land, he's got everything ready to go. But he needs investors to come in and bring in a certain amount of money for those investors, he's going to pay them a piece of the whole deal based on his projections of what it's going to cost. And by the time it's built, what's his going to be able to sell for what is going to be worth then if they refinance, it should be about a 20 - 25% yearly return on the money. So you'll make sure if it's like a three year deal, you make 25% 25% 25%. If it's a four year deal, you'll make your money back. So whatever your money you put in, you get it back now, if you're not accredited, you can't get in the deal. Right? So that's why we want to get to be accredited. And for me, yes, I could put more money into my trading more money into the stock market. But at a certain point, when you already have seven figure plus accounts, you kind of feel like you know what, maybe I don't want to put more money in the stock market right now. Right? If all if the market is going crazy, and everything's going up, then yeah, you can go put it all in there. But in a time, like we have going on right now, you know, in mid 2022, markets are down, Fed is raising rates recession here, not here coming, who knows. But things are more up to down Z for the stock market. So yeah, I'd like to be in diversify into something else where I don't have to worry about it, it's not up to me, and I have to do any work, that money should be coming in. And of course, I have to stay on top of it, do my research, and all that stuff. So it's not completely passive. But it's more passive than me trading. So that's why I encourage all of you to become accredited investors. Now, in order to do that, sometimes, depending on the fund or the investment that you're going into, you know, there's no one place where you go and they give you a certificate or anything, it's not like that. But depending on the investment, you might have to bring a letter from your CPA, or your financial advisor or whatever, yeah, this guy's got over a million in assets. In some cases, you might be able to sell, verify. So they just ask you a question like, Hey, are you accredited? Yes or no, you click the box, and you're good. And they don't ask any more questions. So depending on type of fund regulations, and all that, we'll be able to tell if you need to self verify, or if you need an outside person to do it, because it's more painful. A lot of CPAs don't want to do it. Financial Planners don't want to do it. So more and more people are going to the self verification route, or, you know, if you have just one large account or whatever that has the money in it, you show the money, like there's my statement, boom, done. So that is what an accredited investor is. That is why you want to be one. Now, how do you become one? Well, if you're not one already, you know, it's very simple. Cut down on your debt and make as much as you can. And if you're having, like, if you can invest in yourself, you can get into you know, get a better certificate or something of learning some some specific skill that you can specialize in, you'll make more money at your job. If you can't do that, then passive trading will get you there eventually, depending on how much you have to start with and what strategies you use. So that's you know, the passive trading is the vehicle to get you to financial independence that's the first stop and then after that, it's like "Okay, now let's keep building a nest egg let's keep making more and more Grow, grow grow the pie", so that we can get to accredited investor, which is 1 million in net worth. And then that's when you can think about okay, let me diversify. Let me put some money in a crypto fund if you want to, even though you can't do it without being accredited, even though you because it's me more risky, right? So that's why they have these restrictions, these things are for sophisticated investors, and you could lose all your money. But you could do that even in the stock market, but whatever the government does, and so, you know, maybe you want to be in a fund that, like I said, builds apartments, or owns a commercial shopping center, or owns a mobile home park, or anything like that, where you know, you have other incomes coming in. So remember back to, I think it's like episode number two of the podcast, which is the five finger income theory where you got to have five sources of income. So this could be, you know, once you get to that accredited status, you could set up your investments in different funds in different parts of the country where that money is coming in. So it's a little bit spread out a little bit diversified. So I don't think you need to do it right away. Because most of these funds, they do require, you know, maybe 50,000 100,000 is average, but 100,000 requirement, you know, to invest in the Fund, some are more I've seen, some that are like 250,000, for an investment. So depending on the fund, depending on the risk, all that has worked to play, but you got to put in a substantial amount in to invest in it, sometimes you start getting money back, within six months, sometimes like the development deal. If I invest in it, I won't see any money until the thing is built three years later, or they'll probably build it out slowly and start renting them out as fast as they can. But we're still looking at about a year and a half, without any return any money coming back. Right. So you have to be in it for a little bit longer term. So that's it, that's an accredited investor, again, just to be sure, you got to have a net worth of a million dollars, not counting your house, that's for married people, as well as individual people. And then if you are going for the income route, you gotta be making separately individually at least 200,000 For the last two years, and got to be able to know that you're going to do it forward. Or if it's with a spouse, it's 300,000 for the last two years income and the same this year and going forward. So that is an accredited investor qualified, you know, it's 2.1. Basically, that's it, you just have to have a net worth of 2.1, not counting your house, that would be the next step. And then that will allow you to even more broader categories, certain funds that you can't get into as accredited, you have to be qualified. So that's a higher bar. And then there's another one after that, which is even higher bar 5 million. At that point, you can basically invest in anything you want. But that's what that is. And hopefully we can help you get there. If you have any questions, please always email us help@optiongenius.com. And whatever we can do to help you get to that accredited investor status, some of you are already there, if you are there, and you are looking to diversify, and if you do want to say, hey, what other things can I invest in, I am always looking at stuff. And so I've put together a list of people that are also interested, and we'll share the deals with them. So when I find something that I like, you know, like, Hey, this is a really good deal. This is a good return, the fee structure is great. And there's not a lot of risk here. The operator is good, you know, is vetted. I do all that research for myself anyway. So I can just share that information with you. If you're interested, you know, email us help@optionsgenius.com and and we will get you some information. Just tell us what you want to invest in and then we'll we'll be able to separate it out and let you know or you can go to I believe it's optiongenius.com/passiveincome. And there's a form there, you can just fill it out, tell us what you want to invest in, and we can send you the right information. So again, that's optiongenius.com/passiveincome or just email us or just reach out to us and we'll get you on the list. But we need to find out a little bit more of what you want to invest in. Okay, so there we go. That is accredited investor and we will see you later. Take care and trade with the odds in your favor. JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Hey there, passive traders How you doing? I got something really, really exciting for you today, if you'd like to have really, extra money, free money without having to do anything, that's what we're all about, right? Passive income, passive trading. This is really something I just came across this, I don't understand why I didn't know about this sooner. I just can't imagine all the money that I've left on the table over the years. I mean, I knew that this was happening. And I knew this was done. I just didn't know that us, individual investors at home guys, I didn't know that we could do this. And so I had to make this deal right away. And I had to get this information out there. So you could basically turn this setting on in your account and start making money today. Okay, that's how that's how cool it is. There's nothing to buy. There's nothing to do there. I mean, basically, it's, you have stock in your account, your broker will pay you extra money for having that stock in your account. That's simply what it is. So, I mean, let me just get into it. Okay? I'm flabbergasted. I'm speechless. No, I'm not, I'm talking. So I'm not speechless. But still, I'm really like, shocked. I call it the sticky to Wall Street stock Income program, because that's what we're doing. We're sticking it to Wall Street, we're sticking into the man. Now, look, this is our works. Normally, when we buy a stock, right? It goes up, we make money, that's what we want, you buy it, and then it goes up and you sell it or, you know, your passive trading. So you don't want to sell it, you do want to get dividends from it, you still want to sell options on it, and you want to make money off of it. You don't want to sell it ever, really, because it's just it's a it's an asset, they just want to cashflow. But this is another way to do that. So you buy the stock, it goes up, you make money. But if you think the stock is gonna go down, well, obviously, you can short the stock, right? And that's what hedge fund guys do. That's what Wall Street guys do. The big banks, the institutional traders, that's what they do all the time. They are shorting stock. Well, in order to short the stock, they don't own it, you can't short something you own right, because they would lose value and you own it. So that's bad. They instead they turn around and they borrow the stock from other brokers on Wall Street. So if they want to short a stock, they got to go to a different broker and say, Hey, I need this many shares this, I need this many shares this. And in order to do so they have to pay money, they actually pay interest to the broker that they're borrowing from. Now, if you go to your I know this, this works on Thinkorswim. If you go to the main page, where you type in the symbol, and you see the all the information, it'll tell you if the stock is easy to borrow, or hard to borrow. And that's what tells you how much volume there is and how much ability the hedges have to borrow this stock. Right? If it's easy to borrow, then they can go to any borrow and they can get it and they'll pay a lower interest rate. If it's hard to borrow, they have to pay a lot higher interest rate. Okay, so that's the really cool part. Because if we have that stock, we could lend it and collect that interest. That's right. So the hedge is they have to learn, they have to pay whoever they're borrowing their stock from the payment, it depends on the stock and how much they need to stop, right. If it's hard to borrow, they're gonna pay more. But any borrowing that they do, for us is really extra money. So yes, if you have stock in your account, it's just sitting there, you turn this feature on in your account, click, or I mean, there's no application, but you fill it out, and you get approved for this, your broker will take that stock from you whenever somebody wants to borrow it, and they will pay you interest. Now, the cool part is nothing changes in your account, nothing changes, you can still sell it whenever you want, you're not locked in. If there's a dividend, that money will still be given to you. You can sell options against it. The only requirement is that you own the stock 100% no margin. So if you own the stock 100% no margin. You can do this. Okay now, against the details a little bit, but here's what it's called. If you want to research it, you want to look it up, you want to call your own broker and find out more I think you should because it's like free money right? At Interactive Brokers. It's called the stock yield Enhancement Program, stock yield enhancement program, because that's basically what it does. They're giving you more money for owning it at other brokers like AmeriTrade, Fidelity Schwab e trade, it's called the fully paid lending Income program called the fully paid lending Income program. So you can either research it online or go into your account and search it or you just call up your broker and ask him make sure you get the pros and cons haven't walked you through it. Right do your own due diligence before you do you do it. But it sounds really awesome. And I'm applying myself to get this set up today. I was planning on setting it up first making some money off of it and then being able to come back and report it. I was like No one, we're gonna wait, I just need to tell you guys right now. And because I've seen other people do it and they were boarded that it works, it's easy, it's doable. And so I'm gonna go ahead and tell you now, and then I'll go do it, and then I'll make another, you know, we'll talk about it later, and see how it does and all that stuff, basically, you get daily income, yes, they put the money in your account every day. Because let's say, let's say there's a stock and, you know, they're gonna pay you 12% a year. That's a lot, right? 12%. Now, they're probably not going to take the stock from you, borrow it for the whole year. But for whatever period of time, they'll take that 12% divided by blah, blah, blah, how many days and then you get paid that dividend or you get that dividend, but you get paid that income that yield every every day in your account, and it'll show up as an account as a payment to you. Okay? Now, again, like I said, there's no restrictions on the on the trading, you can sell it whenever you want to, you can trade options on it, if you want to, make sure your broker allows it. Every brokers are different. They all have different criteria. So make sure your broker allows it. But yes, you can trade it you there's no locking period, you can get out whenever you want. Now, you might be thinking, But wait a minute, you know, if I'm giving this stock, and I'm letting somebody borrow it, who wants to short it, that's going to make the stock go down, and I own it. So that's going to hurt me Why would I do that? Well, you would do that because they're going to short the stock anyway, whether they borrow it from you, or they borrow from somebody else, they're going to borrow it, they're still going to do it. So you might as well make money off of it. Right. And we are in it for the long term. We're not in it for like five points. We are in it for five years. So if you do your stock selection properly, you're going to want to stay in the stock. And if it if it goes down, that's great. Well buy more. That's perfect. And we're getting paid while we're waiting. And we're selling options against it while we're waiting. And we're still getting dividend payments while we're ready. So yes, it's a good idea. The yield of what they do depends on the stock. If it's harder to borrow, you get less if it's easier to borrow. No, it's harder bar you get more, it's easier to borrow you get less, it depends on the broker as well. And the broker will then determine how much of that money they give you. So yes, I know it's yours. Right, but they're doing the transaction. So they keep part of it. Now at AmeriTrade they say they keep 50% Interactive Brokers is also 50%. So they keep 50% of that interest that gets paid. All right. Now, what's the risk? Well, the risk is that this is the once you hand over the stock, it's not government protected. So basically, what happens is if you have stock at Fidelity or AmeriTrade or whatever, your broker, if your broker goes out of business, you are protected up to a certain dollar amount by the US government. So the government will go into okay broker you failed, give us all your accounts, you know, let us know how much did Joe have in his account? Oh, this much. Okay, Joe, well, here you go, Here's your money. Or here's the stock that you own. You know, if you got 100 shares, here's your 100 shares, or they'll give you the money for it. So the government protects you in a normal environment. In this situation, the government will not protect you because you're lending them away. You're giving them up temporarily. Right, so you're not holding on to them. In order to offset that. What the brokers have done is each broker has a bank. Right? So for AmeriTrade, the bank is Wells Fargo right now. So the broker or in this case, AmeriTrade takes 102% of the value of the stock that they're borrowing and they go and they put that money or those that that amount of asset into the bank at Wells Fargo. So in case AmeriTrade goes out of business, Wells Fargo will make you whole okay. So again, if let's say you had $100,000 of a stock, AmeriTrade takes it from you, you let them borrow it, you let them give it to somebody else, then they AmeriTrade will take $102,000 worth of assets T bills or something else and they'll put it into Wells Fargo just in case. If they got a business well, Fargo will give you your money back. Okay, so you are protected, but it's not government protected. That's why they call it fully paid lending that it's, you know, fully paid. What else? Okay? So dividends, dividends are different dividends are paid, but they're not paid as a dividend. So let's say you have $1,000 dividend coming up. If you have lent the stock, the broker will still pay you that $1,000 But it won't be classified as a dividend. So depending on your tax situation, you know, that might upset you a little bit. But it's still better than not getting the money, right? It's still better than not getting interest. So I don't know if that would make sense to offset it unless you know your tax bracket and talk to your accountant about it. Make sure it works and makes sense. But if you're doing this Send an IRA account, well, then there's no taxes, so you don't have to worry about it at all. That's the last thing according to AmeriTrade, now again, I, I've only contacted AmeriTrade so far, I do think that this can be done at other brokers in a regular account. But at AmeriTrade, they want you to do this in a non-margin account. So if you have a regular account that does not have margin, they will let you do it in there, or they will let you do it in a margin enable IRA. So what that means for us, as passive traders, is if you're selling options, you know, if you're selling credit spreads, iron condors or naked puts in a regular trading account, that account will not be eligible. But if you're selling those same options in an IRA account, that account is eligible. So this works for those of us who are trading or who have IRAs, and have margin enabled. So you can do that in there, because you probably have most of your stocks in there anyway, the long term holdings, so this will be another added boost to that income and that yield. So that's really cool. That's the basics of it. Okay. Again, it's either called the stock yield Enhancement Program, or it's called the fully paid lending Income program. Again, this is money that it's free to you. There's no restrictions. And I'm looking at the website right now for AmeriTrade on that page. And it's, basically it says earn extra income on stocks and ETFs, you hold in your account by lending them out for a fee, we facilitate the loans. I mean, AmeriTrade charge borrowers and share 50% of the income with you, the securities must be fully paid for not borrowed on margin. Okay, so it says here, you know, you can buy and sell your shares. As usual, you can review the loan details on your daily statements. So you'll get daily income statements, and you can opt out at any time. So you're not logged in. There's no fee for this, you're not paying anything to do this is basically something you click on your account, you make an apply application. And then if that's turned on, then there you go, we're off to the races. How much money can you make? Well, they got some hypothetical lending rates here, you can get 10.5% 5% 1% 15% on different stocks, depending again on how hard it is to borrow. I mean, that's basically all it is, right? It's pretty crazy. If you have a it's and they based it on 360 days of lending. So I guess five days the markets are closed. All right, I guess I don't know how they calculate the 360. But that's what it is they pay you for 360 days out of the year. So even on weekends, you're still getting paid interest. And that's really cool. So again, the considerations and the you know, the risks if you want to say shares, loans are not protected by the SIPC however, the shares are fully secured by collateral held at a third party custodian like explained to you well, when the bank holds the money, you do forfeit your right to participate in any corporate actions, such as proxy votes, tender offers, and voluntary actions. So there's a vote coming on or something you don't get to vote. Okay, I don't vote anyway. So for me, it doesn't really matter. Rather than dividends, you receive substitute payments in the same amount, which are taxed differently from dividends. So again, talk to your CPA about that. Typically, typically, positions must be more than $10,000 to be considered for lending. So you want to have at least $10,000 in that stock doesn't say you got to have 100 shares. So that's cool, you know, you might have less than 100 shares. But if you have $10,000, they'll still borrow it. And then securities lending may not be suitable for all investors, and is only provided to clients after a review and approval process. So yeah, that's, you know, that's them covering their own butts, They have some FAQs here, there's an application, you gotta meet some criteria, and it doesn't say that, you know, all the money or the all this, all the shares will be loaned out, but they will all be eligible. So it depends on what the market wants, right? And yes, you can buy and sell the security, as usual. If it's lent out and you sell the stock, then you just stopped getting any interest. So that's it. And that's it and you do your own research. I just want to get this out to you. This is really cool way of just being extra free money. There's nothing to buy nothing to do. If you have an account at a broker that does this. Just ask them how do you set it up? What are the pros and cons try it out. If you don't like it, stop it, you know, but this is just another way to generate some extra passive income from stocks that you already own. And I'm just happy to bring this information to you that you could do this. Go ahead go get it started today while you're doing this, you know, watch his video again if you have to get the details but yeah, it's pretty simple. Go set it up. All right. Trade with the odds in your favor guys. Wish you all the success in the world. Peace out. JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Allen: All right, passive traders, we have a treat in store for you today. Many of you know about the option continuum, which is basically, you know, our levels of breakdown of where you are as an options trader, you start with level one, you don't know anything. And then you get to level 10, maybe if you want to, which is option professional. And basically a professional means that you are so good at trading options, that you are now trading and managing other people's money and you're getting paid for it. Many of you have reached out to us in the past and said, Hey, I want more information on that. And we haven't really put it out there because I am not doing it myself. Right now, as a professional, I don't I'm not measuring anybody else's money. And so, you know, I'm not the best person to talk to about that. But we keep getting people and be like, hey, you know, I want to learn, I want to learn. So one of our members, Paul Ashcraft, has volunteered to join us today. And I want to thank you, Paul, for coming and helping out. A few a couple of months ago, I think in one of our groups, I think it was a passive group, where I had put in there like, Hey, I'm thinking about starting a hedge fund. So I'm thinking about going professional, right? And he reached out and said, hey, you know, I'm already doing it if you want to, if you want to talk and I can answer your question. So we had an amazing conversation, I learned a lot. And I was like, You know what, this would be really helpful for everybody else. So I asked Paul, hey, could you do it again? And we can record it this time? It was like, Yeah, sure, no foul. And so he's here, Paul, thank you. Thank you for being on thank you for taking the time to do this. Paul: Thank you very much. Pleasure. Allen: And you're Paul is a member of our of a lot of our programs. So passive trading formula, the blank check, and now the credit spread mastery as well. So you know, it's good to see that, hey, if you're a money manager, then you're continuously getting learning and learning new things to help out your students, or your clients, I guess. So. Well, tell me, why did you get into management? What was it that drawed you through that? Paul: Well, I sort of got tricked into it. I had a, I'm a CPA by trade, and I had a client who was becoming an NFL player agent. And he trusted me and wanted me to help him manage his people's NFL players money. So I started the licensing process at that time. And so that sort of tricked me into it. So that sort of fell apart. And then he wasn't getting more leads for what he was doing. So I basically continued since then, so Allen: Okay, so were you already trading on your own? Or before that? Or did you learn as you want to? Paul: Yeah, I've been trading, you know, for quite a while. Off and on. So yeah, I've had some experience of trading. Allen: Okay. So you are comfortable, you could do it? Paul: I knew I needed to learn, I do need to learn some more. But yeah, I feel like I could I knew enough about the world to do that. Allen: Okay. And so you are known as what is a RIA, a registered independent advisor? Paul: Right. That's correct. Allen: So that's one of the ways of managing money. What exactly is an RIA? Paul: It's basically a firm that is licensed by the FINRA basically, and you are licensed to where you can manage other people's money. Allen: And all RIAs, are fiduciaries, right? Paul: That's correct. Yeah.  Allen: Right. Because a lot of people don't know the difference between a fiduciary and a non fiduciary. And so a fiduciary, if you don't know you are legally bound to do what's in the best interest of the client. A lot of these other companies that people think about when they're talking about money management, or Wealth Advisors, retirement advisors, all these words that they use, they have no license, or maybe they do have a license, but they're not a fiduciary. So they're not required to do what's best for the client. And so they can sell you a product that they get the highest commission on, even if it's not really a good thing, a good fit for you. So that's why..  Paul: Yeah one of the ways I deal with that fiduciary criteria is basically whatever I do for other people, I do for myself. Allen: Okay. Okay, interesting. So, what does it take to open an RIA? Paul: Well, if you want to legal structure and need, like, I have an LLC got a creative for that. And I have had to pass a serious 65 test, which you'd like an SEC test, and get to come up some kind of agreement you have with your clients that's approved by FINRA to sign them on as clients. Those are the basics you have to do. Allen: Okay, and like how long did it take you to go through all that? Remember? Paul: I'm gonna say, basically of six to nine months. Allen: Okay, and how long have you been? How long have you been an RIA? Paul: Since 2014, so roughly eight years. Allen: Awesome. Yep. Cool. And for those of you, you know, I'm going to repeat it later on, but Paul's business website is Businessadvisors.Pro. So if you ever or if you need a good adviser, you know, please reach out to Paul. And I'll repeat at the end, and we'll put it in the show notes. I just wanted to get that out there. Paul: And that's mainly my CPA website, just so you know. Allen: Very cool. BusinessAdvisors.Pro, there you go.  Paul: And then sort has been done about creating my Wealth Advisors website, because you're so under scrutiny when you were you advertise things, so I just sort of steered away from that a little bit. Allen: Interesting. Okay. So I guess there's certain things you can say and certain things you cannot say. Paul: Basically, anything you put out there to the public, you have to like, monitor it for five years, and they can question you about it anytime. So I just figured one way to get around that is just not to do it. Allen: Okay. So then that leads me to my next question, like, how do you find clients if you're not advertising? Paul: Well, you know, I have CPA clients, probably like half the clients, I have my Wealth Advisors from CPA side. Other thing is like, from friends, and referrals from other people who use me. Allen: Okay. So it takes time to build all that up?  Paul: Yes, yes. And I'm currently working on more. More advertising. Allen: Okay. All right. So the advertising is possible. It's not it's not like it's restricted. But you have to be careful of what you do and how you do it. Paul: Yes, yes, yeah. Allen: Now, what are your clients looking for? Because, you know, if somebody comes to you and says, Hey, you know, I'm looking to make more money, obviously, but they have so many, so many choices. They can do it themselves, it could go to like, like Fidelity and have them do it. They could go to they're really rich, they can have their own private like, you know, Bank of America, has their own private wealth, people. So when they come to you, what do they tell you? Like? What are they looking for in terms of an advisor? Paul: Well, I mean, I had someone recently come to me, and, you know, we're signing them up, or things that I'd say we, if we look, if we're here a year later, what do you want to what your criteria are saying, I did a good job. And he wanted a 10% return, which has been difficult in this market. But that's, that's one thing. Another thing? I you know, most advisors out there, these basically are, they're buying hold people, I mean, and they bid six things in a bucket, and don't look at it too often. So I, I basically say that I'm actively working in their account, and I'm not sure I'm going to just put it there and not be looking at it. Allen: So obviously, you probably tell them about your options experience and the different types of strategies you use. Paul: Yeah, a lot of times just the casual person warnings on the manager money that, that if I tried to tell them all that it would go way over their head. Because, you know, it took me like two years talking about options to actually start doing it myself, you know, so I'm trying to be a little bit of conscientious about what they can and cannot handle information wise. I'll be glad to talk about it, they want to, but I'm not gonna write too much about it. Allen: And I bet that would that would set you apart, right? You know, it's like, hey, you know, we can do plain vanilla stuff. Or we can do if you're a little bit more aggressive than we can do this, and this and this. And then if it goes over there, that's fine. But as long as they're like, whoa, this guy knows. Paul: Yeah, definitely. That's certainly part because like, my CPA, well, I deal with investment advisors. And like, no one, no one that I know of is actually managing costs. I mean, like, you know, every week or things like that, Allen: yeah, yeah, they just don't I mean, part of it is they have, depending on where they are some of these guys that I know, they have broker dealers, and the broker basically tells them what they can do and what they can't do. And trading is like, No, you're not doing it. They just they can't, they're not allowed. And so, you know, we get we get clients that are financial advisors, they come in, they're like, oh, yeah, I'm a financial advisor, like, oh, they shouldn't, you know, all this stuff. And they're like, oh, I don't do any of this for my son. I don't know, they don't even teach us this stuff. In financial advisors. Cool. So it's like, once I call again, I'm like, Oh, my God. Paul: Yeah, most of them are just like, call themselves people. And it is this, they don't necessarily know that much about investing. It's more about they have relationships with people, and they train their people to be accustomed to five to 7% returns. So so don't want you to do that as that's, you know, not a hallmark. Allen: Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, when I go to if I go to a dinner party, or whatever, and, you know, always comes up. So what do you do? It's like, well, I teach people how to do this. And the first they're like, really, is that, you know, what do you what do you mean? And then we tell them a little bit about it, and they go, Yeah, you know, we try to aim, you know, for 5% a month, and they're like, what a month. Really? Oh, wow, I gotta learn about that. And then, you know, you explain a little bit and then they're, like, bored and then they go talk to somebody else. Because, you know, it's cool. They want, they want it. They just want to do the work. So that's cool. Now as an advisor, how do you How do you charge? Like, what do you charge? How do you do it? Paul: So I have what's called a serious 65 license. So I'm able to charge a percentage of what assets are under management. Okay, so the basic generic, charged with as generally 1% of assets under management. Okay, that if I'm doing more as a some different strategies, things like that, I'm probably going to up the field more because it's, it is active trading. Allen: It takes more time. Yeah, yeah. Because I remember way back when I had a guy at America ice, and he was my advisor. And yeah, he would charge a minimum of 1% on assets every year. Every time you put money, you gave him money, they would take 5% off the top. And then every every mutual fund and every index fund or whatever that they put you in. And most of them were, you know, Ameriprise products. Each of those things would have a separate fee every year. So I mean, I got dealing left and right. I didn't know what I was doing. At the time, I was thinking I am going to you know, I'm smart. I got an advisor. But yeah, he was the one getting rich. And so.. Paul: They made that money, whether they go down or go up it. Allen: Yeah, I mean, they take the money right up front, 5% off the top. As soon as you make a deposit, it's like, man, you haven't done anything. Even if I turn around and ask for the money back, I just love fibers. Do you have like a lot of Is There a lot of overhead for being a advisor? You need a large staff? Paul: Right now, it's just me. And so I'm already have all my setup for my CPA business. So there's not really that much more to do.  Allen: And you can run it from the same location. Yes, yes. Okay. So then who does the like the backend stuff, you know, statements, and compliance audits, all that stuff. Paul: So we use Interactive Brokers as the broker dealer. So they basically, so all my clients have their own account set up with them, and it sort of goes underneath my master account. So so they take care about the then get a statement from there anytime they want to find out what their balances. And if they need to take up money, they can contact them and get the money taken out. So they saw him. So we're doing a lot of the back office stuff. Allen: Awesome. So you really don't have to do anything. And they they opened the account themselves, the client opens the account themselves, they deposit the money themselves, they can take it out whenever they want, they can go and log in, see all the trades, see whatever is there. So you really don't have a lot of customer service issues. And so you don't have to send send out statements, because Interactive Brokers will do that. Right. Paul: And one of my strategies is if someone is, I call it high maintenance, then I probably can't handle that, you know, they probably need to find someone else because, you know, I got enough things to do is it is. Allen: Awesome, cool. And then. So you don't handle any of the money either. Because they just go straight to interactive. So you're like a hands off, okay, I'll do the trades, but I'm not touching your money. So you don't have to worry about me taking your money and running away and flying to Bermuda or something.  Paul: Yeah, just like the Bernie Madoff deal where he was. He they call it having custody of the funds, and he had custody. And so they, they talked about that when you're going through your testing and things like that, about having custody and not having custody and things like that. So yeah, it's a big red flag. Allen: Yeah. Because I mean, like, I've been looking into starting my own hedge fund, you know, using the the passive trading strategies and such. And I looked at RIA first and then I looked at, you know, hedge fund as another way, and I think from what I've been able to find so far is that if you start a hedge fund, and you don't charge any management fees, you don't need the license, you can set it up in a way where you know, you get you only take a percentage of the profit. So if there's a gain, you can get a percent, but you don't get that yearly management fee. If you want the yearly management fee, then you do have to separate a separate Ria, to do the management of the fund. Okay, I didn't know that. Yeah, so I thought that was pretty cool. So we've been looking at that as well, different things. So now, what percentage of your management is active? versus, you know, index funds, mutual funds, etc? Paul: I'd say about half. Allen: Okay, and all of the clients are okay with that, or do you do client by client? Paul: I pretty much put everybody under the same model. Yeah. So Allen: And so with interactive, how does that work, you have to go into each account to put a trade on or you just put one trade on and it just trickles.. Paul: There's a master account and I can set up different  classification. So I could I could buy 1000 shares of IBM and have it spread it putting all the accounts did that.  So they have to watch out for is some of the accounts can trade certain things, some can't, like RIAs cannot do you know, futures and naked options and things like that as far as, at least on the credit side. Allen: Okay. All right. So can does that get confusing? If you want if you want like, Okay, I want like a say IBM, I want my IBM stock to be 5% of all of my everybody's portfolio. Paul: Yeah, that would be a different the different equation. So basically, like I did a trade today where I figured, you know, want to take a $10,000 risk. So divided by what that option was going for. And I bought that many contracts to take on that kind of risk. So not necessarily rebalancing everyone is usually trade by trade. So putting on a certain set of circumstances, set a step stop loss and things like that. Allen: Okay, cool. So you can do it as easy or as simple as you want. Or you can make it as complicated as you want. Yeah, up to you. Yeah. Nice. So what types of what types of trades do you do? Paul: Well, some of what you teach. So I do some swing trading. And of course, you know, credit spreads and things like that. And some, you know, some some of the dividend paying stocks and covered calls and things like that. Allen: And do you do any any oil futures options? Paul: Well, I'm not. I'm just at the point to get licensed for that. Allen: It's a separate license? Paul: That's as a separate license. Yes. So you have to you have to get licensed through the, Chicago Board of Trade, the NFA and National Futures Association. Allen: Okay. Okay. And then will you be able to do it the same as everything else through Interactive Brokers? Paul: Yes, I think so. Sometimes you don't know to actually do it. So I think it's pretty similar. Allen: Sweet. Okay. Now, as a as an RIA, do you also advise your clients on other alternative investments, you know, real estate, crypto anything else? Or is it just stocks, bonds, options? Paul: I'm always getting to ask questions, you know, because I'm in, you know, really, I'm gonna CPA world or the IRA world, I'm getting asked questions. So I will advise on that if I think I have a good opinion. You know, I'm not roll up on that rolled up on crypto Allen: Right, right. Are you still bound by the same fiduciary type rules on that or?  Paul: You could come under some scrutiny. You know, you'd like an offsetting handed comment, and then someone does something crazy. And so you got to be a little careful. Allen: Yeah. All right. And okay, so him now with the interactive account, or the broker dealer, is the software any different? Like, versus if you open a regular account by yourself? Is there anything you have to learn a new platform? Or is it basically the same thing?  Paul: It's pretty much the same platform, you just have to understand how to do the trading, like I was telling you about, like, allocating between all the accounts, but the platform itself is basically the same. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Allen: What do you see as the future of money management, because like, you know, they got these robo advisors now, and they got like Robin Hood, trying to get everybody to trade on their own. And so what do you see down the pike? You know, do you see like, your clients are like, yeah, rather just have you do it? Or are robots or whatever? Paul: Yeah, I can see, you know, some of the robot picking up. But on average, most people out there don't know, hardly anything about the investing world. My average client, so I think it's going to be still a good field you know, way up currently doing it. Allen: Okay, and who is like your average client? Paul: They're probably like 50 years old, that did 60. And probably, you know, got assets anywhere from, you know, 50 to 50,000 to over a million dollars, you know? Allen: And do you have any limits on who can invest with you? And how much? Paul: No, I mean, like, I'm not, I'm just gonna take on any account right now. It would need to be over a certain dollar amount for me to I just always have to keep that in mind about, you know, do I want to take on a five or $10,000 account? Because it's gonna be extra work. Taking that versus the capital issue at-- You don't have to be you don't have to comply with the day trading rules. You know, because because if you if you accidentally in and out three, three trades in a week, then your account gets shut down. You know, so you have to deal with that. So yeah, so I'm trying to gradually move up from like a minimum of 25,000 to 50,000, 200,000. Allen: Okay. And then you also have a certain criteria like a certain person that you want right? Certain somebody they can handle the options and that Intertek can handle that because I mean, it does swing a little bit. So if they have a 5,000 to $10,000 account, they freak out if they lose $1,000, obviously, that's not the right person for you anyway. Paul: Right. But on that same note, I had a client the other day that, you know, they have, you know, an excess a half million dollars with me. And they want to know how they could put in more money since this market was down so they could capture, capture that now mark? I love that kind of client. expecting them to call you and tell you, why is my account down? Actually, that question is dead. They're saying, How can we put more money in?  Allen: Yeah, that's a smart, that's a Smart Client. So that's, that's got to be your email, you know, going out, like, Hey, he's trying to give me more now. double down on your investments. Okay. Now, How has being a money manager improved your own trading? Or hasn't? Paul: Well, I mean, it's made me to seek out new avenues of investing. You know, because I'm looking out for my clients. By the same token, when I do that, I find things that I can use to, you know, like, I don't know, if I would have found the old future options without that, you know, seeking out new new investment strategies, you know, so I could do a better job for my clients. Allen: Okay. Now, we've had a lot of volatility lately. And you've, you've alluded to it already. When stocks down about 20% or so right now, how do you deal with the investor concerns or expectations? Paul: I'm continually learning that. The more, the more proactive you can be with that, I find that it's better. Like, if you have a bad day or a bad trade that, you know, that affects it so much, and then maybe call and talk to them about it versus waiting for them to call you later, and they get their quarterly statements. And they call you know? Allen: Right. So do you find that a large portion of your job is just talking to people and just calming them down? Or explaining certain things to them? Or educating them? Paul: In the beginning? Yes. If someone's with you for a while, and they haven't gotten, understood your ways, and why you do what you do. And it would be generally in the first year of a client relationship, you indeed do that more, but there is sort of they get to know you, you you get to know them and sort of like a training curve there. Allen: And now, most of your clients, are they either they know you or they were referred to you. Right. So there's always there's already that trust built in from the beginning. Most of them yes, yeah. So if you, you know, advertising, somebody comes in cold, they're like, oh, yeah, I like what you're doing here. You know, here's $100,000, there's gonna be a lot more back. Paul: Yeah. Allen: Okay. So how are you handling? How are you handling the volatility? Like when somebody calls up and says, Oh, my count is down. How do you? What do you do there? Paul: Well, number one, what I did when I saw when I saw the market starting to tank, I basically, was going more into cash. So like, I the client won't know why we aren't investing. I said, Well, I'm waiting for the market to give me indication has, it's found the bottom or, you know, it is headed back up. So I don't want to, I'm not a bottom picker. But I don't want to like, write it further down. You know. So that's one way of dealing with it. And they seem to appreciate that quite a bit and understand that. So I don't think that's something you get out of a typical advisor. Allen: So yeah, but what if somebody calls you and says, Oh, my God, you know, I'm down 10%? What am I going to do? I can't handle this. How do you handle that? Have you ever had that happen? Paul: Yeah. I tried to change up their strategies a little bit to get them a little more solid, or maybe not trade as much in their account. Just being a little more cautious. Allen: Okay, so Okay, so you can actually choose, like, let's say, we talked about that IBM thing. So if you're like, Hey, I'm buying IBM, you could choose and say, okay, don't put it in this account in this account, just because in all these other ones,. Yeah. All right. So you can actually tailor it because like, if somebody goes, Yeah, I just want to be long stocks, or I just want tech stocks. And I just want you know, credit spreads. So they you can, you can do that. Yeah, okay. Yep. So, do you have any shortcuts that you can share? You know, for somebody that's thinking, hey, you know, this sounds like cool, I'm gonna I'm gonna get into this. RIA business, anything that you probably didn't know, ahead of time that you would have liked to have known? Paul: This is sort of like a unknown territory. Because, I mean, when I was doing it, I couldn't get anybody to actually figure it out what like a serious 65 license would do. And I was sort of going into blindly a little bit. So I mean, I think the number one thing is maybe you know, then contact me. Shortcuts is, you know, I don't know like I had to find a place to take the take the course for that. And then I hired a guy to tutor me some. And, you know, there's, there's these firms out there wanting you to sign up with them for them to do oh, you know, like your paperwork and so forth. And I just sort of like fumbled my way through it and plagiarized another agreement online affected us. And so another thing is to know if you're in this world, you will get audited. Personally. Well, the your investment firm, right, yeah. Yeah. Like I'm in the CPA world, and I probably will never get out a different CPA world. But the investment side, I will get audited probably time and time again. So far, it's only been once one step Florida, but yeah, Allen: okay. Yeah. I mean, that's a good thing. I guess, you know, that, that the advisors and like you said, you know, the Bernie Madoff, he keeps him at bay as much as he can a little bit. So some of that, I guess, from a consumer standpoint, and that's a good thing to hear. Paul: Yeah, but a lot of a lot of us, they don't necessarily understand the world as much as you do. And it's more like them checking a box somewhere in a city. They ask this question, or I did that, but they don't really find that don't really necessarily know exactly what they're doing, you know, Allen: Yeah. So but do you mean tax audited or audited by like the audit by Paul: the state by the financial regulatory people for the state you're in Allen: The state regulatory? Okay, so every state has their own regulatory stuff that you have so far. Paul: Yeah. So just just sort of background here. Usually, as you're managing under $100 million, you're managed by the state. But then once you hit $100 million in the SEC is basically is going to your watchdog, it's gonna look over your shoulder. Allen: Okay. All right. Cool. And you're in Florida, right? Correct. But you can take clients from anywhere? Paul: I can. But different states have different rules, most of them allow you to take five to 15 clients, and not really be registered with them. But then once you hit over that threshold, they want you to fully registered with them. But there are a few states that require you if you get one client, they want you to be registered. And Louisiana was one of those states. Allen: So I guess, depending on how much capital the guy is gonna give you whether it's worth it to register there.. Paul: Exactly, exactly, yeah. Okay. All right. Allen: So would you knowing what you know, now, are you happy that you went this route? Paul: Ask me again, in a few years. Allen: Well, you've been doing already for like, eight years. So kind of got some kind of track record here. Paul: Yeah, it's been, you know, it's been definitely a learning curve, you know, from the regulatory side. And then from the investment side, too, so? Yes, I'm glad I did it. But it' had its rough moments. Allen: Well, give me an example. Paul: Well if you if you lose on a trade, you know, it can affect your account and other people's account. So that's probably the biggest things that has happened to me, you know? And then you got to figure out how am I gonna tell this person this?  Allen: Yeah. So how did you how did you deal with that? Paul: I prayed a lot. Basically, if I knew the fact that someone so much, I would, I call them and talk to him about it. But in a certain situation, like, because it was spread over so many accounts, it didn't really affect anyone that much. It wasn't that big of a deal. Like, you know, if I'm managing $5 million of money, and I lose 20,000, you know, the most Someone's probably gonna lose is maybe 2 or 3000. So the overall number is a big number. But you know, we spread between all the counts, it's not that big of a number. Allen: Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's that thing, right? There is like, the biggest thing that's kept me out of it for all these years, you know, people have been asking me from the beginning, okay, can you take my money? I'm like, nope, nope, because I don't know how I'm gonna handle the stress. I don't know if, um, we will sleep, I can lose my own money, you know, market down 20% Okay, whatever, it'll go back up, I got time, you know, but somebody else if I lose your money, and I don't know, I don't know how I'm gonna handle it. And so that's the one thing that that's really caused me to be hesitant up till now. And I agree what you said about not having that much information out there. You know, I mean, there are companies out there that will like if you want to be in RIA you type in how to be an RIA and there's a company that hey, you if you give us like 30 grand, you know, we'll do all the paperwork and we'll file everything for you. So you Okay, but what do I actually get? You know, they're like well you do the paperwork. Well what about after that? How do I get clients how do I do this how to do that they will help you at all and these two guys they had approached, they had talked that a because I'm you know Option Genius is in what's called the financial publishing space that world, so we have our own little conventions and all the Guru's come and hang out and talk marketing and stuff. And so there was there was these two guys who were speakers, and they were telling all of the financial publishers that hey, you guys need to get into the into the management business, because you guys already have all these clients? They already trust you? You know, and they probably have a lot of money because people coming to me, you know, they say, Hey, I want to learn how to trade options. Okay, cool, you know, and how large is your account? They're like, Oh, 50,000. Okay, cool. And they trading options with 50,000. But they also have like, maybe a million dollar IRA, that they're not touching, or their wife has $500,000 that is with some other financial advisor that she doesn't want her husband to touch with options. So it's like, yeah, everybody that comes in has a lot more money. So if you started an IRA or an advisor, then you know, they'll give you that money as well. And you can make all this money. And I was like, Okay, that's interesting. But, you know, what are the legalities and all that and they wanted, I don't know, obtain $1,000 plus a percentage of the company to actually teach me all this stuff. And I'm finding a there's a lot of secrecy, as you can say, you know, and Wall Street, I think puts it like that on purpose. Because they don't want everybody to know what they're doing and what they that they don't know what they're doing. Pretty much. So cool. Paul: I don't know, that's intentional, but it just got I think there's so few people who are looking to do it. And like, it's not a widespread throughout the population thing. So you don't find as much about it, you know. Allen: Maybe okay, yeah, I'll take that. Yeah. Because like, you know, even like, what is the difference between an RIA and a hedge fund? You know, I've been beating my head, like, which one? Which way? Do we go? Which way? Do we go? If we go this way? Or this? Or what are the pros? What are the cons, and there's like, no one person that can that can tell me, if you want to go to a hedge fund, they got a little hedge fund world, and, you know, you got to you got to pay the dues to get in. If you want the RA world, then it's more common, but it's, it's for the guys, you know, for people who are like, Yeah, you know, I just want to put everybody's money in an index fund, you know, so it's like, what you're doing is totally different, like, I have not met any advisors that are actually, you know, trading that actively for people. So I mean, compared to the other guy, Joe Schmo that charges 1% a year, or 2% a year, just to put their money in an index fund compared to what you're doing, you know, your value is just so much more. But it does seem like it's very similar to a hedge fund where, you know, a hedge fund is a little bit different, where all the money is pooled into one spot. And then, you know, the, the trader controls it, you're doing kind of similar, where you can look at it and be like, Okay, I got, you know, $10 million under management, how am I going to split that up into different trades? And it just happens to be in different people's accounts? So have you ever thought about increasing your rates because like a hedge fund, they can charge a percentage of the gains? An RIA can't? Can they do that? Paul: They can do that on their certains particulars criteria? I think like you have to have an investor who's has at least $2 million in investable assets. They have at least $1 million invested with you. And then you can have certain arrangements where you say, Well, if I make whatever percentage I'll make about what the s&p does, you'll split it with me, or something like that, you know? Okay, so again, it's very, it's has a lot of criteria to it can't be done, though. Okay. Yeah. Because I wouldn't say the hedge fund world is based on what you're telling me is, cuz you're basically commingling all the funds. Right? So you got to do like a statement for each person or something. Yeah. And so I think the advantage is, you can just commingle it all and then do whatever you need to do. And then at the end of the day, you somehow allocated? Allen: Right, so the thing with the hedge fund is that all the investors have to be accredited. Okay, so accredited, as you know, probably, you know, you basically you have a million dollar net worth not putting your house, or you're making upwards of 300,000 a year. So, you know, basically, so at least Paul: They have to tell you, they're accredited. Right? Allen: I think we would actually want them to be proof, you know, give me proof otherwise, we're not letting you in. Paul: That was actually in so my testing I just did is like, yeah, you want this criteria? But are you actually gonna go go check it? No. So Allen: Interesting. Okay. Because I mean, you know, the government says that the hedge funds, you know, if you're an accredited investor, you should be smarter than the average bear. And so, if you lose money, it's not that big a deal. Like you are smart enough to get into it. You know, somebody with $5,000 or $10,000. That's my life savings. No, sorry, you can't invest in this. Even though the hedge fund might be like doing 1,000,000% a year, you can't invest because you're not accredited. Ras can take basically everybody, so that was one of the things okay, somebody comes in with 50,000 as an RIA, you might just take it because it's not that much paperwork. It's not extra for you. But for a hedge fund. Yeah, no, I can't do it. Because I gotta, I gotta pay the auditing company. I gotta pay the statement company. I got to pay the customer. You know, whoever's doing customer service and answering the phone and doing all that, and salespeople and all that. So 50,000 is not going to cut it, you know, the limit is a lot higher. For sure. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, that, in that sense, totally different world. But very similar from what I'm seeing is that, you know, you're doing probably what we're gonna be doing, you know, similar. Paul: So you probably can't take qualified money like IRAs and things like that. Allen: I think they can. Yeah, yeah, I think they can, as long as a person is accredited. And so there's different regulations, 5063 C, or six, C, five, or six D, they'll those tell you, you know, if you can take accredited and non accredited, and then can you advertise or not, I'm still learning all this, it's all different, because like, if you start a Real Estate Fund, different from if you're doing a hedge fund, versus a private equity fund, so some of the rules apply to everything. Some of the rules are just separate. So I'm still learning all that. But I know that the Interactive Brokers, people, they've done webinars in the past with attorneys. So if anybody wants to start a hedge fund, you can still use the Interactive Brokers platform. And they have they actually have a separate portal, I think, for hedge funds. Yeah, I've seen that. You've seen that too? Where you can actually see what other people are doing. And what are the trades that they're making? Paul: I didn't know about that. I just knew that they had some kind of hedge fund portion of what they're doing. I didn't know exactly what it meant. Allen: Yeah. So So what they said was that, you know, the attorney was like, you know, it'll take several, you know, maybe $30,000, to set up your hedge fund, you can probably do it with a smaller amount, if you want to start an incubator fund, which is like, you know, if you have your own money, and you put in and say $300,000, and you trade it as if it's a fund, and you don't maybe that that paperwork might be like 7000, and you set that up, you treat it as a fun, you build up your track record, and be like, Oh, hey, look, you know, I was trading for six months, I got this, that or not, and then you can start advertising it, and you convert it to a full fund. And then you can say, well, look at my track record, this is what I did. And then people can come in for the full fund. So that was one of the things that they were they were talking about. But so yeah, we were we were looking at an interactive, but the one thing that interacted with their software is a little bit more clunky or less user friendly than some of the most user friendly software. Yeah, it was my personal accounts. Now. So when, do you still trade on on your own on the side? Or is all of your money in the big? Paul: I have some money still in the in the huge fund? And then, you know, I have some I have an account on the side, right? Allen: So that separate account, did that change it all after you got licensed? Because they always, you know, when you open an account, they always ask you, are you licensed? And then they're I don't know why they do that. Is there to change anything on? You're not gonna recall? Paul: Yeah. So, there's, there's occasions where you can link up an account with the master fund, and you can D link the account. So I think at one time I had, it's actually my 401k account for my accounting firm attached to the IRA account, but then I detached it. One of the main reasons was for futures. Okay, because I knew I wasn't qualified to do futures for the whole fun. But I could on a mountain account. Allen: Ah, okay. So you have to keep it separate to do the futures options. Yeah. Until you get licensed by them. And is that like a lengthy process as well? The futures options? License? Yeah. Paul: I took a series three exam back a month or so ago. So I'd studied for two or three months, and again, got a tutor. Yeah. Okay. Allen: All right. How many clients do you have right now? Paul: I'd say about 20-25. Allen: Okay. All right. Cool. And so, from a financial standpoint, has it been worth it? Paul: Yeah, it's been really good. I might, my intention when I know that, you know, once I got into it, my intention was over the years, you know, retirement age, is at my incomes shift for my CPA business or to my investment business. So I could do that, say two hours a day and retirement versus, you know, doing tax seasons and all that. CPA visits. Allen: Okay. Is that still the plan? Yes. Still plan. Awesome. Cool. So yeah, I mean, handling managing millions of dollars of assets in two hours a day. That sounds pretty good to me. Paul: That might be a pipe dream. But that's what I had in mind.  Allen: I think you could do it your own way. You're on your way. Cool. Awesome. So is there anything that I haven't asked you that you think like, oh, yeah, people need to know this. Paul: I could probably sit here and think about a few things. Not on every call. No, no, no, no. I mean, one thing you have to like for instance, a you have to have a like an email account that you Gotta add to retain all your emails for at least like five years. That's one thing to keep in mind. And like I have to send a like a balance sheet and income statement to the state of Florida every year and get someone to notarize it. You have to upload information to the FINRA site at least once a year. And that's where you pay your like on license Louisiana along Florida and things like that. So I pay my fees for those licensing booth vendors website. Allen: And that you had told me that the fee that you charge for management that comes out Interactive Brokers basically pays you every quarter, your fixed asset if I had to build it, right, yeah. Paul: Okay. So, so they do it automatically. But when I got audited, the state wanted me to actually create invoices. So the answer your question is, I'm not sure what the real requirement is. So far, I guess I met that criteria then. So I'm not actually grading him. What's the reporter right now? Okay. Allen: Yeah, I mean, because like, I mentioned, those two consultants that I had talked to, they had told me that I would have to bill everybody invoice, everybody, every quarter. And those people would have to pay me directly. So it wouldn't be taken out of their account, it would be sent directly to me that they would have to write a check every quarter. And I'm like, that's a pain in the butt. You know, that's pretty cumbersome. Yeah, if a customer has to pay, you know, a big check every quarter for management fees. And then especially if you have a down year, he's like, What am I paying for it? I don't pay for this anymore. And you don't get paid. So I was like, Okay, that's a big red flag. But I'm glad that that's not true. Cool. Okay. Paul: One thing I have figured out there is, like, there's an account I was going to take from someone from one advisors to me, and they had all their fees, like totally hidden with all these mutual funds and things like that. And so like, you know, that account, I was gonna charge 3.3%. But we weren't able to ever get to the bottom of what the other advisor was charging. So, even though they have a lot of disclosures and things like that, I think we could have pressed the issue if we really wanted to. But, um, but you know, I ended up losing that account. Allen: So did that customer realize that, that he's being charged all these things? Paul: No, no, no clue. No, I mean, whenever I sort of parted ways, and I said, you guys at least need to figure out what they're charging you. You'd be surprised at the amount of inept that's out there and people who are actually hiring advisors, like, yeah, most people do not keep like their annual statements. They couldn't tell me how much they made last year. You know, because really, when I'm taking on an account, I want to know, what their track record has been sort of what I would need to beat to make them happy. You know, a lot of them are not that attuned to that. Allen: That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, people, they work their entire lives to save up money and invest it so they can retire. But then they don't pay any attention to the money. Oh, boy.. Paul: I think it's because they don't know that much about it. So they wouldn't know what to do if it was not what they wanted, you know? Allen: Yeah. I mean, you gotta you gotta take a little bit of time to at least read the statements and figure out where's the money going? And it could be better disclosed, you know, the statements could be easier to read that that's definitely sure. That's, yeah. But it is what it is for now. Paul: Like, I have this account right now, I'm probably going pick up another six to nine or 1000. And I asked them to get their annual statements ready. Because I wanted to see what they have been. have been doing, you know, so, you know, so they didn't know if there'll be they'll find those. So let me guess. It's like, it's weird. Allen: Okay, they just like asked her her advisor. Paul: Oh, that might be red flag fight flight to them. And they are looking so yeah. Wow. Okay. All right. seem bizarre. Allen: So if somebody was thinking about starting their own advisory firm, what would you say? They would need in terms of like, what are the minimums, okay, you should have been in the market for, you know, five years, you know, or you got to know XYZ, is there anything that you would say that, you know, if you don't, if you can't even do this, and this is not for you? Paul: Well, they're planning on doing what I'm doing, they probably need at least three to five years, you know, their own market experience. But, you know, that being said, like, I just met with someone the other day, and I could put all my funds through their strategies, and just sit and coast. You know, really, they charge an extra 1% or whatever, so I'll back off of my fee a little bit. You know, so you can you can play the game different ways. Wow. So you could do like I can see a new person and starting that and just have these other you know, because they have what's called sub managers or something like that. I don't know the exact term. Basically, you're hiring other money managers to manage the money you have for your clients. Right, like sub advisors, maybe is what it's called. Okay. So I'm not saying it will totally preclude them that they didn't have three to five years. But, you know, hopefully they're drawing on someone's experience to help hold their handle that Allen: Right. And do you know how much it costs to get it up and running? Paul: I would say three to five grand. Wow, that's not much. I mean, the hardware, these firms are brought in to charge you five times that? Allen: Yeah. Okay. So well, the sub accounts. Yeah, actually, I do remember those consultants talking to me about that. Paul: They they call it sub advisors? Allen: Yeah, I think that's what it is. And it's like, yeah, you know, if you don't want to do it yourself, you can put your money, you can put your your clients money into different buckets, and then they just do it for you, and they charge and then you split the fees or whatever, or something like that. So, and then each broker, each broker dealer has different ones. So like Fidelity or Schwab will have different sub accounts versus what you could put your stuff in. But interesting, I just Just curious the ones that you had talked to what what strategies were they were using, Paul: They're using free cash flow to is their criteria for who they're investing in. So they have like international, they call a cash cow c-o-w. So they've international domestic, and things like that. So they have a different definition of free cash flow. So they're they're fearing that's the best value, their way of determining value out there, like sort of like a value fund, but their own definition of what value is. Allen: Okay, so they're investing in stocks. Paul: Yes, international and domestic.   Allen: And they handle the ins and outs. And so you could put a portion of your client's money in there, you put it all in there. So it's like, it's like an ETF. So basically, you can say I want 20% of my money to go on this domestic one 20% International. And I might, I'm in talks with them. So I might end up doing some more money that way. But so they're coming up with different sample portfolios that I can use their funds for. Allen: Okay, interesting. And so that must be a much larger company. Paul: Yeah, I'm not sure how big they are. But they're, you know, big enough to where they had like a representative here in central Florida and some of their back office helping them out. Awesome. I'm not sure their size yet. Allen: Yeah. So I mean, this rabbit hole is pretty big. You can dive in there and spend a lot of time figuring all this stuff out. Paul: Yeah, yeah. So I can see a way I could sit and close more. But you're only doing it two hours a day anyway. Allen: Cool. All right. Paul: Well, maybe we're gonna get into my retirement years, a certain amount of years. I'll just put it there and just coast. The zero hours a day. Yep. Allen: Yeah, my, my neighbor in the office next door, he's a financial adviser. He's been doing it for, I think, 25 years now. So he's built up, you know, a sizable clientele. And so now he's at the point where he wants to retire. But he doesn't know what to do with the firm. He's like, you know, he makes probably a good 500,000 a year income from it. And he's like, I want one of my kids to take over. But the kids are not really willing, and not interested. He's like, I don't know what to do. So he's still there.  So there's been periods of times or, you know, like, I sit on the CPA world deal with other investment advisors, where it's been a quite a lucrative market to get bought your practice bought out by bigger, let's say Merrill Lynch or something like that, you know, they pay some pretty big bucks to buy those books of business. Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, one of the things that the consultants told me is that once you get you get a client, that turnover, meaning the fact that they're going to leave you is not very high, they're gonna stay with you for years and years. So you can count on that money coming in, you know, that fee money coming in for a long period of time, unless you unless you totally screw it up, and then they're gonna leave. Paul: If you play the play smart. You know, if you're dealing with someone 50 years old, right now, you know, another 10 or 20 years, you're gonna pick up their kids and things like that when they need investment advice and stuff. It's, it'd be a self perpetuating thing. Allen: Yeah, yeah. And I do like the fact that there's always going to be somebody there willing to buy you, your company. You know, because a lot of times in smaller companies if you're the only person or if you got one or two employees, nobody really wants to buy the company even if it's successful. Nobody wants to buy it because they would without you there they're basically buying a job for themselves, right? It's not running on its own you're the one doing all the work in this case. Yeah, you're the one doing all the work but they don't need you. They can just, you know, have their own advisors take over. So you still get a pretty decent multiple when you sell so that's really cool too. Right? Paul: Also, I met a.. in my travels on this world. I've met the company and actually finance you if you want to buy on someone else's practice in the financial visor word world. Allen: Hmm.. So have you looked into that? Paul: I had a conversation or two with them, but I haven't really pursued it further. Yeah. Because I didn't know if I wanted to buy a larger practice. Right? Yeah. Because generally, that is a seven year payout to do that. So, you know, seven years, you'd be free and clear. Allen: That'll be interesting. Yeah. So a lot of ways to skin this cat. So you would I mean, I'm assuming that if anybody asked you, Hey, should I do this? Probably the answer is yes. Paul: Yeah, I mean, just mean, talk to people who have done it, and sort of figure out if it's a good fit for you, you know? Yeah. It's definitely can be pretty lucrative. Allen: Right? And I like the fact that it's like, for you at least it's more localized, you know, so you're not competing with somebody in California or Canada, or whatever. It's like, yeah, you guys get your clients over there. I'll have my clients over here. You know, they love me, they trust me. We hang out maybe. And sometimes. So it's not like a competitive situation. So, right. Awesome. Are you in any? Are there any, like, associations or memberships for advisors?  Paul: No, I'm not. Allen: No, but obviously, they probably have them? Paul: Yeah, I'm just not familiar. Very familiar with that. I have another advisor to hang out with suddenly sort of share some ideas. That's, that's all I have right now. Allen: And they're also private. Like on their own? Paul: Now, one of the reasons I didn't cover this in the beginning, like when I started looking into this whole thing, I didn't want to get clients and then share my fees with other people. That's why I didn't latch on to a bigger firm and start building my clients from there. So that's why I started my own Ra. So they will be my clients. And I get all the fees for them. And no one else had had rights to him. So that's, that's one of the reasons I did the way I did it. Allen: Okay. Okay. So what would be the benefits of going with a larger firm just to name recognition? Paul: Well, they have, one of the biggest things is called compliance. So like, right now, I'm my own compliance officer for my firm, okay, and larger firm like that they have whole departments that take care of compliance, for you to make sure you don't get in trouble, the regulators and so forth. So, like this other advisor, I had, he joined another firm, just so you could have that compliance piece to it. But in his firm, he can't trade options. Right? Allen: Because they're very limited. Yeah, exactly.  Paul: It's taught me to join his is up, like can't trade options. Allen: Because compliance says no. Paul: It was on the client's officer. Allen: Right. So that's why when you said you were thinking about advertising, it's the risk is on you because you're the compliance officer. So you got to know exactly what can be done and what can't be done. Right. Right. Interesting, cool. Is there anything else because  I'm out of questions. Paul: One of the things, one of the things I tell you, I looked into going with other companies, other inactive brokers when I started, okay, and like Charles Schwab wanted you to have $7 million you're managing before you could go with them. Allen: Whoa, okay. And they're the biggest right right now, I think. Paul: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. So that's one reasons with Interactive Brokers, because they didn't have the minimums like that. I didn't really check too much rather than other people. Allen: So and how's your customer service at Interactive Brokers, because they for personal accounts, they don't have a good reputation. Paul: Yeah, they have a separate line, you can call as a professional advisor. So it's, I get pretty quick attention. Usually, you know, it's not it's not perfect, but you know, it's decent. Yeah, but you're happy. Yeah, I'm not saying that. I'm sure other companies have better customer service but you know, for right now, they, you know, I might need to call him a few times, but I get what I needed if I need need to.. Allen: And how are their margins and Commissions? Paul: Commission's are pretty low. I don't have the exact numbers I just know less than like $1 per 100 shares. Allen: And who comes out of the customers account? Obviously. Paul: Each person like when you do a trade display something all the counselee they pick up their own fees. Allen: Cool. All right. Well, thank you Paul. You know, Paul's website is again BusinessAdvisors.Pro. Paul said that he could reach out you know, you guys can reach out to him if you have any questions. And Paul is also in our other memberships are other programs as well past trading formula blank check and credit spread. So if you guys are members of those, you can reach out to him there. You'll find him in the group. And he's been very gracious with his time. So I do want to thank you and And he's very active in the group and you know you've been helping a lot of newer people as well they're so appreciate you there. Interesting place, interesting world and as I dive in I'm probably going to reach out to you more. Paul: Sounds great, I appreciate it.  Allen: Thank you thank you so much and we'll talk to you soon JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

One of my 12 month books is called the 80-20 principle by Richard Koch. Now, a 12-month book is one of the 12 books that I read every year. So every month, I'll have one of these books, read it, and then I'll implement. And these are books that have special lessons for me, stuff that I need to implement. Stuff that I want to work on, for the whole year. And what I used to do is, I used to read a lot of books I still do. I'm a Book Reader, I love reading books, I love reading, learning, but I don't implement as much as I should. So even though there's so many things in here, so many ideas, so many stories, so many, so many examples, I don't implement them in a way that it actually helps me. So I'm reading, re-reading, and I'm getting pleasure out of reading, but I'm not implementing, so it's not really making my life much better. And so I implemented this process where I would read one book, and then implement it for a month, and then read another one implement it at the end of the year, I go back to the first book, because there's probably more stuff in there that I can use. So if I finally finished one, I got everything out of it, then I'll replace it. But I've been on the same 12 books for a while now. Now I said one of those 12 books is the 8020 principle. And so the 8020 principle is something that I need to work on. And in fact, you probably all work on it. That's why I keep going through it over and over again. Now, this weekend, I was at the library with my kids getting them some books, and I came across this book, the 8020 manager by Richard Koch now, this guy's really milking this 8020 thing. I mean, he's he's gotten, I don't know, like eight or nine books on it, probably, I have I owe like three of them. And then he's got this way. And who knows how many more? So yeah, he's really honing in niching, down, right 80% of his income come from the 8020. So the 8020 principle is also known as The Pareto principle. And you've probably heard of that one before you, you kind of have an idea what I'm talking about. William Pareto was an Italian economist, who lived way back then, I don't know when he lived. I'm not a historian. So you can Google it if you want to end he discovered while doing some research that 80% of the wealth in Italy at the time was controlled by just 20% of the people. 20% of the families owned 80% of everything. That's pretty astonishing. And over time, other researchers, other scientists, whatever have discovered similar phenomena in just about all aspects of nature, and life. So for example, if you are a business owner, right, 80% of your profits will come from 20% of your products. Also, 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your customers. And on the flip side of that, 80% of your problems will also come from 20% of your customers, but usually not the thing 20% of customers are giving you revenue. If you have employees, 20% of your employees will be giving you 80% of your problems, right? And you know this to be true. So no matter what work you do, 80% of your results come from 20% of the tasks. Now, this is really counterintuitive, because we're told since we were born, that you got to diversify, you know, don't put all your eggs in one basket, you got to protect those eggs. Well, what if all the eggs are not worth protecting? What if there's a better way? Right? So like I said, Koch has written about this book, many books on this topic, and he has tons and tons of examples. But the best examples are ones to look at your own life, and see for yourself how the ratio works for you. So 80% of your good times - 80% of the fun is going to happen with just 20% of your friends. 20% of the people, you know. And in good times 20% People. Also, 80% of your fights are going to happen with 20% of the people you know, so good times, few people, bad times, different few people. So you make the call who you want to hang out with, right? It's up to you, and on and on and on. There's so many different examples in life that we can look at this. But then it gets even trickier if you go deeper. It's not just 80-20 Okay? But it can be 90-10 it can be 95-5, it can be even 99-1, just like the 1%, who now control 99% of the wealth in the world, my goal is to be one of them. So I'm not knocking this, but it's there. It's something we cannot hide from. So it starts with 80-20. And then it gets more and more and more condensed. As time goes by. And it has been this way, for generations, it's just an undeniable fact of life. Everything is not equal. And it never will be. I bet you didn't know that the supply to the markets as well. So in the 20 years, from 1990 to 2010. Got 20 years of data there, the S&P 500 index, grew an average of about 8%. A little bit a little bit down, but average 8% a year. Not Bad, right? But if you take out the gains of just the top 10 stocks, which is 5% of the market, 5% of the index, you take those out, the index was actually negative, on average of 3.3% every year. So you take out 10% of the top stocks, 10% of the stocks that did the best, and you're losing money on the index. So yeah, I mean, you want to beat the stock market, just buy the top 10 stocks, she's gonna need the whole index, and you can do much better than the whole index. Now, this is applied to other years. Yeah it does, according to FactSet. In 2021, the market was up a wami 28.7%. That's a pretty good year, right? S&P 500 up 28%. Guess what? Just five stocks made up 31% of that game, just five, in 2020, the market was up 18.5%. And the top five stocks are just 1% of the index made up of 62% of that year's gains. So 5 stocks, you got more than half of all the gains. 62% of all the games for that year was made up of just five stocks, no matter what you apply this to. Look, I mean, look for the instances that bring you the best results, and focus on those. So now how do we apply this to trading? I mean, you can apply this to all aspects of life. It's like you've read the book over and over again, to see what I can do, I do with my kids, I do with my business I do with my health, I do with my personal life, I try to make it as much simple and streamlined and stressless as I can. And the things that are bothering me the things that are causing me stress, I get rid of the 20% that suck, you gotta get rid of it. Maybe this is where we're the Jack Welch of GE got that from, you know, you take the bottom 20% of the people and you kick them out every year. I don't know if I agree with that. If they're doing their job, you let them stay. But yeah, they are not producing the results. But then in any employer, any business. 80% of the results come from 20% of the people. So maybe he should have been firing 80% of the people. I have a different ballgame. But how do we apply this to trading? Right? Let's make some money on it. What do we do? Well, it's like I say all the time, focus on what works. Focus on less, not more. I mean, it's like Richard and I were kindred spirits. We both keep talking about the same thing. But very few people listen. Very few people listen. Oh, tha's it. That's it. Do you see it? It doen't matter how many times I say it, right? Only 20% of the people that listen, or as you're gonna hear me and implement. That's hilarious. It works in everything. It's crazy. Okay, it's gonna get back this. So let's do this. All right, let's do this. Go through your trade log. I hope you'll give me one, right? All the trades that you've been doing for the past several years, go through it. And if you don't have a trade log, and you don't keep records of every single trade? Shame, shame, shame, you are missing out on a treasure trove of data that can make you better and that applies to you specifically, nobody else can give this to you. Nobody else can help you with this unless you have the data. This is your own treasure trove. This is your own trading history. It's not enough to go look at your statements. You got to record the stuff you got to record what was the trade? What was the strategy why you did the trade what was going on? I've been doing this for years and years and years. I mean, this binder right here. This is just one years of trades. This is just one year stuff that I have in here, different memberships and all that stuff, but I keep everything and I look at it. We go through it. That's the only way to get better. Right? And this is how you do it. When you go back to look at it. You will notice some things. 80% percent of your profits come from 20% of the strategies out there. So you need to focus on a strategy or handful of strategies that you do best and ignore the rest, stop jumping from shiny object to shiny object 80% of your losses will come from 20% of your trades. Okay, so you need to know how to limit the losses on those trades. Why did the loss happen? Find a way to fix it. I keep hearing from people "Oh, yeah, you know, I do good for months at a time, a bunch of trades at a time. And then whooosh I give it all that. Yeah, that's common, that's normal. That's the pattern, 80% of your losses come from 20% of your trades, but you got to know which trades, you got to know which strategy, you got to know why. Okay, 80% of your wins will be on 20% of the symbols. So you don't need to trade every stock under the sun. Focus, specialize. Remember the principle, right? 80% of your losses will be the result of 20% of your mistakes, you're going to make the same mistakes over and over and over until you fix them. And just a few just a handful of mistakes, you're gonna make a lot of mistakes. We all do. We're traders, we make mistakes, you get in at the wrong time, you buy the wrong stock, you do this wrong time you get out, you don't get out. We make lots of mistakes. Not all of them are deadly. Most of them don't even make any difference. But there are 20% of the mistakes that lead to 80% of your results and your losses. Okay, every mistake is not equal. Get rid of the biggest of the worst ones. So to get better, you got to niche down, not out, niche down. You want to trade less, not more, okay? Want to trade less? Not more, less trades, not more trades, focused, specialized niche, and you always want to trade with the odds in your favor. With that, I bid you adieu. 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I don't know if you're doing day trading, but over 74% of day traders lose money. Interesting stat actually thought would be a lot higher, probably is. Let me give the details. So the other day, I was talking on my phone to a friend and the word migraine came out. We were talking about her child that does he have migraines. It was just one or two times that the word migraine was used. The next day on my phone, I start seeing ads for migraines, migraine relief, migraine therapy. I'm like, What the heck is going on? You know, I haven't been to any migraine sites. I haven't searched for mi-- oh yeah, I mentioned migraines on the phone. So my phone is listening to me. And you've probably seen it. And it's just happened too many times to be a coincidence. The phones are listening to you. Mine is listening to me right now, you know, Alexa, Siri, all these guys. They're all listening. And then they're showing us ads based on the stuff we're talking about. Now, that is the future, that's how things are gonna happen in the future, right, we're gonna be thinking something, and there's gonna be some software, some program that's gonna be able to read our thoughts. And it's gonna show us a billboard with a thing that we're thinking about. So every car that goes by on the highway, will see a different sign on the Billboard, because of what they're thinking about. I don't know, it's gonna be crazy. But so I bring this up, because now I don't do day trading, I'm not interested in day trading, I lost money doing it, I don't want to do it, I found my niche. But as a trader, you know, we talk about trading all the time. And so I see ads for all different types of companies, option buyers, forex guys, day trading companies, all this stuff. And I keep seeing, I kept seeing this ad from a company called Warrior Trading, They're day traders and the main guy, he looked like a really nice guy. Tall, skinny, long ponytail glasses, could be like, your average community college or university professor. Nice guy, you know, a little hippie looking guy. But he looked like, he was trustworthy. And he was talking about how he made millions of dollars doing day trading, and it doesn't take a lot of time. And it's super easy. And he'll teach you everything on his webinar and stuff like that. Now, I never looked at it. But by the the numbers that he was throwing up, and the amount of ads that he was running, obviously, he's got a pretty big company, and they're got a lot of students and people are going to it. So it turns out last month, in 2022, or earlier this year, the FTC went after this company for several issues. The company has since settled. And they have agreed to pay a $3 million fine to the government, to the FTC, because of a few different things. Number one, they were teaching people how to avoid the $25,000 rule. So there's a day trading rule that if you have less than 25,000 in your account, then you can only do two or three trades a day. And then once you get classified as a day trader and you have to have more money in your account, because it's more risky, right day trading is actually riskier than regular investing. And so if you become a day trader, then you have to have a lot more money. Well, they were teaching people how to avoid that rule. So that was strike one. Strike two is the claims that they were making, you know, basically, he had a claim that "Oh, how I turned $500 into a million dollars, I'll teach you how to do this with very little time and you don't need a good education. You don't need this and that. And the claims, according to the government were very exaggerated, and they weren't for average people. So it's not true that you can learn to day trade if you're an idiot. It's not possible for you to day trade if you only have 15 minutes a day, it's not possible to profitably day trade by following your rules if you haven't been doing this for 50 years or some stuff like that, right? Now our company we make claims as well. And then we make similar claims. Now, the FTC sometimes they go after certain companies, the bigger companies and they try to make an example out of them so other people like us get the hint and stop making exaggerated claims. So hopefully our claims are not exactly that, we try to make them not exaggerated. But like I said, you know you guys see the ads you guys see that you guys get the emails, most likely you get emails from lots of different option guys. And there are crazy crazy crazy claims that are being made. You know, oh how you can make 100% in your underwear in two minutes every day. You know in the morning when the open is crazy, crazy stuff. Hopefully ours are not that crazy. Yes. You know, we tell you that we can make 10% in a month and we tried to. Every month every month, and that's 120% a year, which is a lot, crazy a lot. So people won't believe that. But if we can show that we can do it, then we can say that. And so you know, that's why we have to do it. But all of our testimonials and whatnot, you know, we interview the people that are having success. So they reach out and they're like, Hey, I'm having awesome success, I want to talk to you about it, I want to thank you for it. And I want to tell other people to do this. So they can also have success. Those are the people we interview. Right? We don't interview the people that, you know, have been doing options for 10 years, and they've made money like 50 bucks. Nobody really wants to listen that right. So we don't interview those people. Because anybody can lose money. That's not a big deal. You want to learn from people that are making money. So that's the ones you want to interview and list. But I digress. So anyway, so this company agreed to a $3 million penalty. And they agreed to change their advertising and the practices and all that stuff. The third thing, the third thing they found was that the majority of the students were not making money. And so how did they do that? Well, I guess this company has a simulator, which is a software program, kind of like a paper trading program that you would get from your broker. So they had their own and they were telling all their students, don't risk your money, do the paper trading on the virtual simulator, and learn to trade there before you go into the real world. So these people didn't lose money, technically, because they didn't have any money invested. Right? They weren't doing real money, they were on the simulator. 74% of the people on the simulator lost money, and they never made money, I expected it to be a lot higher. But think about it, not everybody uses the simulator. So if they have 1000 students, there's gonna be a lot of the people that don't do anything out of the 1000, there might be 20 30% that don't do anything. They just buy the program. And they're like, Okay, Oh, give me the money. No, you have to do something you have to work, right trading is work, you have to do something. So they probably never even used the simulator. Out of the ones that did use the simulator, those are the ones that are taking seriously, or trying to learn watching the videos or the courses going or whatever. And then they're actually doing the trades. Out of those people, the serious ones, 74% lost money. So I think it's pretty clear to say the majority of people doing day trading, probably over 85-90% lose money, even with you know, Mr. Nice college professor guy teaching them how to turn $500 into a million dollars. So if he's teaching, and I don't know if he's legit or not, he might be probably is I mean, FTC looked at everything. So he probably did that. Hopefully, even with him teaching, very small percent of the people actually make money. So should you be a day trader? No. Then again, this is not just a warning about day trading, this is a warning about crazy claims. So I try to a lot of different traders, people are trying to make a living trading options. And the ones that have the biggest issues. And who don't have as much success as they should keep bouncing around from one shiny object to the next shiny object and a nice shiny object because they see the claims. They see that oh, here you can make, you know, a million dollars by next Tuesday. So they jump into that program, and they jump into another program and gentlemen, so there's no focus, right? There's no reliability is you know, it's not stable. Because they just jump around. And so, you know, there was another company recently, a couple years ago called Raging Bull. These guys were teaching people how to trade options and do day trading and buy options and do all the other stuff. They had a lot of stuff, they were selling millions and millions of dollars worth of their courses every single year. They were the ones I don't know if you remember this, but a guy getting out of the helicopter, the guy in the Lamborghini, and it had a private airplane talking about oh, "I'm the world's greatest options trader in the world". Turns out, the guy wasn't even a real trader, he didn't trade at all. Right? Their company got hit by the FTC for a lot of the same reasons that their claims are just too much. They're too exaggerated. But in the research and in the investigation and found out that these guys-- the head guys, you know, the guy on the airplane and, and his main teacher and the other main coach or whatever, they didn't even have big trading accounts. And the trading accounts that they had were negative, they were losing money. So they were busy teaching stuff that they really couldn't do. And so that company went away for a couple years. And now they're back and they're advertising like crazy. They're selling courses again, they're selling everything again, and the same people so you know, it's a sad state of affairs I guess, in the financial marketing world that we live in, I live in at least, you know, you're on the other side of it, you don't see the inside. It's more about marketing, than actually about getting results, unfortunately, for a lot of people, and so, you know, and that's one of the reasons that our company is still small, we're relatively very small compared to all these guys, because we're not willing to go and make the crazy, crazy claims. And so people don't buy our stuff as much. Okay, you know, but the people who see through the crap, you know, they look at it, and they see our stuff. And I Oh, this is actually legitimate, this is actually real. And that's like, the biggest, the biggest thing that we get when people come into our program, they're like, Oh, my God, this thing actually works. Oh, my God. It's like, it's like, shocking to them. And it still works. I mean, yeah, I trade it every day, we-- I do it all the time. So I guess there's a lot of people out there that are selling stuff that doesn't work, or, you know, maybe you have to do it for a long period of time, or whatever. And people just jump around, and they don't see it. But just be careful. You know, this is just an announcement, like a public service message that, hey, you know, day trading, number one probably doesn't work. You know, I mean, yeah, some people do make money. I've seen them. I know some of them. I know some people that make money day trading, it's serious. It's a job, you got to be up before the markets, you have to be ready and sitting at your desk the whole day. And then when market closes, then you can actually do your work and research and homework and tracking and all that other stuff. So yeah, it's not easy to make money day trading, no matter what the advertisement says. In terms of option selling, it does take time to learn. But it doesn't take a lot of hard work. And it doesn't take a lot of time. Because once you put the trade on, our whole process is different. We're not trying to get out of a trade in 10 seconds, we're trying to stay in the trade for 30 days, right? We're trying to stay in the trade for a long time. Our whole process is different. So while we are in trades for much longer, the time it takes for us to find trades, manage them is much less. So I've looked at many, many different ways of trading, and tried them all, several of them lost money on most of them. And then I keep coming back to selling Options. Because it's, for me, the simplest way to do it, easiest to understand, and you can make mistakes, and still have it turnout, right in your favor. Or at least you don't lose a lot even if you're screwing it up. You know, the whole goal. And I've told this all my students like in the beginning, when you're starting out, it's not to make money. The goal is to be consistent. So if you can trade month after month and not lose money, that's great. Because then you just do one or two tweaks, and then that'll that will just skyrocket your returns. So if you're on the roller coaster, right, that's like Oh, win, win, win, lose, win, win, win, lose. That's the biggest bane of option sellers, because they're not doing it properly. Because there's no consistency. So that's the first goal. It's not about making money in option selling. It's not about how much return you can get. It's about how much they didn't lose. I'm consistent. I can if I mean, if your goal is 2%, then make 2% two to two to two. And then if you want to go to three and four and five, then we just changed a little bit. And then you go 345. And then you compound it and you compound it and compound it and you played the long game. Right? We're not looking to retire in a couple of years. Oh, yeah, I'm going to turn my $500 into a million dollars and then go buy an island and live forever on the beach. No, we're this is a long game. We're doing this for a while. Yes, you can turn a small amount into a large amount. If you compound it and you keep working the system. It's not gonna happen overnight. Okay, it takes some time, but it's doable. It's doable, very doable. So, you know, beware, there's a lot of stuff out there, your phone is listening to you. That's one thing. And if you find yourself on too many email lists, just hit that unsubscribe button, get off the email list. I told that to somebody a couple of weeks ago. That's what she told me. She was like, Hey, I keep bouncing around from shiny object to shiny object. And I'm like, Okay, this is what you do. You find the strategy that makes the most sense to you one strategy, just one, that's what you focus on. And you unsubscribe from every other service. You cancel every other service, get off every other email list. She's like, even yours, like yeah, even mine. If you don't want to sell options to get off my list, you know, I don't want you on my list if you're not gonna sell options, right? It's costing me money to send you emails. So get off my list. If you're not gonna sell options. That's basically all it is. boil it down to simplicity. That's what we're talking about. That's how you get ahead. One concept, one strategy. Just get good at it, focus on it, get consistent, and then the rest is history. Alright folks, take it easy. Talk soon. Bye.  

Let's talk about the Fed and more inmportantly how to make money from the Fed. How do we as passive traders, make money when the Fed is going to make an announcement? So a little bit of history, a little bit of background and when you're watching this, but today, while I'm recording, this is May the Fourth 2022. And today, we just had a Fed announcement, the Fed just came out made an announcement, they raised rates, they raised rates last month, they raised them again, and I want to talk to you about how the markets performing and how we could have made money off it. So now you got to understand in the past-- last several years, markets have been doing great. The Fed was not important, right? The Fed had their meetings, they did their announcements, they raised rates, a load rate, whatever they mostly are just lowering rate didn't raise that much over the last like, say 10 years. But the Fed was really important. We wouldn't even notice as traders, when there was a Fed meeting today. Oh, okay. What happened? Oh, yeah, cuz nothing in the market habit, nothing changed didn't make, you know, Marty was paying attention to what the Fed was doing. So we as traders didn't have to pay that much attention. That changed in 2022, when the Fed said, Hey, we are going to raise rates, and we're going to do it aggressively. That changed the whole ballgame. Everything is different. Now. 2022 marks the time when the stock market returns back to normal. This is gonna be a normal stock market year normal trading year, where we go up and down and up and down. And it's not just straight up anymore, because rates are zero, or very, very low or the keep going low. Okay. So in the past, since the last meeting, when they raised rates a quarter point, the Fed has been talking how the Chairman has been talking, the other governors have been going out and been talking, they put out articles, they put out interviews, they've gone in speeches, and they said, Hey, we're gonna raise rates 50 points. In this next meeting, which was today, right, I'm gonna raise, we're gonna raise 50 points. And they actually said it. And they've been telegraphing everything that they're going to do up till now. And up till now, I think the Fed myself, I think the Fed is doing a great job. We do have inflation, I get that. But those were things that were not in their control, right? You cannot control the COVID day, they cannot control the not having enough cars on the road. They cannot control the supply chain and the lack of truckers in California to unload all the chips and they can't control that. So obviously, yes, there's going to be some kind of invasion, some prices are gonna go up, and then they'll even out and maybe they'll come down or whatever. But they figured out hey, we need to raise rates. Cool. Awesome. Got it. So the raising rates couldn't be zero forever, right? So now they're raising rates, they told everybody, Hey, we're gonna go 50 cents, at half a percent point 50 basis points, or half a percent, we're gonna go up. And eventually, we want to get to two, two and a half. And so today, they made an announcement that said, Hey, we're raising 50 cents, then Powell came out, he answers the questions. And he said, Yeah, hey, you know, inflation is there. But it might be peaking, you know, it might be stopping, or we might not, we're gonna raise 30 points this meeting, and we're gonna raise 50 points next meeting. And then we're going to try to get to that to two and a half point, range. And we'll see how it goes. Because more than a month out more than 60 days, we really can't predict what's going to happen. So we have to go month by month and and see what happens. Because that makes total sense, right? Sounds like a smart answer. Right? He's not he's telling you what they did and why. And he's telling what they could do next. But later on, after that, he's not saying anything, say, Oh, well, that's a check to see, we'll have to see. So kind of leaving the market on edge a little bit. But still, you know what's going to happen? You know, what he's going to do, and you know what the target is? So he's telegraphing, he's basically giving you the roadmap and saying here, this is what we're going to do, there should not be any surprises, right? So you think, okay, he already told us what he's going to do. And then he did what he's going to do. Oh, that concept, right? Somebody actually lives up to his word. He did what he's going to do. And so the stock market should not have really done anything. It should not have been a non event, because everybody knew is already baked into the price. But what happened to the stock market today? Well, it's up over 120 points. The s&p 500 was almost 3%, almost 3%. It's about to close right now, in a couple of minutes. 3% On a day when you already knew what was going to happen, because he had already told you now if you don't believe him, and a lot of Wall Street obviously didn't believe him. Maybe they were expecting something else. Maybe they heard something that he mentioned, you know, there's no way to tell. And so for the people who were trying to predict and play today's announcement, they got hammered. Because nobody expected a 3% move. Not the the options change, not the experts on Wall Street. Nobody expected 3% Move, but somehow we ended up up 2% Today, So, how should you have played this? How could you have made money on it? And how can you make money on the Fed in the future, it's very simple. You make money on the fed by not losing money on the Fed. What do I mean by that? I mean, don't play the Fed, if the Feds gonna make an announcement, you don't want to be trading at that time. Basically, you treat it like earnings. Now, if you've been following me for any period of time, if you're selling options and doing passive trading, we don't trade earnings. Right, because you never know what's going to happen in earnings, it's uncertain, it's high volatility. Don't know what's going to happen. And so you can get blasted in either direction. Same thing with the Fed. This is now in stocks, the Fed is the most important thing to keep your eye on, listen to, to pay attention, they are the most important thing. If you're even trading any stocks, the Fed is more important than how much money that stock is making that company is making how the chart looks on that stock, a Fed is more important than basically everything. You don't fight the Fed. Right. That's the same, it's been around for a long time since they made the Fed. And there's a reason you don't fight the Fed. Now, again, like I said, The Secret should not to making money off the Fed is not to lose money when the Fed made the announcement. Now, this is gonna go contrary to all the other option gurus out there that are telling you, hey, you need to be selling options when volatility is high. And volatility was high right before the Fed announcement. Because it's uncertain, right? So they would have told you oh, man, go sell a calendar, go sell a strangle, straddle and do something, sell options when premium is high, when volatility is high, sell it, sell, sell it. And then what happened, they probably got their butts handed to today, 3% Move, nobody saw that. You know, you look at the implied moves and all that he was not there. So it just goes to show you that if you're going to play the long game, like me, right, I want to be doing this for next 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, I don't know how long I'm gonna live, I want to keep doing it. I don't want to get blown up. I don't want to get my butt handed to me, for a stupid reason. And a stupid reason would be to go into a very high risk situation and put a trade on just to make a little bit of extra premium. So I would not trade today, I would not have traded yesterday, a day before I would wait till the Fed.. Hoopla is over. Right? Markets up almost 3%. Today. 2.99 is where it's closing 2.99% Where today are to let the smoke clear. Let the market tell you when it's going to do next. Then you place your trade. Yes, volatility will be down then. And you'll make less money for selling an option. But it'll be safer. And in the long run, that makes more sense. Because option traders I have so many toxic people I've talked to they do good. They do good because you know it's easy to sell high low delta options. Oh, yeah, probably isn't my client. Yeah, great. Do that. Do that do that. Then the crash? Because they blow up because they make stupid moves like this because they're told to do stupid things. So yeah, this is controversial in the markets and the other gurus don't really like that. I'm saying this. Because they blow up and then they go away. And then a new guru takes her place. I've been around here for like 14 years telling you what to do. Teaching people what to do. So yeah, I'm still here. Maybe I'm doing something right. So if you want to make money on the Fed? Do'nt , don't try it. Not worth it. It's not worth the stress. It's not worth the high blood pressure. It's not worth the extra drink and all that extra yucky, Pepto-Bismol. You don't want it. You don't want the heartburn. You don't want the stress, you don't want the high blood pressure. Okay. Put the odds in your favor. One of the ways you do that there are many different ways to do it. Not just one way. It's not just probably the Prophet. Put the odds in your favor. One of the ways is by staying out of very risky situations, like a Fed announcement day. So there'll be putting on trades trying to game it. If you're going to put on a trade wait till after and then play it that way. All right? Hopefully this episode will actually help you and save you from some heartburn. All right, may the odds be in your favor. Take care

Hey, it's Allen again, from Option Genius. And today I learned something that I want to share with you. Over this weekend, this past weekend, I attended virtually a conference. And it was an investment conference on basically it was on funds. So how to, it was for people who want to have a fund like hedge fund or a real estate fund or crypto fund at all, there's so many different types of funds. And so they put all the people together in a room and they had speakers come and talk about the different things that they're doing and how you can do it, and how you can get investors to give you money and how you can build your track record and all this kind of stuff. So currently, I am thinking about doing that. And so I went there, and one of the speakers was a guy by the name of John Pennington, you can look him up John Pennington, he's probably a billionaire, or if not, he's worth several 100 million dollars. About a year ago, he took his company public, they were a fund, they were a real estate fund. So they were using investors to give them money. And then he would go out and buy real estate and do loans and stuff like that. And they made it to build it up pretty good—several billions of dollars of assets. And then they took the company public. And he was the I believe he was the president or the co-founder, one of them and then he retired. So now he has a lot of time on his hands. But he's still a very smart guy, because you don't build up a company and go public, you know, and make millions or millions of dollars if you're not a smart guy. So he took the stage. And he talked about a couple of different things. One of the things he talked about was he what he calls the Bitcoin cage. Now, I want to give him complete credit for this because I hadn't thought about this. This is his thing. I don't know if he got it from somewhere else. But he brought this in spoken to everybody. And it was very interesting. So I'm telling you this not because we're going to be making money, I will not be selling options on Bitcoin or anything like that. But I want to also show you how other people think and how when you're investing, you need to be looking two or three steps down the road, to really understand what is going on in the markets. It's not just hey, I want to buy this stock is gonna go up and sell puts because it's going up. Yes, that's just kind of what we do. Right, simplicity wise, but long term, we have to also know what's going on. So Ray Dalio, the guy who has the biggest hedge fund in the world is another guy, he has written several books. And he's been talking a lot about the reserve currency, as the dollar is currently the reserve currency of the world, meaning that most of the trade around the world is done in dollars. So that's very, very, very, very, very important for the United States. And if they stopped being the reserve currency, the dollar stops being the reserve currency, it's going to be very negative for our economy, our country, our debts, borrowing money, all that stuff, taxes are gonna go up all kinds of crazy stuff is gonna happen. And at this point, China really wants their currency to be the reserve currency. They don't want the dollar, they don't like the dollar anymore, and Russia is trying to get everybody off the dollar, as well. So it's gonna be interesting, the next 1520 years, see what happens with that, but call him John, John Pennington, the guy who's talking. According to him, the Fed-its main mandate there number one mandate is to keep the dollar the reserve currency. That's what he says is that their most important goal, their most important objective is to do that. Now a few years ago, nobody ever heard of Bitcoin, right? But bitcoin is billed as a currency is that's where it's supposed to be used to buy stuff with itself stuff with it, right now, because of the US tax laws, it's not really a currency, right? Because you pay taxes on it, every time you sell it, every time you buy something, you paying taxes, you got to record all that stuff, that's crazy. So until they get rid of that, it's never really going to be a true currency. But still people are using it to buy stuff with. And so it's gaining more and more traction. And it's unregulated by any government. So that's the appeal to it, right? And there's no one government that can take away your Bitcoin or and they actually found ways they can, but technically, you're not supposed to do that. And so the federal government, obviously, you know, there'll be the they got smart people that work in there, they'd be like, well, you know, this Bitcoin thing, it might take over as the reserve currency of the world, and they're going to replace the dollar, that's not gonna be a good thing. And so the Fed is thinking, okay, so how do we stop that? How do we not allow that? So before I tell you how they did that, let me give you a little bit more background. In the 2000s JP Morgan was manipulating the price of gold. Yes. JP Morgan, the bank was manipulating the entire gold market. So they were keeping prices within the range that they wanted to they were not letting go up nine where they say you can look this up and they were fined by the s&c. You know people found out about it, they were fined about it. And, you know, most people didn't even hear about it, they were fined a billion dollars, because of their manipulation. And this went on for nine years. So that's a lot of manipulation. And JP Morgan, you know, it's a big bank. But if you compare it, the resources that they have to the Fed, it's nothing, because they only have a certain amount of cash and serve on a market cap that they can tap into news, the Fed can print money as much as they want. They like unlimited supply of cash. And over the last several years, they've been printing, printing printing, and I'm sure nobody knows where all that money that the printing went to. So I'm sure the Fed has, you know, taken some of that money and done other things with it. That was just a footnote somewhere. Oh, yeah, $50 billion, went to this program over here. Nobody knows what it is. Right? And so John, he made the inference that if JP Morgan can manipulate and control the gold market, gold market is 10 times with Bitcoin, it's, it's way bigger than Bitcoin. Really even greater than that. I mean, it might be more than 10 times larger than Bitcoin at this point. So if JP Morgan with limited resources can manipulate a market 10 times bigger than Bitcoin, it means the reason that a fed with unlimited resources could easily manipulate the Bitcoin market. Make sense? Do you see what I'm going on here? I'm trying to connect the dots here. So what John was saying is that the Fed is manipulating the Bitcoin. And they bought up a lot of Bitcoin when it was at lower prices. And now as it gets higher and higher, they are selling the Bitcoin that they have. So they're keeping a lid on prices, because we had a lot of people mentioning later, oh, yeah, Bitcoin should be at 100,000, it should be valid should be at 200,000. Because every day, there's less and less Bitcoin out there. It's been mined. So it's, it's not like there's an unlimited supply, eventually, they'll stop making it. But that supply, that's the amount of mining that they're doing is becoming less and less and less. So basically, all a bit, most of the Bitcoin is already out there. There's a small percentage of it, that needs to be mined yet. But people lose their Bitcoin all the time, people put their money in their wallet, and then the guy dies. And nobody knows where their bitcoins just gone, where it can be stolen or hacked. And there's so much Bitcoin has been lost just because people forget their passwords. So the supply of Bitcoin is going down, that shouldn't be sending the prices up just by itself, but it's not. And so John is saying that the Fed is purposely keeping the price down, because they don't want interest in Bitcoin. If Bitcoin prices got super sky high, everyone's gonna be buying it, everyone's gonna start using it, all that stuff, they don't want that to happen. And so they're purposely keeping prices down. And what they what they're trying to do is most of the people who trade Bitcoin who buy bitcoin, they're doing technical analysis, right, so they look at the charts and the Bitcoin chart is going up, they're gonna start buying and holding, and if the charge is going down, then they're gonna leave it alone or sell. And so the Fed wants to create a chart of Bitcoin where it's slowly, slowly, slowly, lower highs, lower highs, lower highs, very bearish looking chatter, so that the people avoid Bitcoin and move on to something else invest in something else. And so Bitcoin eventually falls out of favor. Now they can do this for the next 15-20 years. People live on Bitcoin rises. It's crazy, but it's very possible. Now, is this accurate? Is this going to happen? The Fed really doing this? You might be thinking, Oh, conspiracy theory, conspiracy theory meaning, right, maybe that's what it is. But it makes sense. Is it doable? Yes. Is it in the favor of the Fed to do that? And the US government, if not the Fed and the US government or somebody else, you know, that wants to keep the dollar as a reserve currency? Yes, it is in their favor. And Bitcoin becomes the world's reserve currency. Whoa, big shocks all around the world, especially in the United States. So it was just eye opening to me to even hear that see is like, wow, okay, you know, this is some next not just next level thinking, this is like four stories up thinking, right? This is the kind of stuff that these guys talk about, think about. And it's like playing investing is like playing chess, right? You don't just think one or two moves ahead, you got to think 1520 moves. That's how the Masters do it, then the grandmasters they think, like 30 moves ahead. So that's how they become grandmasters. So this is the way people think on Wall Street and how they obviously there has, you know, I mean, I don't even know JP Morgan was manipulating gold prices. I didn't know that but they people know about it. And if that's possible, then there's a whole bunch of other things that are possible as well. They shouldn't be done. But they are being done. And if the government is doing it, then all bets are off because nobody's gonna go to jail eludes me, we're gonna find out about it. Probably. Right? So that is the Bitcoin cage. I know, we didn't talk about options or trading or anything like that. But, you know, I just wanted to put it out there and be like, hey, look, there's other ways to think. And you can't just look at one thing and be like, okay, Bitcoin, yeah, it's gonna go up because of XYZ. Well, there are other factors involved. So you got to look at all the offshoots as well. And when you make your investment thesis, so, you know, whatever you're investing in, look at all the different angles, think about it, you know, talk to other people that might have contrary views to what you're thinking. If you're if you're a Bitcoin bold, then talk to people who think bitcoins going to zero. You know, Warren Buffett said that Charlie Munger says that, why are these guys idiots? No, they're pretty smart. But they have reasons. So find out what those reasons are and then find out why and listen to it and keep an open mind. And then head yourself. Always head yourself. So yes, I still own Bitcoin. I'm hoping it goes 200,000. But this talk did keep me from buying more. So we'll see what happens. Right? We'll see what happens. He might be right, he might be totally off but if Bitcoin doesn't go up 200,000 over the next 10 years, then we'll know that he was right. Be crazy if he was anyway. So that's it for this episode. I'll talk to you guys soon. Bye.

Today I wanted to talk to you about the trader's journey. At least he that's what I call it. I like to learn about marketing. I don't know, it's just one of my things. I just I enjoy marketing. And I think it's because it's a lot about psychology. And so even in trading, you have to understand Psychology because, you know, people are what make markets and so when people are reacting or behaving a certain way, if you understand it, then you can profit from it. Right? So in marketing, one of the things that I've been learning about recently is something called the hero's journey. Now, the hero's journey is a common.. now it's common way to tell stories. So whether it's a movie or a book, most likely the most, you know, the most famous movies, the most famous books, the ones that you really enjoy, they follow this trajectory, this story arc, which is called the hero's journey. Now, basically, what it means is that there's obviously a hero, right, and there has to be a hero in every story, cannot be vague, it has to be very clear who the hero of the story is. Secondly, the hero has to want something, right, it just can't be about a guy just going about his daily life, because that would be boring. And we can all do that ourselves. So the hero has to want something. And then the problem occurs that there is a problem or a blockage, that is stopping the hero from getting that thing, right? So there is something that he needs to go or do or overcome, or there's people in the way, and then there is usually a guide. So a person or a tool or something that helps the hero. Now this is kind of like the Obi wan to Luke, or the Dumbledore to Harry Potter, right? There's, there's somebody that's guiding them along the way. And then at the end, the climax happens when the hero achieves his goal, or sometimes doesn't, right. And a lot of times in the more deeper stories, the thing that the hero has to overcome is external, which means that he has to actually do accomplish something or beat somebody or win something. And then there's also an internal problem that he has to overcome. So from the beginning of the story, to the end of the story, the hero has changed has grown as a person, because he had to overcome something internally, in order for him to get to the end and achieve his external goal. Okay, so now in the traders journey, obviously, we have you, you are the hero, you are the star of the show, not me, it's you. I know we do the podcast, and I talk about my own exploits or whatever. But in reality, it's all about you, the trader, the hero of our story, and there has to be something you want. Right? So what is it that you want? Now in order for us to have a successful hero's journey for you, you have to know very clearly and specifically what it is you want? Is it that, hey, I would like to make X dollars per month, for whatever reason, or I want to make enough money from trading that I can quit my job and retire early. Or is it hey, I want to buy a new Lamborghini. And I need, I don't know how much they are. But you know, maybe like $2000 or $3,000 a month to pay for this Lamborghini, or I want to pay it in cash, or I want to be a billionaire. Or a multimillionaire, I don't know, I want to start my own foundation, my own charity, and I want to be worth millions of dollars so that it lasts for hundreds of years, whatever that is, whatever that thing that you want. If you don't know it, and you're not clear about it, then we're gonna have a lot of trouble on our journey. Okay, so step number one for you to have a very successful hero's journey is to know what you want specifically Okay, so now, after that comes the guide, like, "Hey, Hi, I'm Allen, I'll be your guide on this traders journey. I'm not the hero you are, I'm just going to help you guide you along the way". Because normally times the "guide" has some special information, some special skills, maybe he's done the journey before, right? He knows the pitfalls. He knows the traps. He knows where to write the right turn left, turn all that stuff. So in case I'm going to be your guide, and I appreciate you listening to this podcast and letting me help you along on your journey, then what is it that's stopping you from your destination? That's what we have to figure out as well. And it's not as simple as oh, Allen I need more money. No. I mean, I could give you a million dollars tomorrow, but you wouldn't know what to do with it. Right? So the issue is that we need to figure out a path or a way to get to your goal that is systematic, and can be replicated, right? So that it can be done over and over and over again, it's not just a one time fluke, we don't want to just give you a lottery ticket. No, here's $10 million. And it's going to be gone in winter, right? It's something that we build over time. And we get because the internal issue also comes out, right? If you're just given money, you don't change, it's too easy. But if you grow the money, if you learn a skill, if you do it, and you go through different market cycles, and you have building up that confidence in yourself, and your trading, and the confidence that other people will have in you, around you the way they see you, the way you feel, the way you grow. All of that is part of the traders journey. And that's having all that is the only way to be and have a successful traders journey. Does that make sense? So you can't just be given the money, you just can't be given the thing. It has to be hard fought, it has to be a trial a struggle, and only then will it be worth it at the end to get it. Makes sense? So I was thinking about fuel on the podcast, I did a interview with one of our students, Todd. Okay. Now Todd's journey, his issue was that he wanted to make enough money to pay his monthly expenses. Very simple, very easy, you know, right. That's, that's a big why pretty much right? I want to I need to do this. And so for him, his number was 5000. I was like, hey, I need to make $5,000 a month. That's my goal. That's my why, that's my.. that thing, the end of the journey. It wasn't the end for him, because then he continued later. But that was for the first part of the story. That was his thing. Now, what was keeping him back? Well, he had never done before. And he wanted to do it via trading. But he had never done that before. He had dabbled in it, had some success and failure. But he'd never done it before. So he didn't have the confidence for one, and then comes the guide. Now luckily for Tom, he had already been in our circle, he was already a student, he was in our Oil Options program. And so he had the guide, the Mentor-- me, he had the education, he had the components, everything was there, he had the strategy that was proven, that was like, hey, follow this except some steps up. So he was well advanced in his storyline. If you are not that advanced, if you don't have the guy, then I would be willing to work with you, I'd love to do it. And if you don't have the methodology, you know, that's what we do. That's what I'm an option genius. That's all we do, we have different ways to get there. And we can, if you reach out to us, we can we can help you out. So Todd, had one more thing, which I left out, he had an account. And his account had about $40,000 in it. So he had everything that he needed to go from zero to gold in a short amount of time. And he did it in about three months. So within three months of trading and learning and all that, he went from not making any money in trading to paying off all of his bills every month. And then later on, he kept growing and growing, he added more money to account and, you know, he kept going from there. So it was a very successful trading journey. And that's why it made for a good interview, you know, a good podcast because he had all of the elements that make a good story. Now comes down to you. This is your story. That's why you're listening to this. That's why you're watching this, right? We want to know the hero, the heroe's you. Number 3? It's not "I don't have any money". It might be "Hey, I don't have the discipline to do this". It might be Hey, I don't have the the options approval to do this. It might be I don't have the knowledge to do this. All of those can be overcomed. Right? If the discipline is a problem, it's a question of your why of the thing that you want. You got to make that really really, really clear. Now Todd, in our story, he had been laid off. So you didn't really have a choice. You had to make your work or go get another job. Right. So that's it's a pretty big why. Now I would not tell you to go quit your job in order to do this. But there are ways to do it while you're also working. Um We have another student Mary that I interviewed recently, she is also making as much money from trading as she is from her full time job. Right. But she did it in a way that she could do both at the same time, she could trade as well as do her job at the same time. And her trading doesn't take that long. So yes, that's why I love active trading. That's why I love selling options, because it doesn't take a lot of time, doesn't take a lot of time to learn it, it does take time to really get good at it. And you do have to change internally, you have to become different, you have to become more discipline, you have to become more confident. And you have to in some cases, you have to become more humble. Look at that, right. So for some people, they gotta be more confident. Other people, they have to be more humble. And some people it's crazy, they have to do both at the same time. They're overconfident in some things, and not confident enough in other things. And they also have to know themselves. So that's another story. So all of these issues are things that we cover on the podcast, we cover in our Facebook group that's free for everybody. It's called the The Alliance, you can go to our website and get more information about that. So there's multiple ways to get to where you want to be. Step one is to know figure out what it is. And then step two is to get step by step by step. How do I get there? Okay, now, I don't have time on this episode to go through everything about how to do that. But obviously, if it was, hey, I want to make, you know, an extra $1,000 a month? Well, number one, what's the plan? The plan is we're going to do it through trading. Okay, we got that established, so I can be your mentor, what strategy, right? We've done it we've we've covered this before on the podcast, pick a strategy, pick a trading plan, work the trading plan, focus on it, figure out the numbers, like okay, if I want to make $1,000 a month, and my trading plan allows me to make 1% on my money, well, then on a monthly basis, well then if I want to make 1000, then I need $100,000 in my account. Well, maybe I don't have $100,000. Okay, so step one is going to be how do we get to the 100,000? Right? Maybe we don't go and say, Okay, we're not going to hit our goal right away, we're gonna start smaller. So maybe we only have 20,000. Okay, start with 20, make 200 200 every month to under 200, let it grow and grow and compound and come out, and eventually we'll get to our goal. So, you know, the time aspect, in a story in a movie, you know, it's done within a couple hours. But your life is not a two hour movie, right? You got years and years and years, and we've covered this in other podcasts, we're probably have a lot more years to live than we actually think we're going to be living average lifespan now was about eight years old. But with all the science technologies coming, you know, the improvements that are happening, we're probably gonna live 120-150. So these are skills, this is a story that's going to continue. So it's worth it. It is worth your time, it's worth your effort. It's worth everything for you to start your trading journey. Now. Instead of putting it off, because every day you put it off, every month, you put it off every year you put it off, that time is not coming back. Right, whatever the thing is you want. You can have it and I'm telling you, yes, you can have it. If you do those two things, number one, overcome the obstacles that are external. And then number two, overcome the obstacles that are internal. And part of that internal obstacle is to get started to start doing it to start working it to set aside one hour a day, two hours a day, whatever you can set aside to spend studying, trading, researching, listening to this podcast, watching our videos, joining our courses, going through those programs, being in our Facebook group, so that you are talking to you're building a community, you're building your knowledge, you're building your resources, and you're getting in touch with the guide. Right? You have questions, reach out to us, ask us we will guide you along the way, because we've already done it. Right. I'm probably for most of you, I probably already accomplished what you want to accomplish. And so I'm happy to share that with you. But you got to reach out. Okay, so that is the traders journey. I hope that this has been helpful. I hope that you allow me to be your guide. And I hope that you take the journey. And I mean, it's a crazy fun, wild ride. It is hard, it is a struggle. It does take time. Not everybody can get there in three months like Todd did. That was fantastic. But again, he had everything that he needed. He had the education, he had the strategy and he had the account. Okay? If you have those four, four things, you have those four things. And yes, you can get there in three months as well. Right? If you don't, then we'll need to work on those and then it'll take you a little bit longer but you can still get there. So that is it. For this one. Make sure that you trade with the odds in your favor that will definitely help you on your journey and keep hope alive. Take care, everybody.   SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Vince couldn't trade like he wanted to because he was a commercial pilot and it is hard to put on a position and not be able to monitor, adjust, or exit when you are flying across the world. So we started with our Blank Check Oil Options program....and for 2 years...Vince has not has a losing month! Listen in to hear his amazing story and how we accomplished this.   JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Episode 4 of 4. In this last episode of the series, Allen helps you understand what level your trading is at on the Option Continuum and exactly how to move up to the next level. Make sure to listen to the episodes before this one to catch up. JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Episode 3 of 4. In this series Allen help you understand what level your trading is at on the Option Continuum and exactly how to move up to the next level. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Episode 2 of 4. In this series Allen helps you understand what level your trading is at on the Option Continuum and exactly how to move up to the next level. Make sure to listen to the episode before this one to catch up. So now that you know where you are, right? And you have an idea of how many levels there are ahead of you, I have some steps I can take you from one level to the next. And then I have some more steps that can take you from any level to move you along. So let's go through those. I mean, if you want, you can take screenshots of these. Level one, if you're at level one, if your Option Clueless, you know, very simple, read the passive Trading Book that we gave you, that's going to help you a lot. Get familiar with stocks and options, you know, start watching the financial media starter, covering what the words are, and try to make sense of it. And then we do have a reading list at the website OptionGenius.com/readinglist. So that's a reading list for selling options specifically. So if you want to get into options, those are some of the books that I recommend, they'll get you started, and basically just get more information, just gathering information. Okay, that's the one thing, the first thing. Option level two - options scared, here, what I want you to do is go ahead and open an account, you don't have to fund it, just open the account, go through the process, start creating what I call the watchlist. Now, the watch list is a list of stocks and ETFs that you particularly would like to watch, in particular like to trade. So if there are some companies out there that you're really interested in, add them to your watchlist, you know, and start watching them, start seeing how did their stock behave? You know, if you're working for a company, then that definitely should be on your watch list. Pay attention to the stock, how does that stock behave? You know, if you eat out like I do at fast food, I know everything about fast food, I know almost all the restaurants, I know how they're doing, I know what items are selling or not. It's just something with me. So a lot of the fast food companies, they're on my watch list, then you want to learn the basics. And you'll find the basics in the reading list. You know, you'll learn the jargon, you'll learn what is a put, what is a call, how does it work? Why do we sell the why do we buy stuff like that? And then number four, really, you got to know why that thing that we did in the last session, really, really ask yourself dig deep, you know, the deeper you go the more times you you ask yourself that why question - it gets really emotional. And I've seen people do it. And they've just been crying because they finally understood something about themselves that they didn't know before. Because we think oh yeah, I just wanna make more money. No, it's not the money. It's never about the money, there's always something more deep, more mental, more emotional. That's why we're doing this. And if we don't understand that, then we don't we don't follow through. Level three is option confused. So this is where you have an account, I want you to start trying to put on some trades. And these are virtual trades, paper trading. So you're putting on trades you're putting on, you know, maybe you buy some stock, or you sell an option, you buy an option, just seeing how it works. And then you need to list out all the questions that you have, right? Everything that doesn't make sense to write it down on paper, don't just think, oh, yeah, I got to figure it out, write it down on paper, look for the answers. And then either ask us if you can't find them. Okay, that's how it's gonna get you to the next level. The next level is option curious. Which, right here, you're going to be trading smaller trades, on stocks that you already own, or that you would like to own. So here is where I want you to actually put money to work. And maybe you put $500 in a trade, maybe put $1,000 into trade or even less 250. Sometimes, you know, and you're doing small trades, to get your feet wet, to go through the process to understand, hey, this is not as scary as I thought it was going to be. You know, if you just do it over and over and over again, it breaks down those barriers. And you'll be like, Oh, okay, I got this, this is simple, I can understand this. And then you want to keep a trade log. And this is just for everybody. Keep a trade log of all of your trades. Now I do it on paper, I have a folder here with me. And I have my trades going back for a decade. And I write them all down on paper. And I have some of them on spreadsheets, but really I like to have them on paper. And then at the end of the year, I haven't done it this year and I am to. But at the end of the year, I go back and I look at each trade. And I look at the ones that I didn't do well on the ones that I screwed up on. And that's how I learn. Because you don't learn when you do a positive trade. You're like, oh, yeah, I did it. I'm smart. I'm gonna genius. You don't learn anything. But when you get your butt handed to you, that's when you're like, Okay, what did I do wrong? What happened? Was there something I could have done differently? Or was it just the market and sometimes it is just the market. But the only way to figure that out is to go through every trade and you can't go through that until you're taking you have a record and a log of all of them. So this is how you get from option curious to the next level, which is option dangerous. So here we want to identify your risk tolerance. Okay, so this is one of the things risk tolerance is one of the reasons why I feel and I see people fail at trading when they really shouldn't. So there are and I see the ads all the time. There are plenty have newsletters and courses and ebooks and stuff that we can buy. And we can download and webinars to watch. And things that we can buy where it's the next greatest thing, right? It's the one system, that's going to teach us how to trade in one hour a day, or 20 minutes a day or two minutes a day, or whatever. And it's gonna make us a billion, a million dollars overnight. The thing is that, that thing might work. But it doesn't work for everybody. And it might not work for you if your risk tolerance doesn't match. So that's why I love trading options, because you can dial up and down the risk, you know, you can be more conservative, you can be more aggressive on all of our strategies. But most other types of trading, you can't do that, you try to be a day trader, you're going to be taking a lot of risk. Even if you put small amounts in every trade, you're still going to be taking a lot of trades a lot of risk. And for some people, you can't handle it. So if you take a square, and you put it try to put it into a hole in a round hole is not going to fit. So that's why most people cannot do most types of trading. Because the risk tolerance doesn't work. You also go in and go back to the basics. So if you're trying to do a system or a strategy, and you're not having success at it, it might be that you're trying to make it too complicated. So you need to simplify, you need to take it bare bones, start at the basics, level one, step one, step two, step three, you also need to start back testing. So depending on your broker, they might have the software available for you for free, or you might have to pay for it. But this really, really helps. And it really, really gets your confidence up where you can take your idea, you know, it's like, okay, I want to trade this way. And I'm going to do this and this, and this is how I'm going to adjust it. And this is I'm going to put on the trade. And you actually go back in time, find that situation, put the trade on, and then go forward in time to see how the trade worked out using historical data. So I've been doing this for a long time. And whenever I have a new strategy, I don't put real money to work, you know, I go back and I back test it. So I'll go back, you know, five years, 10 years, pick one particular stock, and then earnings or expiration by expiration, I'll put the trade on over and over and over and over and see how that strategy does. If it does great, then I'll try another stock. And then I'll try a different time period. Or if it doesn't do so well, I'll try to adjust it and see, okay, this didn't work, maybe I can try this, until I come up with something that works really well - then I tested with real money. And that's what small real money and then a test with more real money. And then if that works, then that's when I share it with my students.  So we have an oil Option Program, you know, that's the way I did that, you know, started with backtesting, then did it with small amounts of capital, then larger capital, and it'd be like, You know what, maybe I should teach this to other people. And then we taught it, it really worked well. And then you know, since then it's been growing. So number four, you got to deal with your fear. And that the backtesting really helps with that. But dealing with the fear is just, you know, overcoming a mental block. Really, number five, you got to get over the arrogance. And I've seen you'll see this a lot online right now. Because it was.. 2020 was a year where, you know, a lot of people made money in the market because the markets went up. And whenever the markets go up, people make money and they get arrogant. No, I can do this. Oh, I'm so super smart. I'm a genius. And like Warren Buffett says, you know, you don't know who's wearing clothes until the tide goes out, or something like that.   It's nothing like that, you know, you don't know who can swim until the tide goes out or whatever, and the tide is going to go out, you know, the market will not continue to go up forever. And that's when the arrogance will really hurt. So you gotta you have to have that humility aspect. And then number six is you gotta stop listening to everybody. There's a lot of people out there, and you don't know, who knows what they're talking about. So somebody could be like, Hey, I met you know, this happens a lot in Facebook groups online, somebody posts and say I made 1,000%. I mean, if you want, you know, I'll tell you how to do it. Just pay me money. Okay, but you don't know anything else. You could listen to this person and lose your shirt. Because maybe that was fake. And we're finding out that there are a lot of companies out there that sell newsletters that are fake, and they're lie, unfortunately, you know, in the book, passive trading, I talked about a guy Wade Cook, and Wade cook. I bought his book. He was very, very famous in the 80s. I mean, this guy was this guy was all over the place in the 80s. He had a dozen books and seminars all over the country. And I got one of his books and I learned what a covered call was. And I was like, holy cow. This is the coolest thing. And he's talking about how he does covered calls and he makes 20% a month and it's so easy. I think oh my god, this is amazing. I got to do this. I got to do this. Turns out Mr. Cook was not making money trading. He was losing money trading. And all he was doing was selling his books and seminars and whatnot and you was making money that way. But when they actually looked at his trading results, he was actually losing. And so he ended up in jail for tax evasion or something. There's another company right now called Raging Bull, they just shut down, because the government's coming after them, because their claims were so outrageous that they weren't backed up. And they were saying that they have traders that are making millions of dollars that were not making millions of dollars. They weren't making anything, they were losing money. So I mean, it's really a shame. And it, it really gives a black mark or black eye to what I'm trying to do. You know, because people that fall for those things, you know, the dreamers and the dabbler, they fall for those people, they see those people. Oh, you know, he's the and I actually did one of the podcasts is called the world's richest options trader, because that's what he called himself and he was flying around a plane. Turns out that guy's not making any money trading. Right? And so it gives people like me, a black guy who's really trying be like, hey, look, these are my real results, you know, I obviously made every single one of these trades. And I'm going to show you tomorrow, the results from nine years of trades. And I could not have done it five years ago, because I didn't have those nine years of trades. But now because I've been doing this for so long, I actually have the results from actual trades. And so I'll show you some actual trades of how you can double your money every year tomorrow. But again, you know, don't listen to everybody. You got to really verify who's doing it and they have to show you, they have to show you. So that's level five. Let's go to level six, Options Humble. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Episode 1 of 4. In this series Allen help you understand what level your trading is at on the Option Continuum and exactly how to move up to the next level. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Hey there, it's Allen from Option Genius and I wanted to share a thought with you that has really made a huge difference in my life. I can't take credit from this, I learned this from the guy who, well, he didn't even create it, but he's making it famous. And he wrote a book on it called the gap and the gain. So if you want to, if you want to learn more about this concept, that's the name of the book, the gap and the gaing and basically what it is, it's a simple way to change how you think about yourself, and your accomplishments and your future. And so, you know, for me, and I'm getting little personal here, I always thought growing up that I was a big deal, you know, little bit arrogant. And I always thought, hey, I'm special, I'm above average, I'm really smart, I can do things, I have huge potential, I have an amazing potential, I can be whatever I want, I can accomplish anything I want. And it was true. And I think it's true for a lot of people now, you know, I mean, especially if you have all the advantages of growing up in the West, and, you know, there's unlimited opportunity. So if you're watching this, and if you're a trader, then you know, my God, you know we don't have too many things to complain about. Right? We could, but we shouldn't be because there's people way worse than us. So anyway, the my thinking was that, you know, I made all these huge goals for myself first, it was, you know, by the time I graduate high school, I'm going to be a millionaire. That didn't happen. So then I was like, alright, well, I'm gonna graduate college, I would have been a millionaire. That didn't happen. Oh, by the time I turn 30, I would have been a millionaire - that didn't have any there. Okay, and then later on, you know, things out better and things have settled, but then I realized that, okay, you know, it's like, Man, I don't want to make these such big goals anymore. You know, because I started, I started getting beaten up a little bit, you know, it's taking so long my goals aren't, I'm not achieving my goals. And so I started lowering my expectations. And I remember one time I was in a mastermind group, and the idea was, you know, what's, what's your number? How much? How much do your net worth you want to be. And my goal was 2 million. I was like, you know, if I can have a $2 million net worth, and I know that I can easily make 10% on that every year, and I can live off $200,000. So that was it. That was my goal at the time. And then when I got there, the goal changed. And it got bigger, right? So then it was, you know, like 5 million. Then when I got there, I was like, Okay, now my net worth goal is even bigger, and even bigger, keeps growing. It's like a never ending thing where you get your goal. But then you always want more, because well, we're human. And that's normal. Right? I remember when, when I was first starting out trading, my goal was I want to have $100,000 trading account. When I got that, then it was oh, now I need a $250,000 trading account. Then it was like, oh my god, wouldn't it be awesome if I had a $500,000 trading account, and then a million dollar trading accoun? And I think it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. As soon as you hit your goal, you're now your your thinking is expanded, and you're like, oh, man, I want more, I want more. And the thing is that, that goal keeps moving. Right? That end desire, that end thing that we want, it just keeps moving, moving, moving, like kinda like the horizon, like when you're walking, you know, you see, oh, I want to go there to the horizon. But then you keep walking, walking, walking in that goal, the horizon just keeps moving further and further, it is a the more you go, the further further it goes. So you never get to the horizon. And for a lot of people, especially like me and others, it can cause a lot of disappointment, and self doubt and pain, being "Oh, man, I never get my goal", you know, and then you start comparing yourself to other people. It's like, "Oh, man, he got to the goal so much faster than me. And he's stupid. And I'm smart, and how come he got it? And I didn't?", you know, all kinds of self doubt self talk about, you know, what was wrong with me and why I can't do it and all this kind of stuff. And so, you know, I've suffered from this for a long time, cause depression cause serious doubt. And it really hurt my trading. It hurt my business, it hurt. My relationships hurt a lot of different things in life. And we don't we don't even realize how much our thoughts of ourselves are limiting us. Right? And so I read this book, and in the book he talks about, well, you know, this is very common. It's very common for people who are aggressive and highly motivated, and they want to achieve things they want to grow, they want to accomplish things, for them to make these big goals and then keep looking at themselves, comparing themselves to the end result from where they are now. Right? So if I look at myself where I'm at now, compared to where I want to be, it's like, oh, man, I'm not there yet. It's so far, man. I just got so far to go man. It's how long is it gonna take to get there? Why is it taking so long? Oh, man, I'm not smart enough. Look at that other guy. He got there so much faster. All kinds of these self doubts and criticisms creep up and you start hurting yourself. So in the book, they tell you that's very common, that's very normal. But that's not the most productive and best way to do it. So instead of comparing yourself where you are now, to where you want to be in the future, what you should do is you can definitely make goals, you should always be making goals and striving for nothing things. But that's not what you compare yourself to, what you compare yourself to, is, instead of looking forward, you turn around, and you'll look back. So you see where you were before and then you compare it to where you are now. And that shows you your real progress. If you're trying to look at how much progress you're making, you know, don't compare it to where you want to be, compare it to where you were before, and where you are now. And you look at that big, you know, over whatever the things you've overcome, and that will make a total shift in your mind. So for example, I remember in the beginning, when I first saw the ThinkOrSwim platform, you know, I mean, at that time, Thinkorswim was a separate company, and you know, they were a broker, but they came up with this really fancy platform, and it had all these bells and whistles and charts and colors and, and I was totally, totally overwhelmed. And I still remember what it felt like, you know, like, what button do I push? What screen Do I go to? And what tab another nine? What are all these different things here and bells and whistles and doodads and and it's still pretty overwhelming. And I, you know, I still don't use most of it. But I don't have to because I figured out what are the areas? What are the screens? What are the tools that I want to use in my trading, that helped me get the maximum out of that software? And so now I can think back and be like, wow, you know, I was I was so scared of this software. Like, I didn't know how I was gonna use it. And I was intimidated by it. But now I can go in there and two seconds and I know what I'm doing and I can make my trades and analyze trades and, and do my results and everything. And now other people when they see me doing it, they're like, they get our coaching programs, you know, the students are Oh, Allen, what did you do? Oh, can you do that again? And have to remember that oh, yeah, I need to slow down. And I need to do it slowly so they can follow along? Because they are at that starting point where I used to be right? And so we learned it together. But that is you know, looking at that, like, wow, you know, and before when I before I started getting trading, I was really scared. I was learning all these strategies. I didn't know much. I didn't know that much about the markets. Compared to now -- Wow. I've come a long, long way. And I feel so good about myself like man, I didn't give up. I kept trying even when it was hard. Even when there were losses. There were bad years bear markets, crazy markets, a financial crisis, you know, the worst financial thing in the history of the United States, where the whole economic system almost came crashing down. I traded my way through that. Wow and I've come a long way. You know, when you look at, like, I look at my net worth right now how much money I have right now. And it's not where I want to be. It's not at my goal. So I was like, I could be disappointed. Man, you know, I still, man, I saw this guy on TV nd he's making so much money. And he's so much worth and, you know, Bezos look at Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. And, you know, they're worth billions, I'm never gonna be a billionaire. You know? I don't know. If that's my goal, then. That's fine as a goal. But if I keep comparing myself to where I want to be, I'm gonna feel bad. So instead, I turned around, and I looked at, like, where was I about 20 years ago? 20 years ago, you know, I'm 45. Now. So when I was 25, I was broke. More than broke. I was sleeping on the floor, an apartment with a negative $100,000 net worth, meaning I owned nothing. And I owed $100,000, on credit cards and loans and everything. So I had a negative net worth of $100,000. So compare that to where I am today - Wow, that's a huge Mungus crazy, crazy difference. Yeah, it did take 20 years. Maybe I could have done it faster. But so what I did it, that's the thing, and that makes me feel good. That makes me feel good about myself. That makes me feel good about the future gives me confidence, it gives me energy to keep moving and keep going. Because the other way, you know, if you never get your goals, you eventually you just give up, right? Like in the beginning, when I told you that I made all these big goals, I never got them. So I shrunk my goals and I shrunk what I thought I could accomplish. Now, if I had stayed at 2 million net worth, I mean, you know, Option Genius would not be here. I wouldn't be able to I wouldn't be making this video, right? But I extended my goal because I got more confidence in myself because I felt better about myself. So that's that's the message I want to impart. The book is called the gap in the game but I kind of explained basically what it is, right? Instead of comparing yourself to where you want to be in the future. Take a look at where you were in the past. And compare that to where you are now and then feel good about yourself. If you're motivated, feel happy. Look at everything you've accomplished. Pat yourself on the back and then turn around and then head into the future and accomplish everything you want. All right. Take care of trade with the odds in your favor. We'll see you next time. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Allen: All right, welcome, everybody. Today I have a very special friend with me, I want to let you know that she is a..I mean, she's been doing amazing, since she got started with trading with us. And the thing that stood out for me was that when she, she was going through our credit spread Mastery program, she did not attend any of the coaching calls, which most of the students think that's like the the highlight of it, because it's one on one coaching, but she did not attend any of them. And it was because that she works a full time job. And you know, at a very stressful I guess, manner of stressful, but it's a very important job for the government. And so she was working full time, she takes care of her family. So she does not like she had a lot of free time to do this stuff. And she's also in a different time zone in Hawaii. So take all those three things together. And it's like, wow, if she can do it, you know, I think everyone that has excuses, it just goes out the window. And I think it goes to show that when you want to do something when you really have a desire that you can figure it out, and then she's gonna tell you how well she did. But you know, I'm very proud of her. She did amazing. And so with that, you know, Lori, aloha. Lori: Thank you for inviting me here. Allen: No, it's wonderful. I'm glad to get you on here. You know, for whatever reason, trading is more male-dominated. And so whenever we see a female in it, it's like, wow, this is awesome. You know, and I think we need more females in the in the trading space. And we do, I do find it that females do trade better than men for whatever reason. You know, like, like, I remember when I was learning how to trade originally, and I got some back testing software. And then my wife would come and ask me, Hey, what are you doing? And I'm like, Oh, look, I'm doing this strategy now. And she, she'd be like, oh, you should do this. And this, and I'd look at her. I'm like, "you know, I just spent like the whole, you know, six weeks learning this thing, and you just come and you just go Blah Blah Blah and tell me what to do. No, it doesn't work that way". And she goes, 'Oh, yeah, let's try it". And I'm like, What do you mean? She goes, Well, you have a testing software, right? I'm like, yeah, she goes, all right. You test it your way, all test it my way. And because I had explained it to her, and I was like, you know, this is a like, I don't know what I think was a credit spread. I was like, you know, this is the trade and we want to just pick where the stock is not gonna go. You know, we don't have to pick where it's going. We have to pick where it's not going, and then make a decent profit. So I think that was the basic intro I gave her. And we tested it for like six months or so. And she beat the pants off of me. And she's like, Oh, this is easy. I don't understand why you hate it. Why can't you make more money doing it? Oh, my God, I was about to cry. But no, but still. So Lori, is your, are you married? I've never asked you before. Lori: Yes, I am. We kind of celebrated our 19th anniversary. Allen: Oh, awesome. Congratulations. Yeah, you don't look that old. Does your husband trade? Lori: Oh, he is actually a financial advisor. But oh, yeah. But his is mostly, you know, mutual funds. You know, trying to preserve capital for his clients and everything. And I wanted to do something that, you know, generated, you know, consistent cash flow, something that eventually would replace my, you know, salary that I get from my 9-5 job. Allen: Right. So what does he think about options in the way you're trading? Lori: He doesn't want to touch options. You know, didn't want to, you know, hey, don't go Forex, don't do options. Don't do crypto, you know, he's, he's pretty much the traditional, hey, let's do mutual funds. He doesn't even do individual stocks, either. It's more of a whole portfolio type of approach that he takes. Allen: Oh, wow. So yes, I can imagine the discussions you guys have had in the past. It's interesting, because when we do have a lot of clients, and they come in, and they're like, Yeah, you know, my wife really, really, she hates this stuff. Like, she won't let me do it. Or she, she doesn't she lets me do it. But you know, like, it wasn't an easy conversation. Oh, wow. Okay. So let's just start off, you know, how have you been trading? How's it going? How your results? Lori: Actually, it was because of your program. It's the first time I've been consistently making money. And I think a lot of it is because you provide the structure. And you know, when you were talking about, hey, there's not many women, and a lot of times they're better traders. I kind of equated my husband when he coaches basketball with the kids and stuff. He said, he always found that the girls did better than the boys because the girls would focus and master the fundamentals more than the boys would. The boys always want to do the trick shots and you know, be all fancy and I think that's what helps you teach the fundamentals of "hey, what to look for, step by step". And that's all I have to do is I just have to follow it. I don't have to try and come up with it. You know, fancy, you know things, it's just simple things to follow. And if I can follow it, I can make money. So.. Allen: That's awesome how long you been trading? Lori: I actually was 30 years ago, I got into mutual funds. So I think when IRAs first started, I was in the Air Force. And people who were higher ranking than me, were giving me advice and saying, hey, you need to start putting away money invest, do your maximum at that time thing was 1500 to 2000 A year into your IRA. And that's where I started, I was terrified to pick the worst mutual funds that didn't make (inaudible) money. And then I think probably maybe 10-15 years later, I just started saying, Hey, let's go do stocks, I didn't fare any better in stocks, I tried options. At one point, you know, I put aside a little bit of money, I lost it all. Because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have anybody to, you know, teach me how to do anything. I was just trying to, I was just kind of, you know, muddling my way through and not getting anywhere. So I found the value of finding somebody that can help me, you know, teach me the ropes. And I tried alert systems. And I don't know, I maybe I just kept picking the wrong alerts and I end losing money on the alerts. So.. Allen: But you kept trying. Lori: I kept trying, I see people making money. So if other people can do it, there's got to be a way for me to do it. And so, 30 years later on, I'm finally starting to make money. Allen: Wow. Better late than never I guess. Oh, yeah. You know, some people ask me, oh, can I start this? And can I, you know, can I start making money online or trading? And, you know, I got six months, I'm like, yeah, maybe we'll try to get you there. But yeah, usually it takes longer. But, but that's so but okay, so you're going from a place of where you've tried all these different things, and nothing really seems to be working. And then you go into what we do is like selling options. And that's a little bit more, I don't know, if it's more advanced, but people are more intimidated by that. So how did you make that leap? Lori: I knew you could make more money with Options just because you could leverage what, cuz I have a, you know, small account, you know, less than 10,000. And so I wanted something that was, I could generate money faster, and I knew options was the way to do it. But you know, you also hear on the everybody saying, hey, well, options is risky. And so it wasn't until I heard about yours, where you say, "well, you can do it safely". And so I just, I thought I'd give it a try. And listening to you know, starting off with the passive trading formula, kind of was the first introduction. And I said, yeah, it all makes sense. And so I, I just went all in with the credit spread Mastery program. Allen: Okay. And so what have your trading results been? Since you started that? Lori: Gosh, I didn't do the calculations, but I do have over, I think it's at least 80% win rate. The challenge came in when, you know, my first 20, something trades were all winners, and I had a loser, and I didn't follow your rules on cutting my losses. So that one, you know, kind of really messed up my overall profit. But it kind of highlighted. The other factor that I have to really take into account is the psychology of trading. And I just started reading a book on trading mindfully. And it highlighted all the things that I was doing, I would get overconfident and I wasn't, you know, things, hey, I don't really have to follow that rule or you know, kind of, and so then the losses came and then I get hesitant. Oh, my and that was a huge loss and you know, kind of weary about getting back in. So I kind of had to take a step back, and then I'm back in and I'm doing a lot better now. You know, I'm cutting my losses when I should be cutting my losses. So I think 2022 I think is going to be a really good year. Now that I'm starting to, you know, see what's I can do, where my weaknesses are and then building from there. Allen: Okay, good. So the name of that book is "trading mindfully"? Lori: I think it was "Trade Mindfully" Allen: "Trade Mindfully" Lori: Yeah. . Allen: Yeah, I'll take a look at that. Because, you know, like you were talking about basketball, you got the fundamentals. And you proved it because like you said, you did over 20 trades, or maybe you did the first 20 And then you had one loser. But I remember during our class, you had done well over 30 trades, and you only had like one loss. So I was like, Wow, you did better than I did in that in that three month timeframe. So I was like, okay, she's doing maybe I need to learn from her. So that was really cool, you know? And then since then, okay, so you're still winning. But the the issue was that you just didn't let you just didn't cover the loss fast enough. And so maybe that's why the.. Lori: Yeah, and I had a hard time, you know, after the class, we just started talking about scaling up, it's just really hard for me to pull that trigger of scaling up. So you know, I'm still doing the, you know, I'm just starting now okay, let's, let's go up to, you know, two contracts, or, you know, three, depending on how big the spread is. So I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable with the bigger trades. Allen: Cool, and what strategies do you use? Lori: So, right now, mostly, I'm focusing on the credit spread mastery, I'm starting since you know, I'm getting closer to retirement, I'm starting to look at maybe getting some dividend paying stocks into my portfolio. Allen: Okay Lori: And some other long term consistent things. But I, I would actually like to get some, you know, now that I'm starting to get that baseline, I'd like to start getting into something more like swing trading, where I have the ability to kind of take advantage of the movements that in the stock market to make even more money. Allen: Okay, cool. Yeah. You know, the, the idea there were like, so you're talking about, okay, so you're doing credit spreads, you're also going to be, you know, buying dividend stocks. So that's like the second strategy, and then swing trading would be a third strategy. So I would probably advise you maybe to focus on one at a time, you know, you got the credit spreads under your belt. But if we can get a little bit higher in contracts, you'll feel a little bit more comfortable. And then you already have the the passive trading formula program where we all we talk about, you know, the dividend stocks and the covered calls the naked puts, that'll give you a good foundation. And then from time to time, when you do see an opportunity. If one of your favorite stocks is really has dipped below, then definitely you can add the swing trading to that, but like, from what you're telling me, I don't want you to jump didn't get too much and get just overwhelmed and confused about oh, what decision you know how well I use this rule over here and all that kind of thing. So But definitely, you have the ability. And then if you have more time, I'm sure you'll be able to pick it up really quickly. So So in terms of you said you had a $10,000 account. So how well are you up this year, down this year? Do you have an idea? Lori: I'm up this year? Um, Allen: About what percentage? Lori: I am up about 10 15% I think this year, Allen: Okay. And that's even after giving most of it back, right? Because you said you had some a couple big losses that you didn't stop. Yeah. So okay. Because when you were when you were in the class, and you know, you were hitting it, so if you do 30 trades or whatever, and you only have one or two losses, then you must have had a really big loss. So, but yeah, so now you're working on the mental aspect. And that's, that's really crucial, especially for scaling, because I think when it comes to scaling, that's the biggest, because otherwise, it's just numbers, you know, so if I'm trading one, or if I'm trading zero, or 10, is just an extra zero, the trade that I'm looking for is the same, we do the same type of work for that the strategies the same, the return that we're looking for is going to be the same percentage wise. It's just the seeing those extra digits that kind of gets us like, Oh, my God, oh, my God, you know, you're you're a little bit more careful. You're watching it, you might be overtrading. So I like it going from how many trades do you do at one time? Lori: I don't have more than six going at one time. Okay. And I try to spread it out. You know, no, more than a couple every week. I'm getting stuff in there. Allen: Okay. Yeah. So, you know, have you gotten yet from one to or? Lori: Yes, I have. Okay. And that just happened over the last few months. Allen: Okay. And then so now we're looking at what two to three, three to two to four? Lori: Yeah, maybe two to three. Allen: Okay. Good. I mean, see that, like, you know, we tell everybody that once you learn this skill? I mean, you can use it for the next 2030 years. Yeah. Right. So it's, we're not really in a rush to learn it. We're in a, we want to get consistent, and we want to get to the point where we're comfortable. And then once we understand it, it I mean, the numbers they compound so fast, and you've seen it, you know, you've seen it in your own accounts that, yeah, you just do it with and you have a regular just consistency. If you start doing 40 - 50 more percent a year. I mean, those numbers get really big really fast so you don't really need to like Oh, my I got to get it right now. You know, there's no rush. And I know.. Lori: There's gonna be another stock that will meet the criteria that'll fit the pattern. Allen: Yep. Like when, you know, I see some of these ads, you know, from the other gurus. They're like, Oh, yeah, you gotta buy this one stock by this date and this thing is going to happen - are you gonna miss it? I was like, well, you know, I mean, I could just go into the market, and every other week, there's another trade and there's 1000s of them available. So we don't ever have to have that scarcity mindset where it's like, Okay, I'm going to miss it. No, we got time, you know, every month is a new cycle, every week is a new cycle. And there's 1000s of stocks that fit our criteria that we could be trading on. So it's not like there's anything that we're gonna be missing out on. So, you know, even like, if you go, hey, you know, the holiday breaks are coming up, I'm just gonna take my money off the table and not trade for a little bit. And not go risking, because I don't feel like it. You know? So when you're going through this, what are some of the lessons that you learned along the way? Was there anything that would that stuck out to you like, oh, man, I wish I had known this before? Lori: Being patient, what you mentioned before that fear of missing out, you know, I had to it was hard not to chase after trades like wow, this one is, this would be a perfect one. But it had already taken off them just telling myself, hey, there's another one, just be patient look for the right criteria and stuff that meets the criteria. That I think was the hardest part from the psychology of it. And then what you helped was with trade management, right? How much I should put in a trade, you know, trying to help build up confidence. That was really hard, you know, because I went 30 years without really not making money to do and stuff. So trying to get the confidence, hey, that I can actually do this was a hard one as well, to kind of overcome. Allen: You still having issues with that? Lori: Oh, not as much. Now, now that I've seen some success. Allen: Awesome because I know, I know, I dealt with it. And I know others, I've seen it with others to where, if it if they go a long time, without having too much success, you know, maybe they do a little bit in one year. And then they give it back and goes up and down. And then they finally find something that works really well. And they're doing it, they're doing it. And then there's this element of self sabotage, you know, where like, I remember doing this, like, I would have months where I would make make, make, make make, and then I just wouldn't pay attention. I'd be like, all the trades are fine, I'm not gonna worry about it. And I wouldn't even check in on them. And then the market would start getting, you know, crazy. And then boom, big loss. It's like, Oh, what happened? Oh, duh, I didn't pay attention, you know, that I kicked myself. And I'm like, Why do I do that? It's like, oh, it's confidence is all, you know, comes back to all confidence. Most of you know, trading is like 90% of trading is all mental. Yes. So that's a big realization that you have there. So what what were the big? What were the big realizations that you had? Like, what was the any aha moments? Lori: The biggest, aha was my my mindset that, you know, I'm my own worst enemy, when it comes to trading? second guessing myself, especially after, you know, not getting anywhere for so long. You know, I'm thinking, Yeah, can I really do this, you know, maybe it's, you know, times gone, you know, maybe this isn't for me, you know, kind of giving up. But now, I've having a strategy, a structure, that was big for me, right, saying, Hey, this is, you know, and your stuff is so simple, you know, just, hey, look for it going in one direction over a period of time, you know, check the volatility, and hey, pick this delta and, you know, go ahead and put the trade so that you can get your 10% you know, you're not trying to shoot to, you know, make 300% in one trade, it is just keeping consistent over a long period of time. And that's big. Right? I don't I don't need that. 200% and, you know, two days kind of thing. I can do this over the long haul. Allen: Yeah. I mean, that's part of it. Like sometimes people see it for the first time. And they're like, Wow, that's kind of too simple. But, I mean, you know, you look at it over and over again over the years. Yeah, but it's been working. And I think it's continues to do it. So do you have any the stuff that was holding you back originally? Do you think that that you've overcome those obstacles? Now? Lori: They're still, I don't think I'll ever, you know, totally get over the mindset issues. That's just, I think, just human nature that, hey, we're gonna do well, we start getting a little overconfident or if we make a mistake, you know, you're going to be hesitant to kind of jump back in, but at least I'm aware of it now. And I can address it. So.. Allen: That's awesome. So where do you where do you see the future now, like you said, you know, next year you're looking at, it's gonna be a really good year, and then talk about further down the line - what do you think you're gonna be doing? Lori: I think I will end up doing this full time. Allen: Really? Okay. Lori: We're trading you know, part time to get a full time. Allen: Right. Right. Right. Lori: In about 3 years, I'll be able to retire from my job. And then, you know, I can see it where I don't have to worry about, Okay I'm going to have to live on a lot less money. I'll have something here that I can just maintain or even get, have a better lifestyle than I've got now. Allen: Nice. I love. I love hearing that. And then the fact that, you know, most people, they're like, oh, yeah, you know, I'm going to retire and then I'm going to move to the islands or somewhere. You're, you're already there. You're you're one step ahead of everybody else. Cool. Cool. Is there any any words of wisdom you would give to people who are you know, they're still maybe a little hesitant? They're like, No, no, is this? Is this stuff real? Is sounds too good to be true? What would you tell those type of people? Lori: It is real. All you got to do is follow that path that you have laid out. You have made it so simple, and I am so grateful that I came across your program. Allen: Cool. Okay, and then, so I still want to go back to your husband, like, I want him, I want to get him on board. I don't know how we're going to do that. But I want to, because I always bash financial planners a lot. You know, I mean, they they do a great job. But there's some bad ones. And there's something there -most of them are pretty good. And they're they want to help people, but the whole, their whole business model, it doesn't really work for, you know, people who want to do it themselves. If you don't want to worry about your money, you don't want to think about it or learn about it, then yeah, you give it to a financial planner, and you'll take good care of it. But if you.. Lori: That's the people he works with, he doesn't. He says, you know, he's run into people that are do it yourselfers and stuff. And he says, I can't help you there. That's just not his expertise. And so, but you know, he goes, Hey, if you get really good, maybe you can start managing people's money for him or, you know Allen: Yeah. Yeah, we have a few students that have gone that route. So it's doable. But I do know that once those financial planners, when they start seeing it, and they start learning it for themselves, they go, they go nuts, they can't believe it, they're like, well, I'd really like Oh, my God, I didn't Why didn't I know about this earlier? Because they're not talking about it, you know, they're not taught about options and the way their commission structures work. And then they have their whatever the broker dealers or their their business setup, it's too hard to handle all the little options. So it's cool, cool, awesome. Okay, so I think we've already covered like, you know, what was the hardest part was the the mental aspect. Yeah, you're still working on the scaling? So in you're retiring in three years? I think you said, so you're gonna focus on trading a lot more. Do you feel that you have any special skills? Or that drew you to this? Or can anybody just anybody off the street do it? Lori: I think anybody, if you if you can follow simple directions, you can do it. Yeah, it just takes a little bit of practice. And it's great, you know, doing, you know, start off with paper trading. That way you can get to get your confidence that really helped me is the paper trading because you make all your mistakes there. And it'll help you when you actually pull the trigger with real money. Allen: So when do you think you'll feel that you're you're okay with adding some more money to the trading account? Have you thought about that? Lori:  Ah, actually, I have not thought about that. Allen: Okay. Lori: I probably should. Allen: I'm not, you know, that's up to you. I am not licensed to give you financial advise. Yeah, but like, you know, because when when you told me, because first, I had seen your, your trades, and then later on, you told me that hey, I, you know, I want to scale it. So I was like, Okay, sure. And you're like, Well, I'm stuck with this account. I thought you had already probably added more to it, because you had so much success earlier on. Lori: I think maybe when I get more comfortable with the scaling that I will probably start adding more. But it still scares me. Right? Seeing the extra zero trying to go, you know, even when you said two to four, and you know, just okay and then I start to hang a little faster, so.. Allen: Well, yeah, then then you don't do it. You know, it's like, if you can't sleep at night, then yeah, it's not worth it. It's not worth it. And how much time do you does it take on your trading, how much time you spend? Lori: Oh, it doesn't take very long at all, maybe 20 - 30 minutes at the most so in the morning before I go to work.. Allen: Okay. Lori: ..and take a look. Either put some trades in or check what you know, how my existing trades are going to see if I have to manage any of those. Allen: And that includes everything so managing researching. Lori: Uh huh because because you walked us through on how to create a watch list. So I have my watch list and I just go through that you can easily find a couple of trades every day. And so just takes a few minutes to evaluate which one probably would be the best one that's going to get you your profit faster. Allen: Okay, and you're saying you're doing about two a week or so average? Yeah. Okay, so yeah, so everyday, you don't even need to find trades. It's, yeah, it's just whenever you need. Awesome Lori: So a lot of times, I'm just there trying to, you know, checking on my existing trades to, to see how they're doing. So, you know, that could be as quick as five minutes. Allen: And you check in. So okay, so you're in Hawaii time, which is three or four hours behind me. So when you go to work, what time is it? Like the market is going to close in a couple hours already? Is that how it works? Lori: The market closes? I think before lunchtime here in Hawaii. Allen: Okay. So yeah, so just one time while you're going before you're going to work, that seems to be enough. Fun time. Okay. Cool. Yeah, yeah, we have some students a, you know, they, they get, they get, they wake up early, and then they'll check it before the market opens. And then they check it when the market opens. And then they check it, you know, during lunch, and then a couple of times during the day and like, yeah, you're going too crazy, you know, just you need to chill out, relax. Don't make it so stressful. Lori: That's what I like about this system, I don't have to be on the computer all day watching where everything is going. So I can just 20-30 minutes a day at the most and I'm good. Allen: What was it originally, that made you want to get into trading was there are a specific reason or a desire that you had or? Lori: A lot of it is I wanted to be able to generate a full time income part time. I really didn't want to have to Okay, I got to keep getting up, you know, certain hours, do eight, nine hours a day come home and you know, then you got to take care of all the stuff around the house. You know, it's it's tedious after a while, so I wanted a little bit of more freedom more control of my time. Allen: Okay, makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. Yep. Didn't get there. Maybe right? there didn't get there. But the future now he's bright, but you got there eventually. So now the future looks really bright. And now you'll have, you know, probably when you retire when you do retire, then you'll have plenty of extra money to go do whatever you want. Lori: Like if my kids are interested, you know, they're tired of their jobs. And that's something I can pass on to. to them. That may be something they might want to. Yeah, you know, pursue. Allen: Yeah, that would be I mean, could you imagine? It's like, yeah, you know, I learned a little late, but if you learn it now you can you can quit your job years ahead of time, right? That would be like the biggest best gift you could give. Like, forget College, I'm just gonna teach you this. Cool. Okay, any final words you want to share with our viewers? Lori: She said, if, if I can do it, you know, after 30 years of struggling, you know, anybody can do it. You know, if you have the desire, and you're willing to follow the instructions, the rules, you can do it. Allen: I'll say, most said, well, Laurie, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your time. Appreciate your candor and being open about you know, the losses and sometimes people are a little bit you know, they try to they talk about the good stuff, but they don't really share all the all the hard stuff. But you're like, Yeah, you know, 30 years that sucked. And I know you know, you were a little shy, and I do appreciate you coming on you did you know, I'm sure this is going to help a lot of people, you know. Lori: I sure hope so.. Allen: They're gonna listen, they're gonna see it and they're gonna be like, "Wow, I want to be like Lori". All right, appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Lori: Thank you, Allen. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!  

Hey, this is Allen from option genius. And I am coming to you today from Galveston, which is a beach. So I drove down here today took day off, you know, just hanging out, get some time to think, enjoy the weather. It's not that hot, it's not that cold. But then take a look at this when I get here. This is what it looks like. All foggy, everything was fine. The whole day, everything - the whole road here was fine. It took us about an hour and a half to get here. Everything was fine, good here, and it's all foggy, you can barely see too far in the distance. But that's okay, because that gives me time to shoot you a quick video. And today what I wanted to ask you was are you treating your trading as a business? Or are you treating it as something else? Now, a lot of folks when they talk about their trading, you know, they compare it to their job. It's like, oh, how much do you want to make? Well, I want to make as much as I'm making my job. So they compare trading to their job. Now in the job, you have a performance review, right? So the company manager, whatever the boss tells you how you're doing you personally. And if you're doing well, if you're doing badly, it's all on you. And so if you compare your trading to your job, and you say, Oh yeah, this is my job, this is my second job, then it reflects on you, your results reflect on you. So what I want you to do instead is I want you to think about your trading as a business. Now a business in corporate speak, right? If you incorporate, you are not your business, you might own the business, but the business is a separate entity. Right now, I'm not telling you to go out and form a corporation for your trading - that's a separate topic. But I want you to think of your trading as a business. Now, you might have heard the statistics right from the SBA, most companies go out of business within the first few years, almost 95% of them go out of business in the first 10 years. Now option genius has been around for 10 years, or more than 10 years, I think 1314 years now. So we must be doing something right. So that's good. I'm happy about that, that we survived. But when you think of your trading as a business, you understand that not everything goes smoothly, not everything goes perfectly. Right. Now, for example, at Option Genius, we might have a new marketing campaign. And we might launch it and I cost a bunch of money. And I have really high hopes and be really excited about it and it falls flat and it doesn't do anything. Every people hate it doesn't work. We lose money. Ah, man, it's disappointing. But it's not a personal failure. Right? It's something that we tried, that did not work. So big difference mentally, versus "Oh, my God", attaching it the results to yourself personally, versus "Oh, it was something else that we tried, and it did not work. Now everybody knows that a business. There are ups and downs, right? There's yours are you make profit, and there's years that you don't make profit. And in trading, we seem to forget that. We seem to think that we should always be making money, we seem to think that we should always every year should be profitable making money. But in the long run, it's not like that. And so if you think of it as a business, if you have a losing year, that's okay. Right? Because that happens. Maybe something happened differently this year in the economy or whatever that caused your business to lose money. That's okay. Business is still found sound, the the foundation of the business, it's still sound, we're not going to just throw the business away because it lost money. Especially if you'd lost money for a whole year. Right? We'll make it back. We have that confidence. Now, most entrepreneurs and then I think of us small time traders as entrepreneurs, because, you know, unless you're a professional managing other people's money, then you might be like, you know, a big CEO of a Fortune 500 company or whatever, you know, bear yourself to that. Well, most of us, I can compare us to entrepreneurs, you know, scrappy, hardworking grinders, right? We really we enjoy the grind and entrepreneurs really enjoy the grind, they enjoy startup phase, they start, you know, bootstrapping, where you learn, and you try new things, and you see what works and what doesn't work and you adapt, and you overcome. And you really learn from every single mistake. Now, for a lot of entrepreneurs, the confidence that comes from success. So for example, if you're talking to a rich person or a rich business person, they are not confident because they have a lot of money. And this might be counterintuitive, having a lot of money does not give you confidence actually brings you depending on how you got the money, it can actually cause you a lot of anxiety, because you're worried about not losing the money, if you don't know how to make it, right. If it was just given to you, then your whole thought process is I can't lose it, I can't lose it, I can't lose it. Because I don't know how to get more, right. And that's what happens to a lot of people who inherit money or get the lottery, they get it, they can't handle it mentally, it's totally mind blowing. So they lose it all and they can't get back. But as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, if you make the money in the first place, you have that confidence that wow, I made it, I made it right, I did the work, I tried the new things, I took the risk, and it worked. And then if it stops working, or if something happens, and the business goes out of business, and that could happen all the time, they have the confidence that they can get it back, they can make it again, right, because businesses go out of business for all kinds of ways, they might be good for five years, 10 years, and all of a sudden, maybe a new competitor comes and knocks them out. Or maybe the market shifts, or maybe nobody wants that product anymore, or there's a new technology or the government changes the rules or the legislation or who knows what can happen. And this is quite a business all the time. In fact, you know, you look back 100 years ago, let's look at like a 1900, you look at the fortune 100 list, and most of those companies have been around anymore, for whatever reason. So as a business owner, you understand is this goes out of business, you lose money, okay, you get back on the horse, start something else, and you build it back up again. But as traders, we think like oh my god, if I lose my money, that's it, I'm done. I'm done for I can't do anymore, it's a failure, I have to give up, I have to move on, I can't do anything else. That's what is not only limiting to you, but it won't let you trade properly and mentally, that's the wrong way to look at it. So a lot of times we have losses. And a lot of times it's nothing that we did, right? And we lose money. And it might be a big loss, or maybe 100% loss, you might lose the whole account that happens to most people. But if you can get back on the horse, you can do it again, if you've already made the money once, if you already know, hey, I was trading this way it was working, it was successful. But something happened, something shifted. Or maybe I made a mistake, and I lost the money or the business lost the money, right? Not me, it lives in the business lost, then you know that you can get it back. And it's that mental shift, that it's not over when you lose. That gives you the confidence. And so having confidence in yourself as a trader, and your strategy is probably the most important thing in trading, whether it's trading options, or stocks or futures or whatever you're trading, if you've made it once, you can make it again, to many people, they make it once and it works for six months, a year, two years, and then they have a big loss. And they just give up. Well, maybe that's the right thing to do. But if an entrepreneur lost his business, they have a choice, right? They could be like, oh, man, no, I'm horrible. I sucked at a business and my business went out of business, and they'll never get back on the horse. And it's just, they have a fear and they can't do it again. And your life is gonna be miserable, they're gonna be miserable personally, because they're gonna think they're a failure. And financially, they're not going to get back on the horse, and they're not going to recover. So they're going to be resentful, their family's going to be resentful of them -- all kinds of weird stuff. And that's not what you want to be. So think of it as a business. But think that, hey, if I could do it once, I could do it again, again and again. And that's the confidence that you need to develop. And the only way to do that is to get in the game practice, find a strategy that works for you, make it work, and then keep doing it. So think of it not as a personal thing. Think of it as a separate entity. Number one think of your business as separate from you. So it's not a personal indication or of net worth or personal worth, right? It's net worth yeah, sure, you know, as part of your net worth the asset or the account size, but it's not something that's tied to you personally. So if your account goes down if the stock market goes down if your trades don't work doesn't mean that you are a bad person. It doesn't mean that you're a bad trader, it just means that something didn't work, we need to change it, we need to adapt it, we need to learn what didn't work, how to fix it. And then we keep going. We don't just give up. When something bad happens, we change it, and we keep our confidence high. We do it once we do it again, and again and again. And some sometimes, you know, entrepreneurs are like, Yeah, you know, I want to lose it all. Like, if you you've ever heard of this guy called Gary Vaynerchuk. He said that a few times, he said, You know, I wish that I could lose it all. Because I know I get it back. And it's going to be more fun getting it back the second time. Right now, when I have too much money, I can do as many cool things as I want to because there's too risky. But if I don't have anything that I can try anything, and it's all on me, and that what it lives for. So, you don't have to be that extreme. If you have money and you lose it. But I do want you to have the confidence that hey, I made it once, you can make it again. So that's it for now and we'll talk to you again soon. Take care. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Ex-Financial Planner and 20+Year Trader, Kevin, talks about how to manage your trading and lessons he has learned along the way. Allen:  Today I'm going to be talking with Kevin, who is now a good friend. I've known him for a few months now. And me came into the option genius world a little while back. And he has been a trader for a while. He's done lots of different things worked in the public sector worked in the private sector, very smart man, very intelligent. He keeps me on my toes with the questions that he has. So it's always wonderful. It's always helpful to the, to the other students, because, you know, they get the high level thinking of the questions that he asked, they get the answers to, as well. So thank you for that, Kevin, and welcome to the show. Allen: It's been a pleasure to have you yeah, like I said, you know, you keep me all you kept me on my toes the whole time. So it's like, this is really good, you know, because.. Kevin: You're actually not the first person who has told me that. So that's part of what I do. Allen: Yeah, I think every class needs one person like that. Do you know, and then as a teacher, it kind of, it makes you feel like, hey, you know, somebody is listening. And, you know, you keep pushing the envelope. So it's like, okay, if I don't know something, I gotta go figure it out. Like, yeah, I know, I do that one thing. But why do I do that? I don't know. Let me go and see if you're gonna make it. Because sometimes we've been doing it for so long. It's like, you know, it's just second nature. I just do it and do and do it. And then you're, you know, you and a couple others are like, Hey, Allen go back, "why did you do that?" I'm like, I don't know. I just does the way I've always done it. Let me figure out why we did it that. Kevin: It becomes instinctive and second nature. And sometimes, we forget why we do some of the things that we do. So it's always good to have somebody you know, especially when you're teaching to ask those types of questions, so that you can help other people understand because you've been added, obviously, a very, a lot longer than I have, and other students. Allen: Mm hmm. But you've been trading for a while. So tell me, how did you get started in trading, investing all that stuff? Kevin: Well, I've owned businesses pretty much my whole entire life. And I started, I actually got into investing when I was very, very young. And so it all started with putting out a financial plan that I wanted to be financially independent. And this was right when I got out of college, I want to be financially independent within 20 years. And so I hired a financial advisor to help put together a financial plan and help put together a life plan for me. And so that's really where the journey of investing began. I've always been a saver, so I've always saved money. So that wasn't that difficult for me. And I've always lived within my means and, and so I was able to put away money the old fashioned way, invest it right and had a lot of great people along the way. And, and that's how I kind of got started. And when it came to options, I actually first got exposed through options at a Tony Robbins seminar that I went to event, I'm a big Tony Robbins fan and have gone to nearly all of his seminars and got introduced to options. And so that was back in 1998. And so I was on the buyer side and bought options and had some success. I also, that year lost millions of dollars as well to trading options. It wasn't through anything that I did in the trading process of it is what I, the decision that I made when I held that to call options. So I held 10 contracts for AOL and 10 contracts for Amazon at $15 each. But both were in the money. And both were getting ready to expire. And I wanted to invest in one of them. And I thought AOL had the best opportunity of being in the internet world and creating the internet. And I thought that's the direction we were going and I didn't think that a bookseller, an online bookseller was going to be as successful. Well, not having cashed in and acquired 1000 shares of Amazon, which would have been worth the millions of dollars today, I missed out on that opportunity. And so that was the only the only thing trade that I've ever made that I regret, but I did make some money on it. I think I ended up making like four grand on it. So it was trading near $20. And I had a $15 option, and overall ended up making like 20,000 Plus on AOL. But of course, that pales in comparison when I could have made it Amazon. So anyways, that was my first experience of buying options. So I had some minor success. And when I became a certified financial planner, which I've been for over the last 22 years has been my main business. Then we used options to help hedge my clients' portfolios when they had very large positions. So nearly all my time in the trading business I've always been on the buying side of it and not the selling side. Allen: Interesting, interesting. I have a couple of follow up questions. The first off is most of the financial planners I've talked to, they have no clue about options, they don't want to touch options. They're like, Oh, this is too risky, I don't get paid commissions, you know, for doing options, I don't want to get into it. My, my broker dealer doesn't want us to do it, what makes you get into them? Kevin: Again, when, when I first started, it was the speculation aspect of it. And so I, on a personal side have used it for speculating. And then when I learned and I and I understood options, and who because as you and I both know, options sometimes have a bad connotation, but a lot of people think, Oh, they're too risky. And they're not something that I would necessarily toy with. A lot of times, it's just because you don't understand how options work or their misuse. So options can be used in two ways they can be used as a speculative tool, or they can also be used to hedge a portfolio and use it as insurance. And so I learned both sides of that, and found how important it was, especially as people come out of their careers, and they have very large positions and perhaps, or company stock, maybe they don't want to totally divest of it. But they're concerned that if you know their company, they hold so many shares that if they were to go down in price, they lose a lot of money, and so on in those types of situations, we would buy, or buy puts in the event that the stock were to go down, then we would be able to hedge their portfolio and protect and then they would have protection on the downside. A lot of times I think Allen, people just they're afraid of things that they don't understand. And options- most people are not exposed to unless you really go out on your own. You do a lot of reading and research or get involved in the financial world. Most people don't have that type of exposure to options. Allen: Yep, that's true. That's one of the hurdles that we have to overcome to get people to Hey, can you you know, look up? This is really good. The second question was, so you said when you were younger, out of high school out of college, I don't remember which one, but you said you had somebody help you make a financial plan? And it seems like the plan probably did very well. Would you mind sharing what the plan was or the basics of it? Kevin: Yeah. So putting together a comprehensive plan, as I as a certified financial planner, what I tell people is, it's not just about the money, it's about life. It's about putting together your life dreams and understanding and having a concept of drawing a roadmap where you want to go and make it akin like if you were to take out a boat, a sailboat, and with a sails and with a compass, you can get to your destination and stay on course, understanding that some storms may come along the way. But if you don't have a compass, and if you don't have a sails on your sailboat, you could be drifting out there forever. And so a lot of people really what I found that differentiates people from success or not is, is do they have a plan in place that helps them get to where they want to go. And so as a certified financial planner, that's what I've done most of my career I help people understand and get into in develop and define what their life dreams are, and then put together a comprehensive plan that addresses not only financially what it's going to take to get there, but also how do you address the risks that are involved? For instance, if you were to lose your job, if you were to become disabled, and you couldn't work if you required some type of long term care if if you are the breadwinner, and all of a sudden, you die, Allen, how is it that your family is going to continue to carry on? How are you how will you fund those financial goals? send your kids to college that put bread and butter on the table for your family? So we help address comprehensively all those issues. And also as well as to make sure that we minimize the amount that Uncle Sam puts in his pocket. So we address taxes, how do you invest smartly, so that you don't, you're not overpaying taxes at a later stage in life. So we put all those things together, and then make sure that you have the paperwork and the different things that are in place where for instance, you were to suddenly pass away, what are the directives that you need to have in place? What do you want to have happen? If you lose your you become health challenged? What do you do? Who's going to make health care decisions and other financial decisions on your behalf? So it's taking six areas of life planning put it all together in one comprehensive plan? And, and that's what I've done in my life and that's what I've helped people to do over my career. Allen: Interesting. Okay. Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff. You just mentioned that people need to think about some of the stuff that we don't want to think about, you know, I mean, who wants to think about dying and, you know, getting life insurance to take care of college when I'm not there and all that stuff, but it's all part and parcel of life. So you have to you have to come to terms with it. Kevin: Well then one of the larger risk, especially with younger people, and they don't always think about because younger people think that they're Superman and Superwoman. And if you are all of a sudden get into an accident all of a sudden you had a medical issue that caused you where you couldn't you could no longer work well how are you again going to continue to supply for your family how will you reach your life dreams, and so, a lot of times people don't think about those different pitfalls that can happen in life. And, and so those are the things that you need to plan for. It's not just about making money, it's about also protecting you and your family. And you know, because we can't control always what happens in life, but we can control how we're going to respond. And we can plan for many of those pitfalls. Allen: Exactly. I mean, I remember, years ago, before I got into trading, I started I tried my hand at being a real estate investor. So you know, in those "We Buy Houses" type guys, so I'd run ads and, you know, try to go see people at their homes that were in trying to sell their homes. And most of the time, I realized that people who are in a in a mess, you know, where they're, they haven't made their house payments in a while. It's not something that people want to do, you know, they're not a lot of deadbeats are like, Yeah, I'm gonna try to stiff the insurance cover the mortgage company. No, they, they literally want to stay in their house, they literally can't not pay the mortgage. And I'd go to these people's houses and you know, they wouldn't have electricity, the bills would be piled up. And they're like, you know, I don't know what to do. And I'm like, How'd you get in this situation? It's like, well, everything was fine until I got hurt. And that was the same story I heard over and over and over again, it's like, yeah, everything was great. You know, we are we were living paycheck to paycheck or whatever. We had some everything was good until we got hurt. And then all of our savings were all depleted, because I couldn't work and we had all these medical bills and all this stuff. And now, now I can't go back to work. My family's trying to make ends meet. But the bills are just too much. And so they ended up in foreclosure. And I found that was the number one reason all foreclosures in this country is just, you know, people getting hurt and medical bills and all that it's not because they don't want to pay it again. Kevin: It's the the unexpected, and I think many people that have experienced the Coronavirus. This is a perfect real life time that we're that we've been going through where all of a sudden this pandemic strikes and businesses shut down. People can't go to work. So the question is, hey, you know, aside from getting some assistance from the federal government, which has been helpful, the people that have really been able to make it, they have cash on the side. And that's another thing as a certified financial planner, we talk about, we don't know, and we cannot predict everything that is going to happen in life. And we wouldn't be having this conversation two years ago, how I mean, what would be the probability that we would be able to predict that in a few months, we're going to be going through a pandemic, that's going to shut down nearly our whole entire economy, and where people are going to get sick, over 725,000 people are dying. I mean, you would think that we were writing, we would be writing a script for a Hollywood movie, but we've all lived through it now. So it's important, so much important, even before you start putting money in the types of things that we're going to be talking about in investing that you have an adequate cash reserve of six, I recommend six months to a year of your fixed income. But to aside for the events of an emergency, or maybe it's just for an opportunity that comes along, maybe maybe it's an investment in a property that you want to make or car or something else that comes along or a great trip, you want to take your your family on, you need to make sure that you have money in the bank that's liquid, that's not subject to market volatility that you can tap into, to help you get through those difficult times. And sometimes I think some of the people in I distinctly remember, especially back going into 2007 and 2008. Before though, you know, we have the housing bubble and everything that blew up financially, everybody, you know, real estate was so hot. And so everybody wanted to put a larger portion of their money in investments in real estate. And as I tell people, if something happens, you have an emergency or something, or you need money, so you are not going to be able to chisel out a brick from your house or your investment property, take it to the bank and pay the bills or pay whatever, you know, you need to have liquidity in your portfolio. And that's the first thing that people should start saving for is to make sure that they have adequate cash for, for again, for emergencies or opportunities. Allen: I agree with you. I agree with you. I mean, it's hard for some people to get six months to a year. But eventually I think you definitely have to get there. Now you mentioned the pandemic. And I don't know if it was because we were lucky or what it was. But as a options trader, the way we trade I mean, I've had amazing in the pandemic, it's like it was the most amazing time, because made so much easy money. I mean, it was like I couldn't I, if I wanted to draw it up, you know, like, how could I make it any better? I really couldn't. It was just for people who were already trading and who already knew what to do. It was the most perfect setup. And then there were other people that got involved a little bit later that really understood learned it and they were able to, you know, they'd have to be there from the beginning. They were able to to write it up as well. And so it was I've seen that I've seen people that have been devastated by the pandemic because of different reasons. They weren't ready. They weren't stable. And then there are other issues as well. But for the people that were able to take advantage of it. I mean, this was this was amazing opportunity. And who knows, if we're ever going to get another one like that, again, maybe we will. I mean, you know, eventually markets will come down, they'll crash. And then there's another opportunity and you get back up. But I do remember, there was one guy that I don't know, forgot who he was some billionaire on the TV, and he was like, This is the greatest buying opportunity of your lifetime. And I was like, really? I mean, you know, I lived through that financial crisis, that was a pretty good opportunity to I don't know, this one's gonna be better. It might be I haven't looked at the numbers. But yeah, it's been, it's been an incredibly amazing opportunity for us. So.. Kevin: Well you with your knowledge and other people that have a lot more experience, if you've dealt you, you've gone through the different cycles in this type of a trading market. So you have a greater for you even ever, I mean, I've been through different trading cycles, but not through the through options trading. So in the in the spreads, and how markets treat those and where your successes are. So that's the one thing that as we get into this is part of the learning process and experiencing is adapting to different to different markets that you that you get into. I mean, it was a perfect time for me when I started doing this. I mean, I got into this because I was in the middle of a career transition. I had, like I mentioned, I own businesses my whole entire life, and just got finished with a 10 years of doing the public service with inside my local government for our community. And, and that was an awesome experience. So the question was, what do I do now? Do I go back and open up another business? Or do I go back and perhaps get a job in the public or private sector, I really had an interest in getting a leadership role, and a nonprofit organization, because that's one realm that I hadn't worked in yet. So I was looking for a full time job and in fact, actually up until just about a month and a half ago. But then when I started looking at and discovering the potential as going back and utilizing some of my experience in the investment world, as well, as, you know, my prior option experience, this was a great timing for me to to enter into this type of field that gives you incredible flexibility and unbelievable earning potential. Allen: Mm hmm. Yep. So you've been in finance for 20-30 years? What got you started selling options, because you were buying options earlier? What happened to make you switch? Kevin: Well, I was going back to what I had known. And so this was in January, when I was deciding. So as I mentioned, as looking for a full time job, and then at the same point in time, was doing a lot of reading research on what type of business I could potentially do. And just started seeing a lot of ads about options. And I said, "Oh Yeah, I remember I used to trade those". And I did okay you know, had good times and things. So I started actually I said, I'm going to get a look and see if I can find the best Options Trading coach that I can find and get the best service potential so that I can get back into this. And I figured if I had a pro that I could trade with, or they could show me a system that could produce potential consistent income. And I said that that might be something to consider. So I found one and he had worked for out over 25 years in the CBOE and was really energetic. I read that a lot of research about him look like he was very successful. So I signed up for the service. And you know, he touted that they had over 74% success rate ratio, which I said, that's not too bad. And so he started getting back in where we would have every single day we would meet online, and he had scanners and things that were set up. And then he would call out which when a certain thing hit the scanner, he would call out what to go, who to invest on. So you're online, and you're investing with him. And I did that and for a little while you're having success, but then also, you were having one's trades it didn't work out. And so by the the bottom line is, is to make a long story short, within a couple of months, I started looking, I said, you know, I'm having some success, but it's not really enough success. By the time you look at the trades that were winners in the trades that were losers, you weren't cutting coming out that far ahead where you feel like you could make a really decent income doing this. Kevin: And so then I started researching more. And I started, I came across the concept of selling options and your service was one of the first things in Option Genius that I started reading about. I said, Well, this is interesting, because you're touting over 80% of the options, which is you know, what should I found to be true expire worthless. So I said perhaps I'm just on the wrong side of the equation. And so I subscribed to your service and there's a couple other services that I found that sent credit spread recommendations and started doing more research around this and I said this is really really interesting. So I did not start off with your service right away. I started getting your emails continue to read I got your books and and read what you had written. And I started entering the trades that have been recommendations I was getting from other services and again, you know, in the beginning, you obviously all you're seeing is the premium coming into your account. And so when you're looking at, hey, you know, instead of paying for stuff, I'm getting money inside my account. I said this is a pretty good deal. But that was true until you got into the expiration time frame, when some of the contracts that you were in, weren't going so well. And so those particular services while they told you what, when to enter, they didn't tell you when to exit. And so I'm thinking I said, you know, some of these positions aren't doing so well. And and so again, I did that for a couple of months. And I said, Well, you know, this is again, another mixed bag. And I said, let me try to before I give up on this, let me try one more time, let me reach out and let me get engaged with Option Genius and see what they can do. Because I wanted a way that I liked what this potential what the selling options could do. But I wanted to see if I could increase my probabilities of success, which you touted through your service. And so that's when I signed up for option genius and your services, and then eventually rolled into the Credit Mastery program, which I just, it's just been absolutely amazing the amount of difference that has made and the success of my trading. Allen: Awesome. Yeah, because I remember, when you joined, you had told me that, hey, you know, I'm part of this service and this service, and I'm getting this trade and that trade, what do you think about this trade? And I'm like, Man, I don't know if they're, if they're giving you a trade, I don't know what I don't know what they're thinking, I don't know what their plan is, or anything, I can't give you any advice on that. I can show you what I'm doing. And then if it works great. So I remember that I had to kind of, you know, like you were heading in different directions and had to kind of like grab, you kind of like by the shoulders and kind of pull you over and be like, can we focus please over here? It was very interesting. It was fun. Kevin: I would have services that you would get three to four trade recommendations a day. And I guess maybe where I got confused, where recommendations, the ideas and I say, Well, this is pretty awesome. I said they're given and I'm, I guess I had the expectation that these were actual recommendations that they're saying that you should do. And so I always did a little bit of homework around that. And I would look at the charts. And a lot of these were smaller companies. And I guess, really, I wasn't really looking at the technical aspects and the things that you teach in your course, I was looking at number one, that the amount of premium that I was generating that was going into my account, I'm just like, wow, I can make, you know, 16%, 17%, 20% on this deal, and there's been some will come across like 25%, I didn't think about the risk aspect of it. And so then I would pull it the company do a little bit of research and said, Oh, man, that stock has been hammered that, you know, that's really it's been trading down. I said, it's got to go back up. Well, some of these trades, you'll get into, they didn't go back up. In fact, they continued to go down, trades would get in trouble. And I'm thinking maybe this thing will just continue to go back up. And so I started living on hoping some of these trades, I said, this thing has to go up at some point in time. Well, some of these trades didn't. And so I lost, I max loss on some of these trades. Some of these other ones, I lost 50 and 60%. And that's when I started think I said, Man, either one, I'm doing really something wrong or two, I said, What I'm entering the trades I'm entering, then perhaps maybe I shouldn't be in. And now those are the types of things that I learned when I started going through your program. The other service, I had no rules, there were no rules, there's nothing that really taught you the art and what you should be doing when you're trading spreads, you're just giving you what those recommendations are, or ideas as I've learned to call them before. And now and and we didn't have the rule set up. So now with through your program, there are definitive rules. I know now when I can look at a chart if whether something is a good idea or not, if I wanted to sell puts on something, and they're not trading, above all the three moving averages that you talked about, I immediately discard it. So I'm able to really now take ideas, even where they're from other services, your services or my own research, and immediately at least be able to spot things that I need to look at further. And so your service has really provided an amazing education to me and again, is is really increased the probability of having a successful trade. Allen: That's awesome. That's great to hear. Because you also have to look at it from the business point of it of, you know, when you're running a service, you're just giving trades and you're trying to collect that monthly, you know, the monthly subscription fee, you know, or maybe yearly or whatever it is, but you have to keep people engaged enough to be able to keep getting them to pay you over and over again. It's a tough business and you're not going to share all the secrets and all the things if they even know any secrets, because a lot of these guys I know them, they run the you know, they're marketers and we run into each other we met you know, we talk at different marketing conventions, and they're more interested in you know, how can I get more subscribers or how can I make more money per subscriber, then how can I do better trades because they know that You know, they can use probabilities and they can talk a good game. And so for a while the trades will do good. But eventually they're gonna blow up, eventually, it's gonna go down. And so the only thing they have to do is shut down the service. And then a few months later, they come in, open up another one in a different name, different website, and they start all over again. So it's you know, they just go from one to another, like when we started years ago, I can probably I remember at that time, I made a list of all the other competitors, you know, everybody who had a service who was given trades, and out of like the 50 of them that were at there at that time, there's probably two of them left, you know, and now there's like, hundreds of them, because everybody figured out "Oh, yeah, if you just say, high probability people jump in, and all you have to do is sell a high a low delta option". And it might work out most of the time. It's like, yeah, it's a little bit more to it than that. And that's why I wanted to get into it, where if you're a person who wants a membership, and subscriber and trades, you know, that's one type of person. But if you want to go further and be like, Okay, I want to actually do this for myself, I want to be in control, then you need more of a coaching, you need more of like, these are the rules, this is how we follow it and step by step by step. So that's why that's the program that you are in, I'm glad that you were in, and I'm glad that you've, you know, it worked for you. Kevin: Well, and again, it's not even being able to recognize good trades, or one, it's one part of the advantage of the program. But equally important is the risk management aspect of it. And also knowing when you need to exit a trade. And that's what I also had found and had been frustrating before, some of the positions that I had, I thought, once you got into the credit spread, you know, you ran into the end of expiration. And so some of these positions in the beginning would go in, they would do extraordinarily well. And they would, the price would continue to go up in the stock, and then all of a sudden, something would happen. And I would lose, you know, the stock would come tumbling down, and then my game would end up turning into a loss. And so being able to manage the risk and knowing when to get in and when to get out is equally important. And I also was- the mindset when I started, I said why would I ever want to exit a position when I would have two or three weeks left? And the option is so far out of the money that you know, the probability it's going to fall is very minimum. And why would I want to spend extra money on commissions and give up a couple $100 When I could just stay in it and it would expire worthless, and I would collect the whole premium? Well, again, you'll learn from experience that markets can really whack you and your positions can go down. And it is a real gut punch that you talk about. When you are on a when you're in a winning trade. And you have made your 10% Target to all of a sudden have that reverse and have actually that winning trade turn into a losing trade. And so being able to get out when you make your 10% as you prescribe. And then also making sure that you are exiting in a position that's not working when you're hitting the 25 to 30% that is really what's made the larger difference, where I've been able to increase my success ratio when I started with you, which was roughly about 82%, I was now up over now with your service about 88%. But the larger differences is that my losing trades, the amount that I'm losing is much smaller than when I was trading before. So therefore my profits have increased, because I'm getting rid of the bad trades and securing my profit and the trades that are doing well. Allen: Yeah, I mean, it does take time to learn those and you know, it's great if we give give it to you and be here this and this but it's easier said and listened to then actually done. So you know, the the fact that we have to we have to drill it in over and over and over again. It takes time and like you said sometimes you're gonna it's gonna reverse on you and you're gonna feel it. And that will be a big lesson in itself. So now, okay, so when did you get started with I think it was March, April. I think you guys started with us? Kevin: I signed up in April, your class started mid, mid May. Allen: May. Okay. All right. So how have you been doing in terms of returns? Kevin: I'm averaging about last month was a really tough month. But on average, it's been about 7 to 8% with all my costs and my losses considered together. Allen: So that's really good seven - eight months consistently and about how much time do you spend on it? Kevin: I am actually doing this full time. So up to last month of about a month and a half or so ago. Like I said, I was part of my time was also looking forward, you know, still looking for work. And then I, at the end of your program, I concluded that I believe that I could do this full time. And so full time for me now is I'm a four to six hours a day. And part of it is because I'm just I really love doing this. And so I'm always looking for for different types of investment opportunities, and so I'm always reading and researching on the positions that I'm that I'm holding, my computer stays up throughout the day. So I'm always looking for that time frame of where I might be able to, to get into another position, or to do research and things that I need to know about market conditions. So it's become a love and passion for me. Allen: And you've also told me that you also have a lot of positions on at one time, right? Kevin: I do. And so my average amount positions that I'll have, I mean, the most I've ever had on one time are 40 positions. And that's actually before I came here, as well, that's because I was taking all of the ideas and implementing. And so now, now anywhere between 20 to 30 positions I might have on but one of the things that I found and that you had taught, and when I learned about the importance of of cashing out your winning positions, when you hit your 10% profit, is that that frees up your capital to be able to invest in another opportunity. And so that's sometimes I'm able to put on even additional positions, because I have more freed up capital, because I've taken money I've cashed in and taking money off the table. And so yeah, anywhere 20 to 30 positions a month, but I've never I've never maxed out as far as the amount of margin and, and the cash that I have on my account. I'm always very mindful that I because I don't know what's going to happen, especially with these with the way the markets are trading today. I don't know what's going to happen when all of a sudden we have a larger downturn. And so I'm very mindful about the amount of margin and positions that I hold considering the current market conditions. Allen: And how much are you trading this - in terms of.. Kevin: At first it started, it was 2500. And then I moved up with to 5000, and then at 10,000. And now this is one of the things that I'm really starting to evaluate where I wanted to be position-wise, my goal is monthly income of about $10,000 a month. So I have roughly about $425,000, of what we call buying power. And that includes cash and stock positions that total of about $650,000. So I'm conservatively and I feel like I am on the track. And I'm able to conservatively generate from that about $10,000 per month and what I found and if people are wondering, well, how much do I need to start with? What I have found by the time you include your your expenses, and by the time you include your your losing positions, you have to start out with a number that you want to generate per month. So if you were to take that number and divide that by 0.5, that's where I think, the amount of money you should have in capital to start. So say for instance, you want it to generate $1,000 per month, depending upon if you're talking about cash and stocks, or just cash only if it's cash only, divide the $1,000 by 0.5, and that'll give you where you need to start. Allen: So that's 20. Kevin: Yeah, that's about 20,000. If it's if you have a mixture of stock and cash divided by a 0.25 so somewhere between 20 to $40,000. And people ask, what's the difference? Well, if part of what you're trading on are securities, that's only in their marginable securities, that's you're only going to get 50% trading power and most of those positions, it does vary. So and that's another thing that you need to if you're going to be, if you don't have all cash to trade with and I'm using TD Ameritrade Thinkorswim and you're using securities and I transfer it in security. So my account, I started out of 50,000 and then ended up bringing in some of my other securities. So I could use that as leverage. Well, some of the securities I brought over, were not marginable in that account. And so it didn't give me any buying power. So one of the things you need to talk with with your broker is how the securities you're bringing over if you're going to be using stocks to to make sure that they're marginable. And so that's what I have found so far has been a pretty good conservative range as far as what to start with. I need to first start with you have to know what you want to generate income per month. Allen: Right I mean, that could be your end goal. It doesn't I don't know if you have to start off with that much because I you told me okay, you're trying to make 10 Gray a month. That means that you need 400 on your, you know, at 0.25, right? So, for somebody who was just getting started today, and they're like, Yeah, you know, eventually I want to get there. You know, they don't need to they don't need the whole amount right now. And then that's including so you're saying 0.25 because.. Kevin: 0.025 Allen: 0.025 because the return on the stocks is going to be a little bit lower than the return on the options, right? Kevin: You're well, if you put security stocks in your account, you don't get the full buying power. Okay, as I mentioned, my buying power is roughly about 425,000 and that's with a total combined mixture of cash in securities at about 650,000 into an account. So some of them are cash secured, and some of them are against marginable securities in your account. So that's why I say if you for instance, one of the generate that income, you don't have any cash, and it's all stocks and all securities that you're writing off of, you need to lose the 0.025, because by the time you look at your expensive your expenses and your reduced buying power, that's probably about where you're going to be at as far as the ability, the amount of money you're able to conservatively generate on a monthly basis. Allen: Okay, so how does the return calculate into that? Kevin: I look at, if we look at that, that you start with 10%, that that's the goal that you're making on each investment. But I have found by the time you end up calculating expenses for trading, and also countering your losses, conservatively, it's roughly about 0.5 so you cut.. Allen: So 5%? Okay. Kevin: 5%. That's again, being conservative. And so again, you reduce that further, if you don't have cash. Allen: Oh, because you're using margin so you have to, okay.. Kevin: Pay 50. So to look at margin is 50%. So cut that five and half and point point oh, two, five as a ballpark. Allen: Okay, so are you only doing spreads with that 400? Or are you doing other strategies as well? Kevin: I'm primarily 98% are credit spreads that I'm doing, and I still am with my other service, I still daily I am on those calls. And I will, I will look at some of them, I look at it. And yeah, you know, this is a good opportunity. And that provides a little bit more of excitement into the day to because you're you're dealing in markets that are very, very fast moving, and that you have to be able to get the recommended trades in immediately. Because when you're buying the call you what we're doing is we're following institutional money. So these are people that you know, huge institutions that are making big bets, and mostly on the call side on certain stocks. So we use the concept of follow the money. So if there's a lot of big money that's going into particular, they're buying calls on something, we are making a larger assumption that they know something that perhaps we don't, and you and I both know that there's insider information that's exchanged, and that there are institutional and very large investors that may hold information that you and I may not have access to. So when we see those types of trades come across the scanners, that's when we decide to take a position the same exact position that they're taking. So we have, we have an entry amount, and we have an amount to exit on. And if you don't get in that that entry amount, then you don't take the trade. Allen: Okay so that's what takes most of the time during the day? Kevin: No that's usually done for about an hour and a half Allen: hour and a half. Okay.. Kevin: Then I go back into my personal research in the longer term for the credit spreads. And so and then, so I'm doing that, and I have lists, I mean, the I mean, one of the great advantages of your program is that you gave us a list of about 180 stocks. So I have that list I built upon that list from my own research. And I keep a running list of stocks that I am watching, primarily, because one of the rules that we that you discuss, and that I subscribe to that you don't enter in a position where there are earnings coming. So I if there's a chart that I like, and a stock that I like, and there's earnings coming up, and I can't get something before that, that goes on the list. And then at that the the day after they report their earnings, and I'm looking at and see what's happening in the stock and starting to make a decision if I want to get into something now, or if I want to watch and monitor it a little bit further. So by the time if you do this for a while, if you're doing that, your list get can get quite extensive. So I have different dates when I'm visiting different parts of my lists. Allen: Interesting. So now Okay, so you. So you're okay, so I thought that your trading journey was gonna be a little bit longer. But you started really, in January of 2021. And in about four months time, you became consistently profitable four or five months? Kevin: Yeah, I think it was helpful that I obviously understood options coming into this. So I have that part of the learning curve. When I got into this, I gave myself six months up to a year to decide how things were going to go. And like I said, at the same point in time, I was still actively seeking employment, as you know.. Allen: But now you've given up on that? Kevin: Oh, well. I really have because I this is, you know, of all the years that I've owned businesses this you have provided probably the simplest and turnkey business that anybody could ever have. This business, all I need -- I have no employees to deal with. I have all the flexibility in the world. When I want to go on vacation, we schedule more vacations. I take my laptop computer with me spend maybe a couple hours in the morning, less than when I usually have just the monitor the things that I've got and look and see if there's anything that I need to, to get into or out of, and that's it. You take this business wherever you go, I can't think of anywhere else where you have control over your income, what you make the hours that you work, I'm not worried about the Coronavirus, I'm not worried about anything other than communicating with, you know, doing my research and then having fun communicating with the market makers and, and we give a little fun because I'm not like you I can be patient. And so I'll put in bids for things and see and see what happens. And we've had fun that way as well. So and I really love it. I mean, it really has created a world of freedom, both financially and also with my family. And so I just haven't found another business, if I can do it continue to maintain that and not having to worry about all the other employment hassles. And worry about a boss having to worry about employees having to worry about meeting payroll, all I'm worried about is is my trading and and making sure that my family is financially secure. That's a lot less stress that's on me. Kevin: And that's one of the things that that I've done. And then I'm developing now is the success for my trading that I'm doing. I'm creating my paycheck for next year. And so I'm not, I'm at a point now where I am not going into my trading account, to put bread and butter in a table to pay the bills, I am exceeding what I needed. And I'm creating my paycheck for next year. So at the end of this year, I will look at all the profits that I have. And that I've made and then create my paycheck for next year, I'll put that money and a an a very ultra short bond fund or a secured fund where I'm earning a a three to 5% in interest, and then pay myself into my checking account and my paycheck every single month. So then going into next year, I'm prepared. And I'm not worried I'm not making a trade because I have to make a living. And that's what I think the one of the important messages are is that if you're going to do this full time, it's helpful if you are already financially secured or you have a spouse, or you have savings that can help you transition into becoming a full time trader. If you are at the point where you feel like you need to make a trade to pay the bills, then that's when I think you could make trades that might not be so suitable, or that might go bad because you're entering into to a trade just to generate a premium. And just to generate generate that income. But if you're in a position where you know, every single month that the bills are going to be paid because that paychecks coming into your account, you're not as concerned about putting on the volume of trades, you're concerned about putting on the right trades, and then you're working towards building the paycheck for next year. Allen: Yeah, this was something this was like really big that you you share with me. And I was like, oh my god, yeah, you gotta you gotta share this, what do you call it, sorry? Kevin: I call it the pay forward plan. And that's what we need because you're you're setting yourself up and you're getting a paycheck every single month, and you just have that and at the same point in time, that money is also earning interest. And so you're getting dividend income off of that, but you don't have that pressure that how am I going to pay my bills that you have to do at the end of the year? Look at the profits, make sure that you but you've accounted for the taxes that have to be paid on on those profits, assuming that this is coming from a taxable account, and then take out those taxes and then that's paid on your upcoming tax bill. And then you're getting a paycheck every single month. Allen: Yep so I want to I want to recap this for people just to because one of the things one of the hardest things is when you go from you know, just regular trading and having another income to going okay, I want to do this full time. One of the biggest problems and the biggest mental headaches and and hurdles people have is, hey, you know, my expenses for the month are like, you know, six, seven grand, I need my trading this month to make six, seven grand so I can pay my bills, and like you said, it's the wrong way to think about it. So what you said was, you know, you have an income another source, but you take whatever your profits you're making now and then you put it into a interest bearing account for next year. So you know, how much money is in the account so you know that okay, all my bills are gonna be paid for so that you don't have that stress of having to perform and having your trades to have to work out next year going through it month by month by month, right? Kevin: Yeah, and what I'm doing right now is I'm keeping all and this was at first I was going to take in monthly the monthly profits and take put that in my checking account and as I went along, and knowing and looking at the uncertainty the markets, I decided to keep everything into in my trading account that I was making until the end end of the year. So that way, you know, when you're at the end of the year, you know, everything has been settled, your contracts are settled, you know how much money you have made, and what you can then allocate. That is also an advantage to keep it in your trading account for the year, because as you're building up money, that's obviously giving you more purchasing power as well, too. And so, as you have successful trades and losing trades, then they'll go ahead and wash out each other. But what you do is your record, I'm doing the reconciliation at the end of the year. And so at the end of this year, at the end of December, December 31st, I will look at what I have made, and then make a determination of how much I'm going to take out of my trading account, and put into this other investment and do create my monthly income for next year. Allen: That's awesome. Yeah, it just takes once you have once you know your bills are covered, or at least part of they're covered, you know, because I know a lot of people a lot of traders are like, you know, I have to make this trade work. And that's when you have to do something, that's when you lose control, you're not in control anymore, the market is gonna dominate and emotionally you're out of it, and you're gonna lose, it's just, it just, it could happen. Kevin: Not only that, you end up taking substantial risks. And, you know, if you feel like you have to make six or 7000. That's why it's important that you have a realistic understanding going into this, of what you can generate off of your account. Because if you're expecting to generate six or 7000, and you might have 50,000 in your account, well, I'm thinking that that you might be very disappointed, or you could take risks that you should not be taking risks as you're trying to generate premium to create that six or 7000. So that's what I said, the first thing you come into this with is having an idea of what you want to make. Now again, as you mentioned, it could not this, maybe it's not the amount that you're going to make today, you can build up to it, that's fine. But first, make sure that you have the amount that you need coming in in a month that can generate the bread and butter that you put on the table to support yourself and your family and so then you can build up from that. And that's why if you use that formula, that you know, $1,000 You know, if you want 1000 A month, divide that by 0.05 or 0.25, and that'll give you the amount that you can realistically, you realistically should have in your account to generate that type of income. Because realistic expectations, I think are important cuz I think people could look at this. And many times, I've received solicitations that look like you can bet the sky's the limit on what you can make selling options. Well, maybe that might be the case, but the risk that you're taking, could easily wipe you out. And if you don't follow the rules, and if you aren't conservative, and you don't do the things to make sure that you are having a highly probable success on your trade and you're breaking all the rules just to try to generate premium, you could end up broke really quick. Allen: Right. So you're saying basically another way to say it is that two and a half to 5% returns per month is a good target to aim for in a conservative manner doing options trading? Kevin: It should be used to determine about how much you need to have in your account and generate a certain amount of monthly income. Right. As people always I hear that question I know in the class, you know, people just start and say, well, Allen, how much do I need to get started? Well, again, it really has to start with us have some type of income goal to begin with. And so I have found it to be a pretty realistic tool as far as what you should have in your account to generate a certain amount of monthly income. Allen: Yeah, that's another way to look at it. You know, to me, if somebody asked me that question, I don't look at it in the fact that, okay, you need an income goal right away. I would say that, okay, so this is like a skill, like bike riding, where I want you just to get on the bike and be able to pedal and we can take off the training wheels. So I don't care if you're going 100 miles an hour or whatever. That's the goal, eventually you'll get there. But right now I just want you to be able to pedal. Kevin: I would agree with that. I just think some people think, Oh, if I've got 10 grand in my account, can I go ahead and make three to $4,000 a month? And I'm saying no. You know, you might be taking that 10 grand may disappear really quickly. And the type of risk you're gonna be taken if you want to generate that type of thing. Allen: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, we've had people email me like, well, you know, you say you can make 10% But that's too little. I want to make more I wanna make 20%. Can you help me? I'm like, nope. Maybe I can help you do it once. Maybe. Kevin: That's what I think the answer is yes, you can help them generate 30 to 40%. But the question is, is will they be able to keep that in their bank account or their bank account quickly evaporate? Allen: Exactly. Yeah Kevin: I think the the question is, is can you help them make 30 or 40%? Yes. Can you help them keep 30 or 40% in your bank account? Probably not. Allen: No, no. Doing it over and over again, consistency is the thing right? You got to be consistent. So okay, so when you started with us with the Credit Spread Mastery program, what were some of the or what was the one major thing that was your biggest challenge in implementing, and actually getting it done? Kevin: I think implementing and pushing the button. And that continues to be the challenge, as I say, as I look at the scaling, getting comfortable making that first investment, because when you haven't done it, and, and I had a little bit of comfort, because I had successes with some of the other services that we talked about earlier. But again, having the comfort level of being in the confidence to be able to say, to enter into a trade. And that's what I tell people I said, I said, I think that the hardest thing to overcome is that confidence level and that's where you just have that's why it's important that either you start out paper trading so you can start seeing some of the success and then starting small to build up that into that. That was the hardest thing for me. And then also is is changing my philosophy. You know when you when you talk about the rules when we're selling puts it has to be above the all three moving averages I'm looking at I shouldn't be entering something when a stock is at its lowest price, not its highest price. So it took me a little bit of time to wrap my thinking around that. And to understand that we're looking at the momentum because I'm a bargains are when I'm when I have my long positions of stock, I'm looking for stocks to hit bottom, I'm looking for good stocks to greatly reduced in price not to invest in something that's at the top of the game, I call it I call it the American way of investing. Americans seem to like to invest at the top and then sell at the bottom. So I always tease clients that that was the American way of investing, we want to do the opposite, we want to get in at the lowest point and then sell at the highest point. Well, that's it's kind of like a contrarian theory here for me, but.. Allen: Yeah that works. But for different strategy. You know, if I were if I was like, Okay, I want to do naked put, then I do exactly what you said, you know, it's like, hey, when it's going down, it's a good strong company. And that's what we advise in our, in our other program, the passive trading formula, it's like, what we want to do is we want to find good, strong companies that we don't mind owning for, like 100 years. And when we sell puts, that means that you know, the stock has come down a little bit, we can get them cheap, we can get a discount on it, and we get paid for waiting. So for that strategy, yeah, it works great. Credit spreads? I want to know what the stock is going to do. Right? I want it to tell me very clearly that, hey, I'm going up going down going sideways, and then based on that news, then I will go ahead and play with it. If I don't know what it's gonna do, I don't want to take the risk. And sometimes, you know, people, you can get as complicated as you want with it with the technical analysis, Support-Resistance. And if you can add that stuff to it, then that's great. If it helps, but it doesn't always help. So take it for what you know, it's like it's like a grain of sand. Like, sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. And then we add all the other elements to increase the probabilities. And like you said, you know, if it's working out for you. I think you said you're doing 7% a month, which is, which is phenomenal. You know, if you can keep doing that you keep compounding it. Like you said, the count is just growing and growing, you're gonna be at in so you're not but you said you wanted your goal was 10,000 a month? You're not there yet? Kevin: I'm actually, I'm averaging more. So my best month so far. was just a couple months ago, I did 14 on that month, and I don't know how November's I mean, November has been really awesome so far. But I'm not making any predictions, I might be able to top 20 maybe this month, possibly. But the last time I thought I was going to do that for October, I just like in the middle of the month, I was invested so heavily on the and that was another thing that I point to bring up later on, as you get into this is is trying really trying to diversify. And that's not always easy, because you're looking at trading opportunities. And sometimes at different points in the market. Like for instance, a lot of the when I experienced the downturn for for my October contracts is because I had about 60 65% of my positions were in technology companies that all of a sudden, they decided that they were concerned about the 10 year yield on the treasury bonds, and everybody wanted to start exiting tech companies, well, all my positions really started getting into trouble, because there's a mass exodus. So that diversification, I think is also important and to try to get to that, and that's what I'm still trying to also work on is having, like, I've always preached about not having all your eggs in one basket. And so my, my long stock portfolios are pretty well balanced and diversified. I'm trying to get that way. And it's not always easy to do that. Because you come across an opportunity to say, well, this is really good, you know, the charts looking good. You like the the the prospects for the company. It's a good company that you're trading with. And so you go in and before you know it, you're overloaded on one sector. Allen: Yeah. Remember, this is one of the things that we had, we talked about a few times, you know, when I was going through your spreadsheet, looking at your trades, I'm like, Oh, they're these overloaded, he's overloaded. There's too many of them. And then like, you know, you got the lesson. So hopefully it sticks. Kevin: Like I said, and it's just it's really sometimes it's very difficult to tell And that's why I again, I tried to look for different segments that I can go into. And it's not always easy. But part of the thing I was going to share is that the importance that if your goal is 1000, once you start, you get yourself going, the you shouldn't just stop at trying to get 1000, you should try to get, if you can get into decent trades to earn more money, that should be part of your goal. I mean, it should be part of your natural goal. But I bring that up, because sometimes you are going to have down months. And so at the end, what you want to make sure that you have is if your goal is 1000, that your average is 1000, maybe some months, you're going to end up you should have 1500 or 2000 other months, maybe it's going to be 500. Or maybe you're going to lose 1000. So the whole point I'm trying to make is when you get to the point of what your of your comfort level in implementing the strategies is that you try to overshoot a little bit to compensate when you're going to have down months. And so October, I had a down month, and you know, so but the the idea is at the end of the year is to have that as an average, Allen: Right yep, yep. I mean, that's why, you know, on in our program, every trade we go is we shoot for 10% don't always get it, you know, we're gonna have months or trades where we make less money trades when we lose, but if you average it out, it comes about to be like, you know, five or 6%. And you're doing even better than that. So you're doing better than what averages but yeah, even 5% a month is 60 a year, compounded monthly, not compounded yearly, but compounded monthly, if you want to, that can be extraordinary life changing very, very quickly so.. Kevin: And at the end of the year, you're going to make the decision what your paycheck is going to be next year, I mean, with the program that I've the system that I'm coming up with. And that's that's kind of the cool thing about it. And when you think about it, if you take out your basic expenses and what you need, but are able to build up extra cash, and then the other opportunities that you could use, whether it's getting to financial independence, being able to retire earlier, you know, using that, that's just an extraordinary thing. And so that's part of my goal is again to generate additional cash flow so that you can even build a larger nest egg. And it for a while it took me because I kept on thinking what am I going to as a financial advisor, I have X amount of dollars that I like in cash. But then when you have excess cash, I always say that, you know, you're losing money because of inflation. But when you're using the excess cash to build your strategies into and to do what you're doing here. And if you're making 5% a month or seven, or whatever it is, and it's 84% of the year, where else can you take your extra cash, and make it make 60-80% I mean it just so that's when the light bulb came on, I said, Well, if I generate an extra, I'm going to keep that extra in my trading account that I don't need, and use that in the year going forward. So I can continue to build and have and have more opportunities I can, I can put on more trades and invest. And I said that is the way that you can actually see this really, really take off and propel you to financial independence or financial success of some degree. When you're able to generate and then sitting in cash at any point in time. You you decide that you're going to do something else with it if that money's there. Allen: Yeah. So when you are going through the program, what was like the biggest surprise that you had something that you didn't even expect? Kevin: How easy and simple this would be? You know, like I said, I had an understanding of options going into it. So that complexity of options wasn't there. When I first started, it took me when I started in 98 It took me a little while I bet it was at least a good six to eight months to really wrap my brain around the calls and puts where and how they function, different types of markets. That was probably the larger learning curve. When I first started options. I didn't have that going into this. I understood how they work. So the basic foundation was there, but I didn't realize again how easy and turnkey your system would be and getting you know because let's face it, we all get solicited, you know when the all sorts of different opportunities. Everybody is proposing "Hey, get rich doing this get rich doing that". And you come to almost have a very high degree of skepticism with many of the offers that you get. So there's most of them end up just going into my delete box because you know, you look at in the face and they say hey, make a million bucks. I'm thinking yeah, right. Okay. But yours, you pretty much You said everything on the line that hey, you can lose money. I'm going to help you do it consistently. I'm going to help you do conservatively. And everything you know that you have said this has been true so far. And like I said, with all the businesses I've run in my lifetime, I've never had a business that I felt like that was so simple that would provide me so much flexibility didn't have any headaches to deal with employees that the boss or anything else. And then all I needed is my laptop, laptop and internet or some type of connection into the electronic trading floor and I'm in business and I can do it wherever whenever I want and I set the amount of money that If I want to make it's up to me to take the most degree, obviously, the markets are going to have some say about it. But you know, you, you are truly Your Own Boss in this type of scenario. Mm hmm. Allen: So what do you think the future holds for you now? Kevin: I'm going to do this as long as I can, as long as I have my mental faculties together, and the market doesn't fully blow up. I guess that's one of the things that it keeps me up. It doesn't really keep me up, but it's always in the back of your mind, will I be fully invested or I'll be heavily invested in this market doing these types of strategies, when another March 20th comes in the whole entire market falls out, you know, then that's the one. That's why I try to be very mindful of that. And every day that you wake up you wondering, is this the day when the markets decided that the party's over, and we're going down? You know, there was that point in time that I thought that was happening in a couple months, you know, but not not even a month ago? Uh huh. Then Sir, they just decided I need to take a breath, or is this the day that the markets going to correct 10 or 20%, and I'm going to lose a massive amount of money in my positions. So that's the importance of making sure that you're managing your risks and understanding that the money that you're using, this should not be your savings account for your kids college education, that should not be the mount of your emergency only money, this should be your discretionary money, that you know that the unlikely event that all the markets go hell in a handbasket, you could lose the whole thing you get, you need to be make sure that you're prepared to take that risk. So that always is in the back of my mind to make sure that you're managing your risks appropriately. Because it's not only just about the making money, it's about making sure that you're losing as little as possible. Allen: Yep. So now this program that you are in, it focuses only on credit spreads and layups and how to trade them that way, I probably would not have that to be the only strategy in my toolbox. You know, selling options is great for everything you've outlined. But the like I said over and over again, the biggest time an option seller gets hurt is when the market changes direction. And you can you can mitigate that risk by doing some of the strategies that we talked about, but it's still kind of painful. So like you said, you know, if the market goes down 20% tomorrow, you know, you're going to get hurt to a certain degree. But that's why we also that's why really, I came up with passive trading, the whole system of passive trading and having a foundation in stocks and dividend paying stocks and the other strategies as well. And then you kind of diversify yourself. So yeah, you know, layups are great credit spreads are great, they're a great place to start, especially for, you know, somebody just getting into options, they're a great place, if you have a smaller account, as you grow in size, you know, as you like you, you got 400. As you get to 5-6-7 More than that, it's really important to move away from just one strategy and have your foundation set. And we've talked about that in other podcasts as well. But I think that gives you what I call staying power. And so that, you know, even if the market tanks or something bad happens, all of your trades will not just go down and expire worthless, you know, or expire in the money and hurt you at the same time you do have that something of value that can pop back up, like with Corona, you know, when we had the corona bear market, yes, my trades hurt, you know, my, the spreads trades that I had on, they got hurt. But the overall portfolio did fine because the market tanked. And then it rebounded. And then, because it rebounded right away, and we had money on the side and all that stuff, like you mentioned, you know, we were able to jump back in and make money month after month after month, and whatever was lost was easily easily recovered, because of the proper money management in the foundation that was set. So very good point for you. But you're still You're still saying that you're going to do this full time, I thought you I'm a little bit confused. You said you're still a financial planner, or is that you're done with that?` Kevin: I'm still a Certified Financial Planner, but I don't have an active practice. Allen: I see. Okay, Kevin: I don't I don't have clients, you know. Allen: Yo don't wanna get back into that? Kevin: No, you know, I really enjoy I enjoy what I'm doing now, to be honest with you. It's really now part of this, obviously, this helps achieve the financial goals, but then I've always been driven towards life purpose. So the question then is, is what is it that I will be doing that will will fulfill my purpose and mission in life? And so that's really what I'm exploring now. So this is the key. So.. Allen: Have you figured out what your purpose is? Kevin: No, actually, you know, now I, you know, Allen, I've always had a pretty, I've been really blessed I have, you know, I believe in, in a Divine Being that that controls us and gives us direction in life. I've always had that at this point in time. This is what I'm trying to figure out, what then is purposes for my life. This helps me certainly sustain myself financially. And you know, so the money that I taken in this, this has just been part of the dollars that I'm using to generate short term income of course, as you mentioned, the importance of having longer term investments. That's all this is all aside from a regular investment portfolio that I have in the long term, you know, but the question is what then is the purpose outside of generating money? What is it that you want? What is it that I want to give back to the community? What is it that I want to ultimately achieve? By the time I get to the end of the time in my life, that's always part of the life journey. And so that's what that's what's still always been defined. Allen: Awesome, cool. Well, let me know when you get there, when you figure it out. It's good to have time to just sit around and think about it, you know, it's like, yeah, I don't have to work. I don't have to worry about anything else. It's just, okay, I can sit thinking, what is what is the life? You know, what is purpose of life? I think that's like, a first world problem. You know, I don't think like people in third world countries figure that out. Kevin: No, and that's it. But I believe all of us have a purpose here on this earth, and that's part of the life journey is to figure out what is it that our whole life in, and I don't believe that there's one single purpose, I think that there's different stages in life, I always believe that life is like, it's like a big production, play production, you know, we all play a minor, major roles in each other's drama, comedy, or otherwise called life. And so, you know, the, I just believe that the key to really, to success and happiness is not just what you're able to generate in your bank account, but what you're able to redeposit into the emotional bank accounts of others, and that we were put on this earth to give back to others and to serve others. And so it's just how is it that we do that, I think everybody has a different purpose. Doing that, you know, sometimes people get involved with, that's why I was really interested in non for profit organizations and leading those to, to really help promote a greater cause in with inside my community, or state or country. And so that's, that's what I'm just trying to figure out what it is, you look at some of the most successful people, whether it's Warren Buffett, or whether it's Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos, they all have different foundations, they're all they obviously have created a mass extreme wealth, but they also understand the importance of being able to give back to their community and being able to help solve world problems and and do something greater than just generate money in the pockets of their shareholders. They know that there's much more to life than that. And so that's everybody journeys is to figure out what is it that I'm going to do to make that happen. You don't have to become a a millionaire billionaire? Or now? I guess it's a well.. Allen: Almost there trillionaire Yeah. Kevin: But I think what Elon Musk was says 300 billion now as a first person to reach a net worth of over 300 billion or something like that. Allen: It's all play money, it's all play money, Kevin: He made any that through credit spreads though. Allen: Well Warren Buffet he sells options every month. Kevin: Buffett read a lot of Warren Buffett's books and his philosophy, and he's, you know, he's, there's a lot to learn from him. Allen: Like, you know, like you said, you know, we're blessed. And we're blessed, in many reasons, anybody listening to this podcast is blessed a million times, and the fact that we've found something that works so well, like you said, you know, Option Selling, it works so easy, and so well, and if you wanted to, he could take, you know, a much less time than you put into it because you're you're just having fun with and you're doing all kinds of other stuff and, you know, playing with it and pushing the limits and stuff, but the fact that we have the opportunity to, because of the position that we're in because of the way that the money is being made, we don't have to worry about you know, the 9-5 or the 50-60-70 hours a week, we can actually think about giving back we can actually think about Yeah, let's set some money aside or let's you know, you're talking about working at a foundation, hey, you could probably go in and make your own foundation if you wanted to. And do it that way. And you know, so it's just that gives us so many different opportunities in life and to set up our legacy and to set up you know, the way we want to give back to other people it's just I get over it just blows my mind every time I think about it, I'm like really I get to do this for a living this is like freaking crazy. Kevin: Like I said, the the really the sky's the limit the flexibility of what this allows you to do is extraordinary. Now you just the thing you have to decide is the number one it's not just about having the money to put towards it but it's the commitment and you have to become a student of that this isn't something that happens just overnight especially if you've never had been exposed to to trading options before so it does take some time so you that's why you... Allen: Says the guy who did it like four months Kevin: Oh but I had the background I had part of the mission so if I did not have that foundation, I can guarantee you take me a lot longer like I said before, it took me least six to eight months.. Allen: To understand the concepts Kevin: To have my whole brain wrapped around how options worked and you know difference between puts and calls and how they function in the markets and their purpose and things like that. I mean, I was trying to do the math in the beginning was just and I'm a numbers guy was just It took me a while to wrap my head had around it. But so you have to, if you determined that you make the decision that you're going to be committed, and then stay committed and understand there's going to be ups and downs, you have to become a student of it and really immerse yourself. That's why it's important to understand what is your goal, when you're getting into this, start out with the, with the income aspect of it, where you eventually want to be, create that plan. But most importantly, make sure you're committed, don't just stick one toe in it and say, I might just try it for a little bit, you know, get into it. And really make sure that you spend the time learning it, that you become a student that you're just immersed in this. And then you can make the decision if it's if it's right for you or not. But you can't just do this, you know, for a half hour a day just starting. And when you're just trying to learn and that's all you're going to put into it. Kevin: I've read all your books, your materials, when and inside and out. And I still go back just to refresh my mind you have you become a student of this. You know, I've had a lot of successes, but I don't I'm not, I don't consider myself a master at this, there's so much to learn. In this and in again, experiencing all the different types of markets that you go through and everything else, a lot of this is on the job training. And so it is one of those things that you learn as you go along. As I as I mentioned, I, when you first started mentioning that you need to cash out and spend money and brokerage fees and things to cash out and take your profits, I'm thinking, I think I must be nuts, I'm hanging in here, I want my couple $100 You know, I'm I don't want those people taking my money. And now. And now I celebrate every time that something cashes out because again, I know that that's money in my pocket that the markets not going to take away. And then it opens up the opportunity to make even more money. And so learning things like that and, and also, especially for the guys, I think it's harder to to know that you've got to be able to accept loss, you got to realize that you are going to have losses in this. But the important thing is is that you minimize those losses. And I know sometimes we don't like to make a mistake and say, Hey, listen, this trade just isn't working. I was wrong. When I thought about this direction this was going to go into you make sure that you're you're you're getting out at your prescribed amounts, whether it's 25, or 30%, you don't want to go beyond that if you can help it. Yeah, because those those losses will build. And it takes an awful lot number of trades to be able to make up massive losses, you know, so for me when I first had my first Max losses, $10,000, that's over 10 Actually 11 trades that you have to make up think about 11 trades that had to make up just to get back to breakeven, you count the premium $1,000 premium that you got for the trade. So, you know.. Allen: Yeah that's one of the rules you don't mean ever take up my slots. Kevin: That one that was in one of those companies that we talked about that happened to be which now as part of my rules, I don't invest in foreign ADRs, especially ones from China that are that have lack of regulations and such as one that that I got into it was it went up actually 25% and I'm thinking man, this thing is really kicking this is doing really well. And all of a sudden one day, there was news announced of, of where this there was embezzlement by this huge hedge fund manager and management of all these funds and the thing dropped over 50% And then that's when I got into my wishful thing I said, Well, this drop 50% certainly people can come in and just kept dropping and dropping. Finally, it turned into a max loss. And I had, you know, an issue one of our trades when I got hit on gold, you know, God, I was wrong about what gold was going to do in two days, you know, went from I think we're up to six or 7% were where the trade was down over 50%. And I said now, gold's coming back tomorrow, it's popping tomorrow, sure the hell didn't with a max loss, and that I said, you know, you just can't do this anymore. You cannot do this and be successful as business. You got to be willing to take the losses and just minimize them. Allen: Yep, yep. There's certain rules you got to stick by. And sometimes Yeah, they can come from experience, but it's very expensive experience. Kevin: You know, they are, but that's what the learning process is about. Mm hmm. And Allen: That's what we try to minimize. It's like, yeah, I can tell you it. But sometimes you won't learn it until you actually do it yourself. Kevin: But that's the importance of some and having somebody like you and these personal coaching sessions, because you're able to lease lend your wisdom and your personal experience. And that's what you get through your program. You get somebody that can actually be beside you and give you advice. And it's up to you then to decide whether you're how you're going to heed that advice or not. But at least you have rules to follow. You have a system to follow. And somebody with years of experience that can tell you hey, this is what I went through. And I don't want to see you go through this. So I would recommend that you do this or that the other and then you won't make that ultimate decision but at least they have somebody like you there i think you know is well worth the investment. Allen: Well thank you. So would you, I guess I know your answer. But would you recommend option genius to others? Kevin: Without question if you want to create, again, your own schedule if you if you want to create a real pathway to financial independence, and want to be able to have the flexibility to work, whenever to set your own paycheck, and really have the opportunity to create and fulfill your life and your financial dreams, I think this is a great opportunity to do that. You just have to be willing to make the commitment, have some resources to get committed, and come in with a, as Stephen Covey said with the end in mind, so begin with the end in mind. And that's the way you start to a pathway of success. . Allen: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. I know I've kept you longer than, we were just having so much fun, I lost track of time. But.. Kevin: You have a really long podcast. Allen: It's gonna be a long one. But to sum it up, like well, you know, do you have any any parting advice for our listeners? Kevin: The first thing to do is if you are interested in, then you just need to take the initiative and get started, start with Allen's books, listen to his podcast, and then take those steps along the way. And if it's the credit spread, the direction that you want to go into the credit Mastery program, when that opens up, is certainly well worth the investment of our, you know, I've gotten my investment back nearly over four times from what I paid to get into the program. So it's well, well well worth the money. And again, you can set yourself up for really big financial success, but you've got to take that initial step. And sometimes that initial step is the hardest to take. And you just have to get started and you just have to commit and do it. Allen: Yep. All right. Well, I appreciate your time, Kevin, I appreciate all your expertise and your wisdom. It's been a pleasure to have you. Kevin: It's my pleasure, Allen, great to be here and thank you for the invitation. Allen: No problem. All right, everybody, make sure you trade with the odds in your favor. And Kevin is in our groups online. If you want to reach out to him. That's where you find him. Alright, take care. Kevin: Thanks, you too.   LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Today I have the privilege of sharing with you, Mary Powell. The reason I'm bringing Mary on is because she's having some wonderful success in her trading, and we want to share that and she has a lot of lessons. And also she wants to share. But Mary, you might not know this, you are, you have the privilege of being the first female trader that we're interviewing on the podcast. So I haven't interviewed too many people on the podcast, most of the episodes have just been me. But we have been starting to interview, you know, people that are going through our programs and having success and different different traders, and our listeners seem to like it. So I said, Alright, let's bring some more on. But I did want to get it from a female perspective, because I do know that and studies have shown this that females are better at trading than men. Mary: There is that? And let's hope I'm not the last. Allen: No, no, you won't be. Mary: Start a new trend. Allen: Yeah. Yep. So I'm trying to line up a couple more. So hopefully, we'll have a lot more. Okay. And I am seeing that we are seeing more females in the program. So before, when we started, it was almost 100% All men, now it's become maybe 80-20. I think that with people like you coming on and sharing and saying, Hey, look, you know, women can do this as well, it's, there's nothing, there's no magic or anything to it. I think you'll be a role model for others who are trying it, but they haven't maybe stepped forward or they haven't put their hands up and said, hey, you know, I'm interested or something. So I think definitely, that will help. Because a lot of times, you know, when we're doing some type of like a case study with someone, it might be like, Oh, maybe it's a grandfather that lives or they used to work as a firefighter, you know, and he's talking about his story and this and that, then we'll notice that all of a sudden, we get a big influx of people who are grandfathers who used to be firefighters, or other firefighters. So whoever the case study is we seem to attract people like that. So I'm hoping that we can attract more women into the group. So I think that you're a trailblazer for that. So thank you Mary: Hoping for that as well. We can all support each other.  Allen: Cool. So Mary, how long have you been trading options? Mary: I have been trading options for more than 20 years, I will date myself and tell you that I did participate back in the late 90s when the option Industry Council to still a marvelous group of free education on options. But at that time, they were trying to solicit more business in the options. And they would go to various big metropolitan cities, rent hotel banquet rooms, and give two or three day training sessions for free about options. And so that's how long I've known about options. I would say I was probably a dabbler for a long time trying to master the various concepts about the Greeks and different option strategies. And my career probably took the front seat at that time, and I just didn't dedicate the time needed to really focus on it. Until probably in the last five years, many people in my family or friends have retired. And when I went to the financial planner and start working the numbers, and I didn't like those numbers. Wanna see, you got to work for 10 or 15 more years, I'm very fortunate that I do enjoy my job. But I don't want to have to have that pain over me that I'm a slave to it. So that's when I really got serious and started really honing my attention and my education efforts on options. Allen: So about five years ago, you got serious? Mary: Yeah. Allen: And I want to ask you like back in the day when you first when you when you first start, would you remember how much the commission's were back then? Mary: They were probably in the range of 14 to $16 and each, each side, so you know, $30 a round trip and that was back in the day when the naming nomenclature was alphabetical. They didn't go by month in week. They didn't even have weeklies back then. Yeah. So you had to learn all of that. Yeah, it's been fun to watch the evolution and with electronic trade.  Allen: Yeah I mean it's so so much simpler now and easier. And I remember, like, I didn't get started. I don't know. It's been a while. I think it's like maybe 15-16 coming close to 20 years for me, but when I started Thinkorswim was already there. And, you know, everybody was blown away. They're like, Oh my god. This is so amazing. So I'm like, okay, but this is cool. It's good. I mean, it's good to have these nice features and stuff, but I don't get but they're like, now you don't understand. You don't understand what we've been through. You know, to get a quote, you have to call your broker on the phone. And then he has to go look it up for you. And it takes like, 10 minutes to get a quote. Oh, wow. Okay, yeah, this is all real time. This is cool. This is better. So yeah, people starting now. I mean, the tools available education is available. It's a lot simpler than back in the day. So was it just because of the money aspect that got you involved in Options? Or was there something else? Mary: It was primarily the money aspect. And, you know, I was working a full time job, but I wanted to get into more multiple streams of income in different ways. But my job requires probably 50 plus hours a week. So that did limit me from what I can go out and get a second job. I just totally burnout so and I didn't have the time to focus to open my own business or do something like that. So what could I do that could generate cash flow that didn't require a lot of time? That's where Options fit into the scenario. Allen: Okay. And you you're working from home right now? Mary: Yes. Allen: Okay. What do you do? If you don't mind? Mary: I'm an auditor. Allen: Okay. For like, the for the IRS or something or? Mary: No, for a retail company - food retailer, I audit financial statements. Okay, like Sarbanes Oxley. Allen: So okay, so about 50 hours a week you spend on the job? How much time do you spend trading? Mary: So overall, all of my trading, I probably spend, I'll say, a half an hour a day. Allen: Okay. Mary: When I started with your group, I first started with the blank check program. So in that trading, if I'm not making a trade that day, I probably spend five minutes a check - twice a day, which more out of curiosity than necessity. I could check it once a day. If I'm making a trade, I might spend 10 to 15 minutes analyzing what I'm going to do, and then I make the trade for the month. Okay. Allen: And so what have your results been so far? Mary: So far? So I started trading live, blank check program in February of this year. And in that eight months, I've averaged 7% return per month. Mary: Very nice. And so far, I've made 16,500. I started just with the minimum amount to open an account on TD Ameritrade, 10,000. Okay, and I have added some more money, so I could expand the number of contracts I trade in. Allen: Awesome. So what's your goal? Is it to put it aside for retirement or double your income, supplement the income, so you can try early? Mary: Put it aside for retirement, and then in the hope of retiring early, in the next three to five years? Allen: So basically, you're gonna, you're gonna you're gonna leave the money in and just keep growing that account? Mary: Yes. Allen: Okay. How long do you think it'll take? Mary: So, with the blank check trading in conjunction with my equities trading, which I was just starting before getting introduced to your podcast, and we can talk about that, but I was just starting to kind of glean in on the selling puts strategy and your paths of trading - the wheel strategy, right before I started listening to your podcast. So between the two accounts, I hope to be able to retire in three to five years. Allen: That's awesome. That's awesome. So about five to seven years early. Mary: Yes. Allen: Okay. And do you have any children? Mary: No, I do not. Allen: Okay. All right.  Mary: So that makes it easier. Allen: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You know, she, she, she enjoys learning about the trading. And I've taught her in the past, but eventually, and then she started her own business. And so she's busy with there, and then she's busy with the kids. And she's like, Yeah, I don't want to deal with the trading. You know, she's like, you're doing fine. You do it. I don't want to deal with it. But we do have somebody else on our staff. And she is, unfortunately her husband passed away. I think it's been about a year and a half or two years from cancer. And so she's raising her four boys alone. And, you know, at the company here, I make it a requirement that everybody that works here, they have to know how to trade whether they do it We're not, you know, that's up to them. But they have to know what our customers are going through. They have to know the lingo, they have to know how to articulate. And so she's been, she's been killing it since she started. She said, she's learning and she's like, Oh, my god, you know, I've been working with you for two years. Now, why didn't I do this before? So.. Mary: Oh that's excellent! Allen: Yeah, it's, it's really, it's really cool. And the fact that, you know, you mentioned it only takes a few minutes a day, you can still work, you can still handle other responsibilities. It's not that it's not that time consuming. So that's one of the things I get, we got to get the word out, you know, we got to get the word out. Mary: I know but my heart goes out when I see older, retired individuals in the workforce. And I just say to myself, I hope they're doing it for social reasons and not economic, that they made the choice that they want to be out here working, because this is that easy at that age, and I give them all the credit in the world. Allen: Yeah, I mean, you know, you go to Walmart, and they have the greeters. And you know, they're standing there, and they can't, it's tough to see, it really is. But you said that you had started trading options about five years ago? Or was that Equities and Options or? Mary: That was just the equities? Allen: How are you doing with that? Mary: Very well, very well. That account is much larger. And, again, you know, I have to employ passive trading, because I just don't have the time. But I'm averaging 6% a month on that. So just to your principles may not seem like a lot, and I'm not going to be a millionaire overnight. But the compounding principle, in action, will. Allen: Yeah, no, 6% a month is nothing to.. Mary: No yeah so I'm beating the gentlemen over at a brokerage to remain nameless that other smaller accounts I have. So I'm very happy with the return. Allen: Cool. So how do you balance? Like, how do you decide how much to have in each? Because I mean, you said you're doing better in the oil. So however you decided, which is which you want to focus more time on? Mary: That's kind of a crossroads that I'm at, at this point, because I am doing so well, that I mentioned to you, the financial advisor, when I went last month for my tax checkup said, you have stopped trading for the year, or you're going to throw yourself into the next tax bracket, you do not want that. Focus has become the task, tax aspects of it all. So again, kudos to your podcast, because you address those types of things, all the section 1256 types of trades. And so that's where I'm at right now is evaluating. Okay, do I move more of my money into the oil trading? And I just signed up for the weekly trader, which is good deal more in the index funds - yes. So that would give me a better tax advantage. Allen: Okay. All right. Yeah. I mean, you, you know, I've never I know you can buy SPY. I don't know if you can buy SPX I've never actually tried to, that'd be interesting to know, cuz I know, the SPX. You know, the SPX does give you the tax advantage, the 1256. But I've never actually tried to buy a share of that. I don't know if you can, I know, you could buy call options, or, but I don't know if that'll be interesting to know. Yeah. Mary: Check it out. It's a first world problem. And I'm kind of on the water as well as like, do I keep working? or Now I, you have given me the freedom of time choice and choice do I mean, I could make what I make at my job trading? Do I do that full time? Or do I, you know, stick with the job as I can, then knowing that I do have the freedom of choice that if it gets to be too much, or I don't want to do it anymore, and I walk away from it. Allen: So you can you do that now? Or you could have to wait another three years? Five years? Mary: I could do that now. I think I'm just sticking with it. Because of the health insurance. And those sides thing? Yeah, I could still manage the job and the trading... Allen: Right. Right. So why not? Right. And you said there's, you know, there's a social aspect. So, you know, you've known these people for so long that it's like, kinda like family now. Mary: They are. That's very true. Yes, I have a great team that I work with. Allen: Cool, cool. So how does your husband feel about you trading? Mary: He has no interest in it whatsoever. He just lets me do my thing. I mean, I'm not used to getting his money or the mortgage money. So he just saw that's her little hobby. He's retired. So he spends most of his day either on a motorcycle or a mountain bike or doing the hobbies he enjoys. So.. Allen: Wow very nice. So he's never told you to be like, Hey, can you take care of my money too? Mary: Oh, he wanted me to do that with his 401k. And like no. Not gonna enable you, I'd be happy to teach you what I do. Allen: Well that was fun. Mary: He went out and got a money manager and.. Allen: Ahh that was funny.. you guys can do it together you know, swap stories, discuss different ideas, argue about which ticker symbols to buy. Mary: Yeah, I don't think you can handle the... honestly. Allen: It's not for everybody. No. Now the funny thing is, I do remember when you first called us so you got on the phone with us to learn about the program, and to get in. I actually talked to you, which I haven't I don't really talk to most people, but I don't know what it was. I was listening to you talking and you know, with Cory, you're going back and forth. And I hopped on the call, and you're like, Yeah, I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna think about it. And then I was like, okay, you know, and then later on, you actually came back. And you actually, you actually came back and did it. In hindsight, would you still have waited? Mary: Well, no, it was active waiting. You know, it was the trust, but verify. So what I did after that call was based on what I knew, and kind of figured you were doing with these options I pay a portrayed is for three months. And it was all positive. So I said, Okay, I'm gonna take the leap of faith and go for it. Allen: Cool, good. So that means, yeah, so you've had like, instead of just eight months, you've had like, 11 months of gains? Mary: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that you talked about on one of the podcasts is, you mentioned compared to individuals, one person took the program and went and did really well with it. And the other person just over analyzed and questioned and said, you know, it's too simple. This can't work again, if you had to ask me what was my biggest challenge in implementing it was just grasping the simplicity of it. I was like, Okay. And granted, I, you know, I did come in knowing the fundamentals of Options Trading, but I went through the, there's only six lessons. And so I was like, Well, I must be really tired. Maybe they're on a more on a different page or get it again, tomorrow. Nope, I came back. And I went through the six lessons again. And I went, Okay, let's do it took a deep breath and placed the trade and been good ever since. Allen: That's awesome. That's great to hear. Yeah. You know, I mean, I always tried to keep it as simple as possible. And sometimes like, as options traders, you know, if you come in learning about options, and like you said, you know, you go to the council, and they tell you, Oh, you got to know the Greeks. And you got to know the gammas and the Vegas and, and all this stuff. And people come in and they're like, what about this? What about that? And I'm like, you don't need to worry about it. It's like, Mary: There's so many strategies and strangle... there's iron condor, and people just get overwhelmed. Yo, I don't know where to start or how to do it. And when you look at your system, you're just like, Nope, just follow the straight path that I've already blazed for you. And it'll all be good. Allen: Yep. The biggest problem I have some time is like, you know, like, I knew that you had been doing it, you had been trading for a while. So in my mind, it was like, okay, you know, my hardest part with you is going to be to get you to maybe suspend disbelief a little bit, and to kind of stop doing all the stuff you're already doing. You know, and be like, this is the path just follow these steps. You don't need to do anything else. Just, you know, don't overcomplicate it, because we have people in the program in the group. They come in and they're like, Yeah, you know, you told me to do this but you I'm gonna do this double Condor butterfly thingy. And I'm like all right, let me know how it turns out. Mary: Yeah, it's like bumper bowling just head down the middle keep aiming the head bin?  Allen: Yeah, that's why sometimes.. Mary: ..you're out to do I mean, no, it has I get myself in trouble is if I go against the rules, and they a towel, and then my tracking sheet of what rule did I violate and what lessons did I learn from it? And so I only have myself to blame. It's not the program. Allen: Cool. Cool. So what was besides the simplicity, what was the hardest thing to implement? Or like this could be for your equity trading or for your options trading, to go from, you know, learning and not doing as well, to making that switch to being okay, now I'm becoming consistently profitable. What did it take to make that switch for you? Mary: I think in your mind, you're always trying to hit that home run that you talk about. But if you just get your consistency down with the base hits and small amounts, just keep compounding and keep compounding, you know, all of a sudden, you look at the balance, and you're like, wow, alright, I'm getting some traction, and I'm making progress. And I can do this, I can do this. Allen: Awesome. So what was the biggest challenge in implementing? Mary: Again, I think it's just trying to keep myself from over analyzing it all the time trying to make it more difficult than it is because it's like, well, if it's this easy, and why isn't everyone doing it? Right? So your brain is going, Well, maybe if I add this, or I start looking at this number, analyzing this graph, or this chart, I'll get the edge and it's like, no, just, you know, take a little cream off the top and minimize your stress. And, you know, keep compounding and you'll get there. Allen: So how was it? How did you overcome that in your own mind?  Mary: Just trying to be grateful and satisfied with the results that I have, and not be greedy? Yep. Yeah, keep reminding myself, it's gonna be okay. You know, no matter what happens, now, I have the knowledge and the tools to always be able to financially provide for myself. And that freedom, we can't put a price on it. And I can't thank you enough. I owe you immensely. Allen: No, you're the one that did all the work so...   Mary: But you shared it, and you don't give up on me. Yeah, I'm just a stubborn Irish girl, you let it settle. And I'll come back around. Allen: Yeah, we nobody has accused us of not sending enough emails. Mary: I love your email. Allen: Like one of my mentors years ago, when somebody that I learned from, you know, he kept drilling it into everybody's head, anybody that listened that, you know, get a good education, because that is the one thing that nobody can take away from you, you know, they can take away everything else. They could take away your status, your money or your, you know, physical belongings they can. And he was talking to people from different countries. So he's like, you know, they could expel you out of your country, and kick you out and take everything that you have, but they can never take your education, you will take that with you everywhere you go for the rest of your life. And I think you hit it on the on your head, you know, when you when you mentioned that you're like, now I have a skill that no matter what happens, I'm going to be able to just, you know, go into the market and just extract money. And.. Mary: Yeah, even if all I need is, you know, if I retired and I just need the money to pay the property taxes. I can do that and spend the rest of my time I may be on the beach, but yeah.. Allen: Yep. And you I mean, you compare that to, you know, like the financial planners, you know, they go to school, they get degrees, they follow the news, and this and that, and they do all this research every day, and they're supposed to know everything that's going on in the economy in the market and everything. And hands down. You're beating them. It's like, why are you guys doing that hard, it's tough. If you could do this instead? Mary: So to bring it back here point about being a woman. I mean, we know they are better traders statistically, but just we know in the workforce, you get discriminated against and your pay. And as a petite woman Oh, even more so everybody treats me like a child. You see me at car dealership? Oh, oh, no. Yeah, no. They just only talked to my husband. And he's like, don't talk to me, she's the one buying the car. You know, for you to be honoring to women to give that gift. And it's that freedom of choice that you don't have to be locked into a situation or stay with an individual or with a company if you don't want to only for financial reasons that you can have the freedom to choose the life you want. Allen: Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. I haven't like as a man. I've never even thought about that. You know, I've never had to think about that. Yeah, that you can if you're in a situation that it's not healthy, that a lot of women like you said they feel trapped. They can't leave because they're dependent on one thing or another and they don't have the resources to handle it now especially.. Mary: When you're behind the screen. There's no discrimination. They don't know who you are. You're just out there trading with everybody else. So it's a level playing field. You can make it happen. Allen: Yeah, and you're actually going It's not even level you have the advantage. For, whatever reason, you know, I guess they say that the female mind doesn't take as much risk. It's, you know, it's more about staying calm and collected. And like you said this the small games and watching out for security more than, hey, I want to hit the Grand Slam, maybe that that's what it is but yeah.. Mary: Put your ego aside a little bit and, and in for people that I know a lot of people I'm not good at math. That's not it either, you know, I think if you're like you say if you're wise, big enough, you can learn this. And it's a B, if you're in a store, and they raise the prices on everything by 50%, you're gonna get out of the store, right? If you're in the store, and they lower the price by 50%, you're gonna buy everything. So it's same kind of concept.  Allen: Yep. So all you need is a calculator. Or if not, then you could just use a spreadsheet and this spreadsheet. Cool, awesome. So what do you think the future holds for you? No Mary: Choice. And that's a good feeling that I'm not locked in. If the job gets to be too much, I can walk away and trade full time, and I'll be alright. And if the job holds out, and I retire in three to five years, then I can enjoy more time in retirement doing things I want to do and giving back. Because that's what it's about. It's a human. Allen: Mm  hmm. That's amazing. Yeah, that's great. Because I know, you know, I don't know how or when this COVID thing is gonna completely go away, or if it's ever gonna go away, but there's been a lot of people who had to quit their jobs. And they couldn't, they didn't go back to work for one reason or another. And taking early retirement. And now, it's become a lot tougher, you know, people with pre existing conditions, and then you get older and then you have to go in and it's like, yeah, I don't want to expose myself, I don't want to expose my my loved ones. And if you have something like this, where you can sit at home in a few minutes and use your intelligence and use your common sense and push some buttons, and the money, you know, it's it's, it takes a while, you know, it's not overnight, that you start making money. But I think in the long run, it's better off. And based on that, I wanted to ask you, how long did it take you to get your you know, your mind around the whole concept and start making money? Mary: In the blank check? Well, both both. I think so because I kind of started out as a dabbler and learning like everybody else and tried the strategies of buying options first. And you know, that's so hit or miss and get frustrated. And this and that. And so when I finally started going on the other side and selling options and having success, and it's like, Okay, God encouraged and, okay, now I see how this is working. Okay, let me look at every strategy and the pros and cons. And so, you know, with selling options, okay, what's the worst that can happen? I have to buy the stock. So I stick to, you know, high dividend stocks that I don't wouldn't mind owning otherwise. So that limits the risk on that. So I would say it probably took me two years..  Allen: Okay Mary: And then it  was consistent in my return.  Allen: Okay,so two years of learning, making mistakes, coming2 back having some winners and some losers. And then how about with the oil program? Mary: That was successful right off the bat. The only, you know, last month was my only negative month that I had. And again, that was my own fault. I didn't follow the rules. But but, you know, I could say I had, you know, I had the laws and still far ahead. So it's not one of these, you know, your program is not one thing. Oh, I'm gonna guarantee you, you know, million percent return. Allen: Yeah, and I mean, losses are part of the game. So, you know, you gotta learn to handle them..One time or another, it's gonna happen. So you might as well be ready for it. But, but the The important part is to know how to manage it, you know, and so yeah, I oil has been, has been interesting this year. You know, last year was interesting this year has been interesting, and who knows what the future holds. But I think one of the things that you mentioned you alluded to earlier is that when you're doing it and if you have like a community of other people that are doing it with you that you can bounce ideas off, it gets it gets so much easier, and it's not lonely. You know, one of the things that we see that people are like, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna try to learn it on my own", you really are kind of on your own. And there's nobody there helping you and supporting you along the way. So it takes, it takes much, much longer than it should, and, or that he needs to. Allen: Yeah, and I mean, losses are part of the game. So, you know. Mary: Exactly Allen: You got to learn to handle them it around it. Yeah, one one time or another, it's gonna happen. So you might be ready for it. But the The important part is to know how to manage it, you know? And so yeah, I oil has been, has been interesting this year, you know, last year was interesting this year has been interesting, and who knows what the future holds. But I think one of the things that you mentioned you're alluded to earlier is that when you're doing it, and if you have, like a community of other people that are doing it with you that you can bounce ideas off, it gets, it gets so much easier, and it's not lonely. You know, one of the things that we see that people are like, oh, yeah, I'm going to try to learn it on my own, you really are kind of on your own. And there's nobody there helping you and supporting you along the way. So it takes it takes much, much longer than it should and, or that it needs to. Mary: And when you get older, you know, time is money. And it's worth the cost of the program to gain that knowledge and have it all laid out for you. versus spending so much time trying to dabble on your own and figure it out. And with your program I mean, the Facebook group is all very supportive and sharing their ideas. And as well as the weekly calls. It's a great community. They're very welcoming and open to everyone's ideas and learning new things.  Allen: Yep. Hopefully, you know, we won't have any of that discrimination in there. I don't think we have.. Mary: No, I'm not sensitive at all. I mean, I know for when I first started calling in, I was the only woman on but nobody ever made any comments or said anything. They were very welcoming.  Allen: Yeah, and the culture is pretty clearly. It's not like an all boys club, you know, they're very clean. No dirty jokes really like that. But um, so what would be some of the takeaways that if you know, somebody came up to you and said, Hey, I'm thinking about learning to train and joining Options? What are some of the tips that you would give them? Mary: Well, going back to how I even came upon your podcast. So during COVID, I've only been familiar with your program for about a year and a half. So with COVID, I was doing more walking, so started to listening to podcasts while I walk. So I searched for options, and yours came up. And when I saw how much how many episodes there were in content, I thought, Oh, this will take me three years worth of get through..so this would be great. And I got through all those podcasts in about two or three months. That's how good they were. And every one it was like, yes, that's exactly what happened. Oh, he's given such great advice, and it is down to earth. This is the real world advice. You're not sugarcoating it, you're not making promises that you can't keep. And if I had to tell people what I learned from my 20 years of trading, it would be just what you're telling people on their podcast, you know, from the ups and the downs to how to diversify. How to protect yourself from various risks. So I can't speak to the podcast strong enough.. Allen: Thank you.. Mary: That they cover the gamut of what you're going to deal with and when you become a trader. Allen: Okay, so Okay. Okay, so listen to the podcast, but what else? What else, give you some, some behind, you know, some, some, like stuff that you learned in the trenches kind of stuff? Mary: Stuff that I learned, I'll tell you that one of the best things I learned was making mistakes, how much I learned from it. Okay, so when I was first starting to sell options, and I realized that I kinda oversold and the position went against me. And so I was going to have divided the stock. Well, it was very expensive stack and I was like, oh, no, how's this gonna work out? What's gonna happen on Monday morning, so sweating it all weekend, figuring out how I could take a home back to cover my.. this and that and then just through going through it, then I realized, well, Monday morning, it opened up higher so they came out ahead, you know, they signed it to me, and then I resold it. So it was like, oh, okay, that's how that works. No problem. I know. No, I can handle it. That was my story. Allen: Yeah, yeah. Nobody showed up to my house. You know, want to break my kneecaps or anything? Yeah, a lot of a lot of on that point, there's a lot of things that we are afraid of that "oh, this is going to happen and that's going to happen" and we're not we haven't gone through it yet. And we just have these fears and when we actually go through it, it's like, oh, that's not what I was expecting at all. Mary: Yeah that's not so bad, I can handle that. So exactly, put a lot of that fear to rest in my head. Allen: Okay, so what are the worst things about trading for you? Mary: The worst thing? That there's so many things to choose from, from so many equities you can choose to dabble in and so many different strategies, just trying to find what your niche is. And you know, what works for you and what you're comfortable with. Well, I think finally, after all this time, I've been trading, I kind of have a cadence know, the stocks I like, which ones you get a feel for them, and you get a sense of how they move. And so that was kind of a switch for me, I guess, in the equities tend to trade a lot of high volatility stocks. Went to oil, in my mind, commodities, because I didn't have any frame of reference, except the old movie from the 80s. You know, one minute, you're up half a million and soybeans, the next they breach, your kids aren't going to college presents your... So I was worried that it would be even higher volatility than what I was used to. But it turned out to be the opposite. It wasn't as volatile. So I would make correcting move (inaudible) was gonna be a lot more volatile. And it was, so I've had to adapt in a good way. Allen: Okay. Yeah, most people told me the opposite. They're like, Yeah, this is, it moves a lot more than I'm expecting,  because of the leverage that's involved. Okay. So what was it that that attracted you to oil in the first place? Mary: It was the diversity from the equities, being able, again, like your multiple streams of income, I can do the same thing, but in different avenues. So that if something happens on the stock side, so I have the oil, and it was the tech draw of it. Okay, the benefits on the tech side? Okay. Allen: All right. Do you, now looking forward? Is there anything else that you're going to be trying? Or are you happy with what you got going on right now? Cuz I mean, you know, 6%, on one side, 7% average on the other side per month? That's really good. You know, you could easily turn that into a few million dollars the next few years, just compounding every month, over and over again. Do you think you need something else itching or are you just content? Mary: I just because, I get itchy and you know, there's a bird chirping in my ear about the whole crypto, you know, so, you know, I was looking into different started watching some videos or informational stuff on trading crypto in a Roth IRA. Allen: Really, inside a Roth? Mary: Yeah. So that if it goes big and you get the home run, then, you know, you don't have to get hit so hard with the tax.  Allen: Right, right. Mary: You know and being closer to retirement. Okay. For me, it's a different if you were 20 years or something. Allen: So would you have to have a like a self directed IRA this year, that special broker? Okay, all right. Okay. Mary: So but.. you know.. Allen: Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I have some, you know, I've been buying a little bit for the past several years now, just holding it and be like, Yeah, I'm not gonna trade it because I don't know where it's going up. And when it's going down, just been just invited a little bit here and there and just sticking in leaving it in the wallet and it's just, you know, just going up and up and up. It's crazy time do we live in? You know, like you said, 20 years ago, 14, 18, $20 a commission, you had to call your broker up to place a trade. Now, it's like, you know, press a few buttons 15-20 minutes a day, like you said, I don't know, man, we're living in great times. Mary: There's so many choices. You know, I do listen to some podcasts from CME Group is different ones. And just that team, they're expanding their offerings, you know, getting more into micros and the minis on all the indexes, because that's what people want. And they're starting to get into smaller units on the crypto currency and they don't have options on those futures yet, but you can tell there's enough audience questions about it that there's interest and I'm sure it'll come to be. Allen: Yeah. I think part of it is just they just want to make more money, you know. Mary: Their commissions are getting smaller and smaller. So they have to find ways to diversify as well. Allen: Yeah, the more stuff they have that people can trade, the more fees they can charge on their features. but cool. Okay, well, I appreciate your time. Is there anything else that you want to share with our audience? Mary: No, I appreciate the invitation. And just I would say, if you're new to options, don't get overwhelmed. Because I'm still learning, I pick up books. And, you know, I just, it's a hobbies, interest. And I like reading different books about it. But if you just learn one new thing a day, in no time you'll have it so don't get overwhelmed. And anyone's thinking about going into these programs with Allen's team and just have faith in the process and the program. He and his team are there to support you. It's not some fly by night, answering service, you can get a hold of Allen, you can get a hold of his team. So you know, that kind of put substantiation behind it. So have a faith in Allen's programs and have faith in yourself. Because you can do it, just get past fear and go for it. Allen: Well said, well said, Awesome. And thank you for this so well, the kind words, I really appreciate it. Nothing makes me happier when we have a success story or somebody saying, hey, you know what, I tried that. I just listened to you. And I did it. And it really worked. And I'm like YAY because like my wife. She knows trading, you know, she's she was interested in the beginning. And so I taught her some stuff, but I can't really go home and talk to her about it all day, cuz she'll like, she'll be like, stop. I don't really care. It's fun. It's fun when other people come back, and they like, Yeah, wow, it really worked. And I'm like, All right, Yay, we're actually making a difference in the world. So I appreciate that. Mary: You told me so. And you were right. Allen: Cool, cool. So for our listeners, I just wanted to sum up what Mary shared with us. So she's been doing oil options for about eight months now making consistent returns, she's also trading in a different account stocks, and you're doing some high volatility trades, right? And then you're also doing some low volatility stuff where you're doing like passive style with covered calls naked puts, and.. Mary: I'm mostly doing naked, puts on everything. Allen: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, those have been working amazingly well, I've been doing those as well just gotta make sure that you're protected when the market turns around. Cool. And then it was interesting that you said that, you know, your, your financial adviser told you, hey, you need to stop making money. Because otherwise, can you stop trading please because you're gonna go into higher tax.. Mary: Oh, my goodness. Allen: Like, okay, you know, give me some ideas, you know, how to, like, you know? Like, don't tell me to stop making money. You don't tell me, okay, give us give us a charity or something else? Or give you some ideas? Don't tell me to stop making it. Come on.  Mary: Exactly. Allen: That was interesting. And then I love the fact that she said that, you know, if you wanted to, you could stop working right now. And you could just live off your trading income. And that gives you complete freedom. And that gives you, you know, the choice of, hey, do I want to keep doing this? Do I want to stay at work, or if things deteriorate, you know, who knows what's gonna happen with the future, what's going on? If anything goes different topsy turvy, you have the choice of staying, or leaving or moving, you know, you could go to another country and, and who knows what, anything's possible. So I love that fact that you've been able to get to that point. And, you know, kudos to you, you did the work, you put in the time you learned, you tried it, you practiced it, and then you just followed, you know, you didn't mess with it very much. You followded the rules, and it's working, and you're like, Okay, you know, I can do this. It's good. And it's been wonderful to have a female perspective. I mean, you enlighten me about, you know, having that freedom of not having to be in that bad situation. If you are in one, you know, Mary: Yeah. Or, like, you know, the person on your team who not by choice, but is in a position of having to raise children with, you know, no partner and having to build a come up with that income to do that. Yeah, that's scary to be in that position. Yeah, I mean, for you're gonna do. Allen: Four boys is not cheap, you know. So it's like, she could either be working 50-60 hours and try to pay for everything, because she's got, you know, all four of them are gonna be heading to college soon. So that's not going to be cheap, either. And you can either do that, or, you know, she's working less than 40 hours now, and she's supplementing that with the money that she makes from her trading. So it's amazing. The blessings We get from this stuff. But yeah, you know, kudos to you. Definitely you looked into it, you learned about it and you said hmm. Okay, let me try. Yeah. And that took you down. It took you down a road that you never knew what the outcome would be. But the outcome has been amazing so far. So I'm really proud of you did a great job. Mary: I would not have explored that on my own. You know, if it wasn't for your program, I would have never looked into the oil. Allen: Yeah. Well, we're here for you. We're here for you know, all the other students that we have. We do our best. And again, I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Those of you are listening. If you want to reach out to Mary. She is in our Facebook group. Thank you so much, Mary, and we'll talk to you soon. Mary: You're welcome. Thank you for the invitation. Been a pleasure. Thank you LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Welcome Passive Traders to another special edition of the Option Genius Podcast. Today I have something a little bit different for you. I was interviewed on another show called "2 Bulls in A China Shop" by a company called Financial Ineptitude. That's actually their name,Financial Ineptitud. Basically, it's two guys. You know, there are really cool guys named Kyle and Dan, and they've been talking about trading for a little bit. They've been trying to learn how to trade and so they made this podcast to basically help them get their thoughts out, and to record all of their lessons. Their website is really cool. Their podcast is two bulls in a china shop and I'm going to include the interview that they had here as an episode because I thought it was really good. It was a lot of fun. And hopefully you guys will get something out of it and learn from it as well. So again, that's "2 Bulls in A China Shop" by Kyle and Dan. Enjoy the episode. We're so glad you've joined us today, folks, today is a very special day, we've got a fantastic guest with us. We're gonna be joined here by Allen Sama, Head Trader and owner of Option Genius. He is an Amazon bestseller author of the book Passive Trading: How to Generate Consistent Monthly Income from the Stock Market in Just Minutes a Day. And we're going to let you know more about that. But first, Allen, how are you doing today? Allen: I'm doing very well. Thank you very much. Kyle: Thanks for coming on. I know we had to work a little bit to get this. This recordin going. Allen: Yeah, better make it good. Allen: I'll do my best. Kyle: The more you work for it the sweeter to be right? Yeah, Dan: Yeah. No pain, no gain, Allen: The more you value it, right. Dan: Oh, right. So so tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming the Option Genius.  Allen: So I was born as a trust fund baby and I started with $20 million. Kyle: End of story. Allen: Exactly, then I made a course. And then I made a course and I started selling it. Dan: Make more money selling. Allen: Yeah. So I have a similar story to you guys. You know, I got laid off from basically the only job I ever had. And it was really about, hey, do I go back to finding another job than job market? Or do I try my hand at trading, which I had been starting to learn while I was working because I was working remotely. So it was a great job learned a lot. But it just came to an end. The business went under in the financial crisis. And so, you know, we were actually teaching mortgage brokers how to be mortgage brokers, mortgage brokers, they owe it away. So it's like they didn't need me anymore. And so I said, Alright, cool. Let me you know, try my hand at trading. And I took some of my wife's money, and I lost most of it roughly, for like 40- 43,000. Plus, very quickly. Dan: Oh you're kidding. Allen: And, you know, like you guys said, you know, you learn very quickly, what doesn't work and most of it doesn't work. Yeah, at least for me. Dan: I get to strangled to work one day. Allen: Yeah. And so really, the, the best thing for me was that, you know, she had, she had faith in me, and she, she's like, you know, you need to make this work. And so I went back, and that kind of really put a fire under my ass. And then I looked at all my records, because I keep paper records of all my trades, write down everything. And so I found that, you know, I was doing day trading, and I was doing this and I was doing that buying and selling and value and I was trying everything, you know, there was one time where I was long, the inverse ETFs you know, SDS and SSO. So SSO is the two 2X S&P Going up, and SDS is 2X going down. So I was long on both of them. I was like, I can't lose. Right? Yeah, it's like the only trade that I can't lose on but guess what I did, I ended up losing money on that trade. Dan: You're telling my story, Allen. You're telling my story. Kyle: This all sounds so familiar. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel that it sounds like you.. Allen: Because the only thing that worked for me was selling options. And I had done at least one trade where, you know, I put it on, didn't really know what I was doing. But I followed it. And I put it on and I forgot about it. And then it it was in my paper records, but it wasn't in my account. And I'm like, where to go. My broker scamming me, you know, that should be here, you know, I put the trade on, where's my trick, and I kept researching, and then I realized that that trade had expired, worthless, and it just had gone away. So it doesn't show up on the screen anymore. And there's no exit record. And so I was like, Well, this is cool. You know, this is something that I didn't pay any attention to. And I made, you know, a good decent amount on it. And I didn't like it was easy. So I'm like, What is this thing? So I learned more and I dug deep into it. And we went into covered calls and naked puts and spreads and iron condors and, and all these different ones. And eventually I found that, um, you know, these type of trades are a lot more forgiving. So if you're not the most savvy, technical analysis like me, and if you're always buying at the wrong time and selling at the wrong time, getting all emotional like me, then this really was something that was much easier to do and, you know, you probably hear it If you talk about it, but it's like you put the odds in your favor. So it's a little bit, I think it's more conservative. But it's a lot more passive in the sense where I don't have to be in front of the screen all the time, I'll put a trade on, and then just check it and make sure it's okay. And that Theta decay just works in my favor. So the time decay, meaning the options go down in value, you know, every day as they should. And then eventually they expire. And when they expire, then the trade is over. Kyle: So what kind of time frame are usually looking at when you're selling your contracts? Allen: Well, I'm in different strategies now. But usually, I'm going around 45 days to about 25 days. Kyle: You basically just rolling monthly, the monthly. Allen: Yep. So I'll stay in two months. And then if I get out, then I'll be like, okay, good down. Let me look at next month, sometimes I get out early, and I'll take, you know, take a week or two off, I'm not doing anything. And then, but most of the time, yeah, it's you know, you're getting out of one and then you're getting into the next one. Kyle: Are you just doing these cover calls? Are you doing spreads? Or what are you doing to cap your, your, your losses, because we selling options? Contracts can be really dangerous.. Allen: Mm hmm. So we do a little bit of all of them. You know, I've been doing it now for 15 years. So I started with the iron condor, because that that, Oh, my God, this is awesome. You know, you can make money on both sides, and the stock doesn't move too much. And it's a trade that can't lose. Obviously, I found out that yeah, you can lose. But I mean, it's probably the most complicated trade you can start with. And that's the one I did and then I got, you know, I got good at it. And then I did look at covered calls, we did that for a while still do them now in my. So let me break it down, in my retirement accounts, I do covered calls, naked puts, and some spreads. And the spreads are really there to just goose the returns. Because in those I'm looking for about 10% a month, the covered calls naked puts, I'm looking for one to 3% in the retirement accounts. And then in my trading account, I do spreads iron condors. And then I also do a little bit of futures options. So those are a bit more, they got a lot more oomph to them, because there's more leverage involved. And so they're faster. They're very, they're much faster trade. So I'm in and out, usually around two weeks, about 14 trading days. Kyle: Before we get too deep into here, maybe we should kind of talk, can you explain, let's start with an iron condor. And maybe just real quick recap of what a spread is. Allen: Sure. So a spread and the way I trade them is I want to be selling the spread. And so it is something that where you take an option that is far out of the money, you sell that one, and then you buy another one a little bit further out of the money to hedge yourself. So it's a risk defined trade, meaning you know, exactly "Okay, I'm gonna put in, you know, $500 into this trade, or 1000, or 5000", or whatever you put, that's the most you can lose. And then you get a credit for doing it, meaning you get paid when you put the trade on. That credit is the most you can make. So now on the spreads that I do. So for example, let's say we have a stock that just going up and up and up and up. Right now, I like to play the trend, I like to play momentum. And so if it's going up and up and up, I'm going to sell calls. So I'll sell a call spread, I'll get paid for that. As long as the stock doesn't go below my calls, my trade makes money. And on those types of trades, I'm looking for about 10%, like I said, on a monthly basis. My iron condor would be doing that trade with puts and calls on the same stock at the same time. So you want, in that situation, you kind of want something that's going sideways, you want a stock or an index or something that's, you know, it's not moving too much. It's kind of lazy moving sideways, and so you sell some puts below it, and some calls above it. And so that way, you get paid for both you get paid for the calls, and you get paid for the puts. But you don't have to, you're not risking both sides, because you can only lose on one side. You know, so you have the same amount of risk as if you just did a one sided spread, but you get double the credit so you make twice as much money. Kyle: Right. Oh, I was found that the more complicated things get the worse I do at them. We'll have some links in the episode description explaining those a little bit better to anybody.  Dan: Yeah, I'll need to follow those. Yeah. Kyle: So you're looking to generate about 10%. 10% A month or return on your investment then? Allen: Yep, that's it. Yep, that's it go. I mean, you don't always get there, right? You're going to have months where you make less, there's going to be months when you lose money. So if I aim for 10, you know, I can think hey, you know, if I get five for the month, I'm happy. You know, that's 60% a year. That's that's pretty good. Yeah. So I cannot complain. There have been there have been years when I've done over 100% And then there'll be two years when I've lost money. So, but overall for the past 15 years. It's been working really, really well for me, so you know. Kyle: Yeah, it sounds like you're Your path kind of took the same path that mine actually took, like, that was what led me to quit my job is thinking like, I could sell contracts because you know, 80% of them or whatever, expire worthless, rather be on the side that has the math with it. And I'll just, I'll just basically trade the wheel and sell puts, you know, until I get the stock and then calls against it until they get taken away. Success has been mixed so far, but still not working. So. Oh, really? Well, we could talk about that. Well, it sounds like I need to read your book is what it really sounds like. Allen: Yeah, I mean, you know, right now, we're in a bull market. And so the puts that we've been doing the selling the puts, I mean, it's been, it's been working phenomenally, um, covered calls are doing well, as well, because we go pretty far out of the money. So like, you know, it's not always 80%, sometimes I'll go 85, 90 95%, depending on what I want to do. So in my retirement accounts, I don't want to lose my stock. And so I'll sell pretty far out of the money. So I'm not making as much on those. But I don't want to lose my stock. And I'm just looking for a little bit, you know, I'm looking for, you know, 1%, one and a half percent, maybe a month, and I'm happy with that. And so the naked eye, you know, it's also stock selection. And I think that's one of the issues that a lot of people get mistaken. People say that, "Oh, when you're selling options, you should be looking at the ones that are the most volatile names, because they have the most premium, and you get paid the most". To me, I think that's like a suicide mission. And, and I just want to be the, I just want to save ones that are boring, that are you know, everybody ignores them. You know, I like the small, the large, very large companies, they pay dividends, they don't move very much. Those are the ones I just want to cash flow, you know, I just want to be selling naked puts on them, they're not gonna drop 10%. If they do, it's like, it's like the, oh, my God, this thing dropped 10%. You know, that's good news. So I want to sell those, and I want to keep them and collect the dividends and then just get my cost basis down as far as I can get. Dan: Do you have a favorite company then that you find yourself going back to more than others? Allen: I like stuff like McDonald's, Walmart, Starbucks, you know, big names. Everybody's known them there around the world, they have dividends so you know, that they're if they're paying the dividend, they're still profitable. They're making money. You know, Apple is kind of joining that list, although Apple is still a little bit more volatile than the others. But yeah, stuff like that, you know, basic big name, dao components, most of them, one of them that I really liked, that hasn't has been doing really well over the past few years is Intuitive Surgical. It's is ISRG so it doesn't pay dividends. And it's not good. It doesn't have a lot of option volume, but for credit for covered calls, and naked puts it's good enough. And that stock has been doing really, really well for me for the last few years. So that's a particular name. Kyle: So yeah, some of these are pretty expensive, though. I mean, yeah, you gotta be real careful, you don't get stuck with a couple 100 shares, if you don't have the account to cover that. Allen: Yeah. So in that case, you know, what we can also do is you can always roll them. So if I get into a position where I'm sold a naked put and it goes into the money like I've done this with right now, my kid loves Roblox. I don't know if you have kids, but my kids are always on that game. And I was when it came out. I was like, Oh, this is cool, you know. So I sold some naked puts on it. And now they're in the money, and they've been in the money for like three months. So what I do is I just roll them to the next month. So about maybe a week or so before expiration, I will buy back the put the naked put and then sell it again for the next month, collect a little bit more premium, and then the trade just continues. Kyle: Hmm, that's interesting. Yeah. Wow, I didn't even think about doing that. That's awesome. Okay, so roll it over. I'm making notes for myself.  Allen: Now, these are on stocks that you actually think are eventually going to go back up, you know, if it's still going down, down, down, then you're like, No, you need to bail out and be like, yeah. But if it's a decent company with decent, you know, fundamentals, and you know, they're making money and all that stuff, then yeah, Kyle: I've always gravitated towards the cheaper stocks when trying to sell contracts, just because at least if I'm selling, and they could put on something that's only valued at like, $15, then I know I can't lose more than $15 a share. Allen: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, like, my thinking is that I want to be in a company that I know is not going to zero, so I don't have to worry about it. Kyle: I mean, Ford for a while is trading around 15. It's at 18. Now, but yeah, I know for some solid companies that are in that range, right? There's a lot of other ones that aren't though. Allen: Like if it was a $200 stock, and now it's at 15 There's another issue going on there. Dan: Hertz is coming back. Good PR story. Damn it. Kyle: I'm gonna go back to losing $40,000 of your wife's money. So what were you doing that got you like we tried to day trade options were you.. Allen: I was doing a little bit everything I was day trading stocks, I was buying options. I was buying and selling like I was doing some value investing for a little bit. I'll be watching Kramer every night and looking at what's Kramer telling me to do. Okay, I'm gonna do this and that I would watch fast money every day and look for any anything that sold this is going up okay, hey, copper is going up. Let me buy some you know, SPX. Let me buy some of this. So trying to play the trend is trying to play all that stuff. I looked at futures, you know, trading futures a little bit, but that's,  that takes a lot of money. Kyle: There's no it actually takes less than you think. Really? $4,000 you can fund and account. Allen: Yeah, but then I mean, like you got Japanese. Japanese yen that takes that's a lot of money for a contracts. Dan: Okay, Yen is in micros now. Allen: Yeah, at that time, they didn't. They didn't I don't think they had those. Kyle: Probably. Yeah, I think minis were kind of new thing. Yeah. Allen: But yes, I was trying a little bit everything, whatever I could, whatever book I could find whatever video I could find. Just trying a little bit everything in nothing, nothing really worked for me. Kyle: So what was it that actually got you out of that? That, I guess Funk You can call it. Allen: So until for several months, my wife did not know that I was losing all the money. You know, she'd come home. And she actually, I mean bless her heart, she took a second job. So she's working two jobs while I'm at home trading. And, and we didn't have any kids at the time. So that was good. But you know, she she'd come home tired, and she wouldn't really want to talk about it. Because sometimes I'd be happy sometimes I'd be sad. She really couldn't tell what was going on. And then one day, she checked the mail and the account statement had come in the mail. And she's like, where's all the money?    Dan: Oh, no.    Allen: And I was like, Yeah, we need to talk about that. And then I feel, you know, I could tell that, you know, the marriage was on the ropes because we were newly married, and she had saved up for years working to save up this money. And so it was really a matter of, you know, I promise you that I will give me three months. That's what it boiled down to. So give me three months, I promise you, I will at least get back to breakeven or like, you know, not lose money every month, and then I'll start making it back. And if I don't, I'll get a job. So that was it. That was my ultimatum, I had three months to turn it around, or go back to, you know, the 9 to 5 grind.   Kyle: So I gotta ask you, one of the things that took us a while to learn was basically the number one job of being a trader is risk management. So what point during that journey did that finally kick it in your head? Risk is the most important thing. So you don't end up blowing up an account like that. Allen: It didn't really hit me for a long time, even after I started getting a little bit consistent. Really? Yeah. Kyle: That's interesting. Allen: You know, I kept going gung ho blazes forward until maybe like a year, year and a half. of really, you know, trading full time. The one thing the benefits of the selling options is that they're not that many losses, you know, you don't lose on too many trades, because it's set up to to help you win. And so that kind of helped me, but I would, I would have these huge losses, like if I'm making 10% on a trade, the idea was not to lose more than 25 to 30%. But I would be losing, you know, 40% 50% 60%. And I just couldn't get out of that hole. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you the secret. What turned it around. It was my wife, yeah. So she's like, cuz I was talking to her at this point. I'm like, Hey, this is working. This is not working. I'm doing this. I'm doing that. She goes, You know, it seems like you have everything you need. You're just not sticking to your own trading plan. Right? Yeah. Cuz I get emotional. You know, I think he's gonna turn around. I think he's gonna do this. But then, you know, CNBC said this, and then fox said this, and so she's like, oh, let's do this. She goes, I'm gonna come and check on you every day at a certain time and we're gonna go through each trade. And I'm gonna ask you questions, and then you have to answer. I'm like, Okay, let's do it. So she would come up, you know, she'd come upstairs to the office. And she'd be like, Alright, show me your trade. Alright, what's the goal? How much are you trying to make? Alright, where's it now? What's the trading plan? What happens if it goes down? You know, when are you going to adjust it? Or when are you going to get out? And then if I haven't gotten out yet, or if I haven't adjusted, then I have to answer why. Why? Yeah. And if I don't have a good answer, get out now. Allen: That's, that's really awesome, actually. So you just delegated your risk manager hat to your wife. Allen: Pretty much. And then, you know, there were times where I didn't want to have her breathing down my neck anymore. And so that's when I got better at it myself. And then, you know, after a while, she was like, Hey, I think you got it. You don't need me anymore.   Kyle: I know you say that you think that you're blessed to be to be able to do a dream job of earning money in the stock market and working in your PJs, but I think you I think you hit the lottery twice. It sounds like you really married a great woman. Allen: Oh, yes, I did. I did. And she hates me. He's telling this story about how I lost her money, she hates. She's like, you sound like such an idiot like a dumbass.  Allen: Yep. I think we all go through it. We all do it. Dan: Nobody just started out and just like, oh, every trade I've made. It's been great. What's your problem? Kyle: No, most people will blow up an account too. And that's why the things that we've been learning is, Dan and I are both trying to learn futures. So we're going through some courses with the trade pro Academy. I think we're I think Dan just flipped the live today, in week four now. But one of the main things with that is like, Okay, we fund the minimum amount we need in that account in case something goes wrong. You know, the most we can lose is whatever's in that account. Yeah, we're not going to fund it with you know, the life savings and then give ourselves you know a hundred thousand dollars  a full wrap with,   Allen: Yeah but the cool thing is, you know, you guys have each other to bounce ideas off to talk to, you know, a lot of people try to do it on their own. And they're just like, I did you know, I was lonely. I was doing, I couldn't figure out what was wrong. It didn't have anybody to talk to. Because I mean, you tried to talk to your neighbor, or your friends or your family like, oh, yeah, hey, I sold a, you know, a call spread. And they're like, "What? What the hell are you talking about?" I couldn't talk to anybody, so it's awesome that you guys have somebody. Kyle: Well, actually, I think the podcast for us is actually but what's taking the role of the wife explaining the moves? I mean, at the end of every episode, we do a good, bad and ugly segment where we talk about something that worked something that didn't work and something that was really bad. Allen: Yeah that's accountability. Right there. You got to tell the world. Kyle: So now, yeah, when you're getting ready to do something stupid, you're like, how do I really want to talk about this on Saturday? Okay, I'm looking at their your, your, your sheet here that you said this. And one of the things that I see on here that's really interesting is that you made a small investment for your four year old. Yep. What's the deal with that? Allen: Alright, so the biggest thing that I've been learning by talking to people and everything is that people are not people don't have enough saved for retirement. You know, that's like the one biggest thing and people come to us, and they're like, Hey, I, you know, I'm in my 50s, I just got laid off, you know, what am I gonna do? I don't know what to do. I got to figure out how to trade. I'm like, well, you're under a lot of pressure. I don't know if this is the right time, right. And so I didn't want my kids stuff to go through that. So currently, my wife has another business. Mm hmm. And so what we did was, we have three kids, we got a 10 year old nine year old and now she's five. So the little one is five. At that time, she was four, when we started this actually know when she was born is when we started this. So we took the kids, and we found a way for them to earn some money. And basically, we did it as we were their models. So they model and we take pictures of them for advertising, for our website, the brochures for my wife's business. And so the kids get paid for it. And that money then goes into their Roth IRA. Okay, so that they have no, there's no taxes, there's no income taxes on that money that they that they make, right? Because they're minors, and there's a certain limit, so I'm not an accountant. So don't, you know, none of us are, I don't think but when we started, you know, the rule was you can make up to 12,000 As a child, and it would not be taxed. And then you know, who knows what if that's going to change anytime soon, but we could pay them take that money, put 6000 into the Roth IRA. Now, you know, She's five years old. So we've been doing that for a few years. And currently, she has about $50,000 in her account. Now, you, you can look at, you know, you can do the math on any investment calculator. She's five years old, she's gonna retire in 60 years. So you take that 50,000 invested in let's say, an index fund, and you make 8% a year. Right? Compounded for 60 years. How much is she going to have at the end of that? 60 years? It's going to be well over $2 million. Right? That's if I don't put any more money into it. Yep. If she never touches it, she doesn't put anything else. You know, she's gonna have a $2 million retirements on when she when she's done. And, and that's without me doing any of my options stuff or, you know, doing anything.  Dan: There I say better than a college account fund. Allen: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I mean, part of it is, you know, the money, she's gonna when she takes it out, she, when she retires, she won't have to pay any taxes on it. So we made the money, we didn't pay any taxes on it, she's gonna grow the money and not have to pay any taxes on and then she takes it out and there's so there's like no tax at all. It's like the only loophole I've seen like this.   Kyle: We might need to bleep some of that out just in case. That's interesting. We saw a story not too long ago about a senator proposing a bill to like, and I don't think there's any traction on the actual bill. But what was interesting was the math behind it. He said that I think it was about $2,200 for every newborn, put into an account for him, like that will basically make them retire as millionaires.  Allen: Yeah. I mean, if you start early enough, and you put it away, and you don't touch it, it just compounds and it works. And hopefully, it'll be at the same, you know, average at least 7 - 8% a year that the stock markets been doing historically. So you know, of course, things change in the future. We don't know. But I'm trying to just set these kids up in a way that can help them succeed, you know, and if you if you think about it, like if she doesn't have to worry about saving for retirement, then whatever she makes, she could like, enjoy it. She could give back to our community. She can you know, spend it do it everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Dan: Take care of you hopefully.. Kyle: That's smart. Allen: Yeah, that's the plan. Yes, that's my retirement. Kyle: Tell us a little bit about your company Option Genius. What do you guys do over there? Allen: So it started off as so when you sell options, you know, it's kind of boring. It's very, like I said, it's passive. It takes just a few minutes to put on a few trades, and then just watch him watch and watch. And so when I started doing it, I got bored. And so I would go and I would bother my wife. Hey, what you doing? What do you do? Oh, you're cooking that again? Oh, no. She's like, can you just get out of my hair? And I'm like, Well, no, cuz I don't have anything else to do. She goes, Why don't you like, teach other people how to do what you're doing? Oh, that's a good idea. So I started a website. And the idea was, you know, I'm gonna have one website, and I'll just do my trades, and I'll share them with other people. It'll be a membership site, they'll pay me for it. If they want to do the trades, great. If they want to learn, that's great, whatever. And, you know, hands off kind of thing that started doing really well it started growing and people start asking questions. How do you do this? How do you do? What about this strategy? What about this strategy, and it just grew from one website to many of them three. Now we have three different memberships, we got like three different courses and coaching programs, we got a couple of books out there to spread the word. And eventually, I got to the point where you know what, the emails that we would get from people would be so heartbreaking, that it's like, there's this better way that I think are found, and people don't know about it. Let me, let me expose let me share the message. And so that's really behind what Option Genius is. I mean, you know, not to brag, but you know, I'm trading a seven figure account. And so if I can make, you know, two or 3% on that in a month, I'm living a really, really nice lifestyle. You know, I don't, I don't have a private plane, I don't have a Lambo. I don't need any of that stuff. So we're really doing well. And so this is like, if it works great. If we can help other people great. If not, I can walk away. I don't need it. But we've we've been doing it for a while. And we've really, it's heart warming. When somebody comes in, oh, man, I just did my first trade. And I made 10% Oh, man. And we have we have our own podcast. And I've started to interview our students. And so they come on board. And they're like, you know, I had a small account, but we got one guy. He, we gave him a scholarship. Like every year, we have a scholarship to one of our courses. So he actually won the scholarship. And he's like, you know, I have a small account. It's like $4,000. And he's a teacher. And he does now what you were talking about the wheel. So he learned that from us, and he's doing it. And he's like, hey, you know, I made 30% this year from my wheel. So that goes awesome. Yeah. There's other guys. They're making, like 7, 8% 10%. We had one guy who came in, he lost his job. And then he's like, Hey, I'm in your program. What do I do? I'm like, do the follow up program. You paid for it. He started doing it, you know? And seven months later, he's like, Yeah, dude, I'm making 10 grand a month. I'm like, That's freaking awesome. And he goes, You know what he told me? He goes, I'm going back to work. I'm like, what? He goes, because it doesn't take any time. And I want to go back to work. Whatever floats your boat. Kyle: Learn a different skill. I mean, I guess that's what you want to do. I guess. It's funny though. The more people that we talk to, especially the ones that are really successful, that seems like they all want to give back somehow to the community. Allen: Mm hmm. Kyle: That seems to be a common theme and I don't really think see that in a lot of other industries. Allen: No. I mean, there's only so much money you can make, and it doesn't really make you that much happier anymore. But when you can like to have, you know, the Maslow's hierarchy with a triangle going up to be like self actualized you gotta have significance you got to give back. Mm, Dan: Yeah that's awesome. Oh, boy. Awesome. Okay. Allen: But I mean, you guys are doing that, you know, the podcast, and you guys are helping  Dan: We hope Kyle: Mostly they're learning what not to do. Allen: There's value in that as well. Kyle: Yeah, I think that was our tagline once "Let us lose the money for you". Dan: Oh, yeah, yeah, I've proven myself capable of that time and time again. Mm Kyle: hmm. All right, what else we got on here? And Dan got any other questions here? Dan: Yeah, so when you're starting out some people I mean, I know you mentioned you get somebody started as low as four grand Do you do you give people like a target, like try and get this much money together to start the ball rolling, or you just.. Allen: Um, you know, we say, we say, if you're going to do what we call passive trading, they can start with anything. But if you're going to go into something like just spreads or like futures options, and we say, start with about 10,000. But even then, you want to start off with paper trading, especially if you've never traded options before, because you need to, you need to know what buttons to push and you know, you don't want to hit the wrong button. Instead of the sale, you hit the buy. And it goes backwards. And you got to know what you're doing on the platform, the software, the broker software, before you start putting real money at risk. Dan: Yeah. Kyle: Is there a specific broker that you prefer? Allen: I have most of my money at Thinkorswim and tasty, but it doesn't really matter. Kyle: We've been getting more into Thinkorswim too. Yeah like their their bracket order than other options bracket. It took us a year to figure out the Active Trader even know it existed. But man that made a huge difference. Huge. Oh, you can just drag your stops. Dan: But that's more day trading options. Well, yeah. Well, we talked a little bit real quick, do you ever use the the ThinkOrSwim probabilities when you're looking at selling your options? Allen: Um, so we have a couple of different ways. I use the the desktop Thinkorswim Yeah. And so like, uh, you know, if you're looking at an option, right, you look at the option chain, and it tells you what the delta is, you can pretty quickly find out what is the probability of that option. So if it's delta 20, that means okay, this still this option has an 80% chance of probability of expiring worthless. If it's delta 10. It's got a 90% probability of expiring worthless. So that's kind of like rule of thumb, really quick table math, you know, where you could be like, Okay, I want to do this, or I'll look at the Analyze tab. You know, if it's a more complicated trade, then I'll look at the Analyze tab, and I'll use the numbers that they give me there. Dan: Okay. Okay. I remember that for a little bit with straddles and strangles. But I didn't have much success. Kyle: I think I heard that before with the Delta, but I never I pay attention to it more, because that's tell you how much the underlying will move, right? Like for every dollar that the  underlying moves, then you should see a 30 cent change if it's a 30 Delta, or 20 cent if it's 20. Allen: Yep. But I mean, I don't know how accurate that is, because it always changes all the time. So.. Kyle: Yes, that's true. Allen: It's like I thought it was gonna move 30 cents. Well, your Vega did this and the gamma did that. So. Okay, great. Thanks. Kyle: Plus, now the delta is different. Yeah. We started talking a little bit about crypto. Dan, should we move into move into that? Dan: I would love to talk about it, especially coming from somebody who educated their way into Options success. Do you have anything going with crypto? Allen: So I have been taking advantage of a couple times. We could talk about that. So I'm learning about currently a friend of mine introduced me to I guess they're called alt coins. You know, so I do have some of the big ones, you know, the Bitcoin, the Etherium whatnot. And those I've just holding on to so and then I just started because I have a lot of it. I have it at Coinbase. And so I've put up my Etherium for it was called staking or stocking. Kyle: Staking Allen: Oh, yes. Staking. Yeah, so they hold it on, they hold it for you and they pay you four and a half percent a year. So I'm like, Okay, I'm not gonna sell anyway, I might as well make some most of it. And I think, you know, it's been going up and up. So hopefully by the time I actually want to take it out, it's appreciated. And I will It'll made that four and a half percent, which is pretty good. And so I'm doing that. And then I'm starting to get into these alt coins and trying to figure out which ones are actually going to make it big. And which ones are scams and about, I guess 99% of them are scams. And like so my friends been showing me like, hey, you know, you can tell how much money was used to create this coin, and then are they allowed, are you allowed to sell coins? Or you're not allowed to sell coins? Or you know, what are the different little red flags that go hey, this coin is a scam this coin is a scam this coin maybe not be a scam. You know? And so you know, you put your money in and then if it goes up a little bit, you take your money out, and then you'll play with the house money and then you let it right kind of thing. Kyle: Yeah. So which coins have you found that piqued your interest then? Allen: So the one that I'm getting into right now, I haven't got like I'm pretty new at this. So I'm still learning and looking around. The one that I have found that has a good chance of success right now is called Floki. Kyle: Floki. Like the Norse god. Allen: Uh huh. Yeah Kyle: The trickster god. Allen: Yeah. Floki dot INU Floki.INU. And so his symbol is a dog with the viking helmet.  Okay. So it's it's one of the meme coins, but they're doing a ton of advertising. They're coming out with some actual use for the coin soon. You know, so that one has already gone up in value a lot. And there's probably a lot more to go in my opinion. So that's one that I'm going into. Kyle: What's one that you're that you found some red flags on them? Allen: There's been a bunch. The names I don't know off the top my head but there was one. Oh, it's like world peace earth or something like that. You know, there's like, so there's so many of them. There's like, they call them weird names. Whatever's trending at the moment like just endgame coin and Avengers coin. Dan: Oh, I just read a story that the squid game coin is apparently the creators fleeced everybody. What? Kyle: What, what's your thoughts on hamster coins? Jack Dorsey's favorite. He thinks that's gonna overtake Etherium. Allen: Oh, really? I haven't heard of that one. Dan: Nobody has. Kyle: Nobody has, I know. Dan: Don't listen to Jack Dorsey. That's all I have to say. Allen: I mean, you know, it's so it's, it's like the Wild West is full of gambling. And you know, the guy that teached me about it. He's like, Yeah, you know, we probably have maybe another year or two years before this all this stuff gets regulated. And all these alt coins are just gone.  Kyle: It's kind of started already to Yeah, Mm hmm. I think didn't I see something about the SEC getting authority over was stable coins, stable coins just issued today. Allen: Oh, that's today. Okay. Dan: Biden said if you don't do it, we'll issue an executive order to make it happen? So it's on the way? Yeah, it's happening. They're there. They're the beginnings of regulation. Or I should say not like, we won't get there for a bit.  Allen: So because I mean, we think that, you know, the people behind these coins are like, really sophisticated and smart developers, and they spent all this time and effort, you know, creating a coin. It costs like $1 to make a coin. Kyle: Yeah. Dan and I were actually looking at making our own. Yeah, the two bowls going. Allen: You know, so it's like, yeah, it doesn't take a lot. And it's pretty simple. And people, they're, like, new coins come out every like five minutes. There's a new board. And so it's like, geez, yeah, you're Kyle: Constantly fighting that delusion.  Allen: Mm hmm. So it's interesting. It's something that is, you know, I'm playing with it. But it's money that I can afford to lose. And the bread and butter is still, you know, stock market options trading. Kyle: That's why I was gonna ask you what I mean, because now that you have a real risk manager side to you, like, what's your, how do you limit your risk then onto that? I'm assuming you do it based on like, a small percentage of your portfolio or like this is probably just play around money, right, especially when you're learning? Allen: Yeah. Yeah. So um, you know, I bought 30 grand of Ethereum. And that's is what I'm about to put at risk and all this stuff. So, but some of these coins like they're brand new, right? So they're little, and they can go up 500, 800, 10000% and then they will back down. Yeah. You can have a really big move. And some of the people that I know, they've this year, this past year, and this is why I got into it, because they took like really small amounts, and they've made you know, they have a million dollars or $5 million, or $3 million worth of cryptocurrencies. And I was like, why aren't you selling, you know, yeah. And then they go off and they're like, Well, you know, it's gonna go up more and you know, I gotta pay taxes. I don't want to pay 50 2% taxes or more moved to Puerto Rico and so they have all their reasons for.. Dan: Transfer for a more stable one. Allen: Mm hmm. Kyle: Dan just had this same conversation with a couple of his friends. Dan: Yeah, yeah, mate. Yeah. Kyle: 50% on the latest dip on Bitcoin and then refuses to sell any Kyle: It's 10% Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's like like you're saying like, take your money out. Let let it be house money. Yeah, exactly. Not getting risk on anything come on.  Kyle: And then you got money to reload because it drops again. Yes, I want to have some ammo laying around the to jump into something when the opportunity strikes Allen: Yep. Now I think you guys are you guys are traders you know you guys are watching the markets, you guys are there in the front of the screen, I'm not that much into it, you know, I'll keep my screen open but I'm not checking all the time. And so for me that's a little bit harder. And so, you know, I for my bitcoin and Etherium or whatever I'm not, I'm not selling, you know, even if it dips or goes up, I'm not selling I know I'm gonna hold it for another maybe 10-15 years. So hopefully it keeps going up, but we'll see how it goes. But for now the idea was, hey, just buy it, hold it. And if it keeps going up maybe you add a little bit here and there. So I've been doing that.  Dan: No,but yeah, that's your plan. It's a long term plan. You're not trying to strike it rich the people that are buying into these things trying to strike it rich and then refusing to ever sell. Allen: Oh, that's silly. Yeah Dan: Yes. Like you gotta get paid some point Allen: There was one guy on the had an article where he became a Dodge coin millionaire and he's like, I'm not selling like.. Dan: Oh, no, not a millionaire anymore. Allen: What's the point? Dan: You never were a millionaire, coz you never sold. Kyle: Exactly. Have you come across anything? I guess staking is kind of similar to derivatives. But like, If there comes a time where you can sell calls on your Bitcoin you can do something like that.  Allen: So yeah, so they just came out with, is it bati? I forget the name of it.  Dang it. The the first ETF Bitcoin ETF just came out. Dan: That's Yes, that's right. Um, that was a futures based one too, though, isn't it? Allen: Bitl. There we go. So, that's tradable. And that that has options. So, you know, right now it's at $39. I don't know if that's cheap enough for your wheel. But.. Dan: I think what cuz that's if that's based around a futures contract, it's going to be constantly losing money too overtime, right? Allen: Probably. Dan: Won't you get like double decay if you. So decay of the futures contract. And every time, Allen: Yeah every time they roll it forward a month they lose, right? Because I have all the fees and stuff to pay. So that is something.. Dan: That might be a really good one to sell Options. Allen: Yep. So I mean, I, you know, I've sold some calls on it, because I was like, Okay, if bitcoin goes up, and they're saying, you know, bitcoins gonna be 100,000 by the end of the year, I was like, Okay, I'll sell some calls on it. And or no, sorry, I'll buy some calls. I bought some calls. This is one of the few ones where I'm actually buying calls. Now that trade is still negative. But you know, it's a bet, you know, it's a bet. If it goes up, great. Dan: Yeah, just manage that risk. Allen: Mm hmm. Dan: So let's wrap things up with I want to ask you some questions about just some of the most common mistakes that you see from your students, or just the biggest struggles that they have and how they had to overcome those. Okay, yeah. So if you're going to give us like, just the top couple pitches, see? Allen: Okay, so first off, I would say is that they try to do too much too soon. And so one of the things that I always stress is, Hey, pick one strategy that fits who you are. And just focus on that one strategy, get really good at it, hammer it, do back testing, or get some back testing software, pay for it if you have to, and just do trade after trade after trade after trade until you understand it, until it's like, you know, second nature to you and you're consistently profitable. Only at that time, should you then venture off and say okay, let me add another strategy. Right. So that's the that's the first thing that I tell everybody a second thing is not all strategies are for every person. Mm hmm. Like for me if you told me Hey, you know, I'm gonna put a gun to your head and you have to be be profitable at futures trading, or be like well, you know, goodbye Allen: You know, tell my wife I love here. you know, telling her that life insurance is very well Allen: So it's not for me, you know, my temperament my style, the way I I am the risk temper the the risk appetite that I have is different than everybody else. And so you got to figure out what strategy and there's 1000 strategies and there's every every strategy out there you can make money there are people out there making money with futures day trading and, and Options on futures and, you know, pairs trading and whatever you can think of people are doing it, some of them making money, most are not, but if you find the thing that fits you and you're like, you know what, this this really, really makes sense to me, I really get this, then that's the one that you should focus on. Most people are just like, Oh, hey, you know, I found my friend is doing this or I can make a lot of money doing this or I saw an advertisement, I saw an email, and then they run into it, and then they get blown out of the water. Dan: We actually just had a discussion on that not too long ago, Dan, about, you know, when you try to copy somebody else's strategy, it's not your own, you don't have time and effort that you've got put into learning it, you're not passionate about it. So what you're saying makes a whole lot of sense. Like, yeah, you need to find the thing that speaks to you.  Allen: Mm hmm. And I guess, if I give you one more, it'll be that time goes by a lot faster than we realize, hmm. And so if there are people out there that have already paved the way, and you know, for a fact that they're doing well, then just do what they're doing, you know, or at least learn from them. Yeah, learn from, you know, if you can hire them, hire them, and just see what they're doing, learn, watch their strategies, and just do what they're doing. And hopefully it should work, right. And then you can tweak it once you do what they're doing. And once you're getting good results, then you can start tweaking it and be like, okay, you know, I'm gonna make it a little bit more conservative, a little more aggressive, a little bit this little bit that, but follow the plan first, you know, make it work, and then you add your own twist to it. We have so many people that come in, they're like, you know, I've been following you or I've been listening to you for two years. Okay, how many trades have you done? Well, not really. You know, I've been trying to do it on my own and watching free YouTube videos, like, Okay, well, you only get so far watching free Youtube videos, because you don't number one, you don't know how legit they're right? That's one thing. Anybody can like I say that, you know, any idiot can make a YouTube video. Allen: It used to be hard to write a book, you know, you have to go to a publisher get published and have references and all that stuff nowadays. Man, you put up a PDF on Amazon, it takes like a weekend. So don't be like, Oh, I'm an author. Okay, great. You know, everybody's an author. No. So it's really you got to be really careful of what you listen to. Kyle: Speaking of which, where can they find your book? PassiveTrading.com. Yeah, that's PassiveTrading.com. It's a free book, you know, just pay for the shipping, and we'll ship you out a printed copy of it. Dan: So PassiveTrading.com, we'll link in the description for that. Yeah. Is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners before we sign off here? Allen: No. I mean, it's been a lot of fun. You know, you guys, you guys are awesome. And I love it that you guys are honest. And you share the wins and the losses. Most of the time, you only see oh, I made 1,000,000% Oh, I made 20%. You don't see the losses, you don't see the the nitty gritty behind the scenes stuff. And you guys are showing that. So that's I love that part.  Dan: Well it's the same thing with gamblers too, right? You talk to a guy who goes to the casino and says, Oh, I won $300 last night. Oh, how much did you lose the night before? Yeah. Allen: Um, but yeah, I mean, if people are interested in Options, it's a great, it's a great way to add some passive money, you know? And if that's, if that fits, you know, it doesn't fit for everybody. Like some people, they come in and, and they're like, Yeah, I'm trying to do this, but I'm, I'm doing this and do that. I'm like, Dude, you're too aggressive. You know, if you want to be trading every day or every other day, then this is not for you. You know, find something you can do this part time, and then do with the rest of your time. Play something that fits your style more, but that's really important. You know, find your style, and then it'll just it just a whole lot easier. It's just which is way easier. Dan: What else can they, so we find your OptionGenius.com. You've also got your podcast. Allen: Yep. It's called the Option Genius Podcast. Kyle: Oh, hey. Allen: Yeah, we got really creative with our very own brains. Dan: All right, perfect. Yeah, we'll make sure we link all that stuff. Right. So if anybody wants to find out more they can check it out the description. Kyle: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us Allen, this has been a great conversation all of your your knowledge and experience has been a good time to listen to. We really appreciate you coming by the shop and talking with us today. Dan: Yeah, the hardships too, because I feel like you learn more from those sometimes.  Allen: Mm, yeah. They hit on the head. You know, sometimes you got to do it over and over again. Eventually, they eventually they sink in. Kyle: Alright, well there you have it, folks. We'll have all of that fun stuff in the episode description all those links for you. Any parting word, Allen? Allen: Just you know, I I tell everybody you know, trade with the odds in your favor.  Dan: The odds be ever in your favor. Kyle: It's like in the movie? Kyle: All right. Well, I guess it's time to kick everybody out. You don't got to go home but you can't stay here. Until next time. Happy trades. Allen: Bye, guys.   LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

What is the fastest way to learn Options? I want to learn to trade Allen. What should I do? How do I get there as fast as possible? Nobody wants to take the long way, right? Everybody wants to take the shortcut. Nobody wants to be like, alright, Allen, I want to take 20 years to learn how to trade and make money No, everybody wants it today, they want instantaneous results. Right now right now. So let's go over some of the things that I think can definitely help you, in your Options Trading journey, that can definitely speed up your path, right? Get you to your goal, the fastest. And that is actually number one. That'll be number one on the list is you have to know your why you have to know why you're doing this, you have to know why you're trading, you have to have a deep inner reason. And you know, if I asked you "Hey, why are you trading?" It's gonna be the first and everybody says, "Oh Allen, I want to make more money. Allen, make more money". Yeah. Okay, great. I know, I know that, right? That's a superficial answer. Everybody wants more money, of course. But why? What is it? And we've talked about this before, we've talked about this in our live events, we've talked about this on the podcast, you got to know why. And you got to dig deeper and deeper until you figure out like, hey, you know what, I want more money because I want more security, because I want my kids to have things I didn't have when I was growing up. Because I want to make the world a better place. I want to start a foundation and give back have a legacy. You know, donate money, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. That's your thing. Doesn't matter what it is. Right? But that's going to keep you going. And that's going to help you remember why you're doing this because it's a path. It takes a while it's not overnight that you're going to turn into an Option Millionaire, right? So you need something to keep you going when the times get tough. And they do get tough. markets don't cooperate all the time. You know, we think they're going to do this and they do the opposite. And then we have to adjust, we have to run and sometimes we have losses. So at those times, you might be like, I want to quit. This is not too hard. I can't get this. I don't know, man. I don't know what this what's going on. I think I did everything perfectly. But in the workout, let those times that's when your why kicks in. That's when you realize "No, you know what, I'm going to keep going. Because Allen said I could do this". Yes, Allen said that you can learn to trade options. Okay? So, stick with me. Know your why, number one, number two, the method beats the hours. So when it comes to learning something like trading, right, your method will always beat the number of hours you put into something. So it's not about you know, I gotta trade 10,000 hours like Malcolm Gladwell said in his book. If you do that, that's great. You'll turn into, you know, a world class expert in whatever thing you're practicing, if the practice is perfect, right? It's got to be perfect practice. But we're not even trying to be world class. Right? We're not trying to be one of the top 10 best Option Traders in the world. We're just trying to be profitable. It doesn't take that many hours to do that. But the method the way you do it does make a big difference. Okay, so for example, let's say there's two people driving from Boston to New York City. Right? It doesn't matter how skilled or how committed or smart the first driver is, if he's driving a pickup truck, like a beat up old pickup truck, and the second guy is driving a Ferrari Well, driving number one is going to lose, right? Your method is the vehicle that will get you and become the engine to where you want to go. So with Ooptions, there are dozens of available methods to follow, right? There's lots of experts, so called "experts", quote, unquote, to learn from, this means that you want to spend a lot of time understanding who you're learning from, what credibility they have, and how it fits with your learning and your trading style. Okay, not all trading is suited for all traders. Now, for me, you know, day trading, not for me learn that the hard way, you know, and passive trading, passive trading is not for everybody. If you don't have patience, you're going to get bored, and you're going to wonder. So the process or the strategy that you trade has to mesh with you and your temperament. You got to know yourself, and what trading style or method fits you best. Okay, that's number two.  Number three, we want to apply the 8020 rule, because we want to get success faster, right, we want to get the results faster, we don't want it to take forever. So you apply the 80/20 rule. And really, you should be applying the 8020 rule in just about everything, because 20% of the people in your life will lead to 80% of your happiness. If you have a business 20% of your customers will bring you 20% of your sales. And 20% of what you're learning will give you 80% of your results. Okay, so you might have a list and say, Okay, I'm learning options. Alright, so I got to learn how to do my broker software, I got to learn how to do technical analysis and charting. I got to know how fundamental analysis works on stocks, I got to know how options work and puts and calls and buying options, and I got to know how selling option works. And I got to do this strategy and that strategy. Yes, you can learn all 17 in your lifetime and you won't master it or get good at it. Right? So when it comes to trading, it feels like there's so much we don't know, it's so overwhelming. So it's easy to jump around, you know, learning about a little this, watching that video. Oh, there's another video. Okay, let me watch that over video over here. Oh, let me watch this guy over here. He's talking about something Oh, he's you know, it sounds like this is good over here. That it will only lead to wasted time, what you want to do is you want to focus on the one or two things that will drive the needle for what you want to achieve. And then you double down on them. Right? You go all in? We Don't dabble. You don't want to dabble. Okay, we're going to cover that later. But how do you do this? So you focus on one strategy first. That's one strategy, you pick one that works makes most sense to you. That's the only thing you're going to work on. You trade it, you back test it, you do it over and over and over and over and over again, until it's second nature. How many times? I don't know - the more the better? Right. So while you're doing that you ignore the noise. Okay, you don't need to master 12 different chart indicators. You don't need to trade the stocks with the highest implied volatility. You don't need to watch the financial news every day. You don't need to read every single marketing email sent to you by all the different services and want to be gurus. Cut out all the noise, focus on the 20% which is your trading plan. Your watch list, your strategy, three things, trading plan, watch list strategy, that's the 20% ignore everything else. Number four, learn by doing. We talked about this a little bit in the last one. But we're this is a big one. Immersion going all in diving deep into what you're going to learn is the best way to learn anything. And research shows that humans, okay, as a whole, when we're trying to learn something. When we hear a lecture, we only remember about 5% from a lecture, right? When we read something we learned, we remember about 10%. 10% of what we read, okay? When we do when we hear like an audio visual, you know, maybe like a movie or something. 20% Maybe it's a PowerPoint, and somebody's explaining, that's 20% we remember of that. When we see a demonstration, somebody's actually doing it for us. 30% Remember that only 30%. When we're in a group discussion when we're talking about it with other people we remember 50%. Okay, now we're getting a little bit, you know, this is better now 50you still lose half of it. When you actually practice what you have learned. You remember 75% of it. So you learn something and immediately you turn around and you practice it and you do it that's 75%. If you learn it immediately if you do it immediately, then that's 90%-  so practicing but immediate practicing. Soon as you learn it, you turn around and you do it or you watch a demonstration, you turn around and you do it. That's 90% remembering, right? So you got to do it learn by doing. The fastest way to learn is to get into the trenches and gain experience by making mistakes. Yep, making mistakes. So what do I mean by that? Well, doing 10 trades is better than doing two. Okay, 100 trades is better than doing 10. Now, do we use real money? No, we paper trade, we try to get into trouble, right? We put on trades that we know, hey, this might get me in trouble. So I'm going to have to adjust it, I'm gonna have to play with it, I'm gonna have to money management. So I'm going to learn the skills. The more the better. And the fastest way, and the best way to do more of them is back testing, you get yourself as a back testing software, man, it can cut years off your learning curve, you can take a strategy, and you can take a stock and you could back test years and years and years of trading that stock in an afternoon. You can't do that with real money trading, you can't do that with paper trading. Now, sure, it's not exactly the same as if it's real money. But those are emotions, you can figure that out later, right now, in the beginning, you're just learning the skills, right? You're building confidence. Back testing is probably one of the best ways to do that. Number five, find a coach. So the people that perform at the highest levels, whether they're business owners, whether they're athletes, whether they're musicians, whatever, they all have a coach, every single one of them. According to best selling author, Seth Godin, there are five reasons you might quit anything that you do five reasons, you might run out of time, and then you quit, you might run out of money, then you quit, you get scared of something doesn't always go exactly, you want it right, you might quit. If you're not serious about it, you'll quit. If you lose interest, you can quit. Having a coach allows you to see the blind spots that you couldn't see by yourself, right? And the coach can guide you through the different obstacles. And the tough times that come when you're learning anything new. Because everything is not going to be rosy and perfect, tough times are going to happen. So if you have somebody there that's been through it, that knows what you're doing and knows what they're doing, they've been through it, they have done it before and they're successful at it, they can help you and guide you through. And they can tell you what you did, right what you did wrong, you know, they can analyze it. That's why coaching is such a big part of trading. And that's why, you know, we have services where we give you the trades. And then we also have coaching, where we actually do it with you, then you do it. And then you show me what you've done. And then we work on it together. The people who do that to people who are in our coaching programs, they get results, maybe 1015 times faster, you know, 10 times faster, 15 times faster than the people who are in our memberships. So I mean, there's no shame in being a membership, you just need some trades, okay, fine. But if you really, really want to learn to do this yourself, you got to get into the coaching program. Okay. You know, one of the coolest things is when we have our credit spread Mastery program, you know, we've set it up right now, it's a three month program, you get in, and you're out in three months. And you actually have learned and you've mastered the credit spread. And we do it so many times we go through it, we're there, we're putting the time in, we're not dabbling, you know, we're immersed in it. And we do the process over and over and over again. And you got everything like all the people all this stuff on this list, you have it, we make you do all of them. Right? I make you go through all this, this whole list we do we cover it all in the program plus a lot more. So within three months, people graduate from that program and they are ready to go. They're rocking and rolling. They're happy. Right? So I mean, it doesn't take years and years and years to learn how to trade options. There are shortcuts if you want them. Okay, number 6, process over results. So doing the work is usually sometimes the hardest for some people, okay, actually doing the trades, and just doing it over and over and over again. A common mistake that people make when they're trying to learn how to trade is they focus on their results. They focus on how much money they made, how much money they lost. That's like the biggest thing in their mind. Oh, I made money. I'm doing good. I lost money. I'm doing bad. No, that's not what you should be looking at. Okay, it's important to focus on your process versus your actual performance, because it's hard to see any consistent results until you've put in enough time and done enough trading. That means in the beginning, you are going to lose on your trades. That happens to just about everybody. That's fine because you're learning. That's part of it. Right? That's why you should start with paper trading so you don't lose money. But in the beginning, and I tell this to everybody, that goal is not to make money. I'll say it again, the goal in trading in the beginning is not to make money, it is to become consistent. It is to be able to know and understand the process and the trading plan and say, "Look, this is how I put on a trade", this is what I'm looking for, this is how I manage the trade. And then this is how I get out, either good or bad. Once you stabilize that, once you understand that, if you're not making money, then we just need a couple of little tweaks here and there; and you'll be consistently profitable, right? But we what we don't want is we don't want to do trades, we're doing really well. And then through Bah, we lose everything, and then we do good. And then we lose everything. And then we do good. And we don't want the roller coaster ride. We want safe, stable, consistent. And if you're not making money, when you get there, we can tweak a little things, and then boom, you're off to the races, right? But if normally, if you do follow the plan, and you become consistent, the profits will take care of themselves. Now, Woody Allen said it, you know, it says 70% of success in life is just showing up. It might be even more than that. Just doing the work. Right? taking small steps doesn't really sound sexy. But it's been the proven path to follow. If you want to achieve anything in your life and in your trading. Number seven, writing down what you're learning helps you remember. So when you're learning something, you're going through one of our programs or the podcast, and you're like, hey, I want to remember this, write that stuff down, take notes with your paper and pencil, not typing, you know, I'm old fashioned, don't type it, just write it down. That's gonna trigger between your hand and your brain, it just does something helps you remember, for all my trades, I write them down on paper. Now most of them are also then put on a spreadsheet or something for recording purposes. But I have them all on paper with notes. You know, I have my trading plan there as well. So I know exactly what I'm supposed to do. And in every trade, every trade every single time. So remember, write this stuff down. And then lastly, you got to teach it to others. So find somebody who's interested in learning about options, or at least they'll listen to, maybe they don't care. But maybe you have a spouse or a child or whatever, that'll do your favor and be like, hey, I'll listen to you, okay. And you explain to them what you're learning, you have to take these concepts that you're learning, and you have to explain it to them so that they understand it. Because if you cannot explain something to a 12 year old, then you don't know it enough yourself. You might think you do. But if you cannot explain it properly, you cannot answer their questions. You don't know it enough. And that's like the ultimate tell. Right? Do you know it? You got to be able to answer questions. And if it's too complicated, and they don't understand, then you got to go back to the drawing board, figure out more, learn more, come back, explain it to them. That's when you really, really master something. Okay, because I mean, you think about it, like some of the best teachers in your life. You know, they didn't make stuff complicated. They took hard concepts, broke it down. Maybe they told with stories, maybe they use analogies, you know, they compared it to something else. Right? I heard somebody that we're working with right now, I was explaining to him about trading options, you know, and I was like, hey, you know, there's different ways people trade options are there the the people that say they want to go buy an option, and they want to make, you know, 100% overnight, and then there's us where we're looking to make, you know, five 10% a month. And he got it right away. You know, and he told me, I mean, he this is on him that he was really good at this. He was like, Yeah, well, you know what option selling is really like the Toyota Camry of trading. It's like, you just get in and it just works and just turns he just runs in and runs and runs and is dependable and reliable and consistent. And you don't have to worry about it. It's just gonna work. And I was like, Cool. That's really cool. I gotta write that one down. That's a great way to explain it. I'm gonna steal that one. I'm gonna write that down. Yeah, you know, it's like a very dependable car. It just works. So if you guys are interested in learning more about how to trade options, go man, join one of our programs, check us out OptionGenius.com. and we'd love to have you.   If you are on your trading journey, and if you want someone to talk to about it and say, hey, look, I've done this, I'm done this, what do I need to do next? Then reach out to us, send us an email and we'll have somebody hop on the call with you, hop on the phone, walk you through it, ask you some questions, you know, find out where you are, what you've learned, and then we'll be able to tell you like okay, you know what, we probably think you maybe need to study this more or maybe you need to go in this direction based on your results so far. So we do have that available now. Our team is growing and so we are able to now get on the phone with a handful of people and then you know, give them some suggestions, like, hey, what do I do next? Allen? Okay, well here let's ask you some questions. You know, it takes about 10 minutes on the phone, not a big deal to reach out to us, email us, or look us up on Facebook or whatever. And we will send out a link, you can, you know, schedule a time to talk, and somebody will get on the phone and talk to you as well So, with that, I want to say, have a great time today or the rest of this week and the rest of this month or wherever you're listening to this and trade with the odds in your favor.   LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Allen: Welcome passive traders. Welcome to another edition of the podcast today I have with me my good friend Alex. Alex is one of our graduates of our credit spread Mastery program and I brought him on to talk about what it was like in the program, what his results have been, and what he sees for the future. Alex, how're you doing today? Alex: I'm doing great. Allen: Awesome. Awesome, cool. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, you know, how you got into options, what you do full time, all that kind of good stuff? Alex: Sure, I worked in the corporate world for about 15 years and always invest in real estate. And in 2015, I left the corporate world to focus 100% on real estate. But as far as option trading, you know, in real estate, there are lulls in activity, you know, whether you're caught up in in building and planning, or, as we were discussing earlier, there's a global pandemic. So the Option Trading provided the prospect of additional streams of income. So I had a good friend that actually a family member has been trading options for decades. And he kind of figured out all the stuff you figured out, and they told me about it. And they basically said, Hey, there's this guy, the Option Genius. Of all the crazy programs and snake oil salesmen out there, you know, they said, This guy's he knows what he's doing. His strategies are legitimate. So that's how I kind of got turned on to your stuff. Allen: Awesome. Sounds good. So basically, it was I mean, you're in California, you know, I know you're doing well for yourself. It was basically I need, I'm gonna diversify income, and I'm gonna just try to learn this new skill, or was it more to it? Alex: No, that's exactly it. I mean, we have multiple streams of income. And we're always looking for additional streams. And this, again, based on the family friend that introduced us to you and your program, and this style of trading, we just seem like a very viable additional stream of income. Allen: So you're not looking to quit what you're doing and just go full time trading. This is something in addition to what you're already doing? Alex: Yes. Yeah. But not not yet. You know, I started out I did your program. I started out slowly, I started with the paper trades. And then.. Allen: Well, that's because you had never traded options before. That was your first time doing anything. Right? Alex: Exactly, exactly. I never traded options. I mocked around in the past with securities, but you know, probably lost a bunch of money doing it. So you know, this is really my first introduction to Option Trading. Allen: And how did it go? Alex: I think it's gone great. I've learned a ton. So like I said, I started out with paper trading. And then probably the end of March, I started with my real trades, I can tell you I did since the end of March, I've placed 46 trades, I currently have three active trades for those three trades. So far, so good. They're set to expire at the end of next week, of the trades I've placed, I had 37 out of 43 were successful. So that's like an 86% success rate, the longest run I had was about 14 successful trades. And you know, so interestingly enough, I started out at the end of March, and then by the beginning of June, I was up by 1100 bucks. So again, these are small trades, like 50 bucks or so and potential earnings and, and so on for potential profit. And then all of a sudden, by the end of June, I was actually at $35. So, so what happened was I placed a few trades, and you know, a bunch of them were the potential profit was somewhere around $50. And then there are other trades that maybe are based on the spread or the actual stock or the option. You know, they were worth 100 bucks, potential profit, or max profit. And some of those just didn't go my way. So that I don't know, if the term the trades weren't exactly balanced. So those six trades took me you know, that didn't go well took me from 1100 bucks down to $35. A couple I made mistakes that, you know, like, one was Amazon, I lost about 250 bucks on that. And that was because I placed a trade too soon after earnings, which and I can hear you in my heads. Oh, the credit spread mastery sessions and we're, you know, we're too close to earnings or not before earnings, but after earnings, you know, and the stock got a little bit of a bump, yeah, after earnings and started heading south. But you know, and then a few others like United rentals or Norfolk Southern, they're just larger trades, and they just didn't go well, or they didn't go my way. So.. Allen: So that was basically you were trying to scale it up a little bit or it was just it just happened that they were.. Alex: It's just at that time. I wasn't aware of it. You know, it's interesting, looking back how much I've learned and how much more aware I am of what's happening in the trades, and I have a better sense of what's a good trade, I have a better sense of what's actually trending well. And since I started I got back on the horse in early July. Since then I'm nine for nine In all my all my trades are somewhere around 100 bucks max profit I made sure that I had, they're all balanced. So if I take a hit, you know, for all the wins that one hit won't wipe me out. Allen: So is that 10%? The 100 bucks? Alex: Yes, yes. Yeah, right. I get out of 10% on every trade. So.. Allen: Okay, so basically, you learned your lesson, you figured out like, okay, hey, this needs to be balanced, they'll need to be the same amount. It'll make it easier for me. And then, since then you've recovered. And now.. Alex: Yeah, at this point, I'm at year to date, I'm at 1040. Allen: Good. Alex: I'm up 1040 so.. Allen: How much are you playing with? Alex: I have 15 grand in the account. Okay. Just, you know, again, just, they're not huge transactions. But again, they're all about max profit, or somewhere around $100. And I'd like to start scaling up. Allen: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it's a wonderful place to start, you need to go from zero to not knowing anything about options to where you are now, where you're like, Hey, I'm consistently being profitable on these traits. And I think now from (inaudible), I believe you do have that confidence that, hey, you know, what this stuff works? If I follow it, if I do it, and I just, you know, put in put in the effort, it's gonna like you, you it's like an ATM machine that or like a slot machine, you know, putting the money you get the money back, you get more back, right? Alex: No, for sure. For sure. And I you know, it's during the the class, I used to ask a lot of questions. And you would say, just you got to go for it. You got to you got to place the trades. And it's, you know, volume. And I can see that it's the more you do it, the more you develop that sixth sense that you always talk about and you put yourself in a better position to see success. Allen: Yeah, I mean, what I remember is that you were you were trying to overthink it, you know? Yeah, it's like, okay, I'm looking at this trade. And there's just one little thing that is like, not perfect. Do I do it? I'm like yes. Allen: Yeah, like six months from now, they're saying that they're not going to have you know, they're gonna have this problem. Like, no, yeah. Let's put it on and see how it goes. Because, and I love the fact that you are starting out small. I mean, obviously, you can go much bigger if you wanted to. But you're like, hey, you know what I'm going to, you know, play with this, I'm going to learn it. I'm not going to risk a lot. Because a lot of people they come in and they, you know, they start off with big numbers right away. Some people come to us like I had one guy. Just yesterday, before he emailed me, he goes, "You know, I have $9,000 but I can't do this. It's like, why? Because I only have $9,000?" You can't, but you could learn it. Right? I mean You could learn you don't have to use the 9000 to you don't even need 9000 to learn. You can do paper trade, like you did. And you start off and you do it, do it, do it. You gain confidence. And then you put a little bit in each one. And then it just grows and grows and grows. Are you at the point now where you feel that you're going to start putting a little bit more money into each one? Alex: Yeah, like I said, I coming into June, I was doing really well. And then I though there are several trades that that almost basically wiped me out and wiped me out. We're talking less than 1000 bucks. But it didn't Allen: It didn't hurt you. Because I mean, that was your profits that you gave back. You didn't go actually go negative. So.. Alex: No so yeah, so now I'm a little more focused. And I upped each trade, like I said, max profit of somewhere around 100 bucks. And so far, so good nine for nine and, you know, slowly ramp it up. So my, you know, my goal for the year is to end up profitable so that, you know, I see some of your, many of your students have seen incredible success. And some of the some of the people in the very class that I was in and make 1000s of dollars or exponentially grow their, their accounts. I'm happy just to be profitable this year. I'm okay to you know, being slow and steady, you know, are taking that approach. Allen: Looking at the long run, the long term picture. Alex: Yeah, I'm a real estate investor. So, you know, we we, um, you can make a killing in real estate, but we were we're primarily buy and hold. You know, we've, I mentioned we started building houses a couple years ago, but by and large, our strategy has been buy and hold. So.. Allen: And it's worked well for you. Alex: Yeah and we're talking about option trading. We're not talking about buying and holding but my point is, it's about you know, the, the broader horizon or the, you know, thinking about the long haul. Allen: Yeah. And I love it that you understand your temperament. You understand your personality, you know, because sometimes somebody in your shoes where they're like, You know what I want, I want to take it long term, or I feel more comfortable when it moves slowly. And then they start doing something that goes against that and they started like day trading or buying options and trying to make 1,000% overnight, and internally, they can't handle it, you know, emotionally, it's like they don't understand why they're not doing well is because, you know, their temperament or their personality doesn't jive with that way of doing it. So I love that you found a balance, and you're not worried about everybody else, you know, it's like, oh, yeah, hey, you know, this guy made 50% this year. Okay, great. I made 100 bucks, I'm okay, I, you know, I got my confidence, I got my practice, I did it over and over again. And I proved it that, hey, this can this can work for me. And so you have from now until the end of your days to keep doing it, and compounding it and compounding and you know, the effort, you know, like, when you start compounding the money, it just gets larger and larger and larger. So what, you know, $100 right now might not sound like a lot to some people, but that $100 is going to grow and grow. And five years from now, it's going to be 1000 to trade and then 10,000 to trades and 20,000. So, cool. Awesome. So I mean, was there anything that anything that was holding you back? Was there anything that didn't click for you right away,or? Alex: I used to sell software, and I was working in Silicon Valley during the internet boom, you know, the whole dotcom thing. So I dabbled in, in a number of tech stocks and so on. Beyond that, I had zero experience. And as far as options, forget it, I dated a girl that went on to trade options commercially. That's about that was the that's about the extent of my experience with options. So I knew absolutely nothing. And just like the logistics of placing trades, and so on. And so many of the things, we talked about your strategies until you actually do it. For me, personally, I had to do it a bunch of times to really internalize it. You know, like I said, simply, you know, what does it mean, for a stock to be trending nicely, you know, or positively, I have a better sense of what that is, at this point. So yeah, it's interesting, I think this is so much like real estate. In real estate, you always say, trade with the odds in your favor. And, you know, that's what the Option Genius is all about. That's what we do in real estate. I mean, you, you do due diligence, you know, and there's there's definitely luck involved. But if you do due diligence, you're investing with the odds in your favor. You know it's, you know, that's how you ensure success, and slowly, slowly build it up. So but anyway, to answer to go back to your question, I, you know, this is you have to figure out how to actually place the trades which can be a challenge in itself, and really internalizing what all these strategies are and how to actually implement them successfully. It just took a little time, but I don't really feel like there were any major barriers are, or challenges, you know. Allen: So it was just because it was all brand new, just.. Alex: Yeah, yeah. And then mentally, you know, I, I'm doing what works for me, you know, mentally building up the size of my trades, or scaling up, I'm scaling up at my pace based on what works for me, like we were just saying, Allen: Yeah, and I mean, the scaling part of it, it's all, it's gonna be all emotional. Because once you have the skill of finding the trade, putting it on monitoring and and managing it, then it's just a matter of zeros, whether you do one contract or 10 contract or 100 contracts, right? Almost all of it is identical. So the hardest part is being profitable, like you said, and then after that, you can just add to it, and then you just managing your emotions and be like, Okay, I'm taking too much risk. I know, I'm feeling stressed out, I'm going to cut it down, or, you know, or, Hey, I feel good about this. Alright, let's, let's, let's go a little bit, let's put the pedal down a little bit. But I also like the other thing, that in options, there are like 1001 different strategies that people could do, you know, everything from under the sun. But you came in and you join the credit card mastery course where we only do one strategy. And that's the one you learned. That's the one you're still trading you haven't, you know, been like, Okay, I like this. This is good. Now, let me go learn something else. Now, let me go learn another one. Let me go let it go. I know you just stuck to that one. And you're at that point where like, Okay, I'm gonna get good at this one. And then we'll see what happens later on. Alex: No, exactly. I mean, by staying focused, I have a better chance of success. And by staying focus, I am learning so much that I know when I start to expand my strategies, or incorporate other strategies, everything I'm learning now by focusing on this one strategy will benefit me. I know towards the end of the course, we got into some of them some other strategies and some more complex strategies. And I just I said, That's not for me. I can't I don't want to hear it right now. You know, I mean, ideally, I'd like to start acquiring using your strategies and acquiring stocks holding on benefiting from the dividends and so on. I just right now, I'm still focused on the credit spreads. Allen: Great. That's awesome. I mean, you know what you want you going after that.Nobody can fault you for that. So give me a couple of takeaways from your trading journey so far, what have you learned? Alex: Yeah, I think it's, you can trade with the odds in your favor, you can put yourself in a position to realize consistent returns, I think you know, that the credit spreads are one thing, but you know, like, you're saying, that should be a small percentage of your portfolio, I see, I just see a lot of potential, you know, again, I mentioned I sold software for a number of years, I was I was a lot of these tech stocks that were blowing up, I was, you know, interacting with these companies directly. And I never really paid much attention to stocks, I just, I was always a did my job. And then I was, I was investing in real estate on the side. So it's just really opened my eyes to the potential of the stock market and investing and, you know, I, I really look forward to building up a portfolio where I have a stream of dividends coming in, and you know, leveraging your strategies to secure those stocks. Allen: Yep. Yeah. And it's gonna be kind of like, buy and hold, you know, it's gonna be like, Yeah, we're gonna own it, and we're gonna collect income every month. We're just gonna rent those suckers out to like income every month. So what was it that surprised you the most about options? Alex: I don't say how easy it is. But that that, that you can actually implement a specific strategy and get consistent results. And I hope I don't sound like a commercial for Option Genius. But that's yeah, that's like I've always thought, you know, even with all the financial regulations in place, you still don't know what's happening within a company, what decisions they're making, what shenanigans are going on. And it's just, it's not so much about the company, it's about what the stock is doing. I mean, outside factors can impact the performance of the stock, but it's what the actual stock is doing in the market versus the performance of the company is that Is that fair to say? Allen: Yeah, I mean, like when we're talking about when we're looking at our layup spreads, you know, it's a one month trade. So, if something is there, that's going to impact the company a year from now, two years from now, it doesn't make any difference to us. We're only worried about, you know, from the start of the trade to the end of the trade. And then we're not worried about the fundamentals or all that other stuff that that happens. If the trade looks good, we'll get in. If not, we don't we skip, and we don't have to do the same trade on the same stock every month. Right? We can we can vary it and move it around. But that said, we do like, there are certain times where we want to go into the same stock over and over again, because they do have a good fundamental picture. They are growing, they're, they're hiring more people, they're getting more customers, or building revenue or more stores or whatever, you know, and the stock will then continue to trend in our in one direction, which makes it easier for us to figure out okay, how do we want to play this? Alex: So actually, I got into Costco three times since June. They've been going up and up and up, you know? So, yeah. Allen: And the end, the cool thing is that, you know, you take a look at Costco, it's like, oh, this chart is doing really well, the stock is going up. Okay, well, if you had bought the stock at the bottom, or whatever it was, and you had hold it to the top, how much would you have made, compared to if you had done spreads on it, you know, from that same time period over and over and over again, wish would have been better? Well, the spread would have, you know, totally kicked it that the stock might have gone up like 20, 30%, and we've been up like 40, 50%. So you're looking at the same thing, and you're looking okay, do I want to buy it? Or do I want to just sell spreads on it? And the spreads if it's continuing to trend in one direction, the spread will always do better than that. So but is that one of your, you have any other favorites besides Costco that you've been playing? Alex: Not really. I mean, I don't think I've been doing it long enough. I guess SPX is another one I invested in several times since I started trading at the end of March. And I've been I have yet to, that is yet to fail me, so.. Allen: Right. So class started in January, you started with real money in March. Right now it's what is it? Start of September. So March, April, May, June, July, August, September. So seven months? You've been doing it for seven months? Cool. So do you feel that you're confident right now that you understand it? You got to you've if you needed to if you had to you could scale it up right now? Alex: Yeah, I think I think I could. I'm infinitely more confident than I was in January. The revelation that all the trades have to be balanced and so on. June was a turning point. I would say, okay, like I said, I started out up 1100 bucks and then all of a sudden at the end of the month I was at 35 bucks. I'm I'm trying to think what the word is.. Allen: It's like a wake up call? Alex: It's like a milestone or.. Allen: A turning point. Alex: Yeah, a turning point. I am at another level at this point. Allen: Okay. All right. So how long do you think it would take somebody else to to go from zero to okay, now I can actually do this, on average, like, how long do you think it should take somebody? Alex: I would say reasonably, two to three months, being part of your class was super helpful when you have the opportunity to work with someone that, you know, with your level of expertise and knowledge. That was huge. That was tremendous. I mean, every week jumping on the call, and going through watching everything you're doing, and hearing your thoughts about specific trades, and so on. That was that was tremendous. So that helps a lot. So I, you know, for me, it was two to three months where I was, you know, able to figure it out and start trading. Allen: And how much time did you put into the learning aspect and the doing it and focusing and watching the calls and all that stuff? Alex: Yeah. So I made an investment in your programs I wanted to get, I wanted to make the most of it. So we had the class every week, and then I, several times a week, I'd go back and listen to the, you know what, listen to the videos, I say, listen to the videos, I'd pull them up as I was, you know, exercising or whatever. And then I'd stop and make notes either on my phone or in my notebook, you know, but I had, I have notes of every class and, you know, go back and make sure I really understood everything go through with a fine toothcomb and truthfully, I haven't looked at the videos in a few months. But every time I'd go back and review the videos, it was like, oh, you know, it always find half a dozen new gems, you know? So, but so yeah, I would, I would spend several hours a week, in addition to the actual official session we had every afternoon, you know, every year. Allen: So but between between the the class time and the study time and the trading that you did, so, you know, like somebody listening to this, they're like, Yeah, you know what, I want to start this, but how much time should I put into it? How much time should it take me every week that they would devote to this? Alex: Yeah, I mean it's if starting off 5 to 10 hours a week, Allen: 5 to 10 a week, okay. Alex: I would say, you know, just thinking, you know, including the class and going back and transcribing the videos. And then doing my own trades, you know, I did 40. I've done 46 real trades today, but I did 37 paper trades. Some of them were purely recommendations from that you provided with us. So you provide it to the class and others were ones that I found on my own. In several instances, I identified a trade and then a few days later that you selected the same stock for the class. So that was, that was encouraging. But uhm. Allen: Okay. I mean, yeah, cuz sometimes people are like, you know, I work a job. I don't know if I could do this, but five to 10 hours a week, I think anybody, if they're serious about learning a new skill, learning about changing, you know, something that could change their life, potentially, I don't think five to 10 hours a week, is that big of a commitment or sacrifice to do something like this.. Alex: Yeah, no. And, you know, the things don't happen by magic. You know, I always like the the saying, the harder you work, the luckier you get. We create our luck, you know, and now I am nowhere near the expert that you and many people like you are, but you know, probably a couple days a week, I sit down and go through my list looking for trades. And then you know, maybe I have to sit if something's not going right, I have to make an adjustment. But now it's probably an hour, two hours, max per week. And that's, you know, that's being in not even two hours a week. You know, my trades. So.. Allen: Sweet. Yeah, I mean, so took a little bit in the beginning. But then once you got the hang of it, then obviously, it's gonna continue down. And now it's just, hey, it's already ingrained. I know what to do. I don't have to go watch the video and say, oh, what would Allen do in this situation? What am I supposed to do here? What does this mean? Now that you've done it so many times? It's just like second nature, where you're like, Okay, boom, boom, boom, steps up steps already in your head. Alex: Right, exactly. Allen: That was the reason that we did the class and the way we did it, where it's like, every week, we get on the call, and we just go through it step by step by step over and over and over again. So you guys can see it and ask questions along the way. And then you guys go, and you do it on your own. And then when you're like, oh, wait a minute, I got stuck. And then you come back and you say, Hey, I got stuck here. And I know you were the I mean, to be honest, you asked more questions than anybody else. And I loved it. And I was like, Man, this guy is into it. This guy's exciting guy. Yeah, he's doing great, you know, because you kept asking and asking and asking. And it really, really helped. Not only you, but also it helped me because I'm like, Okay, this is where they didn't understand. You know, like, if you came, you ask a question. I'm like, Man, I covered that. Okay, but he didn't get it. So let me go and go more detail. You know, let me make another video to address that specific. So he made the class better. So I wanted to thank you for that as well. Alex: I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm not afraid to ask dumb questions, that's for sure. But no, I mean, we'd kind of kind of compiled a list of all the things that we need to look for in a trade and what makes a good trade. And initially, I would go through my list line item by line item. And at this point, I just didn't, you know, I just, it's, I get it in my head, and I just go through, like you said, boom, boom, boom, and then I'm off to the next thing. So, in full disclosure, I probably spend more time than I need to watching like, a couple times a day, I'll pull up my phone and look at Thinkorswim to see how things are doing. And maybe down the road, I won't do that so much, but I still am curious and think about it during the day. Allen: So well, as you scale, it'll be more and more important to do that, you know, and like, I know, you have the funds that you could put into it. So when you do when you're not so busy and doing the other stuff. And you're like, Okay, let me let me make this a bigger part of the portfolio. At that point. You're gonna Yeah, I mean, but it doesn't even take that long. You know, it's like, Oh, hey, I'm going to the bathroom. Let me check my trades. Oh, okay, cool. Done, you know, but it's, to me, at least it's fun. You know, it's like, it's like, points, like, you're playing a video game. And it's just joins, and they're going up and down. And like, oh, no, I got it. So, to me, it's an interesting part of.. Alex: Yeah, no I really enjoy the process sitting down, I pull up my list, and I just, I go through it, I look at the charts. And, you know, I document, you know, something looks interesting, I write it down, I might do some analysis on it. And then once I go through the list, I come back and, and place my trade. So I really enjoy the process. Awesome. And then like I said, this is just like real estate, we, in real estate, you invest with the odds in your favor. And with the credit spreads and all the other options, strategies, you're investing with the odds, and you're trading with the options in your favor, you know, so just it just makes sense to me. Allen: Cool. So what do you what do you think the future is gonna hold for you now? Alex: I'm, like I said, I'm very interested in the passive trading formula program you have, I just, I want to be I want to, if I do it, I want to be present and focused on it. We're just like I said, we got a lot, we have a lot going on at the moment. But I want to expand my portfolio, I want to expand beyond credit spreads, I want to start using these strategies to buy and hold hold stocks for a longer period of time. And, you know, who knows, like when I'm not when I'm out, you know, as a landlord, fixing a, you know, I'm sitting under a sink, fixing a leaky pipe or chasing a tradesman to do something, you know, to fix something that they messed up on a build. I think about how nice would be to just sit behind my computer and have 100% of my income come from options. Yeah. Allen: You think that's ever gonna happen? Maybe we're gonna make that switch? Alex: Maybe I mentioned that family friend that has that was his has been doing this for decades. I mean, this, this is what he does, you know, he's got a significant stream of income from trading options. I think I told you about him. And I think his he loves Tesla. I guess that's what he focuses on a lot right now or the past so many years. So yeah. But he you know, he has a more than healthy stream of income, some purely from doing that. Allen: Right. Now, do you guys sit down and compare notes or get together? Alex: So I keep saying it's a family friend, this is a really good a couple of you know, it's one of my wife's childhood friends. It's her grandfather. So I talked like, he's the guy I don't, I've met him several times. But a lot of my what I'm sharing comes through the his granddaughter. So I'm actually trying to set up some time to sit down and talk to him specifically about this. Allen: She's the oil program yeah? Alex: He's in the oil program, and then she does she trades options on her or she sells options on her own based on what her grandfather taught her. Allen: That's awesome. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, you can see it right. It goes from generation to generation. And if you can pass that trade along, it's like, Man, my kids, my grandkids, they're not gonna have to work. They'll know what to do. And it's like using your mind instead of your skills and your body to actually go out and manual labor to do something. So it's really exciting. And I think you got lucky in that sense, where, you know, she, she introduced you to this world, but then you took it to the next level, and you're like, Hey, I'm going to learn this and you put in the time, the effort, and now you're seeing that it works. I still want to see you scale it a lot more. Alex: I'm sorry, I can't report huge earnings. But that's.. Allen: No no no, that's fine. It's not it's not about that. It's it's you know, the fact that you're doing it that's that's a that's a good thing, you know, and you're getting there you're doing it but I want to see you get a better for the time that you put in I want to see you get a better income back. You know what I mean? Because I know you could do it. I have I have 100% faith in you. I know you're doing it. I know you know how to do it. But instead of making just 100 bucks I want you to make like 1000 bucks per trade. So it's like, hey, yeah, you know, a little bit more skin in the game. I feel a lot more fun too. Alex: Yeah, you know, I'll tell you so I said in June I that's when I realized like, hey, all these trades have to be the same amount and I need to I need to scale up from 50 bucks a trade and Honestly, going from 50 to 100, was it took a little bit of a leap of faith. But already, you know, just several weeks later, I'm like, what was the big deal? You know? So.. Allen: It's all mental. It's all emotional, you know? And eventually, you know, you'll do it from 100, you go to 200 to 250. How many trades at one time do you put on? Alex: I was doing as many as 10. Allen: Okay Alex: Like the most was was 12. I know you in the class, we talked about just keeping it a manageable level. Now, since since June, it's been Max four trades. Allen: Okay. Okay. So I mean, if you're doing for them, maybe we could do a little bit more on each one. And see how that goes. Alex: Yeah, I mean, we, you know, what, I'm part of the appeal of the passive trading program is to be able to, you know, pick people's brains and get feedback from the group and ask you some of those specific questions. Hmm, maybe I should get on it not. Yeah, that now's the time. Maybe now's the time to just do it, you know? Allen: Yeah. I mean, if you I mean, but you you said, you know, you don't have all that time right now, because you got all the other projects going on. But like you said that it only takes maybe five hours a week to study. So if you got five hours a week, then yeah, you know, go get that one, it's gonna be now that you've understood, probably 80% of it, the rest of it is going to be pretty simple. You know, because now you know, what an option is, you know, what a call is, you know, what a putt is, you know, what a moving average is, you know, all the indicators and, and all the other stuff that we talked about almost 80% of it, you know, now it's like, okay, which stocks do I buy? And how do I do a covered call? How do I do a naked put rows, things you'll be able to pick up very quickly, because you've already got the foundation for it. So it's not going to take a lot of time. Most of the time, we tell people, Hey, do passive first so you understand the basics, like the covered call is the easiest trade, you know, puts are really easy. And then we get into spreads, you went to spreads first, which is fine. Most a lot of people do that. Because the stocks and the covered calls and naked puts they require a little bit more capital. So if you're going into spreads first, that's fine. The other ones will be a little bit simpler to actually understand and implement once you do Alex: Right. And I realize I'm leaving money on the table by not well beyond not doing bigger trades, you know, not doing the naked puts in the covered calls and so on. There's a lot of there's a lot more money out there. Allen: It's all up to you know, when you feel comfortable, and the time is right. You know, you'll you'll feel it inside you. But hey, you know what, now it's time for me to do this. So it's something that people regret. And they kicked themselves. Oh, man, I should have started 20 years ago. Yeah, but you didn't. So don't worry about it. Don't beat yourself up, forgive yourself, you know, let's just move on. Let's just do whatever works for us right now. Let's just be happy with it and move forward. So.. Alex: I'm doing it. I'm doing it. So.. Allen: Oh you're doing great. You're doing wonderful. And so is there anything else that you wanted to share with our audience? Any final tidbits or advice? Alex: Nothing really, I think we've talked about a lot I will tell you one funny story. I've heard you. You've talked about Disneyland a bunch. So we actually we picked up some passes in in May, or June, we went to we went to we went to Disney they had reduced capacity. So they you know, allegedly it was only 25% of their their allowable or max capacity. So we we had the run of the place, It was still pretty crowded. But man, we we got to go on every ride and never waited more than 15 minutes for anything that's outside. It was amazing. But here I am at the happiest place in the world. And my stocks are going sideways, you know, so I'm on the rides and my kids and we'll walk around the park and I keep looking at my phone and I'm watching Amazon go down. And you know, it's funny, you get emotionally involved in the trades. And in reality, it's 200 bucks, it's no big deal. But finally, by the end of day two, you know, I was out of Amazon and a couple other stocks and just I was able to relax. But it was I thought of you because I know you've been to Disney. You've talked about Disney World a bunch and.. Allen: yeah, I mean, if you're going on vacation, or you know, I've had some people they're like, Hey, I'm going into surgery or I'm doing this or do that. It's like hey, if you're gonna be out of it for a while, take the trade off. It's not worth ruining your vacation. Alex: It didn't ruin it, but it just funny that you know that. Like I said, I was at the happiest place in the world. And I had this I was battling with my with my trades, you know? Allen: Well, that's because you're still learning and so it's still a new thing for you. So I get it. It's exciting, you know. Alex: But you know, as far as parting thoughts, it was a tremendous program. I'm so glad I did it. You know when my family friend introduced us to the whole thing. I was just absolutely intrigued. I read your book, I read That book by the Wharton professor of being that the way to really beat the market is by acquiring stocks with dividends. And I wish I did know about this sooner. It's a very viable means of addition, it's proven to be a very viable means of additional income. And I'm really excited to expand what I'm doing and increase the results. Allen: I mean, you know, because of COVID, we did have a market shock, right, we had a bear market because of COVID. And then the government stepped in and they started printing money like crazy. And so since then stocks have been on a roll. So it's been a great time. So you did miss out on that part of it. But I do believe that, you know, once they stopped printing, and once they start raising the rates, things will stabilize a little bit. And then once the economy comes back, or you know, COVID gets a little bit more under control, and the supply chain issues get fixed and things get back to normal. I think the market and the stocks will be a great place to be as well, you know, so you're still a young guy. And so for the next 20 3040 years, there's a lot of appreciation, there's a lot of gains that you're going to have. Because you now have this skill. Right? And so it's nothing to feel bad about that. Oh, yeah, I wish I wish it started. Yeah. But now's as good a time as any to get started. Alex: I agree. Allen: I like I like what you said, but so thank you, Alex, thank you for everything. You know, it was a pleasure having you in the program and can't wait to see you in the passive program. Alex: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. It was fantastic. Really appreciate all the all the knowledge that you shared. Allen: Awesome. Thank you so much. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

Did you know that passive traders are some of the happiest traders out there? That's true. I'll tell you why in this episode. So the longer I trade, and I've been doing this, geez, it's been it's been a while. Okay. But it's been a while. And the longer I do it, the more I realize that the only thing that is holding me back, is myself. It's not the economy. It's not the stock market. It's not the Fed, it's not the government, it's not lack of money, or too much money or any of those issues. There's nothing - it's not an external issue. Because all of that stuff can be addressed. And it can be overcomed. It's not that hard. But internally, that's the stuff that takes the most work. Because most of the time, you don't even know what the issue is internally. And so the thing that separates winning traders from losing traders, is mentality - their mentality, specifically, I mean, you can give the same trade to two different traders, and one will win and the other one will lose. I've said this over and over again. Why? Well, mentality, it's their mental state. It's the stuff that they're thinking about. That's what's holding us back. Fear, stress, doubt, lack of confidence. All of these can limit your success in trading and in life. You see it all the time, you see people walking by like, "Oh, my God, this guy should have been so successful, but he's not, why he's not taking the right actions". Why? Because of fear, or stress, or doubt, or lack of confidence. So if you are not as successful as you want to be, the fastest way to fix it, is to work on yourself. Now, I didn't say it was easy, but it's the fastest. So how do you overcome the self-imposed limitations? How do you how do you fix this? Well, sometimes the answer that we're looking for, will not come from the stuff that we already know,right? Einstein said this, I think what they say - it's attributed, the quote is attributed to him, but nobody knows if he actually invented it or not. But the quote was that when you have a problem, you cannot use the same type of thinking, to find a solution for that problem. You have to change your thinking, you have to grow, you have to expand your mentality and look at it from a different way look at the problem in a different light, in order to see the answer, because otherwise the answer would be easier, and you just do it, you wouldn't have the problem in the first place. So in this case, I found an answer. From studies on relationships. Totally different, right? Have nothing to do with trading. What is what is having a good relationship have to do with trading? I'll tell you. One of the most respected experts in marital stability, his name is John Gottman. Okay. Now this guy has shown repeatedly that he can predict with 90% accuracy, which couples will stay together, and which will get divorced. So he can watch you and your spouse for a few minutes. And he'll tell you if you're going to last or not. So not only am I going to tell you why passive traders are happier, and how to be happier. But I'm also going to share with you how to improve your marriage. Looks pretty good, right? Not bad. 2 for 1 in this podcast. All right, you're welcome! All right, the difference between happy and unhappy couples is the balance between positive and negative interactions during conflict. So basically what this means is for every negative interaction you have with your spouse, you gotta have five or more positive interactions. Okay? So let's say your wife comes home, and she says something, maybe she asks you a question that you've already answered 100 times, and you look at her and you roll your eyes, that would be a negative interaction. But if she's sitting down, or you're walking, you know, you go for a walk, or you're in the mall or whatever, and you reach over and you grab her hand, and you hold her hand for a few seconds, that will be a positive interaction. All right? So you have the negative and the positive, couples that stay together, give each other five positive interactions for every one negative. These are just simple things, right? raising your voice, negative interaction. Giving a hug, positive interaction. So if you want to stay happy, make sure your ratio is five or more to one. There you go. Marriage, problem solved. Now, if you want to be a happier trader, you can use the same ratio, five winning trades to one losing trade. Maybe that's why I've never really met a happy day trader. Think about it. If you know people who trade - day traders are not the happiest bunch, they're not usually the most miserable bunch, right? Because they lose on most of their trades. They lose after lose after lose now, now yeah, the losses are smaller, and they try to make it up on one or two big ones. But most of the time, they're losing money. And that affects you mentally. Okay? But as passive traders, we win on most of our trades. So we get positive reinforcement, over and over and over. And that results in what? Well, less stress, more confidence in what you're doing, and in yourself, less doubt that it's going to work or not, because you've seen proof that it works over and over again. And less fear, not to mention more profits. So, you get everything right? You're happier, and you get more money, and the money does not come where you're not happy because of the money. The money comes when you are happier. Does that make sense? The money is a byproduct, you will trade properly when you are happier. And when you trade properly, then the money comes. So the money is the byproduct of trading properly, which happens when you are happier, which happens when you're passive trading. And you're just winning. So if you want a happy relationship, do five nice things for one bad one. If you want to be a happier trader, be a passive trader. Take care folks trader. Trade with the odds in your favor. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

 Back on Episode 96 of this podcast, I was talking about how to get started trading for a living. And that came about because I got an email from one of our students saying that he had just been laid off. And he needed some help, and some sounding board about what he should do. Should he go back to work? Should he new start trading full time? And he gave a little bit of the background? And you know, I read his email on that episode. And then I gave, I had written him an answer, but then I went into a little bit more detail in that episode. But right now I'm happy to say that I have Todd with me on the line here. And he is going to be giving us an update of what he decided to do, the situation, what happened and how he did it. So Todd, welcome to the show. Todd: Yeah, I am. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Allen: Yeah, I really appreciate you coming on. You know, it can be a little bit vulnerable, embarrassing a little bit, you know, when somebody gets laid off, it's, you know, not always under our control, especially when you're working. So I appreciate you taking the time to help us out here. Todd: Right, no problem. Allen: Cool. So can you go back a little bit and tell us so what exactly was the situation when you had sent that first email in? Todd: Yeah, so the situation was I ended up losing my job. It was due to budgets that were constrained because of the Coronavirus in response to that. And so some of the projects that I was working on, the funding got pushed out another year. And so they couldn't, you know, they couldn't compensate me anymore. So they laid me off. And at that point, I had already signed up for to have your blank check program, I was kind of starting to get, do the homework, but I really didn't have a lot of time to do it, when I was working full time and balancing family and, and then when I got laid off, it was more imminent. Todd: And so I thought, well, this might be an option that I I'll have more time to dive into it. And so that's what I did and I sent you an email and said, "Hey, Allen, is it really feasible that I could, you know, do this full time and at least cover my my hard cost- my expenses?" And that was my initial goal. I wanted to, you know, cover my mortgage bills, you know, monthly expenses. And, you know, your advice at that time was, yes, it is possible, it may take you a few months to get up to speed. So, and I think at that time, you said maybe you should look at getting a part time job, something like that. And, I ended up not doing that. I just kinda, I just kind of dove into it. And I think in the third month of trading, I was able to meet my goal. So that's amazing, right? So I met my initial goal of just covering my expenses. And, and then the next couple months, I increased my goal. And I think I was running about an average of 10% rate of return on my trades. So month to month, it was real positive. And I kept scaling up. So it's continued to be a positive experience. As you know, last month, it was a little bit volatile, a little bit of a roller coaster. I ended up getting out of that month, I think I met I was at 8% of my rate of return. So.. Allen: That's still really amazing. 8% a month is a good month. Todd: Right, right. So it's good for that. Now, what's changed recently is now that I've learned this, and I've gotten a little more in tune to the oil market, I'm actually out again, looking for a job and what I think I one of my plan is continue trading at this level, and then find a job. So I think I have more time during the days that I could I can do that. And and so hopefully I could go back make my original salary, and I can still, you know, profit from the trading. Allen: Oh, that's really interesting. Wow. I mean, yeah, I didn't see that coming. Todd: Right. Right. Allen: So okay, so you are in our oil options program. And you're also in another You said you were in another program which one the passive the passive trading. Todd: The passive trading program. Allen: So when you started trading full time, right after after the layoff? What did you focus on? What did you trade? Todd: I jumped, well, I went through about half the courses of the passive trading program and got a you know, learn what options are how they were, but I ended up migrating towards the blank check program with oil. I'm okay. With my job. I'm more in tune with the energy markets. It's more interesting to me. I can understand I can understand that supply and demand a little bit better. And so that just appealed to me. So I, I really dove into that. And that's what I'm doing 100% right now, in the future, you know, in the next couple months, I plan to go backwards more into the strategies that you teach in the passive trading and use probably use, you know, covered calls on, you know, on some other other trades, just to supplement. Allen: Right. Okay. Yeah, because in the passive program we do, you know, cover calls, naked puts, covered credit spreads and whatnot. And just to make a living, it's a little bit harder with covered calls and naked puts. We do have students doing it with credit spreads, but like you said, you know, when you need to go from zero to whatever it is cover the expenses, the oil one, it just, it has more, I guess, bang for your buck right away. Todd: Right, right. Allen: Credit spreads do too but the covered calls naked puts, I mean, those are, you know, maybe 1 to 3% probably, or profitability in a month, how much you can make a return? Well, we we go for 10 credit spreads, we go for 10. So those are more the strategies that if you're going full time, then yeah, I like what you said. Because, you know, once you have that coming in that extra cash coming in, then you're like, Okay, now what do I do with it? Okay, now, let's put it into building up that foundation that we talked about in the past program where you're putting in stocks, and you're just cash flowing that foundation. So cool. I like the thinking of it. So if you don't mind that what was that goal? The original goal? You know, you said it was okay to cover the expenses. How much was that? Todd: Yeah, the original goal was $5,000. Allen: Okay, and how long it took you three months to get there? Todd: Yeah, I think my third month I hit that. Okay. So the months before that, I was at about $2,500, $3,000. By the third month, I hit that. Allen: And how long have you been doing that? Like, how long has it been since you started full time? Todd: Since March? Okay. Since March. Allen: So September is almost nine months? No, seven, seven months? Todd: Right. This would be the seventh month. Allen: Okay. Awesome. Awesome. So we got seven months, and what was your best month? Todd: Best month was actually last month at about $8,000. Allen: Okay, awesome. Cool. So now, originally, when in your email, you said your wife was a little bit concerned? What do you What does she feel now? Todd: Well, she is, and it's more because she's just a little more conservative. Or I would say that her risk tolerance is a little bit less than mine. Right? So in her opinion, and rightfully so it's, we have a family, we have kids in the college, you know, so she's just don't comfortable with the fact that it's not sustainable. Every month, necessarily. Allen: It's just not that checks just doesn't come in every month. Right? Todd: Exactly. Yeah. Allen: It can vary.. Todd: It can vary. And, and so that's really what she's uncomfortable with. So, you know, if I think if I get another job on the side, and I do both, then I'll be more than sustainable. And I'll be bringing in, you know, more money than I that I was previously making. So.. Allen: And that'll get her to be a little bit more relaxed. Todd: Exactly. Exactly. So yeah. It'll be it'll be a win win for for everyone. Allen: Yeah, I mean, that's one of the reasons I started option genius was to get me off of her back. She was like, Hey, can you go leave me alone? Can you go do something else, you know, and she didn't I get where your wife is coming from, because my wife was coming from the same place. She's like, you know, you're doing the trades, you're looking at it every day. I don't know what you know, to me. It's just up and down, up and down, up and down. And so I don't feel secure. And for my wife, it was about security as like, you know, I need to know that I'm going to be able to pay the bills, or go to the grocery store, and my car's not gonna get declined, you know? So absolutely. So she's like, yes, if you can get me something on the side, then I'm okay with you trading, but that on the side has to come in. Like, okay, I think we can work on that. Todd: Right? Yeah, that's, that's a lot where we were so or where we are now. So. Okay, we're working through it. Allen: So the business that you were in, it was construction, right? Todd: Yeah. Construction Management. Allen: So that has, is that picked up again now? Todd: Yeah, it sort of has, I mean, it took a dip with the COVID. A lot of funding was frozen in the, you know, the immediate industry that I was in and, you know, things are picking up. So, yup. Allen: Okay, cool. So, all right. So let's recap. The industry that you're in had bit of a constriction. They didn't have any more work for you. Right, you decided, Hey, I'm going to try my hand at trading. Did you give yourself like a deadline, like I'm going to try it for three months or six months or I have like 50,000 I could lose, or did you have some kind of, you know, line at the end? Todd: Yeah, I think it was really like, three to five months. Okay, is what I was figuring. I mean, I was under a little bit of pressure and motivation, I guess, right? I really wanted to make it work. So I kind of went all in and was having, you know, good success. And so I kept going. So I, you know, is really, you get, like, get thrown to the wolves, right? You got to, you got to make it work. So that's really what I did. And that's how I learned by, you know, putting skin in the game, putting money in it. And that's where I really paid attention, and was my motivation to learn it. So.. Allen: That's awesome. So what would you say your return average has been on a monthly basis? Todd: I think I hit 10% every month, except this last month. Allen: Wow. So every month for like six months? You did 10? And then this last year? You did 8? Todd: 8. Yeah. Allen: That's phenomenal. That's amazing. Yeah. So then you started doing that. And obviously you had, you know, you had the the program. You know, you had the coaching calls, right? You had all the stuff that comes with it. But you had to actually do it. You had to get in and be like, Okay, I'm making the dishes, I'm going to put this I'm going to scale it, you decided when to scale. Kudos to you for that. And then now so Okay, so you've gotten you want your goal was like five, you've surpassed the goal, you're making more than you were making as a working. So how long does it take you to do your trading right now? Todd: Oh, yeah. You know, I spend about two hours a day, not just on trading, but on, you know, looking at news, educating myself, you know, looking at different websites. I, I probably spend two hours a day on on it. Yeah. Allen: So we're doing two hours a day, we're making a really nice income. But now you're gonna go back? Because you're going to basically you're diversifying, right? Correct. One income source. Now you're adding a second income source, which is going to take more time. But you know, going back to work, it does, you know, keep you mentally sharp gives you social interaction, there's there's several benefits of working with a lot of other people. And so that's going to give you so do you think you'll still be able to do the two hours a day of trading? Todd: Oh, I think so. I think I can still, you know, check in on it. First thing in the morning, I've got to the app on my phone, where I can keep tabs. And, you know, I think I need to jump in. You know, I certainly could do that for a few minutes during the day. And then, you know, check in again in the evening. So I think if I just keep tabs on it all day long, I can control what my positions are doing. Allen: Okay. Yeah because some people might listening to this might be like, what? This guy's crazy, he's doing so great. Why is he going to, you know, why doesn't he just continue to scale? Why is he going to go back to the workforce, you know, if he can, if he can take some of that money that he's throwing off every month that he doesn't need, you can put that in some other passive investment, maybe some rental properties, or investing in some other companies or whatnot? What would you say to that? Todd: Well, I think right now, like I just said, I have, you know, my kids are young adults. So I've got three kids in college right now. And so the expenses are pretty high. And so, you know, I think it's gonna benefit us if I can go back to work, get a regular paycheck, and do this on the side. You know, I'm almost twice as good as I was seven months ago. Allen: Right, and how long do you plan on working? Todd: You know, I don't know, I think probably at least get the kids out of college, and then, and then reassess. Right? You know, what we're doing. But I think one of the, you know, one of the benefits of trading is, you know, you can continue to do this, eventually, I'll retire. And once the kids get out of college, I could retire, I could do this. And I could do this. I'm sure. You know, as long as my mind is good, and into my 70s. Right? So so the long term plan is, keep trading. And I'll continue doing is as long as I'm able. Allen: Are you going to continue to scale it, or are you going to take that money and put it somewhere else? Todd: Well, I'll continue to scale it as far as I can on the oil and then I think you reach a limit where you have to do something else. Allen: Well, I mean, you already said that, right? You're putting it into the other stocks and the other.. Todd: Yeah so I'll put it in other socks and also with a, you know, I can't turn I can't trade retirement accounts and in oil, so I could trade that with, you know, some of the other strategies. Allen: Okay. Now, let me let me ask you on a on a personal level, because a lot of people they say they want to trade for a living, they say they want to go full time, right? But when it comes down to it, they just can't make the change they they either take too much risk, or they trade too much they over trade the under trade, they don't follow the rules. How did you stay emotionally grounded with that much pressure because it it does go for, you know, it has a lot of pressure, where it's like, hey, I need to not only just not lose money, but I have to make a certain amount. Otherwise, you know, maybe the lights get cut off, or I don't make the car payment. How did you handle that emotional pressure? Todd: Right, right, you're right, there's some pressure there, I think that, you know, I'm pretty easy going person, I can handle some of that stress and some of that risk. But on the other hand, I think you have to have a little bit of capital to absorb some of the downturns and I'm in a position where I have that it's not that I want to lose it. But you know, if it came to it, I could, I could lose a little bit and absorb that for a month or two. Right. So I think that's how I went through it. And but uh, you know, it does get a little bit stressful when you when you have some money on the line and the market turns against you. You can't make knee jerk reactions, you'd have to, you know, kind of settle down and maybe turn it off for a little bit and reassess. So, you know, just by doing that is the way I was successful that to keep a level head and not get my emotions into it. So.. Allen: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I mean, it's it's a really interesting story because you never hear that where it's like, Hey, you know, I learned a skill I'm doing great at it, but then I'm gonna do it part time and go back to you know, this my job. I've never I've seen people do it. But it's, it's something that nobody talks about, because it's like, you know, "I hate my job". "I can't wait to get out of here". You know, "I'm gonna go after you to my boss". You know, they have they actually have a term. It's called FU money. You know, it's like, when you make so much money, that you'd have to care what anybody else does or says to you. You could be like, I'm rich. I don't care. Todd: Well I'm not, I'm not there yet. And that's a problem. Allen: But you but it seems like you enjoy your job. Like, enjoy what you do? Todd: Yeah. My original career? Allen: Uh huh? Todd: Yeah, yeah. I enjoyed it. I mean, it was nice. You know, it's very nice. Getting involved in trading and, and, you know, making money this way. But, yeah, so I don't mind going back. And, you know, getting back into my old career. Allen: Okay, cool. So.. Alright, so if we were talking to Todd, eight months ago, what advice would you give him? Todd: Oh, you know, I really don't think I would do anything different. No, I would do something different. I would be more clear with my wife about what I was doing. I think that that was my biggest challenge. It was our largest challenge. And, you know, my wife wasn't really didn't want to take the time to understand what this was all about. And, you know, eventually I was able to explain it to her. And so she kind of came around, but, you know, it was she's just risk adverse. We didn't we don't have the same opinion. And I was probably didn't communicate enough with her and early enough. So yes, my advice would be communicate more with my wife and, and do it earlier and more often and clear. You could do that. So that was my biggest challenge really. Allen: Okay. So if there was somebody that came to you and asked you for your advice, like, hey, Todd, you know, you've had great success. You've been doing this for a while now, how do I do this? How do I get started? What would you tell? Todd: Yeah well, I was talking to a couple people, that would be my brothers. And they, you know, we got talking. And what I did is I said, hey, look up Allen's website, again, your website, and I said, you guys should do this. It's, you know, it's a way to get another income. So now two brothers that have signed up for your programs. So that's my initial advice - anyone who's interested.. Allen: And do you think that in terms of time, do you think three months was enough? Could you have done it sooner? Would it have taken longer? How did that feel? Todd: No, I think three months was enough time, I think, you know, speaking of another challenge was once you start making trades with your own money, because I did paper trading for I think a month. Once you start making trades with your own money, you know, you have to ease into it, because there's, there's really a mental capacity that you have to get used to and get over with. So for example, start with a start with a couple $1,000 trading, I think, you know, you probably need an account worth $10,000. But don't bet at all, you know, don't don't trade at all, leave a cushion. I think one of your rules is leave 50 to a minimum 30% out there to absorb fluctuations in the market. So I've done that and but Just like you said, don't overtrain don't get, don't do too much where you're uncomfortable with it. And it takes a couple months to kind of get used to that mentally. Allen: If you don't mind, how much did you start with? In your account? Todd: So I started with $40,000. Allen: Okay. Todd: And then I scaled that up to 100,000. Okay, eventually. Allen: Awesome. Awesome. Cool. Yeah. So you were okay with that risk? The 40,000? I mean, you know, obviously, you didn't use all of it at one time, but Todd: No, exactly. I've never used at all and, you know, I'm, what I'm comfortable with, I guess is that you're not risking all of that. You can control your risks a little bit more, and, you know, make adjustments. So you don't take on that enormous of a risk. Allen: And those of us who are well, not us, but others who are trying to do this, how did you handle the scaling? Like you started with 40? And then how did you know that? Okay, now I'm going to add more, I'm going to add more. Todd: Yeah. So once I got more comfortable with it, after about three months, I was just, I wanted to make more trades and, and my margin, I was pushing the limits of my margin. So I needed to add to my account. So that's the point that I added to my account, and then I kind of kept scaling up, but I kept enough margin reserve, you know, to be comfortable. So, you know, so I really scaled it up over, you know, a three month period, I guess. Allen: And when you started talking to your brothers, and I'm sure other people probably asked you, hey, Todd, you're not working? What are you doing all day long? And you told them? Well, I'm an option seller? What are they? How did they respond? Originally, in the beginning? Todd: Yeah, most people, I had to kind of educate what it was and what it was about. Yeah. And I think that my two brothers, and when I started talking about it, they actually knew people who were trading options, but they didn't know a whole lot more about it. And, you know, so I was able to educate them a little bit about what it's about, and I told them about my success that I was having, and then that got them more interested. So but yeah, for the majority of people, I typically have to tell them what it's about. And, you know, the difference between what stocks are and what options are, you know, options are a derivative of stocks are not the same. So really had to just educate them and some people got it. And some people, you know, weren't really interested in knowing more. Allen: Now, their eyes glaze over and they say that's too complicated, I don't care. I don't want to learn about it. Right. And I, you know, but everybody's different, everybody. So it's interesting, very few people have heard about it. So I mean, that's why we're trying to do the podcast, and thank you for coming on to spread the word. I think it's really important to hear from real people that are actually doing this real money real, you know, everything's on the line. We're not just doing back testing here, just coming up with strategies or theories. You're actually doing it every day, month in month out, and you've had a lot of success with it. So kudos to you. Congratulations. I hope that your wife eventually does come around. Right? Yeah, like mine. I mean, with mine, I guess, you know, eventually I got her her own business. Like she wanted to start her own business. And so I'm like, Yeah, sure. Let's do it. You know, and I'm like, okay, she's off my back now. So she's happy, she's running her thing. You know, she's making money there. So she doesn't even she doesn't even ask me anymore. Right? But because in the beginning, it was like, she would come home from work. And I if I had a, she'd look at my face. And she'd be like, "Oh, the markets up or the markets down today. Right? You look sad". And I'm like, "Yeah, the markets down today". You know, I'm sad. And then the next day, she come home, and I'd be sad. And she's like, "well, what happened? I checked the market, the market is up, you should be happy". I'm like, "Yeah, no, I'm sad because the markets up today", like every day, no matter what, I would still be sad in the beginning, while I was learning, so it was it was really a roller coaster for both of us. But I'm really happy that it didn't take you that long. For me, it took a little bit longer to actually understand everything and get through it and get to that point where "Yeah, okay, I'm making enough, you know, to pay all the bills", and it was a hard thing for me. Todd: Right? Well, and, you know, speak to my wife, she's a competent professional person herself. She's very successful. And it's our 26th wedding anniversary here this week so. Allen: Wow, congratulations. Todd: Yeah. But very proud of her. And, you know, we just got to get over this, this pump and move on. Allen: No, but you're doing great. I mean, look, the future is looking good. You added a skill. You know, now you have something under your belt, you're like you said it, you know, I could do this into my 70s we have people doing it into their 80s. So it and with all the technology and the health advancements that are coming down the pike, who knows maybe 100, 120 that will still be trading, you know, you never know. Todd: Right. So that's, it's a long term plan. Yeah. Allen: Yep. It's awesome. It's awesome. I love it. I love it. So any any final parting advice you'd give to our listeners? Todd: No just keep plugging away and, you know, keep track of your markets and your positions and don't over trade. So probably the best advice yeah. Allen: Awesome. Was there anything before you came to us? Were there any other stuff that you had tried that didn't work? Todd: No, I didn't. To tell you the truth. I, I was traveling a lot for my job. And I came across your podcast first. And so I was listening to your podcasts. While I was on the road that got me more interested. I was trying to look for something that, you know, could supplement my income. And so I got interested, and then eventually signed up for one of your programs. So no, I didn't try any other programs before I, you know, found yours. And, you know, I kind of checked it out and it looked like it was viable. And so, so that's how I got going. Allen: Awesome. Yeah. Great, great. Great, great to hear. Great to hear. I really appreciate you coming on. And you know, I wish you all the best of success. And, you know, you're in our program so if anybody wants to reach out to Todd, he'll be in our group. And thank you again for being here. Todd: Okay. Thanks, Allen. Allen: Hmm hmm Todd: All right. Take care.

Eddie shares his trading journey and how to transitioned from a Startup CEO to full time trader. Allen: Hey passive traders, how you doing? This is Allen back with another episode today I have one of my good friends with me, Mr. Eddie So. He is an amazing Options Trader and he is 100% bought in, he loves what he's doing. And he's going to share with us some of what he is doing some of his results and his lessons that he's learned along the way. How are you doing any? Eddie: Doing pretty good. How are you, Allen? Allen: Good, good. Welcome to the show. Thank you for doing this. Eddie: Sure. Happy to. Allen: So Eddie, tell me tell me what do you do? Eddie, what do you do? Who is Eddie? Eddie: Yeah, so I started my career. pretty young. I think I've held a job since I was 15. And then I got into, I guess, my career job, if you call it when I was about 19, I was actually in financial services, I worked for Citi group for almost 10 years, I started as a bank teller and worked my way up. And you know, it was at one point a manager managing branches. And then just before I left, I actually I was on my way to becoming a stock broker, basically, I was getting my licenses, and actually had my series 663, I was going through and getting my series 7. And I live in the San Francisco Bay area, right in the heart of the Silicon Valley. And at that time, was right before the dotcom boom, and or bust, I should say, booming. And, and I was, you know, I noticed all these young guys around me, you know, making really good money in tech. So I decided at that point to make a career change after 10 years, and I got into tech. And so for the last 20 some odd you over 20 years, I've been in the tech industry here in the valley, I you know, always in some sort of sales capacity, whether it's business development, or partnership sales. And when I sort of got out of the working world, yeah, I had worked up to the executive ranks. And I was running in sales teams and partnership sales teams, for various tech companies. So I've worked for companies, small and large, you know, small startups all the way up to really large, you know, 100 billion dollar companies. Allen: Awesome Eddie: And then I left tech and I started my own startup that has been something I had wanted to do. And unfortunately, I started right at in 2020; and right before COVID hit. So we took a little bit of a hit, I knew we wouldn't be able to weather the storm. But I knew I had to wait, right? And so we're still in stealth mode. But one of the things that I realized is going through options, and this whole Option Genius thing. And trading just sort of came back around. Because I was actually a little bored during the pandemic and I was looking at, you know, what else can I do? And you know, maybe I could get some income I used to trade and and that's how I stumbled across Option Genius. And then I came to the realization of, well, why am I putting all this money into my startup, I could be putting all this money into investing. And so I made the decision earlier this year, having gone through your program for probably like six to nine months, I had seen enough and done enough and experienced enough to make a decision that you know what, as of January 1, 2022, so next year, I am going to basically live off of trading, meaning I won't be doing my startup anymore, because I think a lot of money into a timing wasn't the greatest and I'm thinking my returns are a lot better with trading. And I don't work, you know, even you know, it's a fraction of what I've done in terms of work versus a startup. So.. Allen: That's a pretty big move right there..you know? Eddie: Yeah, you know, I've been pretty fortunate in my career. I've worked hard, I've been pretty fortunate as well I've been part of some IPOs in Valley here and so it's you know, it helped me be able to sort of save up the startup right to fund the startup because in you know we were all have few partners and we're self funded where we were not at the stage where we're you know, looking for funding so it's actually early enough for me to get out still, and still have a decent amount to invest to make a living off of Allen: So are you going to get that money back that you put in or is that lost? Eddie: Yeah, so I'm you know, I'm going to continue as an investor but more on the silent sort of investor side versus you know, being an operations so I'll get that money back eventually. I may even invest more into it but I just will be sort of a silent investor non operational versus what I am today which I pretty much general you know, GM right now. Allen: So Okay, so let me see if I can recap that. So you were doing you've been doing well. Obviously, you're in you know, San Francisco, very expensive to live there probably one of the most expensive cities in the world to live. So obviously, your expenses are pretty high and your income has to be pretty high to match. You decide, hey, you know what, I'm going to start my own company. So you start that, doesn't go as as expected. And so while you are trying to get that off the ground, decide, hey, you know what, let me try something else, too and I learned this whole Option thing. And then you said, Okay, I'm doing better at the options, then at my job thing, so I'm gonna just switch. Eddie: Exactly, and it takes so much less time, right? I mean, if anybody's started a company, like yourself, right, you know, you're working, you know, 24/7. And so for, you know, for a larger return, and a lower amount of work and time of working, you know, it's a no brainer. Allen: Right, so how long have you been doing options, the way you've been doing it now? Eddie: Well, the way I've been doing it now with Option Genius, it's probably about a year or so like, you know, when I was like a city, city group, I did some trading and you know, but that was sort of small time, I was mostly buying options, and I wasn't very successful at it. And then now, you know, during the pandemic, as I was looking around, and searching, researching, I started swing trading a little bit. There was a service through Investor's Business Daily IBD, that they had a swing trading program, that they, you know, they basically just tell you when to get in and get out. And I did that I wasn't very successful, and you had to sit in front of the computer all day, as soon as you got one of the alerts, you got to run back and put in the trade or get out. And so that didn't work out too well. And I did just didn't really like the model. And I stumbled across Option Genius, I think you guys came up in one of my social media feeds, I don't, I can't remember his facebook or something, or through the web, it was online somewhere. And I looked at all your courses. And I thought, wow, this is, you know, this is exactly what I want to learn, right? Because I knew about Option just from my financial background, but I never really got deep into it to the point where I was really confident and having, you know, consistent success. And that's when I dove in. And, you know, I started with the oil program, as you know.. Allen: Right.. Eddie: And had some successes there, which then got me very interested in as credit spreads or layup spreads, yeah, lay up spreads. And then, so then I joined and subscribed to Simon says, and then I got, you know, I thought, Wait, I want to learn how to do this myself. And so I joined your credit, credit credit mastery course. And then after that, I read your passive trading book. And I wanted to get into passive trading, because then again, that means less work ahead, and I joined the passive trading group. And then most recently, you know, everything has been great. I just keep on wanting to learn more. And I most recently, I just completed your iron condor course, right? And in my mind, I want to have different strategies to execute depending on what the market does, right? Directional trades are great when you have a great bull market running like we have. But I also want to be able to trade successfully if the market is just going sideways or down and just have the sort of Arsenal to be able to handle whatever the market does your courses do that right? you enable people like myself, your students to be able to have that sort of all around education or knowledge. Allen: Yep. Yep. I mean, we try to have something for every single market you know, and, and you kind of did it the opposite way. We kind of tell people "hey, you start with passive you know, build up something there, learn the basics, and then you can move up to credit spread mastery, and then iron condors and then get into oil last" because it's probably the most advanced he just you went the opposite way. And he started with the toughest one first, and then you, you end down but you know, either way it works as long as it makes sense. Right? So.. Eddie: Yeah, it made sense to me. And maybe because I had my financial background, but yeah, you're you're absolutely ready for somebody. Yeah, that was probably the thing for me. I wouldn't call it a regret but I wish I had to do over I will probably have started with passive trading and work my way up in that sort of curriculum the way that you just described I think starting with oil was a was definitely a little backwards. Allen: Yeah, I think maybe though, that might have helped you to get it off the ground faster. Eddie: True Allen: You know, because with the passive trading, there's different strategies involved. And so it's like, oh, do I do this one, let me learn about this one. They learn we learn about this and they learn we learn about this one. Sometimes people get confused or they get you know, it just takes too long for them to get through it. Where oil options is just one strategy you know, just say, hey.. Eddie: True. You're right. Allen: This is it. This is what we're doing this way we're doing it Boom, boom, boom, it works. Here's money. Oh, yeah, a success, right? Eddie: Yeah, you're right. Because thinking back that's what sort of got me into it and more excited as I was having quick successes with what I was learning in oil, which is what got me interested to the next one, and so forth. So yeah, you're probably right. Allen: I think we might have to restructure.. Eddie: The curriculum Allen: Yeah. So you've been doing this for about a year now? And how have you been doing, how are your results? Eddie: Pretty good, I'm at for the year, the date right around 60 a little higher than 62 or 63% year to date. So somewhere around there, and you know I follow the rules, right? And I shoot for 10% every month. The interesting thing though, is that when I looked back at my trades, what I learned is that every time I lost, it was because I didn't follow something in the rules. And so had I followed the rules. I think I would probably be somewhere in the 70s.. Allen: Okay. All right. Eddie: So lesson learned for me yeah is is you know, you just got to follow the rules don't let the emotions or anything get to you you know you have to be very disciplined in how you invest and if you you know those rules came from years of your knowledge and experience right? And doing this so you know, you just gotta follow and don't let anything else get in the way and you'll be fine. Allen: That's probably the hardest part, following the rules.. and it used to be me, I don't follow them 100% of the time either and then we get burned.. Eddie: Right! I sometimes think oh, you know, I think one of my mistakes earlier on I was I was actually I believe too much in the market or I was too much of an I was too optimistic if you will, I would be down on some and I wouldn't get out at 25% right which is what the rules say. And so you know then I watched it and I just watch it kept watching it and it just went down down down also and I'm in the money so you know luckily I was saved a few times where you know came back up and I took you know less of a loss but in general again you know, it's I should have just followed the rules and everything would have been fine. Allen: Yep, I mean well said. I mean it's easier it's easier said than done right? I mean you've been there and it's like okay emotionally I want to do it but it's gonna come back it's gonna come back and then that I think that discipline part is is the thing that comes in last after years and years of like, you know, getting your butt kicked over and over again, I think that finally we finally get smart enough to be like okay, fine I'm gonna get out you know and then eventually you get to the point where like right now it's all fresh it's all interesting and it's all new so the money aspect and you know getting that return and be like oh man, you know I want to get up to 100% this year. Oh, you know if that's your goal, it's really motivating eventually after a while you get to the point where you know what I'm just gonna try not to lose money - that becomes a whole new ballgame it's like yeah, I'm gonna put it on and most of the time it's just gonna work but the month that it you know the month that he gets in trouble I just don't want to lose money. You know? And then if that's if that works then overall at the end of the year I'm going to have fine, so it's not like we don't want the roller coasters we just want steady steady steady a little bit dip okay and then steady steady dip and if they so, but you'll get there I mean, eventually it just yeah, I think it's a natural progression mental aspect as well you know, it's not eventually you'll get to the point where they okay another winning month, go home, you know, it's not that exciting anymore. But yeah, so I mean 60 some percent for the year would you say 63? Eddie: 63 Allen: 63% for the year to date and I mean, we've only been you know, eight months so that's freaking incredible. You know, very kudos to you, man. That's awesome.  Eddie: No thank you. Appreciate it. Allen: So I did want you to show me or show everybody your license plate. That was really cool. what you just did. Eddie: Oh, yeah. I don't know if this was a podcast or.. Allen: We're recording. We're gonna show the video too, we put up on YouTube but.. Eddie: Yeah, so I just got this license plate. This is Yeah, I wanted to surprise Allen during this during this video. It just sort of shows how committed I am. You know, I love it. I live this stuff every day now. And it's exciting. I think it's exciting and fun. Right? And I wish I actually would have found out about this sooner and had done this when I was you know, a little younger even. You know, never too late. Allen: No. I mean for those of you guys who are listening on the podcast, Eddie has a license plate OP TRADER oh no sorry OG TRADER no was it OP, no OP TRADER, yes, Options Trader.. Eddie: ..for option trader. Allen: I like it. I like it. And I love the colors too. Looks really nice. So is that gonna go on your Lamborghini? Eddie: No, another car. It's already on there. One day, I can do that. Yeah. So no like that. Hopefully that tells you I'm all in. Allen: Okay, so now you said you're all in and you're going to make the switch permanently or full time to trading in a few months from now. So what size account will you be playing with at that time? Eddie: Yeah. So I think in order to be totally comfortable, being able to make a living, and also keep in mind that, you know, I'm not always going to get the 10% every month, it's going to be about a million dollars. And so the look at, you know, even Of course, 10% is great a month, right? On a million bucks. Yeah, you can definitely, you know, live off that. But even if.. Allen: Yeah I think you can you live off that. 100,000 a year. Eddie: Right? And I'm thinking, Jesus, you know, I could be doing this or putting money in the startup, right, which that will come but it's gonna take a little bit more time. This is more immediate. Allen: Okay, so now how are you going to break that up? Because you've done you're doing oil options, you're doing layups, and then you're also doing stock? So how are you spreading that out? Eddie: Yeah, so actually, before I even get to, to that, let me just mention I was gonna say this earlier is, I spoke with my accountant and he actually said, Hey, Eddie, you know, I advise you to actually form a business, create an LLC, and trade in your LLC, because you'll have certain tax benefits, you can write off the Commission's and the and the fees, and you can write all the courses you're taking, of course, I'm not giving, you know, accounting or tax advise here, this is just what my, my accountant told me. So everybody's listening, maybe you ask your own attorneys. But so what I've actually done was just earlier this week, I formed a new company in California - an LLC, just to trade and I'm in the process of opening an account with TD Ameritrade. So I can move from my personal account to this business account, you know, to trade, and there's some liability stuff to there that permit protection from you get sued. You know, they don't go after your personal assets. But I just thought I'd throw it in there. Because you know, it's important if you're going to do this full time, I think. Allen: Yeah, for sure, for sure. And then especially, like you said, the liability thing, you know, when you get into the bigger numbers, you get into a car accident, or your wife gets into a car accident, or somebody slips and falls in front of your house, they can go after all of your personal assets. That includes your trading account. So you know, if that's what you're using to pay all the bills, you want that set off aside in a separate place where nobody can touch it, and if it's a totally separate thing, so I really like the fact that you you've gone ahead and done that. It's very important. Eddie: Yeah, no, I thought it was too and I have some real estate too. And I keep that separate from that. And it just makes sense all around. Allen: Hmm, yep, yep. Okay. Eddie: And then so in terms of sort of how I split it up, right now, I'm doing about 75 to 80% credit spreads. Allen: Okay. Eddie: In my mind, I think that's a little high. That's why I took your iron condor course, because I felt like, you know, I, you know, in a good bull market, the credit spreads, directional trades, you know, we'll be successful. But what if we go into a sideways market? What am I going to do then. And so that's where the iron condors would come into play. And I also moved my IRA from JP Morgan to TD Ameritrade without paying somebody, you know, a good amount of money to manage it. I was part of their private client program. And they were doing everything and I'll paint a bunch of fees, I got my statement, I looked at a bunch of fees. And I'm like, you know, I could do better than this. So I got rid of them. And I just transferred it over to my TD Ameritrade account, so I can manage it myself. And what I plan on doing there is selling covered calls, and maybe cash secured puts and, yes, I have a you know, more well diversified portfolio than, you know, just doing mostly credit spreads. Allen: That's awesome. Yeah, so I was I was gonna say that, you know, if you're doing that much, and it's if that's the whole size, but obviously you have your trading account, and then you have your retirement funds. So in the retirement funds, we want something a little bit more stable, maybe, you know, something that's gonna instead of like our options, who you know, they last a month or two things expire, the stocks if you're owning or ETFs. Like if you get an index ETF or something, you can just hold on to that for the next, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, however you need to and keep cash flowing that so that's what we talked about in the passive program. And then in the credit spread mastery, that's the one that you're talking about with the the credit spreads and the layups. So, I guess, you know, I guess depending on what your goals are, you know how much you need every month. You might even, you probably don't need the whole million depending If you, you know, if you get aggressive and you use all of it or most of it, then obviously you're probably gonna have a lot left over. But you know, thinking about Hey, making 5, 6, 7 percent a month, that's still gonna grow pretty much. So I think we get to the point where, okay, you know, like you were talking about the discipline issue where "Hey, I'm gonna let it go", well now it's like, "okay, I don't need a whole 10% You know, I'm fine with like four. So if I'm up a nice amount, you know, do I wait until the end of the week? Or do I wait till expiration? Do I wait till I'm up 10% on this trade spread?" Maybe I don't, you know, I'm up 7% "Hey, I'm taking my money, and I'm going to the beach". I'm up, I'm done. I'm done for the month, I don't need to worry about it. So I think that gives you when you have more money than you need, because a lot of people do that they do the opposite, especially when they're like, Oh, yeah, I want to I want to get into trading. I'll do it full time. But I need to make $10,000 a month. Okay, great. How much money do you have to trade with? Oh, I have 50,000. It's no, it's not gonna work. You know, there, even if you have 100,000, if you have to make that 10% every month, that stress level on you, it just rises exponentially much higher that pressure, and then you start making mistakes. Allen: So I mean, you know, I don't know how much you need every month to survive. I'm assuming it's not going to be 100,000. But, you know, if it's like, "Hey, I have more money than I need. So I don't have to hit that 10% goal". If you can hit it, that's great. That's awesome. Maybe that's enough for two months, you know, and if you like "Hey, you know, for some of these months that we've talked about in the past, you know, some months are really rocky in the stock market, September being one of them, October being one of them. So if you have, you know, if you're doing really well and you're up 60, 70 80%, like you are now, September, October, maybe you're like, you know what, I think I'm gonna take a break, I'm gonna go on vacation these two months, and I'm not even going to risk it. Right? It's like, what's the, what's the thing, I could lose 30%? or I can make 10%? Do I want to try it? You know, and then maybe just don't and obviously, you'll see that when you actually do it over time. And you'll see what are your tendencies and what months are good for you and not and, but I really like the way that you're thinking about it, you know, it's like, hey, in a bull market, I'm going to be doing these spreads. Sideways market, I'm gonna switch over to condors a little bit more, you know, in the down market, you can go back to spreads, but the spreads, they'll work even in a sideways market. It's just, if it's very volatile, then that's the one that we don't want to play in, because we don't know exactly which way it's going. So if it's going sideways, we can still play a layup or a credit spread, but it's not as.. It won't be as comfortable as we normally are. Eddie: Right. Allen: So then how much of it how much of the account will be in Oil Options? Eddie: Probably around 15. Okay, times 20 that's a good amount on depending on the month, but again, you know, I want to diversify even more, if I can right? You know, I may even you know, later on when things get are sort of more streamlined for me, and I've reached my goal. I need to look into other commodities too, right? Besides oil. Yeah, well, you have that again, a further level of diversification besides equities and just oil. Allen: Right now how much time are you spending on your trading? Eddie: Not too much I spend a little bit of time when I'm putting the trades on so I do my research, I look at the charts just like you taught us you know, I'll take a look at news to see if there's anything affecting it Look at you know, all the different things on the checklist and the rules you gave us that takes I don't know maybe an hour when I do that, but after that and I usually do monthlies right and after I put it in and the rest of the month I'm in the morning you're just sort of looking at it, right? Maybe I'll look at it once in the morning once usually around noon before the market closes in Pacific time my time to just make sure nothing you know happened and then that's about it. And you know, then I'll work in most of the time if I'm up in a certain amount really fast for one particular stock or trade, I'll just get out and take the game and then go back in if there's enough time for the month so then you're sort of double dipping and so I'll watch for that and then you know and then apply that accordingly. I don't even adjust that much to be honest with you because I you know I thought about you know what Simon Says does write on his layup spreads and you know, the fact that you've done back testing and you know sometimes even if you don't adjust you end up doing better than trying to adjust and save the trade. I've gotten to a point where I just get out you know if it if it's you know, it's gone to a certain amount I'll get out and I you know, maybe I'll get back into that stock maybe the next month. But most of the time I've been getting into something else, and not worrying about that one, that lost one. Allen: If you can get to that level emotionally, it just takes all the stress away. You know, yeah, you'll you'll know at the beginning of the month, you'll be like, you know what I'm putting on these. And I'm gonna ask you this question, you know, how many trades do you put on every month at the, you know, at one time how many trades you have, but like, let's say you have 10 trades on you're like, you know what, I'm gonna probably gonna lose on two or three of these, the other ones, they're gonna make money. So when I get one, like, Oh, that was a loser. Okay, I'm taking it off. Let me go find something else. And that just takes all the stress away, instead of Oh, my God, this one has to come back. Whoa, yeah. And then you're watching it every day, and you're worried about it, and you're checking the news, watching, you know, your business channels and all that. And it just, it's not how it's supposed to work out. And the cool thing about the Simon says, trades, I mean, we have nine years of real money, you know, it's not even back tests. It's like real money trades, that are that are the results. And it's like, okay, okay, I think that, you know, it's been through up markets down markets, bear bull, all of them is like, Okay, I think this is a little bit stable. Now, I think this actually worked. So I feel pretty confident being like, Hey, you know what? This stuff works, you know, to go out and say it, before the first few years, I was kind of hesitant, you know, it'd be like, yeah, hey, this is our track record. You know, you make up your mind, you think about it, you look at it, and if you want to do it, you do it. But now after nine years, I can I think I'm pretty confident in saying, "Yeah, you know, this stuff works". So if you wanted to do it just do it, right, so, so let me ask you, how many trades do you have on total? Eddie: Well, this month, I'm being cautious, like you said, you know, you sort of warned the class and I so I'm in less, but typically, I'm in about 10 to 12 a month. Allen: Okay Eddie: Usually what I do is I have, instead of a 10% goal, which I use as a sort of an overall metric, I typically have a goal for $1 amount goal for each trade I put my place in, so I'll know and I'll put the same amount of money, the exact same amount of money in every trade, right? So not gonna do little here. And then more on this one, everything's the same. So across the board, so I know exactly. "Okay, What's a 10%? gain, for example? And what's 25% gain? What's that dollar amount, I can get in or whatever. And so, I know from the odds that, you know, you need to be doing about 10, trades, you know, 10, 12 trades in order to, for me to hit that dollar goal every month. And so, you know, so that's typically about 10 to 12. And I think, you know, you're telling us too, you sort of taught us, hey, in terms of the number of trades, you know, get don't get to a point where it's, you know, difficult to track, right, and I think, you know, be beyond 10 or 12, would probably be hard for me, I'll lose sort of lose sight. I don't follow the news. I'll miss stuff and so that seems to be the sweet spot. Again, according to the rules of where I try to stay about 10 or 12 a month. Allen: Right. Okay. Sounds good. So now, while you've been doing this, what was the biggest challenge that you faced in terms of implementing or learning? Or what was the hardest thing that you had to overcome? Eddie: You know, I think for me, if it's a little bit different, I actually jumped in pretty quickly. I didn't do very many paper trades. I think my you know, regret as I think, in the beginning, I was sort of too optimistic. And I would do a trade and I'd be, it'd be down, I'd be like, Oh, no, I'll go back up. And also, the next day is really down, right. And so if I had to do over again, I would probably do a lot more paper trading, to the point where I would do it for probably three months. And until I have that sort of consistent return, then I would maybe switch over again, this is what you teach in the class, and I didn't listen. And so you know, I mentioned before, the time that I lose is when I don't follow the rules. And this is one of the first rules you taught us. I didn't follow it. And in the beginning this last year, right? In 2020, when I first started, you know, I had a couple of couple of losses there that hurt. And, you know, but I've definitely learned from it. Allen: Right? Yeah. So if I remember, if I remember the first couple months, you took some you took a big loss. And then after that, then he was on fire, and you were just doing 10%, 10%, 10% every month. Yeah. Eddie: Yeah. After I learned the lesson of following the rules, I decided I told myself, you know what, I'm not going to let any you know, emotion, good or bad, optimistic or pessimistic? I'm just gonna follow the rules. And so I did that. And so I was doing pretty good. I was hitting, I think there's three months in a row where I hit 10% like running, you know, one month, month after month, and so I ended up doing pretty good. Allen: So do you think that's, that's what it was that what clicked for you? Is like, Hey, I'm just gonna, I'm just trying it on my own. I'm trying to, you know, adapt on my own, but if I just, I had there's a road there, I just need to follow the road. Eddie: Exactly I came to this point where, you know, I took a big loss. And I thought to myself, shoot, should I be doing this? And I thought about a thought about a loss and, you know, lost sleep over a couple of nights. And I thought, you know what, you know, these rules were developed, you know, on purpose. And it's based on years and years of trading experience, right from you and the team. And so why am I not following these rules. And so I had to have sort of that heart to heart with myself to say, Eddie, stop being too optimistic or stop, you know, doing things that are, you know, that go against you. Just follow it, do it for a few months, and see what happens. And that's what I did. And that's when I had those three consecutive months of percent. And then I'm like, now I'm looking back, you know, so wanted to, you know, sort of smack smack myself in the back in the head, you'll want to just do that in the first place. Right? So, but it was a lesson learned. And that's, you know, one of the things going into this year that I told myself, is that, you know, I must, you know, just follow the rules. And you know, I think we've done pretty well there. Allen: Cool. So now the spread trades, how do you find them? Eddie: Yeah, so I'll go through the charts exactly, as you explained it in the training, look at the trends pretty much step by step, what you look at, you know, what you shared with us, what really helped me is that the credit mastery course that I took- that was different than your other courses, because your other courses were mostly videos, and maybe some homework here and there, which is good because it you know, reinforces the knowledge that the credit mastery course was good in that we did it for three months straight, every week for a couple hours, the same trade, you know, same looking for the trade staying, you know, how to look for the trade, how to, you know, evaluate one trade against another, and, and, you know, then placing the trade, choosing the trade and then actually placing the trade. And that helps so much, because after that three months, and we're just doing it over and over again, where now I can you know, I know all the math and everything of what I need to do, I don't have to look at a cheat sheet, I'll just figure out on calculator real quick, what's the, you know, what's the max loss? What's the max, you know, Max, gain -  a note, you know, I have all that ready to go. So I could be a little bit faster. And so, you know, getting back to your, I guess your your question about how I go through the Choose the trade, really just I followed your steps. Allen: Do you have any favorites? Eddie: Yeah, so I've, um, I just haven't been in the tech industry for a while, I tend to like the tech sector. I mean, it's been obviously it's been doing well. So, you know, your your typical Google Apple, Cisco for a while, you know, those types of companies again, you know, what he taught us? You know, I don't do any smaller companies, right. I, you know, I want big, strong companies that, you know, won't, you know, won't lose a significant price overnight. Allen: Right. Eddie: So the big strong guys that usually in the tech sector, right now, as I mentioned before, I'm in Google for this period, and then PayPal, but I also try, obviously, you know, I try to diversify, too, right? I don't want everything in tech. Right? I don't want everything in credit spreads to begin with, that I don't want everything in tech, I try to mix it up a little bit. And you know, how I usually go with the trend of what's in the news, too, right? You know, okay, it's reopening stocks, okay, which kind of, you know, is a Travelocity or, you know, airline stock, and you know, and then if it's a, you know, it could be a growth, it could be a growth period, and I will look for growth period stocks, and pretty much look at the look at what's going on. Allen: Awesome. Cool. Okay. Now, you said that you've made the decision to go ahead and go full time. What was the trigger? Like, how did you feel comfortable to the point where, hey, you know, I'm ready to do this. How did you know that? Because a lot of people, they have that same goal. But for whatever reason, they're afraid to quit the job or they're afraid to go in full time or put all their money into this. What was it for you that mentally had you prepare? Because obviously, you have a family? So you know, you probably talked to them about it, and they had their input as well. And they have to be comfortable? Because if the wife says no, then it's kind of like a no. How did you get to that point? Eddie: You know, when I saw consistent results, where month after month, I was not just in the positive but sort of healthy, right? I mean, not everyone was 10%, obviously, right? I and I mentioned my 63% year to date, but I saw it, as soon as I saw that consistency. I knew that you know, I You know, there's definitely something there and I didn't obviously overnight, think about, you know, just quitting the job, whatever. And doing this full time, it was sort of an evolution, right? Where the first light bulb went off well, you know, there's consistent results here. And and I can do it month after month, and then is you when you get consistent you start having these ideas of all what, you know, what's next, what else can I do, right? And you know, what's the, you know, it opens up your opportunities, I guess, and you start thinking about what, you know, everything else, and it got to a point there also to putting money and investing money in my startup, you know, I saw I didn't see the return right away, I know what's gonna come, there's no doubt about that, I believe in my partners, etc. But the results weren't coming month after month, right that you had, it's a long term investment, you sink a lot of money into it, and just don't see the results have passed. And so because of that consistency, and my ability to sort of do it myself, right, and produce those results. That's what got me thinking, hmm, why should I continue to put money in the startup when I can be putting it, you know, into trading and be able to, hopefully, right, earn a pretty good living right?  Allen: Where you're getting paid by working at the startup. Eddie: We were in stealth mode for a little over a year, I wasn't getting paid regularly. But my partners and I had all been in tech before and you know, we had some IPO, money set aside and savings again, we were self funding this thing, right? That I wasn't paying myself regularly. So that was another thing is that and that's actually one of the reasons why I look to see during the pandemic, I was a little bored. Because you can only do so much when you start a company when you're in the pandemic. So that's one of the reasons I started looking out there to see what else was there and, you know, looking at options, etc, reminded me of my financial services days, and that's when I decided to take the plunge. Allen: Awesome. Okay, so yeah, and I mean, I know you're, you're a smart guy, so you probably do also have a backup plan. Right? I would assume that if you needed to, you could go back to working at the startup. Eddie: Oh, yeah, no question, right? I mean, I've got Yeah, absolutely. That was part of the consideration is that if all else fails, if the market tanks or whatever, I can always go out and get back into tech, I can, you know, go back into my startup, right in a more active role. So yeah, there's definitely you know, Plan B, Plan C, but you know, having a taste of this sort of lifestyle of the trading lifestyle I mean, once you have that experience for a couple of months you know.. Allen: It's hard to go back. Eddie: It's hard to go back. And so now you know, I'm at the point where and maybe this is mean with just daydreaming but you know, I always wanted to give back more than I am now, right? I mean, I volunteer at my church every Sunday and you know, I donate and etc. but I knew I could be doing more and so I thought you know what, after if I can really make this thing work I'm gonna have a lot more time and probably financially be able to contribute more than I am now. And so that's another way you know now that I'm sort of getting closer to that July 1 deadline I set for myself you know, I'm already picturing 6 months 12 months down the line of this thing successful. What am I going to do after that? And so I would love to volunteer more I would love to contribute more financially to different causes. And look how I can do more from that perspective. Allen: That's awesome i love it i love it i love the fact that you're giving back you know i mean that's the primary goals of me starting Option Genius was like hey, you know let me help people make more money so that they can then use that to go and make the world better cuz I can't do that myself so you know like I try but it's not I'm just one person but if we have a whole army of people that feel the same way and that they don't have that stress of you know, I gotta go get my money today, I gotta go get my paychec,k I gotta go cash this and there's not enough left at the end of the month where I can actually go out and help somebody else. I think if we have a whole army of people who are doing it this way it'll help definitely spread the good word and.. Eddie: Absolutely Allen: ..be better so what do you think the future holds for you now? Eddie: Well, I'm gonna continue working on the goal. Hopefully I'll report back you know maybe first second quarter next year and share with you know how I'm doing I mean we talk every week on our calls anyways but you know we could do a follow up then but  Allen: Yep would love to do that. Eddie: No, I you know, i'm well on my way now. I'm pretty prepared waiting for some last minute things like forming the business entity and waiting for that to come through and you know, just sort of logistical things like that before I actually start you know, going off in 100% so no I want to thank you and your team you know, I, gosh you know, I think about if I hadn't stumbled across right, you know all the great stuff that you guys are sharing and teaching you know I wouldn't have this you know, I wouldn't be here and I wouldn't be you know, have this opportunity by and I'd probably still be not that as a bad thing by be you know, still working a startup but the, again the return wouldn't come for you know, a number of years versus you know, almost a near instantaneous with trading the way you've taught us. So I thank you and you have a great staff on your team very responsive. You know, sometimes when I freak out and I have a question, you know, I'll send it over and Cory or yourself will, you know, send an answer right back so it makes me feel, you know, feel good that I have that sort of support, plus the you know, Facebook group, the weekly calls that we do All of that is you know it's very helpful because you can't do it alone. You have to, especially in something like this where you're, what you're taking on. If you do it yourself, it could take you ages but if you have a group, you have a leader that can share with you what they had done so you can learn from it and do it too and then you have that support network like I go back and forth on on chat with with Nelson in our group, you know, you make friends right and then you you know, you have that support network you know, and you encourage each other to to do better. Allen: Yep, I mean, you know, slowly slowly we're getting there where we're building up this whole system and I think you know, I mean it's been a pleasure to work with he's been a pleasure to to help you and to hang out with you and talk to you and I mean, you've done it you've done everything you know, when you've taken everything and you've you've used it you've learned it you've internalized it and then you've actually implemented it. There's a lot of people that get to that point but they don't implement or they get stuck somewhere along the way and it's you know, but you had a you had a dream you had a reason a goal and you were like okay, I'm gonna take this it makes sense to me I'm gonna try it and then it worked. And then you just kept going with it. So kudos to you and congratulations on all your support and it's been a it's been a wonderful No, it's been a wonderful experience to have you with us. Eddie: Thank you. Thank you But one thing I will mention though, Alan is that I think the key for you know, anybody that's thinking about doing this is just do it. Right? You can start small, right? You don't have to start you know, do paper trade you just start with a few grand and just do it and learn it and anybody can do it right? You don't have to have a big account you know, just getting started is much better than than doing nothing nothing at all. So that's what I would you know, say to encourage other people that are thinking about doing this is you really have nothing to lose you know by by doing this I mean, the tuition fees that I pay were made up probably within my first couple of things, right? So you know, there's absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain. Allen: Yep. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. One last piece. I don't know I mean, this doesn't have anything to do trading and this is for those of you guys who are listening. I'm not an accountant or an expert on this. But you said you were opening your company in California. Did you look at opening it in a different state? Eddie: Yeah, I actually.. It's a good question. I looked at Delaware Allen: Okay Eddie: And I actually opened my startup filed in Delaware because there are some laws there that again speak with your own attorney but that are more favorable to business owners over there. I didn't feel like I needed it here with with just a trading you know, because I'm not I won't have clients or anything with my trading account it's just me doing my my own trading that I didn't meet really need the Delaware protections Allen: Okay, but in a tax point of view, because I know, California does have state corporate tax, right? Eddie: They do in terms of there's a couple of things that my account was explaining to me like mark to market and things that we'll be able to do. I can't remember the specific but I can't tell you that the good outweighed the bad. Allen: Okay, as long as you looked at it, that's fine. You know, because I've heard a lot and you know, whenever we're opening a corporation in Texas, I don't have a problem because there's no corporate tax. But that's what people say that hey, there's no personal income tax here, or there's none in Florida. But even for opening a corporation. I've heard lately that hey, you know, Texas is okay, Florida is okay. Delaware is really great if you're going to go public because there are banks, you know, like banking, those guys, they have a lot of protections there. Nevada is a really good one for other things. So okay, but as long as you have a cover, that's cool. I just wanted to ask Eddie: Yeah, cool, cool.  Allen: Cool. Cool. Cool. Any final takeaways or bits of advice you got I mean, you shared a lot but if anything else that's.. Eddie: No, I think I'll report back in you know, next year but again, a big thank you I mean, I you know, this journey has been awesome. I mean, of course, I mentioned that, you know, in the beginning you know, it took some hits, and you know, I would say you know anybody thinking about doing this, do it - don't get discouraged, you're gonna have ups and downs, that's just you sort of built in, but there's definitely a lot more ups than downs. So, you know, doing stuff like this is a lot better than doing nothing at all. And so I would encourage everybody to, you know, jump right into it and learn. Allen: Awesome. Eddie: And again, a big thank you to you and your team as well. Allen: You're welcome. You're very welcome. But thank you so much for being here and helping us out. Of course, Eddie: Anytime

Opportunities don't last. Now as I record this episode, Bitcoin is trading somewhere around $50,000 a coin. And no, this is not going to be an episode about Bitcoin. So just hang with me, okay? Some people are saying though, that Bitcoin is going to go all the way to $100,000. Some people are saying it's going to go up to $500,000. Now that'd be great, right? For people who own Bitcoin, I mean, I have some, so that would be great. If it goes up, that'd be really nice. I mean, a 10x return from 50 to 500,000. But how long is that really going to take? I mean, might take years, might take decades? I mean, the more expensive something gets, the more money it's going to take. buying it to move it higher, right? What if you had bought it when it was like $10 a coin? Back in 2013? It was bad. He was at price to 10 bucks a coin somewhere around there. And then it jumped up to $220. That's a 20x return. Wow, how long do you think that took, right? To go from 10? To 220? How long do you think it take really long? How long do you think it took? It took four bucks. That's it just four months, 20x return. So I think that it's safe to say that the easy money in Bitcoin has already been made. I mean, sure, you can hang on to it, you know, you could buy some at 50,000 a coin, and it might go to 70,000; 100,000; 200,000, that would be a really nice return. But I don't know how long it's going to take. The easy money has already been made. My point is that in life, we are presented with many different opportunities. Almost every day, there's a new opportunity presented to us. Some of them suck, most of them. Right? Your brother-in-law comes with a can't miss, you know, get rich quick scheme is probably gonna suck. Right? Some are okay, some are good. And then there are a few that are amazing - life changing. And realistically, you only need one or two of those life changing ones to change your life to be amazing. But they don't last. That's what I came to realize that they don't last. Now, in my last job, only real job I really had. We taught people how to get into and train for the mortgage business. We trained mortgage brokers. This was way back in 2001. And business was booming. And so my boss was taking things slowly. I mean, for him, it was just a cash cow. Money just kept coming and kept coming in. I mean, we were dominating that market. But we knew that we were leaving millions on the table by moving slowly. But that was okay with my boss. Oh, right, who's gonna go against the bus? We thought that we would be doing that for years. Because I mean, mortgages are not going anywhere, right? Who can afford a 200; 300; 400; $500,000 house, you got to have a mortgage, if not a mortgage is going to be some other kind of loan event or something like that mortgages are not going anywhere. So we're in the right industry. Or so we thought. But then in the financial crisis, everything stopped. They stopped doing mortgages. And so people didn't need our training and our marketing training to do nothing because they couldn't get their loans approved. And the legislature, right? They wanted to find a scapegoat. They wanted to find "hey who causes financial crisis"? And so who do they listen to? They listen to the lobbyist, and who had the best lobbyist. The people with the most money, the banks, the people that were actually approving the loads, right? And so they listened to the lobbyists and they blamed everything on the mortgage brokers. So industry changed. Mortgage brokers, the rules change for them, and most of them were put out of business and out of work overnight. The opportunity ended. Now it's been several years since then. There are, there has been an uptick now in mortgage brokers. So that kind of industry is kind of coming back now. But that was a long time ago that opportunity ended and it's not going to be like that again, right? When we are in the middle of an opportunity, we feel that we have time that it will last for long, long periods of time, that there we will be able to get to it eventually, even if we're not doing it now it's like, oh, yeah, I know about that. I'm going to get to it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to take advantage of it. It's gonna be great when that happens. And many times we do get in. Sometimes we don't, but sometimes we do. But usually, after the easy money has already been made, and now we curse our luck. "Oh, man. Sure got in earlier. Oh, man, this doesn't work, man". Now, look, we all know that self-driving cars are coming. Right? We see the headlines that had self driving cars, coolest new thing, eventually, technology is going to be there. I test drove a Tesla just to check it out. And it was awesome. Really, really, really cool that it can drive by itself, parked by itself, drive by yourself changed lanes in traffic. I mean, it was scary. But it was really cool. I mean, you can see the future right there. Now I love driving but I still I want to self driving. You know, I love to drive. But I want that opportunity to be able to do that. Now, before it seems like we're going to get self driving cars. Maybe before everybody gets a self driving car, you know what we're gonna have? I think we're gonna have self driving trucks before that. 18 wheelers, semis, those big ones, the big ones that have been hauling the crates around and the cars and you know, the big trucks, the 18 Wheeler trucks. They already have self driving semis in Florida, all over Florida. self driving semi trucks, 18 wheelers, with no driver in the truck. If anything goes wrong, sorry there's no driver there to fix it. And these trucks have already driven millions of miles on Florida highways already done. Now they're coming to Texas highways for more testing, but they've already driven millions of miles. Now currently, there are over 5 million in this country, truck drivers, taxi drivers and Uber drivers, their opportunity is ending. If they don't see that already, then they need to open their eyes. And then you have all their technologies, you got virtual reality, you got artificial intelligence, you put those two together and the stuff that they're coming out with the opportunity for many other fields is coming to an end too - very quickly, probably much faster than we can even anticipate. Paralegals, translators, bookkeepers, accountants, and so so many more, they're all going the way of the truck driver. Now, after the corona bear market in 2020, stock market rebounded and stocks jumped, those that bought close to the lows, rode the markets higher. But those people, those traders, those investors that waited until close to the end of the year, missed out on amazing gains of 200, 300, 400% - because by then, the easy money had already been made. Now Sure, even after that stocks kept going up, but not nearly as much as they did earlier. So I'm just trying to give you different examples of opportunities that you've had come in front of you. Now I don't know if you took advantage or not. But my point is that whenever we're faced with an opportunity, sometimes we don't see it for what it is. And we don't know when it's going to end. And so we think "oh yeah, I'll get to it. Oh, yeah, maybeit will be no, no, I'll wait to see what happens" and then you miss it. Passive trading right now is an easy money territory. It's been doing amazing for years. But how long will that last? Up till now, option selling has been pretty much under the radar. Few people know about it. Not too many people know how to do it. People come and go, especially when the market changes. You know, some people come in, they're experts, and then they get wiped out because they didn't really know what they're doing and they leave. But now, at least for me, I'm trying to spread the word I'm trying to fight, spread passive trading to everybody. And even if they don't do it to the point where they're trading for a living, but even if they make a couple of $1,000 extra a month, that's fine. I'm happy with that, that I was able to help those people. So yeah, maybe I'm part of the problem. Maybe I'm part of the reason that passive trading, the opportunity might go away. But I don't right now I don't see anything on the horizon that will lead to its demise. Okay, but then I didn't see the financial crisis happening either. You know, my crystal ball, I don't know, you know, in terms of crisises, and stuff like that. Not that good. Now, right now is the time to take advantage of passive trading. The time to spend time learning and mastering is now. The time to find a mentor and speed up your journey is now. The time to maybe commit more resources to your passive trading is now before this opportunity passes you by, or the easy money is made. Now, options have been around for decades, and they will continue to be around because they serve a purpose in the market. But as more and more people find out about selling options, and passive trading, the amounts that we will make, will eventually start declining. until maybe one day, it won't be viable for us home gamers anymore. That could happen. Right? If 10 million people are trying to sell the same option, it's just gonna go down, down, down, down down in value until it's very cheap, and it's not worth trading anymore. That could happen. The good news is, you still have time is we got a long way before that ever happens. Okay, probably a couple decades. if not more, to take advantage. But that does not mean that you should be waiting does not mean that you should not get in now. So commit now, jump in now. Avail yourself before the easy money is made. And don't forget, always trade with the odds in your favor. Take care, talk to you soon. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Allen: All right, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast today I have with me, Matthew D'Ambrosi .He's one of our passive traders. And he's gonna be telling us how he got started and how he's doing pretty well right now. How are you doing, Matthew? Matt: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on. Allen: Cool. Cool. So how'd you get started with Option Genius?  Matt: Well, I have to actually go back, it's been quite a journey, I have to say, you know, it's more like a 15 year journey for me. Allen: Wow. You know, I was given a book by my sister at age 30. And I was a young guy, and I was just more not interested in reading books just kind of floating through life, didn't really have much direction. And the book was called "Automatic Millionaire" by David Bach. Allen: Okay. Matt: In that book, I wasn't really interested in reading it, but she handed it to me. So I said, at least go through it. And I started thumbing through and I came upon a compound interest chart. And it showed, you know, you're 19 years old, and you put $2,000 into an IRA, or Roth IRA, and you did that, and you continue to do that, it would be well over a million by the time you're 65. So I was caught immediately by that. And that's kind of where my journey began. So I took that information, and started reading more books. And I came across Dave Ramsey. He's kind of like a financial soldier, if you will, you know, to get out of debt. Yeah, kind of get your stuff together. And I started, I always thought about making money and you know, retiring early, it was always a thought of mine, it was a gold mine, it was definitely what I wanted to do. And I always felt like 65 is when I would do it just like everybody else. And I continue to read more, I read numerous articles and books. And about two years ago, I went to a workshop, and I was learning how to invest. And they introduced me to options and selling options. And I was told that everyone else was told, you know, it was risky. Don't touch it. There's a whole another world to me. Allen: Have you done any stocks or options before that? Matt: No, absolutely not. Allen: No stocks either? Matt: Not really, you know, I was more into mutual funds, I had gave my money to an advisor, I just believe that people had your best interest. And they're great advisors out there. I'm not saying they're not. But it really started me to take a hard look about how money is handled. And you're much better off if you take the plunge and believe in yourself and start looking into deeper and see that they can really work out for you if you're willing to take or have the interest really to go and look at that. So I started paper trading. And then I was wondering who else does this so I started searching. And then I came across your name, and I have to hand it to your master marketer. I've never had anyone hit my inbox like you. So I started listening to all your podcast, taking little by little, you know, all the information that you give out there and started little by little paper trading. And then I started making money slowly, you know, doing one contract, then adding two. And then now I'm pretty much on my goal to replace my income. And that's my ultimate goal so... Allen: Awesome. Matt: Just a regular guy, you know, I just kind of happy to be here. I'm really happy to be here today. Because I want to get the message out that you know, you're teaching just normal people like me, who have no experience at this. And it's really a wonderful thing if you're willing to get a hold of your fears and take a stab at it. Allen: Right. So you started about two years ago, you said? Matt: Yeah, about two years ago yeah. Allen: Oh two years ago. Okay. And you're still working? Matt: I am, yep. Allen: Okay, what do you do during the day? Matt: So I'm a forklift driver and it's tough work. It's very laborsome. And trading has allowed me to look at money in a different way. I just don't look at money as scarce as it was. So it's a whole different mindset. Allen: Yeah. So how do you find time during the day to trade? Matt: Generally I don't go until about 2:30 in the afternoon, and I go on to 2:30 at work so I spend the mornings pretty much studying and paper trading and learning and then even after work at 11 o'clock, sometimes I'll be up till 1am or so learning as well and paper trading and trying to think about things and whatnot so.. Allen: So you're all in? Matt: All in, absolutely. They say burn the ships and I burnt them. Allen: So what was your first trade? Matt: First trade I did was credit spread. I did far away from the money for about just one contract and I made like 18 bucks. It wasn't much but you know, you're, you talked about the options continuum. That was in that stage where I was very nervous and you know, you have these feelings and you feel like you're gonna lose all your money. And that's not true, if you study and really take what you have to teach, and I took it very slow and got into it. So after that, after you do, there's something about to do first live trade, it kind of clicks with you like, okay, that wasn't so bad, you know, not the think of the worst that can happen. So, yeah, I did it. And it's been a, you know, I'm gaining confidence each and every week. And, yeah, we just continue to evolve on that continuum. Allen: Cool. So if I can recap. So basically, you want to get into investing because you didn't like where it was going. And you didn't want to wait around till 65 to, you know, have a nest egg and retire and have somebody else in charge of your money. So you started looking at it for yourself, and you've been putting in time you've been studying, researching trading, paper trading? What else is it that you want to achieve, besides just the money aspect? Like what what is it about the trading that is, you know, speaks to you on a deeper level? Matt: Yeah, I think the main part and it's different for everybody, for me, it's actually you know, as you get older, you realize you don't know how much time you have on this earth. And, you know, you start looking at things like, Hey, you know, the time is right now. And if I can find a way to free up some time, I'm going to seize it, because I never want to look back and say, "Hey, you know, I got to 65" I'd be glad if I do. But to spend time with friends and family, I got, you know, parents are almost in their 80s, I would love to just free up just a little bit of time and already am and I'm already you know, I already feel successful. And that, you know, I found something that I can do and free some time up and actually see them. Allen: Okay. So when you say you feel successful, what does that mean in numbers? Matt: Numbers to me, it's like just even $500. And it's different for everybody. There's no doubt. I mean, $500 extra dollars a month is successful to me. It gives you just a little bit of breathing room. I'm a simple person, I don't need a lot. I drive a 2200 accord. I mean, it looks like it's gonna fall off the road. I'm not a man to really, you know, I love great things. I would love to get in a nice, wonderful car, but it's not the main driver for me. The main drivers just to spend quality time family and friends. Absolutely. Allen: Nice. Nice. Okay. So would you mind sharing how large your trading account is now? Matt: Yeah, I started with in the brokerage account, I started about 2 Grand, and I'm already up to about 16 right now. Allen: Wow, in two years? Yeah, that's phenomenal. Matt: Yeah, I mean, I'm also adding to it too, but.. Allen: Okay. Matt: It's amazing to see the compound interest grow. And I haven't been really calculating it like dollar for dollar. But I'm just more really tuned into just being successful and working through the trades. And not really focusing so much on, you know, $1 amount just being, "Hey, let me get this tray. Let me monitor it. Let me look at it. Let me learn from it". If I have any problems, if I look at it as a learning experience, I have to continue to go I want to be in it forever. You know, I want to continue to I want to be that guy standing, you know, 10 years, 15 years from now and still doing this. Allen: Okay, so you don't want to be a forklift driver anymore? Matt: No, I say, you know, I'm sure there are a lot of people who listen to podcast saying I hate my job. I do not I actually enjoy driving a forklift. I just don't want to drive 40 hours a week. Allen: Okay. Okay, so what type of strategies are you using? Matt: So right now I'm doing a lot of bull put spreads, I've ventured into bear call spreads. I'm also doing covered calls. I haven't done any naked puts yet. So I'm really kind of looking at some companies and, uh, you know, I want to know more about the companies and look at stable companies like you teach us and start doing options off of them. So, it's an ongoing process and what amazes me that you don't need to do a lot of different strategies to be successful. Allen: Right, right. Right. Okay. What's your if you had to only pick one, which was your favorite? Matt: At the moment, it'd be a bull put spread, but I have a feeling that's gonna change. Allen: Yeah depending on the market. Matt: Also venturing into into oil, like you're teaching in your program. Allen: Cool. Yeah. Welcome to that program. Yeah, it's definitely it's definitely the next level of stuff. You know, it moves faster, and it's more leverage. So the numbers are bigger. Matt: Yeah. Allen: Cool. So have you tried anything else that didn't work? Matt: You know, I've done about 60 trades so far. I've lost one. And I got out early, it would have worked out. And it was my first time losing money, but I look at as a big lesson. You know, there's a lot of feelings. I listened to one of your podcasts where you talked about how you lost and the feelings that surround that. Right. I think you have to kind of reevaluate and find the lesson in it. And the lesson I found in that trade was that I was trading too heavy. I was a little bit. I was actually doing too many contracts. I was a little bit too uncomfortable. Matt: So that it was is a really good learning experience to say, Hey, you know, I'm not really comfortable risking that much money. Let me just pare it back a little bit. And think about what I want to do here, so.. okay, that, you know, the experience of actually getting out of a trade out of our live trade because you know, your bloods pumping, and you're like, Okay, you know, am I hitting the right buttons? And I get now it's a little different than paper? Of course. Allen: For sure. Yeah. But did you say you did 60 trades and you only lost on one? Matt: Yes so far... Allen: And these are all real money? Matt: Real Money, yes. Allen: Wow. And what's your strategy? How are you doing that? Would you find that trading plan? That's amazing. Matt: You know, it's a lot of listening. I've read so many books, listen to podcasts, listening to education, I kind of go, I'm a very conservative person. So I trade very conservatively. So about 90% out or more, I try to get at least 23 cents, 22 cents, and then just move my contracts up as I feel comfortable taking that risk. Allen: Okay so if I heard you correctly, you are trading at about a 10 delta spread? Matt: Yeah, usually. Allen: And then you're trying to make about 5% on each trade? Matt: Yeah, but between four and 5% Allen: Between four or five? And how long do you stay in the trade? Matt: You know, it's almost embarrassing, but that's the level of how you get better. I really have my you know, you talk about your AHA moments, and one of them was mine. I didn't know you could get out of the trade. So I was always thinking you had to be there until expiration, but that's not obviously not true. So that was a big one. For me, I have to honestly say that, you know, when you're learning this, you just don't think of you don't know everything. Right? And I was like, oh, my goodness, you can actually get out of these trades. So I learned to get out. So you know, that's a benefit in my world, once you know how to get out, it takes a little bit of fear out. Allen: So when do you get in? How many days to expiration to get in? Matt: Generally, I'm between 28 and 35 days or so. Allen: Okay, and what how many trades at one time do you have on? Matt: I really try to do only as many as I can comfortably watch. I try to do maybe one a week. So about four trades at most that are going on? Allen: Okay, so four trades at one time. Okay. And so how much would you say you're making on a monthly basis? dollar terms? Matt: Well across two accounts. So I trade in my brokerage account, I trade under my IRA, I rockler. Right? I'm averaging about 1000 a week now? Allen: 1000 a week. Okay. That's amazing. So within two years, you're up to 4000 a month. And you're saying your account value is roughly around 16? Matt: Roughly 16. And then, you know, in the Roth IRA, it's considerably higher, but that's not money I really want to put a heavy risk of short term trading, but I do trade there. Allen: Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. No, that's, that's crazy. And you're saying that you're almost to the point where it's getting close to where it's gonna replace your income or equal your income from..  Matt: Yeah I mean, I have no qualms about it. I my goal is to get make $5600 a month. And I know my number and but it's all about, you know, I guess one of the big reasons for me coming on is that you just have to trust the process. And you have to actually become in love with the process not be so result driven. I mean, it's important, you know, we all want results. But if you can find a love for the process, I think you're that much better?  Allen: For sure. Definitely. Yeah. Because, you know, like you said, You've been putting in the time you wake up and you work on it. And then after work, you know, tired long day, but you still sometimes you still get it and to look at it being you wouldn't do it if you weren't like happy and excited. It's really something to find something. I feel like this is a point in my life where I really found something I love to do. And I really do. I really love this. And, you know, it's, I just want other people that are just regular people like me, and people come all the time and say, you know, you can do this and do that. But I am I tell you to my core, I'm just a regular person, I drive a forklift. And if anyone can do it, you can do it. And thank God, there are people like you have to teach this stuff. Because I would have killed 20 years ago to have someone guide me through just hitting me across the head of the board and be like, Hey, you know, listen. But that's not how life works. Allen: Right, no, yeah. You know, when you're ready, the teacher appears kind of thing. You know? Matt: It really is true. Allen: Yeah. Yeah. So the biggest thing that surprised you when you were doing this stuff, besides that you could get out before expiration? Matt: Oh, yeah, that was a big one. I think it's coupled with what other people say but also with what I think is that you can trade on something that you don't own. I think that's a big thing for people. Because we're just conditioned to be like, you know, if I can trade something, I have to own it. And that was a big like, wow, for me, for trading. You know, also the covered call as well. Allen: Okay. And so what was your biggest challenge? Matt: The biggest challenge for me was overcoming your fears. I mean, it's, it's definitely a big fear. And I don't take it lightly. Because, you know, we all worry about losing our money, we worked so hard for it. I mean, I work 40 hours a week just to make the bills and do everything that we want to do, we want a better standard of living. And it's very scary  you know, you can think about losing all that money and a flash, and that's really fearful. And I think that's the biggest obstacle, but be to be able to papertrade it and learn from people like yourself that have gone through it. And like, they say, taken the arrows is all much better. I mean, you know, it's like, I talk to people, it's like, you're in a forest, and you don't know which way to go. And it's like, you have someone like yourself or someone else that has gone through this. And we're like, Hey, here's the path. You know, over here is a ditch over here, you know, there's a lion, go down this path, and you start to understand otherwise, you're just flailing around, and you'll be lost in that forest forever. So, you know, it's just one big journey, to be honest with you. Allen: Yep. Yep, yep. Yep. So is that the biggest thing that helped you overcome the fear? Got me a lot of people have that fear. You know, it's like, oh, my God, if I do this, what's going to happen? What if I press the wrong button? What if they take this away? What if you know, something, I do something wrong, my wife's gonna kill me, you know, how did you besides the paper trading was that the biggest thing that helped you overcome the fear? Matt: I think also, the actual structure of a credit spread, you know, knowing that when I have a set amount of money, that it's risk, I can only lose like, $500 in a trade or 480. That really helped me, okay, I was like, Okay, if you're uncomfortable, overall, losing $480 in this trade completely fails. And that's all I'm gonna lose. And I wrapped my head around that, then I can get past that barrier. And I can trade more and learn how to trade. I think initially, you just have in your mind that you're gonna lose all your money, which is not true. If you, of course, you I mean, you have to study and you have to pay attention. None of this is easy or simple. But you got to put in the time, I'm not saying you don't. But if you really want to, and you're, you have conviction, and you have desire, there's no reason why you can't do this stuff. Allen: So what do you think the future holds for you now? Matt: Well, I hope all good things. I mean, I go on with the, I hope I go in with the attitude. I'm really happy and excited to be part of the the oil, that's a whole another, the oil blank check trading program. It's a whole another world for me. And, you know, I kind of feel like, it's traded like options, but it's very different. And then I have to get in there. And it's like, you know, I'm back at the beginning a little bit. So I got to get him up to speed and learn that it's a whole another world. So you go through those feelings again, in a different way. So I'm kind of in the beginning, but I'm very hopeful for the future. And I just want to continue to be consistent and profitable. And that's all you can ask for. Allen: Yep. Yep. So would you recommend Option Genius to other people? Matt: Absolutely. I mean, I sing your praises almost all the time. I one of the big reasons is that how accessible you are. And you know, whenever I had a question, you guys are on top of it. I mean, I couldn't ask for any quicker response. And if you have a problem, you feel like someone's right beside you. And I really appreciate that. So yeah, I've absolutely, I would tell anyone to go to you and learn from you learn from you on the program.  Allen: Yeah, we try. I mean, we're not perfect. And we don't work weekends. But some people, some people are like, Oh, I bought this thing on Saturday. Why haven't I got it yet? I have questions. I'm like, Oh, we don't work weekends, you know. See that's part of the job here. You know, I talked about it on the podcast, and the books and everything. It's like freedom. You know, that's the ultimate, the ultimate goal is freedom. And however you define it, yeah, the time to do what you want the money to do what you want, and you just, you know, if you want to go here, do this, or whatever, buy whatever you want. Like, I'm so happy and excited that you're feeling a taste of that, you know, it's like, "Okay, if I'm going to work, I'm going to make X dollars, but I can always be laid off". I can always get hurt. I can always, you know, get sick. I mean, so many people right now are getting sick and they can't work and they're all scared because they don't know what they're going to do. And you know, the fact that you're you found something that you can stay at home, press a few buttons, and you understand it and you're like, Okay, intellectually, I can make this work. And you put in the time in the effort. I've seen that. So kudos to you for that. Because I've seen a lot of people. They're like, Oh, yeah, no, no, this is supposed to be magic. I'm supposed to hit the Escape key and I'm supposed to get money coming out of my computer. Well, it doesn't work that way. You know, you have to put in time, effort, thought process. You have to do it over and over and over again, which you've done for the last two years. You've been putting your dues in I mean, obviously you're not done yet. Right? You still got a long way to go. Matt: Oh, yeah, absolutely my goal is never to be complacent. You know, never think I've no at all, because I do not. There's people out there that are very smart, intelligent, people that are learning, I always look at life, you can learn somebody, something from everyone, just like all the people, all the books that I've read, if you can get one good thing out of them, you can learn something from them, you're all the better. You know, I just learned to not look at one thing as the way there could be multiple ways. But you know, you have to take the good and almost make it your own as well. You know it, but it's on you. And you as you get older, you realize that it is on you to make this decisions. I don't want to bury my head in the sand and just hope you know, I wake up at 65 and I'm retired. So it's a process. And luckily, I fell in love with it. Allen: That's great. That's great. So let's say you get your goal and you're making 5600 a month from your trading. You still going to work? Matt: I think initially I mean, you know, it's a wonderful question to answer. I think initially, I would go with part time, because I like I do like my job. I do enjoy driving a forklift. But um, it would allow me to do some other things that I would want to do in life. I mean, I like gardening, I like painting, maybe learn Spanish, I always want to learn Spanish, you know, and I could put my efforts towards that. It's just, it opens a whole another world for you. And I mean, it really does. And it gives you a chance to maybe go into some things that you never dreamed that you would be. For instance, after this, I'm going on a boat, I would never dream that I would learn, I always didn't want to drive a boat, I was afraid to drive a boat, I was afraid I was gonna to crash into a dock. But I'm a member of a book club now. And I'm going to go out my wife after this podcast and get on a boat. And I'm learning how to drive and docket and it's like I believe trading is broad and open that world for me. Because I'm no longer fearful making mistakes. And I'm going to learn from them. And, you know, if I crashed into into a dock, so be it. I'll learn from it. And I'll get better. So that's the way I approach life now. And I think trading is a big part of that. Allen: Oh, that's wonderful. So the fact that you've been you've had some success in the trading has given you confidence in other areas of your life. Matt: Absolutely. That's something I can ever believe. Yeah, absolutely. Allen: That's so beautiful. Okay, so let's say one of your fellow employees at Costco, you're at Costco, right? Yes, yeah. So if one of your fellow employees at Costco comes up to you and says, Matt, man, I got to do something. You know, you told me you talked about trading a little bit, how do I how do I get started? What do I do? How do I make sure that I don't lose money? Matt: Well, go to Option Genius. But I would more so I would tell them that, you know, it's a process and you have to put in the work. There's no shortcuts. And you know, people say that all the time. And you have to really believe that in your heart, and you have to put in the work. And thank goodness paper trades out there. And you can make mistakes and learn from them. And just keep trying. And then when you're ready, do it. Somy advice is to absolutely take it slow. You know, everyone's different. You could paper trade three months, six months, but don't be hanging up for a year paper trading. I mean, you want to get out there and try. So but do it with a little bit of money that you're finally losing, and then just go on from there and reevaluate your process. So that's the advice that I would give them. And, of course, I want to help everyone out there, you know, because I have co workers that are in the same, I know the grind they go through each day. They're hard working people, they're looking for the same thing I am that they're trying to look, you know, to better their life or help people that are left to right of them, and get through and improve it. And, you know, this is out there for them. So I've just tell it, take it slow, be patient. I mean, it's very difficult to be patient, especially this day and age. But if you can harness that patience, you can achieve what you want to achieve. Allen: Well said, Well said. Yeah, I mean, you know, the cool thing is that we've I guess since you started, I think you've been sending us emails every once in a while. Matt: Probably a little crazy. Yes. Allen: Yeah no it's okay. It's not crazy? I mean, you know, I bombard people with email, we generally like to sometimes people, some people get three emails a day from us, it's like crazy. We need to work on that. Matt: I'm one of those people. And I'm like, wow, I'm like, man this is something else. Allen: There's too much going on. Yeah. So we need to work on a little bit there. But you know, so it's been fun to watch your progress over the past. You know, it's like, I try to if there's a trading email or whatnot, I try to read those. And if I don't answer them, at least I try to read and see what's going on. And I've seen your emails come through, and it's like, you know, this guy, he's getting it, you know? And whenever you ask a question, it's like, there there are some people that they're nice about it. And then there are some people who are like they expect the moon and the stars and everything in an email like, "Hey, I'm on your list. I want you to tell me every one of your secrets". Like how am I supposed to do that in an email? Matt: Yeah that's impossible. Allen: We share that for you. Like we could have a course about that. It would be like a 20 million-hour course. I could share everything and bring an email. I'm not writing all that stuff. But the fact that you took it slow and methodical and whenever you, you did the work. And then when you had a question, it was specific to that particular thing. So you could tell when I'm reading, I can tell, okay, this guy is actually trying to learn, he's actually trying to trade. And this has given me a question based on his actual experience. So I mean, that's in, you know, for those of you who are listening and be like, Oh, well, I asked a question, I didn't get an answer. Or, you know, he didn't give me a complete answer or whatever. It also depends on, you know, how you approach the question how the question is asked, and if it's gonna make sense or not, because we do get inundated with trading questions, and how do I do this? And how do I do that? And without proper background, we can't even give individual moves. Legally, we can't give individual advice. But even trading questions, it's like, okay, if I don't have the proper background into what you were thinking, when you were looking at a trade, then I can't give you a, you know, what I would do even because if I'm looking at a chart, and I think it's going to go down, and you think it's gonna go up, whatever I tell you, it's gonna be the opposite. And you'll be like, that doesn't make any sense. So I love the way that you have approached this. And you've been, you know, slowly, methodically, you pick something you realized from the beginning, you knew what you want it, you knew your why you understand, you know, compound interest, you understand how that works? And it's not going to happen overnight. How long do you think it took you until you started becoming like, consistently profitable? Matt: I would say about three or four months where I felt consistent, you know, first, you know, you could say, Oh, you know, it could be you just not, you're not sure until you really feel like, okay, I can repeat this month after month. And third kind of understanding, you know, not only the positives of a trade, but also the negatives, and you start kind of wrapping your head around it and start feeling comfortable, but not complacent, then you start, you feel like you're on the right road, so that that feelings and the results probably about three to four months for me specifically where I felt confident about the trade. Allen: Okay, and you trade the same stocks over and over again? Or do you choose different ones every time? Matt: I'm looking, you know, basically the same. You know, I tell the story, way back, I bought Airbnb, you know, an IPO, which stands for is probably overpriced. And I consider it as a mistake. But my wife and I did a covered call together, and we literally push the button together. And we're like, we made like, 500 some dollars off of that. And I was just like, we were just like, baffled, like, wait a minute that actually work. Like we just got paid for that. And we're just like, How can that be? So, you know, I read books on covered calls and things like that. And, you know, there's there's downfalls of covered calls as well, the dark side as you speak. And it's important to, to learn all the different strategies. But the point is, you don't need to know a ton of strategies to be successful, I think it's important for the viewer to focus on one and get really comfortable before you move on to other things. And I feel that's kind of where I am with oil now I'm comfortable with a trade and now unwilling to go into another world, and kind of explain that or, you know, explore that, and I'll take that slow as well. And, you know, it just starts being well, and overall process and you bring it together. And it's all about learning and what a beautiful thing. Allen: Yep. Yep. Very beautiful. So, and there might be some skeptics listening to this. And they'll be like, Well, you know, the last two years, we've had a really good bull market. So are you prepared for choppy market volatile market? down market? bear market? How would you adjust to that situation? Allen: You know, I think it's, I look back, I'm actually reading your book right now, how to hedge, you know, all the hedging strategies, and what I always call my replay in my mind, what will I do if there's a big crash, and I don't think you can ever, you know, fully prepare yourself, but there's a lot of things that you can do. I think the most important part of that is knowing a valuable company, it's knowing what kind of strategy you're going to use, you can never do bull put spreads continually, because you're going to get hit at some point. Right. So again, learn how to do a bear call spread and do some different things to hedge your position. So it you know, that's education by itself, but there's definitely some big things. You know, you got to look at each thing of, you know, a comfort level and then continuing education. I definitely am. I'll continue to get better at that as well. Allen: Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, there's no way to tell which way the market is going, you know. Matt: Sure. Allen: I mean, we've been lucky that we've had a nice fed induced (inaudible) rally recently, the last couple years. But again, we don't know how long that's going to last and what's going to happen after that. But as somebody who has been doing this for, you know, a little bit longer than you have. Matt: Much longer. Allen: It's good to be able to, like you said, you know, understand the different strategies as well. And you said you've done you know, two or three of them and you've, you've practiced them over and over again. So that when things do change, that you can also see that coming and then you can change with it. So You know, I was talking to someone earlier today, and we were talking about and he was, he was asking about iron condors. And he's like, yeah, you know, I've tried honor condors didn't work at all. So how do you make them work? I said, Well, you know, every strategy doesn't work for every person. Some people might like one strategy, and they're really good at it. And somebody else, their brother might try it. And their brother might be horrible at it. You know, it's different risk tolerances, and different personalities will tell what strategy you should work on. And so.. Matt: Yeah, that's really fascinating. Like you said earlier, you know, we talked about how you can get the same trade as somebody, it just turns out different. And I think it's, it's fascinating in psychology, and it's also how, you know, you think of a trade and everyone's into individual to that trade. So it's pretty interesting. Allen: And you said, you had studied psychology, right? in school? Matt: Yeah, I have a degree in psychology from the University of Alabama. And, you know, I just, I never knew what I wanted to do in college. And it's interesting, I find myself using it. Now. I it's the psychology of the markets. And I think about how why people sell and why people buy and, you know, a lot of it's fear based, sometimes people that are very smart, do stupid things. You know, you just think that it's not that way, but it is very true. So it's, it's a whole, I never thought I'd be using psychology, but I do. I'm fascinated why people think the way they do. Allen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. It's very interesting. Yeah. I mean, I've been a big fan of psychology, just trying to understand myself, you know, and most of the time, like, you know, when we try to figure out, okay, hey, this stock went down today, what happened? A lot of times, we can't figure it out. I don't know, there's so many. There's so many background factors. But I think the study of psychology really helps in the big picture thinking, you know, you might not be able to figure out exactly why a stock moved up and down, depending on if there's some news about it. But the overall market like, hey, if this happens, then this is how people react. And then this is how they think. And then this is what happens in the stock market. So it's definitely a learning experience. And something that comes with years of experience, as you get used to it, say, Okay, I saw this happened. So I, I expected this to happen because of that. So it's really interesting. Allen: I really appreciate your time, Matthew, and just wanted to give you one more, you know, like hey, is there anything else that last words that you want to share with our audience?  Matt: Just I encourage people that are, you know, maybe thinking just like how I am, you know, they're out there working everyday life, and they just don't think that this is possible, and I just wanted to really encourage them to, you know, take a shot at it. And really, you know, if you're really interested in it, and put your 100% into it. And, you know, you could really surprise you on the other end, what life has to offer to you if you really get into it. And trading is a wonderful way to do that. So I'd really encourage people of all walks of life to try to better their situation, I think it's a great, great avenue to do so. Allen: Right. And you got started again, how? Just by reading a book? Matt: Yeah, I was just really looking at a compound interest chart. I was just, I just looked at it. And I was like, man, I could just kind of see the overall plan. I was like, I didn't know, you know, you know, everyone wants to be rich, and they want to have enough money. And it was a different feeling. At that time, I was young, and you know, mostly when you're young, or just want to get things and accumulate things and, you know, burn the world down. And that's not the case, as you get older, usually, you know, you, you find out what's really important. And to me, it's time with family and friends. And once I saw that chart, I could see the kind of overall kind of structure if you will, what I want to do. And then now as I got into it, I started filling in the blanks and seeing what way to get there. And trading is really kind of sped that process up. And I'm very excited about it. Allen: So do you see yourself like, okay, hey, you know, and this year, or this keeps up and you know, this age, I'm going to be a millionaire or 100 millionaire or something like that-  that doesn't appeal to you, right? Or does it sometimes? Matt: You know, like, I have a goal of turning you know, our money and making a million dollars. And that's, I wrote it down and seven years, I'd like to do that. If I don't get there, I'm not going to be upset about it. Like I said, you have to be happy about the process and excited about the process. And long as you're generally heading the right way. You can't help but be happy. I mean, if there's little setbacks, but if your general trajectory is moving forward, that's all you can ask for. And we're excited about that. So, you know, the number is less of a issue to me, as I get into it, you know, it's a great thing. And it's a great byproduct of what we're doing. But I think you just got to really look inward and be contentment and what really makes you happy in life, whatever it is you'd like to do. So, you know, money is just a tool to get there. And I I really feel that at this age, you know, it took me 20 years to figure that out. But yeah, it's exciting. Allen: Yeah, I totally agree with you and I'm excited for you, man. It's Just like, you know, you just get started now it's just, it's just up from here, you know, it's just the sky's the limit, and you know, a million dollars one day, you're gonna be like, Oh, that was nothing, you know? Let's go for 3, let's go for 5. Matt: You know, if not, I always say, Hey, you know, I can be happy I took a shot at So, you know, yeah, I left everything on the table. And that's what you have to do. And I couldn't be happier about that. Allen: But you've gotten it done. You know, it's not, it's not like, You got lucky, you've been doing it for consistently, you know, over and over and over again. And yeah, we've had a good market. And that helps. But you know, every market can be a good market, if you know what you're doing. So the fact that.. Matt: I'm very worried about that, because I started investing in 2009. Okay, so I've never seen a crash. And I know that and I'm aware that and I also look at, hey, what are my feelings going to be? And I try to read books about it, and listen to people and talk about their experiences, because I want to know what to do in that situation. So I could, that's a continuation thing for me. I mean, I know I have not been in a crash. That's all been up for me. And but I do know that I have to be wary of that. And I have to have a plan for that. And that's what I'm doing right now. So, you know, I don't want to get complacent and that I'm winning and winning and winning, because losses could be around the corner. And I just gotta know how to mitigate that process. Allen: So and see, I mean, just that comment right there. That's like, you know, this guy knows what he this guy's got a head good head on his shoulders. You know, he's not he's not overconfident. And he's not like, Oh, yeah, this is gonna happen for the rest of my life. I'm just gonna make money every month. No, I mean, I've been looking at it from all different angles, and you've been practicing and trading and different things. And you said, Oh, yeah, I've been doing put spreads. But I'm also doing call spreads, you know, because eventually, I'm going to need them. So it's like, yeah, there you go. That's it. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, you do it the right way. You're doing it really the right way. And you started small and you're, you know, slowly, slowly, you're increasing. But you're still sticking to, you know, something that's manageable. You're not Oh, like you said that one trade I had. I mean, oh my god, out of 60 trades you've only lost one that's like, incredible. I never heard anybody do that. That's like, Well, can I give you my money? I want to go sail around the world here. You just take it in, take care of it for me. Matt: You can't have it back on if I lose it? Yeah. Allen: No, I think you'll be okay because you're getting prepared for it. You know, you're not blindsided. It's like, yeah, this is part of it. I've seen it. You know, you've maybe you haven't seen it yourself. But you've heard of it. But you're not. What are you like, 45 years at? Matt: I'm 45 Allen: Yeah, so you've been alive when there has been crashes? And oh, yeah. and stuff, you know, the.com bubble, everybody still remembers that? No, tell you about that. And, and stuff like that. So it's not like it's something completely out of the blue for you. If somebody was like 15 years old, or 20 years old - they're like, Oh, yeah, you know, I've never seen America crash. It's never gonna crash. But yeah, it's there. And you are, you're rounding out what I, you know, like, it's like, it's not just, you focused on something you learned about it, you practiced it, and you're like, Okay, this is working. Now I need to add to it, I need to add another skill, I need to add another skill. And you're, and you're still adding, that's the coolest thing that you're still growing, you're still learning. And you're still humble enough about it, so that you're like, you know, hey, I'm still working. And I work hard, and I have a good job, and I like it. But I would like to have more. And then eventually, I'm gonna work part time. That's really cool. Yeah. Matt: I actually parallel investing with running a marathon. You know  running marathons is a very difficult process, and it takes a lot of work. And there's a lot of dips along the way, and at times you feel like quitting, and there's a point of elation, and you have an angle. And I kind of feel like that kind of parallels my trading style. So I know that there's going to be, you know, mile 15 is going to be horrible. And mile 18 could be even worse. And then you get the mile 24 and you're like, elated. It's almost at the end. And that's kind of how investing is, you know, you have great times and you have terrible times. And you have to, you know, when you're training, you're accounting for all these processes along the way. You know, what shoes do I wear? How do I do this? If it rains? How do I count for this? I don't feel good. How do I account for that? What did I eat? all that stuff is very similar to how trading is in trading really, you learn a lot about yourself, just like you do in marathon running. I mean, you learn about what you're really made of, and the risk that you take and who you are as a person. So I think there's a lot of parallels there. Allen: Wow, yeah, I've never run a marathon but it sounds horrible. Matt: Yeah, I mean, people are like, they're either they do it or they want it done. I've got the bug. I was crazy. I decided doing but um, I don't do them anymore. I maybe maybe have one or two. I mean, I will see but uh, you know, I want to keep my knees going into my 50s. Allen: Cool. All right, Matthew. I really appreciate it. This was great. I mean, it's wonderful to see you know, somebody go from knowing nothing to making you know, four grand a month trading part time. And, you know, it's like, Hey, I can do this. If you can do for you can eventually do more, and it'll replace your income and make all your dreams come true. So kudos to you for getting in the path, taking the risk, and trying it out, learning, spending the time, and I hope that people listen to this and they’re encouraged by it, they’re inspired by you, I mean  when I heard your story, I was like, "we gotta get Matthew on the show". You know, forklift driver to early retiree. Matt: Yeah I hope so. I appreciate you guys and I can't thank you enough, you and your team, that there's actually people out there that teach this stuff and actually care about people, because there's a lot of people that don't have it all and I really appreciate that. Allen: Thank you Matt: Yeah I'm sure your viewers appreciate it as well. Allen: Yeah thank you for hanging out with us. Matt: Alright, thank you. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

When was the last time you let yourself dream really big? I mean, really, really, really big. Most of us, I think, you know, "we live lives of quiet desperation". That quote, I don't remember who said it, but I believe that quote is so true. Most people are just going through the motions. So what would you do if gave you a billion dollars? A billion with a B? Right? If I just gave it to you, or whatever, you woke up one day, and boom, there's 1 billion in your bank account. You can do anything you want with it. What would you do? I mean, obviously, a lot of us, we probably start spending it, right. I mean, there's no strings attached. It's not stolen or anything, it's your money, do whatever you want no taxes, debate and anything like that? Start spending, what are you gonna do? Right? You gotta buy maybe the nicest house in the state. Maybe you buy eight or nine, fancy sports cars or luxury cars, whatever you can think of - Bentley's, Maseratis, whatever you can think of. Maybe you buy a jet or two. Maybe you get your own private island. That's pretty big. Maybe you get all the clothes you can ever think of, eat out every night, you know, some jewelry for the spouse or something, gifts for the kids, maybe a pony? I don't know. But a billion dollars is a huge amount. And for most people, they probably still have a lot left. I don't think any normal rational person can spend a billion dollars in their lifetime. It's pretty hard. So what would you do with it? And then the real question is, what would you do with the rest of it? Right? Eventually, you're going to realize that the money is not going to bring you happiness, all the stuff. Stuff is not important. When you die, it don't come with you. Right? The houses you can buy them, but they're not really yours. You know, stop paying property taxes and see who really owns all the houses. The cars are gonna eventually fall apart, like clothes are gonna get eaten by moths and go out of fashion. Ponies probably gonna die eventually anyway. So that stuff doesn't bring you happiness. Significance! That's what it's all about, right? Having some significance in your life, having a sense of purpose, being able to do something that makes you feel alive. What is that for you? Do you even know? How do you generate significance? How can you generate more significance? I mean, dream big, think big. Is there an injustice that you've experienced that needs to be solved? What did you want to do as a kid when you were little think back? Think back to when you were little? What did you want to do? Be? Accomplish? Before the world said no, that's unrealistic. Can't do that. What gives you the greatest excitement and wonder? There are some deep questions. For Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, you know two of the richest guys in the world. For both of them it's the same thing. They want to get humanity, mankind into space. I mean, think about it. These two guys, billionaires, top two richest people in the world. They're both, both of their passions, both of their purposes, is to get humanity into space. And so that's why they both have companies where they give billions of dollars to that have pushed the frontiers much farther than NASA has gone, faster, cheaper, more sustainable. So what's your purpose? Do you know what it is? Or are you like most people just going through the motions every day? living day to day. You know you get up you go to work, get stuff done, accomplish, some things here and there. Then you're "Oh, I'm tired" "Oh, it's five and six o'clock, all right" Time to head home. You get home you take care of the kids. You hang out with the spouse, you cook you clean, you do some stuff and then maybe you relax a little bit and hit the hay. There's all time to do it all again tomorrow. Is that what life looks like? Are you in a rut? For most people, they say that they cannot live their purpose because they don't have enough money. Or they don't have enough time. Or there's something stopping them. "Yeah, I can't do this because I have kids right now". "I can't travel the world because I have kids". "I can't go and become a teacher because I have all these bills to pay". "I can't do this, because of that" or "this person won't let me" or my spouse this, or my mother this or my mother in law that. Right? I think it's just sad. And I mean, I don't blame you, if that's you, because I'm in the same boat. You know, I have always wanted to travel. And I wanted to see the world but we have three little kids. So can't do it. Right? Because they have to go to school, they have to learn stuff, we can't just, it's dangerous out there in the world. And we could be traveling in some third world country and get taken hostage or get sick or get hurt. And then you know, all the medical stuff and it wouldn't work and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was at a seminar where I was talking to this guy. The the head of the seminar, he was like this personal trainer, not treating you physically, but like motivational speaker type guy. And I asked him that question. I said, "You know, I don't know what to do". I don't know. But I want some more purpose. What do I, how do I know what my purpose is? Because what I want to do as I want to travel, he goes, so why don't you travel? It's pretty simple questions. Like you want to know what you want. Why did you do it? Well, because he's like, is it money issue? I'm like no, not money issues. Health issues? No, not health issues. Okay, so what's wrong? Well, I have little kids. And he goes, Okay, so what school you want to give one school, you want them to learn stuff? But yeah, that's, that's, that's the problem. You know, we can't take them out of school for that long. They miss. If we go traveling for a year or two, or whatnot, you know, homeschooling for me - that's not gonna work, neither for my wife. It's not our thing. We go nuts. We'd kill the kids. So he said, yo, you know, he goes to me, he says that he lives on a ship. Yeah, this guy actually lives on a cruise ship. There's a one particular cruise ship, I think they call it "The world", I think you can look it up. There's one cruise ship, that you can actually buy a cabin. It's like a condo, or like a private condo, you buy the cabin. And you could live on the cruise ship. And it travels all around the world. And docks in different places. And the people who own like, all the people want the little cabin, they, you know, they get to vote and they get to decide where they want to go next, and where they want to stop and all that stuff. And if you want to get off well, then you know, you get off at a stop and then you fly wherever you're going. And then whenever you want to come back, you find out where the ship is going to be you fly to that city, and then you get on board. So that's pretty cool. He goes, Yeah, there's actually a couple families on the ship. And I'm like, really? He goes, yep, there's one family indeed. There is a family that have three little kids just like yours. I'm like, how do they do it? He goes, Well, they hired a nanny, and a teacher and an au pair, or whatever they're called, I don't know what they're called. He hired some tutor to come and teach the kids. So they're traveling around the world. They're seeing the sights, they're seeing everything, but they're still learning. In fact, they're learning better than probably what my kids are learning. Because when you go to school, most of the time is not spent learning. Most of the time that teachers spend, you know, telling other kids to be quiet or, or having them go to lunch or line up on joining the proper line or dealing with discipline issues or announcements and all that kind of stuff. So most of the time is not spent teaching anyway. So they have a tutor that teaches them for a few hours. And then imagine what they learn when they get off at all these different places around the world. Now that's truly an education. So that opened my eyes. It's like Wow, man, I'm just making excuses. I'm really making excuses. So it's not that my kids are stopping me from travel. It's my own limitation. It's my own small thinking. My purpose, if that's my purpose of traveling, it's not strong enough to get me to figure out how to overcome the situation overcome the difficulties that I am seeing, which are not really difficulties. So if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've heard how we make money out of thin air by selling options that we don't even own to make obscene amounts of returns. All this without being brain surgeons or rocket science. You know, we're not scientists, without starting with millions of dollars and without spending years and years and years to learn this stuff. So I want you to be living your purpose, whatever it is. And at that time, I realized, Hey, you know what my purpose probably not is travel, it's not traveling, and I don't want it bad enough. So I'm still looking for my ultimate purpose. But I think for now, what my purpose is to spread the mission of passive trading. To spread the word to help other people, just have them experience what I'm experiencing. The joy, the freedom, and that's my purpose. For now. I don't know how long it's gonna last. Eventually, I'm gonna say, you know what, I got another itch, I want to go do something else. And I already have something in mind. And I guess I could share with you guys, I want to start something else called "Mortal Heal Thyself". Basically, it's I don't know what it is yet, I haven't really put any too much thought to paper yet. But it's, it's a way it's information to help people to heal their health issues, without taking massive pharmaceutical drugs, or having to see 100,000 different doctors and all that stuff to keep us healthy, naturally, before we get sick, and then even when we do get sick, to do everything that we can, without more, you know, or is taking as little pharmaceutical drugs as possible. So that's, that's kind of like what I want to do. So eventually, I'm going to maybe do that. But for now, I'm focused on this particular purpose, which is to help you achieve your purpose, to help you achieve three freedoms that we talk about - Time, Money, and Choice. Okay, so I want you to be living your purpose, whatever it is. Now, if you don't know what your purpose is, or even if you do, but something is stopping you, I know that you can figure it out. If you spend enough time on it, you can figure it out. And for some of you, you might need some help. And if that's the case, we can start with our high probability trading live event that's coming up soon. It's a two day event training coming up on September 17 and 18th, we'll be talking about this, we'll be having exercise on this and going through it. And I can walk you through the process that I've found that works really well for a lot of people. Or if you're listening to this, after that date, and it's already happened, you can email us and ask us how to get the recordings. Because if you want to find your purpose, if you want to find your why I think that is crucial to your success at trading, if you don't know your why. I don't know if you can be as successful in trading as you could be. So I think it's very, very important. That's why I talk about it at this event. So at this event, I'm going to be spending some time to help you determine your purpose, your why, and how that is so crucial to your success. And then we spend the rest of the two days on strategies to free you from any money constraints. Right? I don't want that to be an issue. "I can't afford it" - no, we're going to take care of that. Okay. We have many, many students that have been through this event in the past. And the first time we did it was not that long ago. But they but it was less than a year ago. The first one it was in January of 2021. No, yeah. 2021 sorry. It was it was earlier this year, January. We have many students who have attended this event. And they are already on their way to replacing their income with their gains from trading. So that was that thing that they decided they said, "Hey, I want to replace my income", boom, they're already on their way. And for others, they decided, hey, I want to add to my income, so they're on their way. Others decided, hey, I want to use this money to go give back and to help other people and so boom, they're on their way to do that. So some of these people had never traded options before. Others had traded but with very limited success. So we were able to help them overcome their limitations, their limiting beliefs and to figure out "Okay, what is it that stopping you?" What is it in in your in your thinking that's stopping you and then what is it in your trading? What are the skills that you need in trading wise to be able to turn the corner and start making more from your trades? And it worked. And that's one of the things I'm so super, super excited about. And that's why we're doing this event again, because we are to help so many people the first time and the second time. So I mean, I can't wait for it. We have so many success stories, so many people that are getting so excited and thankful after this happens, that I just can't. It's I mean, I'm really excited for it, I hope you'll be there. So join me live for two days. And while I don't actually have a billion dollars to give you I would, I would love to give it to you, if I had it, I don't. Helping you figure out your purpose and your why is actually worth a lot more than a billion dollars. And you think about it, even if I had it, I probably wouldn't give it to you. Because I would just spoil you. She is more much, much more fun and much more -- you feel so much better when you when you earn it for yourself. So let's do it together. Okay, go to OptionGenius.com/live for more details and to get your ticket. Spaces are limited even though this is a virtual event. We're still restricted on the number of people that can be there at any one time. So get your ticket today, OptionGenius.com/live, I hope to see you there we'll be there live for two days, you can interact with me ask questions, the whole nine yards we'll be going through a lot of material. It could be a life changing event for you. I don't know how many more we're going to be doing these. I want to continue them. But we have so many other projects that are really, really exciting that are coming down the pike that we might have to suspend this and work on those instead. So if you are looking to make a change, if you're looking to get out of the rut or start trading or stop making excuses, this would be a amazing way to do it. Okay, so get your ticket while tickets are still available. If you can't make it live, there are recordings that will be available so get those but really you want to be there live to get your questions answered to to feel the excitement and to really get motivated. And you know, there might be some questions that you have like hey, how can I do this and this and this or this is an issue that I've had in the past? I'm seeing this over and over again. What do I do to fix it? We can talk about those and we can discuss it and answer your questions live. So go to OptionGenius.com/live get your ticket today and trade with the odds in your favor. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

The question asked was: "Allen, what has been your greatest investment?" I was asked this by a coaching student recently. And I told him, I have to think about it and get back to him. Right? Well, I have thought about it, and I want to share the answer with you as well. So when it comes to success, at anything, really, there are three major components. Okay, number one is the skills, you got to know what to do. And then you got to get good at it. And that's doing the thing. Now, whether this is trading, whether this is parenting, weightlifting, anything, there are certain skills that you have to be able to perform. And the best way to learn those skills is by investing in education, something like a book or a course or something like that. Right? Now, these are basic skills. So when it comes to trading, you have to know some stuff, you have to know what is a stock? How do they go up? What do they go down? What is an option? What does it call? What does it put? How do they work that you go, and you get from a book you get from a course or a video right? Now, most of the questions out there that you want to know, you can get the answers for free. From about skills, you can get the answers for free at the library, in a book, and now maybe even on YouTube. Now YouTube's a little sketchy, because you don't know exactly who's making these videos and how good it is. And if the answer is actually going to legitimate how old this stuff is, I mean, I've I've tried some things on YouTube that were so old, they didn't work anymore, and you can't tell. But at the bookstore library, you know, the skills, the basic skills, hey, I want to learn fundamental analysis, I want to learn technical analysis. 90% of what you need to know, you can learn by a book or a course, that stuff is out there, there aren't that many things that are secret out there. And that's like a myth, right? Everything you hear about is like, oh, the secret method to do this the secret to do this, oh, they that person got so rich, because they have a secret. No, the skills are the same trading, the skills are the same, you got to know how to chart you got to know how to look at a stock, you got to know how to read the direction, you got to know how to put the trade on, you have to understand how the trade works. Right, you have to know probability of profit, you got to know when to get in when to get out, follow a trading plan, you got to have a trading plan. These are all skill-based things. Because the skills are just the basic level. That's like the entry level. Right? That's the first things you got to learn the skills. And some people they spend their whole life working on the skills. But that's why they never become successful because they don't do the other two components. Getting good at the skill does not guarantee success. There is a lot more to uncover. Just because you know, this skills or your book smart doesn't mean you're going to be successful. Knowledge is not power. I don't know why people say that. So I've heard that before. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. No, it's potential power, if you use the knowledge, right. But if you only have the knowledge, that's not good enough. If you know some of the skills, you could do some of the things that will get you some success, but will not get you the ultimate success that you're after. Okay. So I know a lot of people that are very smart. You know, they went to Harvard, MIT brainiacs, you know, everything. They're like a walking encyclopedia, but they struggling to pay the bills every month, because they are missing the other two components. So now, component number two is the habits, the discipline, the work ethic, these are all based on character, right, you have to have the right character. In order to succeed, you have to have discipline, you have to have work ethic, you have to be able to get up when you get knocked down. You can only get that one way. By doing the thing over and over and over. Like they say, practice makes perfect. But then again, there's no such thing as perfection. Because there is always another level, there's always a way to get better, there's always a way to achieve more to improve more. So you never get to the end goal. So there's no such thing as perfection. But you still got to practice and you have to have it internally. It has to come from inside. That's the only way to have the discipline and the work ethic you have to work on that everybody's not born that way. You know, you look at take a look at Arnold Schwarzenegger or the rock, Dwayne Johnson. They got bodies like crazy, I'm never gonna have a body like that, because I don't have the discipline to be in the gym for six hours a day. That's not me. That's not my thing. I don't have that discipline. Right. And so I might have the skills, I might know how to lift weights, I might know how to be a personal trainer or whatever, but I'm never going to look like them because I don't have that work ethic or that discipline or that desire. So whatever it is you need to master, if it's trading, you gotta follow the trading plan, you got to follow the rules, you got to have that discipline, you got to be able to take a loss, you have to be have your emotions in check. That's all character, that's the second component. Now these character traits like habits, you can have them by working on themselves on yourself, if you're lucky, you might be able to do it on your own. It's not easy, but it is doable. The easier way to do it, the shortcut is to do it with somebody else. So they can see where you are falling behind. Okay, so they can help you, they can motivate you, they can point out certain things that you might not be able to see, they can push you, when you fall down. When you don't want to go, they can give you that nudge, that encouragement. If you do what somebody else, the habits, the character traits are easier to develop. Does that make sense? Okay, now, number three, the third component, this might be the one that's the biggest one that people miss that that causes them from having the ultimate success that they're looking for. They might have the skills, they might even have the character traits and the habits. But if they don't have the belief, it's not going to work. And not just any belief, they have to have the right belief. And that is the toughest one yet. Because if you have the skills and the habits, but you're not achieving what you desire, then it is because your beliefs are not right. Now you already have beliefs, you already have some, they might not be the ones that you need to get to your goal. Now, for most people, the reason is that they believe something that is not accurate. They have what's called false beliefs. And the crazy thing is that we often don't know what we don't know. We think we know. But what we know, is the thing that is blocking us. Does that make sense? I'll say it again, we don't know what we don't know, we're blind to it. We're the guy in the forest, you can't see the forest from the trees. We think we know, we already have beliefs we think we know. But that thing that we think we know, the thing that we know, is the thing that is blocking us. That's the false belief. Now, like Einstein said, or maybe he didn't say, I don't know, he said, the quote is the thinking that got us into the problem won't get us out of the problem. And for the longest time, I couldn't understand what that meant. Right? But when you're in a problem, and then eventually you have an epiphany, you have an AHA moment you have like, "Oh, my God, why don't I think of that", that is a change in thinking to get you out of the problem to show you the solution. Okay, now, for example, in our credit spread mastery program, the hardest thing I have to do is to get students to break their false beliefs, the ones that they already have, when they come into the program. They understand the system, they understand how to find trades, place trades, all that that's easy for me to teach. But then they keep trying to use their own beliefs, and their things that they learned into the new system. They're taking their old skills, trying to apply it to a new system. And that's why they don't have the success that they could have. That's what causes them problems and losses. Now, the students that have the most success, are the ones that are new to options and just follow the program. They just take what I say at face value and just do it, you know, it's like run Forrest run, just do it be like Forrest, just do it. And the results for them have been crazy, amazing. I mean, so good that you won't even believe them if I share them. But they're not my results, right? They're the results of students. And there are so many of them that are getting similar results. Because they're doing the three steps. They're believing what I tell them, they get developing the skills, and they're developing the work ethic, the character. Now, on the other hand, we have the students that have been trading for a while. They keep trying to do it the way that they've learned to do it, and they keep struggling. Right now they still make money, they still end up doing well. But they're not doing as well as they could. And that's where they get frustrated. They see it in front of their eyes. They're like, Man, this is working. This is working. It's working for other people. Why isn't it working for me? If you ever had that problem, if you ever felt that way that oh, my God, this thing works. I see it working for others. It's not working for me. It's because there's something wrong with the belief level, or maybe even the character level. But most likely, it's the belief level. If your why is strong enough, if you really, really, really want to make it work. That's your character level. But if the beliefs are wrong, it's still not going to work. Okay, now this is crazy to me, because I do the same thing. I'm preaching to you about it. But I do exactly the same thing. So don't feel bad. But if you want to succeed at something, this is a shortcut, I'll give you the secret, the best way to do it is to have someone who has done it before you who has the success you want, and then have them point out the beliefs that you have that are holding you back, basically, get some coaching. Hire a coach, and that person will tell you why you're being held back if they're any good. Okay, now, I heard a podcast today where a guy, the speaker, the guy doing the podcast, he said he hired himself a coach for $30,000 an hour. 30,000 an hour, and he had to buy for hours. He had to pay $120,000 for a coach. Now that's freaking crazy, right? That's amazing. But for him, it was worth it. Because this guy's already making according to him, he already makes a couple 100 million dollars a year. So for him $100,000, $120,000 no big deal. But, I mean, it is still a big deal. I bet you still a big deal. But he's looking at it in a different lens. He's not looking at like, Oh my God, that's 120. He's looking at it, like, what can I get out of this? What can I make from this? Like, what is my return going to be? What is my value going to be? Okay, the answers that he got, were worth a lot more to him than the $30,000 that he had to pay for one hour. He was able to go to the source to somebody who had already done what he wants to do, and got the answer from the horse's mouth. He was able to say, Hey, this is my problem. What do I do? This is my thinking. I'm thinking about doing this. Should I do this? Yes, no, why not? Oh, you did it before? Oh, it didn't work for you. Okay, that makes sense. What about this? Oh, I see that now. Oh, my God, I didn't think about that. I didn't know anything about that. What does that mean? etc. So not only does he know what to do, but he knows what not to do? What not to waste his time on what not to waste his money on. Right? He's saving his time, which is a lot more valuable to somebody who's making 200 million a year, than the $120,000 that it cost him. Now it's the same with most traders online, I see it every day. They said that they would never pay to learn to trade. Oh, yeah, I'm not going to pay to learn trade, I'm going to figure it out myself. I'm going to do it myself. That's great. If you want it to take forever, do you really have forever to learn? I mean, think about it. Let's just say it takes you five years to learn how to trade to be successful to be profitable consistently. Okay, that is five years of profits that you never get back. So either you have two options, right? Let's do you can do it yourself is gonna take you five years. And in that five years, you get some winners, you get some losers, you lose some more, you get some you kind of break even. But after five years, you know what you're doing. Awesome. trader number two, trader B goes and hires a coach takes a mentoring program. And he learns it right away. Like let's say he takes credit spread mastery, and he learns how to trade in three months, and it becomes profitable. And so after three months, he's profitable for five years. Whereas trader A is still breaking even after five years, because he's learning it on his own. He didn't want to spend the money for the coaching. Okay, that's five years of profits that trader a could have had, but he'll never have, he doesn't get it back. The years of profit could compound into millions of dollars. That's what these guys don't think about. They don't think about long term they don't think about they're just thinking about the short term like, Oh, I have to pay for coaching right now. No, it's not worth it. But they don't look at the long term compounding image 10, 20, 30 years down the road. Right? Now, I'll give you an example. I put aside $20,000 for each of my kids, in their IRAs for them, three kids 20 grand each. Okay, now, when my oldest turns 65 when he retires, and he can take money out of his account, even if I don't add another penny. And if I only leave it in an SPX index fund, like an index eval, put in the index fund, it matches the stock market. I don't touch it. We don't add anything. We don't do anything. It's just that 20,000 just growing, growing, compounding, compounding, when he's 65. He's gonna have over a million dollars in that account. That's pretty good, right? I mean, the kid is 10 years old. He's gonna have million dollars. He's a millionaire. That's amazing. You know, hopefully he'll thank me. Might not be around but hopefully he'll thank me Like, oh, yeah, my Dad was a great guy. I don't know, hopefully, right? Fingers crossed. Now my youngest, my youngest child, I also put 20,000 aside for her, when she hit 65. Same thing, no extra money, no touching it just index fund, her account, her 20 grand will turn into over 2.5 million. What? One kid gets 1,000,000, 1 kid gets 2.5 million? What's the difference? Well, they're six years apart in age. So the oldest, he's got six years less of compounding. And that means over a million dollars difference in account size. Six years of compounding means over a million dollars. So yeah, when you try to learn something on your own, you're gonna pay for it, you're paying, you're paying a lot more than it costs to hire a professional to teach it to you. Let that sink in. You're still gonna pay, you pay this way you pay that way. One is harder, takes longer, and you got to pay more. The other one, you get to learn the right way quicker. And you have somebody on your side, and you profit sooner. So what was my greatest investment? Investing in coaching. It had to be the greatest return on investment of anything I've ever done. Okay, I mean, I read a lot. I've read lots and lots of books. I've been to seminars, I've watched videos, but nothing can replace that in-person coaching, where somebody is talking to you looking at your situation, looking answering your questions, it made a complete world of difference. There was one program I joined three or four years ago, I think was like four or five, a four year five years ago, not sure how many, it was for $8,000. And I was like, and I don't know, if I want to spend $8,000 for this. There's a lot of money. It was for business marketing and business development stuff. And I paid for it. I was like, Alright, you know, I'm gonna plug it in, I need some help. I'm gonna do it. In the first, very first session, I went up to the main guy, and I asked him a question. I said, Look, man, I have this specific problem. It has to do with my technical stuff that we're using in my business, my systems, my software, what do I do? I have a problem. What do I do? Okay. And his answer, he looked at me, he goes, "Oh, that's simple", you know, in our business, and this is him talking goes in our business, we use this system, we set it up this way. This is the guy that sets everything up for us. So why don't you talk to him, I'll introduce you, you talk to him. And he'll set up the whole thing for you. Now, I'm getting a referral from somebody who's doing millions and millions of dollars in revenue, somebody that I look up to somebody that I paid to coaching to teach me because I want to be where he is. Right? And he's telling me to use this software that he uses, and to use this guy that he also uses to set everything up. Is that not the ultimate shortcut? I mean, that paid for the 8 Grand right there. Just that one introduction. Okay, that was it. One sentence, I followed his advice, I hired that guy. And guess what? That guy was an idiot. a total idiot. It was a waste of money. And time, he promised to do something he tooks part of the money. It took him a year and a half, and he still hadn't done it. But what it did was it got me on the right path. It got me that software, it got me thinking along those lines of how to improve my systems and my processes. And then eventually, I did find somebody to finish the job. I got to find somebody sooner if I wanted to, but I was still being cheap. And instead of hiring somebody else and firing that guy, I was like, No, no, he's gonna do it. He's going to do it. I kept pounding and pounding and kept pounding. Finally I gave up. If I'd given up a year earlier, I would have been done a year sooner. So I found somebody else to finish that job. And then that helped me reach my goals in that particular area for Option Genius. That one sentence, that that coach told me, not one cent is telling me what systems they use was worth the whole price of the program that $8,000 that I paid for them. But I still get value from that program in other areas. Even years later, I was still looking at some of my notes the other day from that program, and it's still giving me ideas. I'm still helping me out. Okay, so save yourself the frustration of learning things yourself. If I could start all over again, which I can't go back. It would be cool, right? If I could start all over again. That is the thing that I would change in my own life. I would have found somebody who was trading profitably the way I wanted to and paid them to be their apprentice or be in their coaching program, or whatever, and then followed exactly what they say. That's the biggest thing. Yeah, we can pay people. But when we don't follow them, we don't believe what they're telling us. We bring our own misconceptions and our false beliefs to a new system. It doesn't work. So you need those three things. You need the skill, need the character traits, and you need the right beliefs. All right, folks, that's it for this episode. Much love to you and trade with the odds in your favor. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... 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I have the pleasure of introducing you to Nelson Wennerlund. I call him Wonder Man. And you'll see why his results and his accomplishments have been amazing. So, without any further ado, let's just get into it. Nelson, how you doing? Nelson: I'm doing great today. Allen, how are you? Allen: I'm wonderful. I'm happy to talk to you. You're one of my one of my favorite people to talk to you. Nelson: Oh, good. Yeah. Allen: So I know a little bit about you know, you share a little bit about you know, who you are and what you do. But for our audience, once you once you tell us, you know, give us some background into who is Nelson, and how'd you get to where you are today. Nelson: Well live outside of Nashville, Tennessee, newly retired officially about five years ago. But I've been keeping busy with doing this, that and the other and volunteering. And in some of the stuff that I've wanted to do that I hadn't had time to do spent 25 years in the restaurant business, I spent 15 or 20 years, almost 20 years in the financial services business. And when I was 60, I decided that I'd had enough. And I retired with my wife's blessings. And so I've been kind of just volunteering and doing stuff since then. So trading, what I've been doing as far as trading back in the 90s. I started, I got a thing in the mail from a guy won't mention his name that was gonna teach me how to make tons of money. Trading commodity futures. Allen: Mr. Roberts. Yes. Mr. Roberts? Nelson: Yes Allen: Yeah, I got a quote. I had it. I don't know where it is now. Nelson: Yep. And so actually, I won and lost a few small fortunes for me at that time doing that for about I mean, I dabbled in anatomy for about 15 years. Wow. So, you know, I would I would lose, and then I would, you know, get all excited, you know, I'm gonna do this again. And, you know, I had a few small wins than that, you know, get over excited and make a dumb move and all that. Yeah, you know, same story, you know, so, and so I, but I did, you know, I, I did enjoy doing it, actually. And so, and then, but in 2010, I stopped and focused on the business I was part of and, and then I got something else in the mail about selling naked puts options. And I had been on the periphery of options, but it was just, you know, I didn't understand them. And it was confusing, seems like a sucker's bet to me, and all this kind of stuff. But I didn't do any research in it, that did research for this kind of bought this course and started doing just some naked puts, and actually did really well at it, you know, identifying stocks and this kind of thing, following this certain method and this than the other and so, I thought this option thing one so bad, after all, I can make some money at it. And I wanted to be able to do something in my retirement years that would bring extra income. Nelson: We had enough to live on wasn't really done it to, you know, have to put food on the table, but wanted to, you know, help grandkids with college and, you know, that type of thing and give to causes that we like and, and help people out and that type of thing. So we wanted to so that's really what I've got into it for. Discovered Option Genius, actually, by just wanting to get into option trading, and just went on the internet and started, you know, looking at, you know, I just counted all the guys who were getting on big airplanes, and, you know, like, they owned them, you know, and stuff like that. And so, you know, I figured that that was, I didn't want something that was get rich quick, I knew that that I'm smart enough to know, that didn't work, that doesn't work. You know, um, you know, the turtle won the race. And so I wanted something that was understandable, was consistent, was slow, was high probability, all that that's fits my personality. And when I ran into you Allen and just listen to some of your stuff, and all that, and, you know, that fit with my personality, I'm sure there's some other one good ones out there. But there was a lot of adjusting and doing this and doing that and day trading and, you know, all this kind of stuff. I don't want I didn't want to do that. I don't have time to do that. I have other stuff going on. So that's how I kind of, you know, options fits with my personality and doing the passive trading the are already owned about some pretty good positions about 10 stops. And so I just started doing covered calls. Allen: And this was in your retirement account? Nelson: Yeah, yeah. It's all in my retirement account. I don't have a separate account. Allen: Okay. So everything stays in there? Nelson: It stays in my retirement account. I've dabbled with another account. But, you know, most of my money's in my IRA. Plus, I don't have to pay any capital gains tax on anything in retirement funds. So that helps to, you know keep a little bit more. So that's, you know, with naked puts with an IRA, you know, it's there harder to do so, and yet about the full amount. So I don't, you know, don't do as many of those unless a stock is getting close that I own that I want to buy more of, and that really hadn't happened much lately. So.. Allen: Now, you said you were in the financial services? Or what do you do this? Nelson: I was a, I started out as a loan mortgage originator like you used to do. And then I was offered a partnership in a mortgage company. And I took that and then we got gobbled up by big fish and I retire. Allen: Oh, very nice. So is that how you were able to retire? I mean, cuz you did it at 60. So that's a little bit earlier than most people? Nelson: Yes. So I was able to.. my partnership was, I was rewarded handsomely. And, and we were a successful mortgage firm, local mortgage firm. And we did well. And so I was rewarded. And I'm very grateful for that. Allen: That's awesome. Cool. Yeah. So in your spare time right now. So you've been retired? For what? like five years? Six years? Nelson: Hmm hm Allen: Yeah. Okay. So basically, you're, we're looking for something to do. Yeah. And that's, that's how you stumbled upon and say, Oh, let me let me see what this is all about kind of thing. Nelson: Yeah I wanted to build residual income, not to actually, you know, to live on day to day, but to just supplement some traveling and stuff. Without I mean, you don't know what the future holds. We don't know if, you know, I don't want to be I mean, obviously, my wife and I don't want to be a burden to our children when we get older. And so we want some of that stuff built in, you know, that we would have enough money in our retirement funds that if we had, you know, to go into assisted living or something like that, and there would be money for it. And so, and that's really what we wanted to that, that that was my main aim just to build grow over time. So if that happened, we would be covered. And if it didn't happen, we would have something to leave our children. Allen: Sweet, nice. I mean, it's, it's rare to see people in that position. Most people are the other way around, you know, they're becoming part of the sandwich problem, I guess they call it you know, where the, the kids are taking care of their own kids and then taking care of their grandparents or their parents. And it's the they're getting squeezed on both ends. Nelson: Well, when I was in the mortgage business, just quickly, when I was doing loans for people, and I did over over 2000 loans at a 10 year period. It was shocking how many people had little or no, nothing in the retirement funds at even 40+, and they had a company that would match. And they just said I can't afford it. I couldn't afford it. But yet they had $800 truck payment. Allen: And they're buying a brand new house. Nelson: So I mean, it was like I you know, right there I'm thinking that's not gonna be me. Yeah, so, yeah, this is another thing that motivated me to, you know, find something that would build on my retirement cuz you don't know what's going to happen. And you know, that retirement fund can go quick. A six figure retirement fund can go quick. You may not think so. But it can. Allen: Yeah, no, I mean, one heart attack. So that's right there. Nelson: Right. Allen: So now you're, help me out here. You're you're over 65? You are 65? Nelson: I'm 65. Allen: You're 65. So technically, you can take out money from the IRA? Nelson: Yes. After 59 and a half, I could. Allen: Oh Okay. Okay. So basically all the money in the IRA that you're trading is growing, no income tax, no, nothing. And then you can take it out for like you said, your travel and your charity and all that stuff. Awesome. So you like the best of both worlds? Nelson: Yeah, well, that's my plan. Yeah. Allen: Cool. So did you try anything else before that you haven't mentioned yet before Option Genius? Nelson: I've dealt with in a couple other folks. I don't remember their names now. But they were they were very educational and everything. But you know, the more I got into it, the more confused I got quite honestly. And they started talking about like, and I'm sure if I studied it, it would be fine. But like butterflies and doing this and taking this off and this and that and the other, like I don't kind of want to do all that. Okay, I'm not a day trader and I don't want to, I don't want to be that involved. I want to be a passive trader. I want to get on my computer 15 minutes every day. Unless it's you know, trying to do a, you know, doing some research on a trade, I wanted to check my trade, take 10 minutes and go do what I want to do. And you're the one that offered that. Like, I mean, I could have done it with the others, but I would have probably lost all my money. Because, you know, again, they're, you know, listen, if you want to do all the adjusting and all that stuff, that's fine. But if I've got a great trade, I don't want to have to adjust. You know, I know you have to sometimes, obviously, but yeah, you know, and I had to last month, but still, you know, yeah, I don't, I wanted something simple, strategic, easy, high probability, you know, just prod along, if I can be, if I can, if I can go in the right direction, you know, which is up, just incrementally 3 to 5% a month? I'll make, I'm gonna make millions. You know, 5 percent a month. Allen: Right. A per month. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Nelson: And that's, you know, quite honestly, your course. That's easy. I mean, to me, it is so.. Allen: I mean, you've proven it, right. Yeah. I mean when I first got started, when I, you know, options and stuff, I really was like, "Oh, yeah, you know, the adjustments" because you do a trade. And then you can, if it goes bad, you can adjust it, oh, man, I'll never lose on any trade, I'll just be able to adjust my way out of it. And you learn really quickly that the adjustments, they you know, they add more risk to it, because you're adding more money most of the time. And then if it keeps going against you, then the loss just ends up really much bigger than you anticipated in the beginning. And then, you know, I guess the older I get, and really the the more assets I have, the less I want to be sitting in front of the computer, and the less I want to be worried about adjustments, and hey, what am I going to do tomorrow? Is everything okay? And being stressed out about all that time, so I totally hear where you're coming from. So I'm sure everybody's wondering. So what have your results been? Nelson: Well, in 2020, despite I will mention this number, despite losing $92,000 in about 45 minutes on that Tuesday after the COVID Allen: On the COVID crash? Yeah, the COVID bear market? Nelson: Yeah you know, they've taken that hit, I still was up 24% for the year. And so, and this year, so far, I'm up about 56% through the first six months. Allen: So 56% in six months, right? Nelson: So I'm sure I'm gonna break the 100%. thing, and I'm gonna get my award from you. Allen: I'm still working on that. We haven't come up with it yet. But yeah, definitely want to, I definitely want to get you one. So what strategies are you doing? How do you get the 56%? Nelson: Well, I just I do just almost exclusively, I do make some money on covered calls. I'm very conservative, because I like my stock. And I don't want to be I don't want to call the way unless I want it called away. And so that's only happened once this year. And so that's really, you know, otherwise, I'm just, you know, between that I'm just trying to lower my cost basis on my stocks, covered calls and in reinvesting the dividends. And so but I do just vertical spreads almost. And, you know, this summer, I'm doing iron condors because that's what your training told me to do. So I like to do, I'm learning more about them. And so mostly I just do vertical spreads. I'm also, I also do weekly and daily spreads on SPY. Allen: Okay Nelson: I use a high probability 90% Delta, or 10% Delta, I should say, I'm an optimist so I always say the 90%. 10% Delta and, you know, I've had an occasional loss, but that's really helped also with my return, but my bread and butter is still the monthly vertical bull that really a bull put spreads is what I've been doing this year. So far. I haven't seen a whole lot of really great call spreads, but mostly put spreads from a $5 put spreads with, you know, 82%, 83%, 84%. Making 10% just doing it over and over and over, you know, on the monthly and I haven't had a loss yet this year on that. Have on the daily and weekly. Allen: But okay, say that again, you've been doing these like these, we call them layups, right? So the layups, you've been.. Nelson: Yeah, yeah. Allen: Since January. Is that when you started with the layup? Nelson: No. Well, I've been doing. I mean, I had been in the course. Allen: Okay. January 2020. Allen: Okay, so you've been doing them. If you were in the past year in the passive trading formula program in the course. And so you were that in January 2020. And then from April 2021 that's when you join the layup mastery program to.. Nelson: Yeah the credit spread Allen: Right, the credit spread mastery and then since then you have not had a losing trade at all? Nelson: Not on my vertical spreads. I have on my daily head a couple of my daily and one of my week Allen: Right, I mean the but those are obviously those are riskier. Yeah. But that's amazing. How many of the monthly trades have you done? Nelson: Oh, gosh you asked me that. I'm probably I averaged about five a month, five to six months. I would say 50 to 55 spreads, I'm guessing. Um, That's not right. You know, 30? Probably around 30. Yeah. But in June, I only did one because I was doing those iron condors so. Allen: Okay, so you're not counting that. Okay. All right, but that that's phenomenal. That's amazing that you've had so much success with that one. Simple trade. Right? Yeah. That's cool. Kudos to you, man. That's amazing. so on. So you said in 2021, first six months, you're up about 53%? Or 56? I don't remember.. Nelson: 55% Allen: 55% Okay. And then in 2020, even after the big market crash, the bear market and you lost a ton there. You still were up? 24% for the year. Yeah. So before you got or you found option genius, what were your returns then that you remember? Nelson: Oh, gosh, they were really super hit or miss, I was basically breaking even. But I was only trying, I didn't have scaled up trading. You know, I mean, like I do, you know, I was really basically trading two or three contracts when, instead of, you know, 40 and 50, like I do now. So.. Allen: I mean, I wouldn't blame me if you if you don't have confidence in the system, right now, if it's hit or miss, or it's when a couple of times, and I lose, and then I win, and I lose, it's there's nothing there to give you the ability to say, you know what this works, I'm gonna start putting more money at risk. Nelson: Right. And that, this, that this strategy, I mean, it was a good knowledge base. But I didn't care for the I just didn't care for the strategy. It didn't fit my personality. So it was a little half flying, you know, doing set, you know, doing 30 deltas. And that's just too risky for me, and then adjusting out of that in, in the couple times, I paper traded all that and adjusted, I still lost money. Plus, I'm not a guy that wants to keep a losing trade a loser and try to eke out a few dollars. That's just my personality. I rather let it go and move on to another trade. So yeah, but yeah, that's just me. That's just my personality. Allen: Right yeah. Because if you come in, you know, 30, delta, even sometimes 25, you're gonna end up adjusting a lot more than if you come in much lower. It's rare that you won't have to adjust if you come in at that high. So, yeah, okay so.. Nelson: I don't need to actually, I don't need that action to make me feel like I'm a big time trader or anything. That makes sense. Allen: Yeah, I mean, some people they have that mean, and some people they actually get addicted to the, to the, you know, all the madness and watching the talking heads on TV all everyday looking for ideas and being in the chat rooms. And, oh, what do I do now? What about this? Oh, that's the craziest thing I see. You know, people, they put trades on. And then they go to like a Facebook group or something online forum, they're like this My trade, I'm in trouble. What do I do now? And then they just get advice from who knows who on the other end? You know, people that maybe have never put a trade on before they're giving them advice. Oh, you should do this. And you should do that. It's like, Ah, no, that's not how you do it. Nelson: That's what I think it's great that you Allen, one of the things is that if I have a question, I can shoot you an email and you'll answer back. So and and that's one thing that you don't get with other folks. I mean, you might get somebody answering you back, but you don't know who got out. Allen: Yeah, I mean, that's why we you know, we try to keep our system smaller so that we can actually give that one on one attention and so I can like right now I'm handling all the trade questions, you know, so anything that comes in. Now we do have somebody that we're training to help take off some of the load but for any member, any student they get a direct answer for me so that's something that I want to keep doing. Okay, so what was it that really turned the corner for you? Was it just that you found a strategy that work that fit your your your style or your your personality or was it something else that helped you go from hit or miss to wildly consistently profitable? Nelson: Well, I really, the way he does class, Utah in the in the course materials and stuff, were super understandable to me, and, and so you know, I'm a guy that, like I made some rules not and so when this happens do this I'm that's sort of how I'm wired. And you know, I don't I'm not a guy that's gonna look at a chart and sit there with angles and all this kind of stuff, I can get a lot of support and resistance and, you know, the simple stuff like that and moving averages, and, you know, but it's really, you gave me a sense, and a confidence that if we do this, most of times, you're going to come out as a winner, or you're going to be profitable, and you're not looking. You know, if you're looking for 10%, monthly, month after month after month, and you know, and even if you make less than that, that's okay, you know, and so I mean, you don't go into it, like, Oh, you know, you're gonna make 80%, you know, and, you know, some unrealistic expectation where people do they just end up quitting, that's not the goal, the goal is to, you know, figure out a strategy. Nelson: And one thing that you taught me is that, you know, you can look at a chart and stuff, and it's really incomplete. You know, it's incomplete, because you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow, perfect example, is this past Monday. I mean, you went from Friday to Monday, that just crashed red, now it's up, you know, you know, a whole, you know, for its back even so, you know, you just don't know. And if your eye tells you, they know, they're lying. So you know, so you don't know. So you have to take that information, and make in take what it says to you. Make an informed decision, and then you just have to put the trade on, I learned that from you. And that revolutionized how I did things because to me, I always was thinking, "Okay, is there something else I need to know?" "Is there another indicator that's gonna make me feel all warm and fuzzy?" and you know what, there's not one. And so I take a few things that I look at that I think it's going to continue in that direction, it may not. And then I'll make a high probability bet that it's going to, instead of a low probability bet that it's going to end so. And that's an edge and a strategy that totally fits me, I can do a trade that's got a 85% probability of winning, I mean, if you can go into a casino, you'll own the casino in about 4 hours. Allen: Yeah, they won't let you get away with that. They're either beat you up, or they put you in jail or something. Nelson: You go into the back room. Right, so that, like, you know, that I was I monitored in statistics in college. So that made a big sense to me, like, you know, I know that, that I'm going to lose some time, it's inevitable, but the probability that I have a greater probability of winning than losing, and so that's a strategy that's an edge that I think works for me, you know, once it's passive, it's passive. And so, you know, I think that that right, there is what made me turn the corner, and in your credit spread mastery course, showing that over a period of time, how well you did with your count, through ups and downs was a real inspiration for me also not tucked up for real inspiration for me to think, you know, a regular person could do this. You know, you don't have to have an MBA from Harvard, or some somewhere else to, or something to do all this. So a regular person who is serious and, and can do the same strategy that works over and over, can really build upon it, and, you know, reach their financial goals. Allen: Yep. And I mean, I'll tell you the truth, like, you know, you took the rules, you took the system, and you've done better than I have at it this past year. Seriously, you know, you're from what you said, you have a losing trade, I haven't had losing trades. So, you know, it's like, maybe I need just need to give you my money be like, Hey, can you manage this stuff for me? But um, so now that you have a decent size portfolio, so you have a bunch of stock that you've had for a long time, and you do and the spreads, and then you're also doing some dailies and weeklies, so how would you break it down in terms of percentage? How much do you do in each? Nelson: So I would say 50% of my IRA is in 10 Stocks. Allen: Okay Nelson: Maybe a little bit higher that but less than 60%. And then the rest, I just keep keeping, you know, I keep it in cash, but it's cash that I use to trade spreads and then I have backup, you know, reserves that I have for emergencies and stuff like that you know, reserve fun or rainy day fund or emergency fund whatever you want to call that so I have a really even have a savings account so I can because I can get this money out in a day, right? If I had to so I have a non that something I'm not going to touch that you know and then I have the rest of it. I really considered cash that I will invest in my spread trading. Allen: Okay, and how much do you do monthly versus weeklies or dailies? Nelson: Most of my I would say 60% of my that I do and or maybe 70% I do in monthlies Allen: Okay. Nelson: Okay, and then the rest I will do in three day-a-week, I guess the dailies, and then the rest of would be on the weeklies Allen: And do those take a lot of time, the weeklies and the dailies. Nelson: No I have a system that I sort of go by, but I, I use the same system for the monthlies as I do for the weeklies and the dailies. Really, it works. I mean, I use a higher Delta, Delta. And so and I don't make you know, 10% obviously, I make three to 4%. But, you know, that compounds over, you know, every week, so.. Allen: Definitely, yeah, yeah. So now, like once you turn that corner, right? And once you started doing well, once you started getting confidence and scaling, what was something that surprised you about the whole process? Nelson: The process and how we do it is scalable. That's what I was sort of surprised, like, you know, I never, I didn't think that, you know, I figured out what I had to, you know, maybe have a new strategy by now that maybe this didn't work over a longer period of time. And it's a surprise me that it actually, I mean, I know, yeah, and I know, you've said this, but, you know, nothing lasts forever. And I figured I'd have to be switching strategies or something. And I will, if there's, you know, a long program, or you know, long bear market, you know, I'll have to be doing more calls and puts, obviously, and all that type of thing. But the rules still apply, I would think it's pretty much it's the same strategies, just the other side is the opposite. So I'm thinking, you know, I'm always tweaking I'm, I mean, I'm always evaluating, I should say, you know, the strategy, you know, I mean, I'm always paper trading lower deltas to see, you know, how I would have done at the same trade, you know, and I mean, in this market, even at an 80 or 20, delta, you know, I'd probably still doing really well, but you know, I don't want to own up I would say on the weeklies, but and then on the monthlies I always paper trade them as if they were 30 Delta, just to see how would go and they haven't been that great on a 30 Delta. But they've been, so I'm thinking, why would I do that, like, I'm not going to put my account at risk over a few more $100 or so you know. So again, I'm I want something that's consistent, sustainable over the long haul. And I'm not looking to get rich quick. I'm not trying to, I mean, I'm doubling my account, I'm going to double my account, if you're just by doing regular stuff, not by going, I'm gonna double my account. And so I'm going to take, you know, unnecessary risk. And so I'm just not going to do that. I don't want to have to tell my wife like you had to tell your wife that "Oh, I'm sorry, honey, but our IRA is gone". Yeah. Like, I kind of want to have that conversation. Allen: So okay, so on that on that note, like, what are you doing in terms of like a hedge? Do you do anything to see like, okay, hey, if stuff goes bad, do you have I don't know, like a process or something that you Hey, this is what I'm gonna do? Or do you do you know, buy long puts or something to hedge you? Or? Nelson: No, I don't I haven't gotten into that. I'd love to learn more about that. I do, I plan every one of my trades completely before I get in it. Okay, I'm going to exit this no matter what, you know, for in the course and I do this at 25%. I'm getting out. You know, but I haven't explored the, I've heard you talk about it. I don't I haven't done the time, or taking the time to try to understand, you know what that's about? And I mean, I do understand it, but I just haven't done it. So but I'd love to learn more about that. But I haven't had the need to really learn a lot of it. Does that make sense? Allen: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, from what I know, you have already stuff built in, you know, with the stocks you like you said he even if they go down 20 25% you're still gonna hold them? Yeah, you still want them, you still want to get their cost basis down to zero. So you're gonna keep doing that no matter what happens with those, you're still gonna be cash flowing them, you know? Nelson: Exactly, exactly. Allen: With the spreads, you have a certain number, a certain percentage of your portfolio, it's not the whole thing. And you have your you know, when you're getting out, right? Nelson: It's non negotiable to, you know, I'd get out at that time. You know, I've gotten out before and had it turned around on me, but you know what, but I don't you know, I don't worry about that, almost. If I do everything I know I can do, and do it by the rules. And, you know, I know that I'm going to win more than I lose. And I'm, you know, preservation of capital is the rule for me. You know, I don't, I don't need to prove myself right or wrong. You know, when it's out. It's out. Yeah, get out. Allen: So it seems like you do have a plan in place. You know, it's not like you're just doing whatever And not even thinking about it. If stuff happens, if things go bad against you, then you you already know what you're going to do. I mean, that's pretty good enough, I don't, you can go further with it. And you can say, yeah, I'm gonna hedge it this way, or I'm gonna start doing pairs trading. And, you know, there's so many different ways that you could hedge yourself. You know.. Nelson: Maybe that's extra work I don't think I need to do right now. Allen: Yeah. And there's always a cost involved, right? So either time and money, or one of the other or so cool. I mean, as long as you're, as long as you're able to sleep at night, then and you know what to do, and you're safe, then that's cool. So, when you when you first got started, what was one of the biggest challenges that you had getting started? Nelson: Pulling the trigger to do a trade, I didn't have the confidence. I mean, listen, I know I did, I've done a lot of paper trading, and it's not the same. And so that $100,000 in that paper trading account is not real money, and, but my $100,000 in my account is in so and so I, you know, pulling the trigger really was, you know, was the hardest thing to do. But once I did it, and once I knew that I didn't have to know everything, before it started, and that there was a possibility to lose, and I was able to accept that loss, because I still believed in the strategy. You know, for an occasional loss, then that helped me move on in because, you know, and, and not be worried, you know, if I've done something dumb, in lost, that would have been bad, but if I follow the rules, and still lost, you know, and then that's just going to happen, and that's just life, and that happens in business. And that happens, you know, in life. And so, you know, in trading is no different, you know, my egos not tied to my trading. And so.. Allen: That's a big deal. That's a big, that's a big distinction. Nelson: I don't have to be right, you know, and, you know, because sometimes I'm not right, and that's just life. And so I don't, I had that problem, at first when I was trading commodities. And I just had to be right, you know, and, and I wasn't some of the time. So.. Allen: Well, that's the thing with the way I mean, if you're buying commodities, or buying stocks or buying options, you have to be right. Otherwise, you lose money, you don't have a choice, you know, but with our way, it's like, yeah, you know, I could be wrong on this direction, and I can still make it, you know, it'll still might work out, it doesn't have to be like you said, if you take incomplete information, make your best educated guess on it. And then you put the probabilities in your favor, and then most of the time is going to work out, even if you try to screw it up. Nelson: Well, that's a great edge that you taught me, not only myself, but you know, the other students that that that gave me some coffee, that gave me a lot of confidence to go forward and pull off trades. And that gives me confidence in scaling up my trading also, you know, we're, um, you know, you know, I'm up to you know, trading 50 contracts on each spread. So, and that's, you know, that's, that's a lot of money. There. But, you know, it's, it's just is what it is, you know, I mean, I've got the confidence that it that, you know, you put up high probability trading in your favor, you're gonna win most of the time. Yep, if you have to get out and it should, whatever it is. Otherwise, it probably turns into a low probability trade. Allen: Yep. And so, as you've been through the process, as you, you know, you started out learning and you implemented now you've, you've been doing well at it, what are some of the takeaways that you would want to share with our listeners? Nelson: Well, I tell you, my biggest takeaway would be that follow the rules. That's my biggest takeaway. I mean, you're the person that's done it. And so just bumping this takeaway is just follow the rules. If you just follow the rules, and do things that like you've taught us, then you're going to have a high probability trade, it's not coming, you're always going to win, but you're going to have a high probability trade, people get in trouble, and they do things that go against what we teach, passive trading, you know, betting on the next high flying stock, and, you know, and it goes up, and then goes down, and, you know, you're out of money, you know, that type of thing. And so, you know, that that would be one one of my takeaways. And, you know, the other thing is that this course is easily explained. And it's, it's easily understood. And, you know, for someone who's not even brilliant, you know, I was able to take it and fit it within my personality. And I guess the last thing that my biggest takeaway, too, is that, you know, you, Allen and your team, you care about your students, you know, and I've told you that before, that's no new news. But, you know, like, I know that if I send you if I have a question for you, you're gonna answer Or some, somebody on your team is going to answer me. And so to me, that's, you're committed, and your team's committed to my success. And as I said, it's not a tag word. I mean, that's, that's, I've felt that from day one. And so that inspires a lot of confidence in me, that I know that you care about not only my success, but you care about me and how well I'm doing too. And, and that's, that goes for all the students that I've seen you interact with. Allen: Yeah, I mean, we we try our best, right? I mean, we make mistakes, but we do try our best and we do care, everybody that comes in, it's like we want to do whatever we have to do to help you succeed. You know, one of the things we're looking at is we're having more customer service issues, you know, like, "Oh, I need my password", or what program should I get? or stuff like that little questions here and there. And we're thinking about bringing on somebody to take over that position. And we looked at different things to think, well, we could go, you know, overseas, we could hire somebody in the Philippines or something like that, and they get, you know, three $4 an hour and full time they're happy, you know, that's the going rate over there. They'd be more than happy at a job like that. But then there's still that disconnect, you know, and so we decided, no, you know, we're gonna keep it in house, we're gonna hire somebody here locally, that is working with us in the office. And I think I've made it a rule that everybody that works for us has to trade, like, they have to go through our programs, and they have to understand the trades, and they have to know what they are. And whether they do it for themselves or not, that's up to them. Right now. Everybody's doing it, and they're loving it. But if somebody says, Hey, you know, this is not my thing, but that's fine, but they're gonna have to know how to do it. Right? If they don't do it for themselves, that's different, which I don't know why they wouldn't, when they see, you know, they're all the results. But that's one of the things that we want to because even for employees, it's like, you know, I don't want you just working, I want you to better your life as well. So, if we're doing it for customers, and clients and students, then you should also be benefiting from that as well. So that's something we've implemented that I'm proud of. So Nelson: That's great. Allen: Yeah. Cool, cool. Cool. So what do you think the future holds for you now? Nelson: Well, I'm, I'm going to keep slowly, and hopefully, I'm going to still be successful, I'm going to keep, you know, scaling up my trading slowly, you know, I mean, I have a certain I have a certain amount that I want to have in my account, by the time I'm 75. And so I need to, you know, keep compounding it and, you know, keep trading and, you know, keep just scaling up, I guess, you know, I still believe in the, you know, I can't see the strategy changing unless some fundamental part of the market changes where you can't do options anymore, or something, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep adding on, I'm going to keep it, just add on some more, you know, the stocks that I own, I'm gonna keep adding shares, as they, you know, as they become, you know, available at a good price. And so, you know, that's my long term goals. The other is to really feed that, you know, that type of thing is to buy more stock, and, you know, and that type of thing, so that that's really what's, you know, I'm on a, hopefully, I'm still going to be involved with passive trading and doing that in the community. That's another great thing. I mean, we have an awesome community. And that's, you know, duty. I mean, yeah, but an easy Allen, for you to say, other courses over, I'll see you later. Good luck, you know, send me an email if you need help. But, you know, the zoom calls, and we've been continuing and have been great. And it's great to be in a community of people who are like minded, who want to progress and are serious about trading and who, you know, it's, it's good to bounce off ideas. I think we've got a pretty decent group. You know, and so, it's been great to meet, you know, get to know those guys over the last few months, guys and girls. Allen: Now, I want to thank you, too. I mean, you're, you know, you're a very beneficial source in that group. You know, I mean, especially like, you took Roberta under your wing, kind of, and you kind of coached her through it. And she, you know, she put on her I've been after her for months to put on a trade. And you just, you know, you kind of gave her a little pep talk. It didn't even take that long. Hey, she Next one. She came back and she's like, yep, I did it. I did it. You know, I made money. That was like you we have no clue how big an impact that can have on somebody. You know, we've been emailing back and forth so.. Nelson: Okay, all right. I'm trying to get her here. Second one now. Allen: Cool. So I mean, I'm so I'm a bit a little bit confused, though. But do you like your living expenses, how do you that comes from another source or you take it out of your trading account? Nelson: Well I'm on Social Security, I took it, okay, now I said, I'm waiting, I get a really decent amount of Social Security, my wife still working, but we don't have any debt. So and, and all my kids are out of the house and, you know, rolling on with their own lives. And so we don't, we don't have a ton of expenses, the only, like we're going to we're planning some trips next year that we're going to, you know, use some of this money for but nothing extravagant or anything, but, you know, it's taken some trips, some places, so that's what you know, stuff like that. And then we help in help our, I don't, this, I know this is gonna be popular, but instead of giving our grandkids gifts for Christmas, and all that stuff, we just put some money in there for 429 Program, which makes their parents happy. They're not super excited about but you know, what's one less present when you're getting 20? Anyway, so you know that that's one thing that the.. Allen: Oh, the 529? Nelson: Yeah 529, the college savings program. So we just put Birthday, Christmas and everything all in there once, of course, and then take a tax deduction for that. That's how you make your grandkids birthday party. So I've been saying, Yeah, I stay busy. So, you know, I do some consulting restaurant wise and stuff like that, that keeps me busy. But, you know, so I, that's kind of in the future, maybe that, you know, I look forward to, you know, doing more trading and, like, I love doing it, like, it's fun, you know, doing it. But I think if I was like doing a day trading thing that would just wear on me, you know, and, you know, I'm kind of like, you know, I check in at about 10:30 in the morning, and about 10 minutes, and I look at the PNL just like he taught me. And if it's doing well, I just click off of it. I don't watch any of the you know, news programs or any of that noise. Yeah, I used to get up in the morning and check the futures you know, and we all weird about it and everything like that. And, but I don't you know, anymore, so. So you are like the poster child for passive trading. I took you seriously, Allen. Allen: Yeah. And so far, it's been working, right? Nelson: Yeah. Well, that's how, you know, I know, guys that are my age and have portfolios, like mine have stocks, and they're checking them every hour. Like, that's gonna make a difference. Like, they're not gonna sell them anyway. So, you know, they're checking them all time and always talking about them all that stuff. And, you know, that just bores me. Allen: Yeah, yeah. But I think part of it is also fear, because they're not in control of it. Right? Exactly. They don't know how to like, once they retire, they don't know how to generate more. Nelson: That's right. Allen: Because they've been just okay, if I go to work, I'll make money. And so I'm safe. But when I stopped working, and that paycheck doesn't come in, now, it's all this money that's, you know, in this mystery place that somebody else is running, and they have no control over it. So they lose a big part of that certainty in their emotional makeup. And it can be very, very scary. Nelson: Well, I had my money when we had our IRA course, to somebody and, you know, in 2018, I got my statement, you know, when was a great year for the S&P and all that I got my statement in my account had gained 1.18%. Allen: Okay Nelson: I said, All right. You know what, I can do better than that. I'll be a blind squirrel finds a nut every once a while, I can invest it in myself, and make 2%. I know it. So that's what I rolled it all over to self-directed, I rate myself, and I'm glad you had to, but, you know, I got that that got killed me on fees and stuff. Allen: Yes Nelson: And wiped me out. Couldn't believe it? Yeah. Allen: Every time they do something, there's a fee for something. But so Okay, so would you would you recommend Option Genius to other people? Nelson: Absolutely. Of course, it was, you know, it's been worth every, I mean, it's been the return on investment. It's almost incalculable, you know, on what I've paid for, what I paid, and just the time that you've invested back into me, it's been unbelievable to me, you know, so, I mean, I really can't even put you know, a figure on it, because what it's meant to me, be part of community to be coached, you know, to be almost mental word in some ways, you know, because if I hadn't gotten involved in Option Genius, you know, I'm sure no one myself I'd be at some other deal doing something and pulling my hair out, you know, with gains, losses, gains losses, and never had the confidence So I would recommend it to anybody from the beginner to the seasoned veteran who's just so stressed out because of their strategy just stresses them out, you know, and I don't want to live stressed out, I, you know, I spent 25 years in the restaurant business, that was nothing but daily stress, you know, so I don't I don't want to do like, I don't want to live like that. And so it's great that I've been able to be profitable, but I wouldn't learn this system if it weren't for y'all, because no one else is teaches this system. I mean, I've looked, and, you know, it's, most of them are, like, get rich quick schemes from from what I see, you know, in in, and the ones that aren't, aren't teaching, high probability method and even a passive method. So I would say, for, you know, a low stress trading system, that over time bills and bills and bills, you know, through incremental gains, you're the best. Allen: I mean, I gotta tell you 50% a year, that's not that's not incremental. There, there are people on Wall Street, they'll give their right arm for one year of 50% gains, and we're just halfway through. So we, you know, Nelson: I don't know what the second half of the year is going to hold Allen but.. Allen: Well I mean, even if you take the second year off, it's 50. For a pretty good year, you got bragging rights, Nelson: I will have to correct myself, I think that I did have a small loss on a put no, a call spread. Because you told me I need to be more diversified. Yes. Allen: So that was my fault. Nelson: So I tried to be, but I did take like a $200 loss, I think on that trade. But I'm not blaming you really. Allen: You just did. Now, okay, so now you did tell me that you did want to you had a message you wanted to share. Nelson: I did want to share for any of y'all out there that or maybe you're, you know, retiring, or you have to retire, you know, you don't want to work till you're 70 or 75, or whatever, you really can start with this method. And build your nice retirement fund or nest egg or inheritance that you want to leave your children or grandchildren. Because this system, even we even with a small account with incremental growth over the years, will get up pretty quickly. Compound Interest is the eighth wonder of the world. And compounding time after time, after time doing safe trades. So if you have a small amount, and you are 60 Plus or even 55 Plus, and you haven't done a good job of funding your 401k or IRA, for whatever reason. Doing this will get you back in the game. You know, if you follow the rules, and you think clear headed and you invest clear headed, you don't try to all make it in one swoop. This right there, this right here will be the key to doing that. And with Allen and his team that's committed to your success, you know, you almost have to try to go wrong. Allen: Well said Yeah. And then you know, the other thing I was looking at it and you said compound interest. And you can go to any calculator on the on the web, and you can say, Okay, if I put this much money, and I make this return, and if it sits there for 20 years, you know, you compound it, it turns into like a huge number. But most of those calculators, they compounded on a yearly basis, right? You know, so it's at the end of the year, in a year. So 20 times, you know, 20 years later, you'll have a big number, but that's 20 periods of compounding. But like, you know, you told me, you're doing this, the monthly trades, right. And so every month, your account is now bigger. And so you have more money to compound it. So you're compounding it on a monthly basis. So that number is just totally off the wall exponential. So it's it's x, you know, like, whatever, whatever your return is gonna be like, you know, cubed or quadrupled or whatever. I don't know how to explain it, but it's a can be so huge. So definitely, I totally agree with you, you know, you got to you got to start, right, even if you can't just give up and part of the thing is the more I study this I've been looking into longevity studies, and the science and the advancements in technology and health. And they're some crazy, crazy stuff coming down the pipeline that is almost ready to be unleashed on the world, where it's not going to be unusual for somebody to say yeah, you know, I'm 140 years old and they'll still be in control of their faculties you know, I myself, I think my one of my goals is, Hey, I'm going to live to 120 you know, and from what I'm reading and seeing in the, in the research in the companies that are coming out and, and COVID really, really really, you know, supercharged this movement, because before I was reading somewhere where you know, you go to the hospital, and about 5% of the visits were virtual, then you got COVID. And it went, it jumped up to like 80 90% visits were virtual. And so now everybody's, you know, more familiar with the technology. And the government was the bureaucracy of getting new stuff approved for experiments and trials. That was one of the biggest holdups. So what used to take 10 years during COVID, took two months, because everybody saw that there's a real need for this stuff. So we're gonna see in the next handful, maybe five years, we're gonna see some really radical new treatments and technologies coming out that are really going to push longevity to the future. So even if you're behind now, in your retirement funds, you know, you get started and you're going to have time to catch up. Nelson: Well, if you have $100,000 account, and you average 5%, which is totally doable in this system, in 10 years, you'll have $50 million. Allen: But that's per month. Nelson: That's per month, per month, you gave me the confidence that I could do that. With this system. Allen: Where'd you get that number? Five? 100,000? How would you say 50 million? Nelson: $100,000 and 5% compounded monthly will be 50 million in 10 years. Allen: Really? Nelson: Yes. Allen: Wow Nelson: I put it on a compound calculator Allen: And you're doing that right now you're doing that? Well, you're you got a head start. Nelson: That's assuming a 5% every month, you just don't know. Allen: But yeah, no, I mean, you can't, you're gonna have losing months but still. Nelson: Just have a little bit of that. Allen: Yeah, you don't need to I don't think anybody needs.. Nelson: So it is possible. And again, II think if you break it down 3% either. So you start with a 10,000 and a 5% and you're gonna have $5 million. So you know, it's, that's that's a lot of I mean, I can live on that. Allen: And that's 10 years. Nelson: Yeah, that's 10 years. Allen: That passes by like this. I mean.. Nelson: Yeah so 2% would be compounded is a little bit over, it's almost 3 million. So you, you know, 2% you can do 2%. If you had some stocks you could do you know, you could almost get 2% on covered calls a month, you know, and just keep on every month. Keep on and keep on keep on. And then you're right. It's at a certain point, it just starts going crazy. Allen: Snowball. It just goes faster and faster. And then you have to do anything. It just doesn't by itself. Nelson: That's right. And even if you subtract nearly 3% inflation out of it, still a ton of money. Allen: Yep. Big time. Big time. Nelson: But but so you don't have to put on 20 spreads every month, you know, to do that you really can, you know, you really can do a lot less than that. And, you know, and if you make 10% you really can do that, like you teach. Allen: Well, thank you so much, Nelson. I really appreciate your time. I know this is gonna be very beneficial for a lot of people. And you know, it's wonderful having people like you in the community. You know, you're so selfless and you help other people and you're an inspiration. I really can't thank you enough. Nelson: Oh, no problem. I'm happy to help any way I can. Allen: Alrighty. Take care. Take care. Bye. 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I'm going to call this episode, a thing about scaling. And when I'm talking about scaling, I'm talking about scaling up your trading in terms of trading larger amounts and larger quantities of contracts. So this comes into play, because we have several students who are going through one of our, I guess, our credit spread mastery program. And we teach them the fundamentals, we teach them how to do the trades, we work with them, we show them how to do it. And then at the end, after they've had really great success, and they're ready for it, we talk about scaling, how to go from, you know, one to two to three contracts to 510 50 100 or more, depending on the size of the account. And so, we've been having these discussions, and that's why it's in the top of my head, and I noticed something recently, that I wanted to share with you. Now, I tell everybody, and I've said this many times on that podcast as well. trading is 80% Mental 20% Physical, right? So whatever you do, the thing, the analyzing, the research, the clicking, the monitoring, the trading itself, the stuff that you do with your hands on their broker, and moving money around all that stuff, that's 20% of trading. 80% is what goes on in your mind, and how you process how you handle things, your emotions. And when it gets to, when it comes to scaling, that really, really starts to play a bigger role, the emotions, how to handle those things, that is really important to have a handle on before you start scaling. Because otherwise, you're going to have issues. And those issues are going to be very expensive. So one of the things that I noticed recently, is I was doing a I had a $15,000 trade on. And it was a normal spread that I had put on, and it had hit my goal, which was 10% for the month. So it's like a great, you know, $1500.. not bad for a trade. I'll take it very nice. And so according to my plan, I'm supposed to take the trade off, I'm supposed to finish it exited, take my money and relax, right? Or move it to another trader or do whatever. But as I'm looking at this trade, it was not in my regular brokerage account, it was in a different brokerage account. And so the way that trade looks is different. Maybe that's why I felt or felt differently. But normally, you know, most of my trading is done in thinkorswim. This one was done in a different account. And so it looked like I said it looked different. It felt different. And so maybe that's what what threw me. But when I looked at the trade, it showed me that oh, I had made 15 $100, which was great. But there was plenty of time left. There was still another maybe another week, week and a half left in the trade. And I could have made another I think $600. I said "huh this is interesting. I made 1500, I got my goal, but I can make another 600. Now 600. That's a lot of money, right? I mean, I just have to sit in it for maybe like another 10 days, the stock is really far away from from my short strike. What are the chances of this trade going bad, pretty little probabilities on my side time is on my side, you know, data is gonna pick up and every day I stay in the trade, I could probably make another 100 bucks. Do I want to do that? Or do I want to stick to the rules? Now normally, I've gotten to the point where it's not even a question. I just take the trade off. But something caused me to pause. Something caused me to think about it like $600 that's a lot of money that give me for some people that's maybe not a house payment, but that's definitely a car payment. Right. Hmm, interesting. So I paused and I thought about it. I'm like maybe I can stay in it. Maybe I can stay in it. Now here I am. violating my rules. My rules is you get your gain, you get your 100% your your 10% profit and you get out. That's it. There's no ifs, ands or buts. You get your money get up. But here I am thinking about it. Eventually, I did get up. I took my money and I got out. But it really bothered me that I was sitting there thinking about it and trying to try to reason with myself. Oh, maybe I can stay in one more day. Maybe I could stay until the weekend. Maybe you can stand on Monday. You know get the whole weekend time decay. Yeah, maybe you could do that. How much can I make? Oh, and I kept like I kept going back and forth and thinking about and checking the trade over and over again when I didn't have to. And it just was not normal. And so that's what I wanted to share with you. It's like, Yeah, when you scale, you do the same things, you know, you press the same buttons, you do the same analysis, the same stock, same trade, same strategy, everything is the same. But emotionally, it's very different. Because the numbers get bigger. The numbers get bigger, you just add more zeros to it. Now, yes, technically, depending on how much you're trading, I have to tell you that you should probably do more in hedging, and you should probably change it up a little bit your trading. So that the trade is a little bit different, maybe you're hedging a different way, maybe using different strikes or different underlyings to make sure there's plenty of volatility and liquidity and all that stuff. So yeah, it varies a little bit depending on how much you scale and what strategy you use, and all that stuff. That's way beyond this episode. But my point here, is that while you're scaling, you got to have a handle on your emotions. And it's really important that you stick to your game plan. Now what happened with that trade? It expired, I could have made the extra money. But I'm happy that I stuck with my plan. I didn't let my brain in my emotions and all that get a better of me my greed, basically, right? the greed of wanting to Oh, that extra $600 could go far, you know? Nope, I had my gain, I heard everything. Now, normally, if this was a small trade, you know, maybe you would be like, Oh, I can make an extra 60 bucks, that wouldn't be a big deal. Okay, I can get out of my trade, no problem, I'm gonna, you know, I'm a good boy, I'm a good trader, I'm sticking to my plan, I'm following the plan getting out. But when you get to taking it off, and there's still $600 left on the table. $600 leaving on the table, that feels different, feels really different. And when you get into those extra contracts, you know, that that commission adds up to then, you know, what about if it's not 600? What if it's 6000?  Right? bigger numbers. So that's why you have to have a check on your emotions. And when you scaling, you know, we don't want to go from five contracts to 50 contracts, we want to go from five contracts to maybe eight, I don't even I wouldn't even want to go double, I'm gonna go step by step slowly, slowly, slowly, until you get the hang of it. One month, you maybe go to five, then 10, 15, 20, 25. As long as you're staying consistent, as long as you're staying true to your trading plan and trading by the rules that you've already set out. Right? Eventually, you'll get to the point where hey, I'm increasing this, maybe I need to tweak my rules a little bit, maybe I need to hedge myself a little bit more, maybe I need to change what my goal is, instead of making 10%, I'm going to try to make 8% and use 2% for insurance. Or maybe I'm going to change the underlyings that I'm trading in in my larger, larger trades, I'm going to go into some underlyings that are very liquid. So you change things up. Right. Now that comes with experience. And if you're one one of our programs, we can talk about that when you get to that level. In the beginning. Of course, you don't need to worry about that man as much. In the beginning, you stick to the plan, that's the biggest thing, focus on the plan, understand the plan, understand how the trade works, put it on, take it off, put it on, take it off over and over again, make it methodical, make it consistent, so that you're doing the same thing over and over again, so that you get consistent results. And then once you're consistent once the money is coming in, we can tweak it, we can improve it, and then eventually get to the point where Okay, now it's time to scale. And at that point, it gets emotional. So be careful for that when you're scaling. Be careful. And big plan here. No matter how big you get, no matter how much you're trading, you got to stick to the rules, no matter how much money is being left on the table, because you got to remember, hey, look, I got my goal. I got what I wanted. I'm playing it safe. And the more money you trade with, the more you have to keep it safe. Because I heard somebody going again on another call. And you know, this guy was talking on the podcast, he was talking to a billionaire. And a billionaire had a different mindset about investing. That billionaire was saying that, hey, when I invest in something, and they're talking about real estate, when I invest in a real estate property, I don't care as much about how much money I can make. I am more concerned with getting my capital back. I'm more concerned with return of capital, then return on capital. And so when you get to that level, when you get rich, right, when you get to multimillion dollar status, then your mind shift changes, your goals change, everything changes. So as you're scaling, when you get to that point, it becomes really I got to make sure that my money comes back. And then if my goal changes, maybe I don't need to make 10% on every trade. Maybe you make 3% maybe you make 2% even 1% on a lot of money is a big deal. Because eventually we know we've talked about this in the past that after you get to a certain level of net worth, you know, adding more money doesn't make you happier. It allows you to do more things, you know, your, your nest egg gets bigger, and you're, you know, you can buy more toys if you want to, but eventually, that stuff doesn't really make a difference in your life. At this point, we're talking, you know, maybe $30 million or higher in terms of net worth, you know, very few of us are at that level, eventually, I want to get there, you know, hopefully you get there too, and we can get there together. But for now, you know, we focused on scaling, focus on trading on a plan and getting our goal and getting out. Because the less time we're in the market, the less bad things can happen. Yes, we're leaving money on the table. But that's okay. Because I got the lion's share. You know, I got what I wanted, I'd be happy before I got into when I got into the trade was like, Okay, what would you want this trade to do? Well, I wanted to get my next goal, which is 10% for the trade. If I get that I'm happy. Good. So when you get that you should be happy and get up. Forget about whatever's left on the table. Let somebody else have the scraps, we got the lion's share. So when scaling, remember, you got to stick to your plan, keep your emotions in check. If you have any issues, you can reach out to us, we'll help you out. But I wanted to give you this quick lesson. This is something I noticed doing myself. And you know, I think mainly it was because that I was trading in a different environment. I was trading in a different software. And so what I was accustomed to seeing was different. You know, normally if I'm on my thinkorswim, I look at you know, what's my margin? And then what's my profit and loss on the trade. And if it's 10% of that I just get out. I don't even look at how much is left. But on this particular software, I couldn't see that. And so I had to figure it out by myself and like "Okay, did I get my 10%?" Yes, I did. Okay. Oh, wait, there's a lot of premium left. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so it gave me pause. But eventually I'm going to get used to it. And so hopefully, it doesn't bother me and I can stick to my emotions and stick to my plan. So I hope that helps. I hope that's something that you can keep in mind as you scale up. Again, trade with the odds in your favor, and we'll talk to you next time. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Allen: Passive Traders, welcome to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast. In this episode I have the pleasure of introducing you to a fellow passive trader, Mr. Charles Betz. He is a passive trader and he is gonna talk about how he got started with a small dollar account and how he is using the Wheel Options Strategy to generate some very significant returns. I think you're gonna enjoy this one. Stay tuned. Allen: Cool. So tell me, tell me about Chuck, tell me about Mr. Betts, you know, what do you do? Who are you? How'd you get into trading? Chuck: I'm a high school teacher, I teach math and physics. It's a second career. My first career was in the restaurant industry. And you know, things just didn't really work out for me there. So then a teacher for then going into my 10th year of teaching. And the whole reason I got into trading was when I looked at the retirement system, the pension, everything that teachers can earn, it's like one of the few professions that still has a pension, I looked at how old I was going to be when I was going to be able to collect a decent income. And I thought, wow, I'm not sure I want to work to be that old one. I'm still working and retire at that age, like, how much am I going to have left? Who knows? So I started looking into other things that could maybe do to dial that number back. And I met with a buddy of mine, I have a real estate license, that's one of the things I got into while I was transitioning careers. He's he owned a, he ran his own little brokerage for a little while, and I was thinking about maybe, you know, selling some homes or listing some homes in the summer or on the side while I was teaching to make extra money. And he told me about options. He's like, you got to check this out. This crazy thing, like, and I'd heard of them, I'd looked into different types of trading, trading currencies and, and trading stocks. You know, that's one of the things I teach in one of my math classes was investing, you know, stocks and what are they and all that stuff. Just the basics, though. And I had never heard of options. So that's how I found out about options was through my buddy knows about two years ago. Allen: So okay, only about two years. All right. Chuck: Yeah. Allen: Cool. So instead of telling you to "Yeah, come on board and you know, love you sell houses for me", he just, he put you in a whole different direction? Allen: Well, he did offer to, you know, give you some leads, I could follow up on his real estate leads. But having done real estate full time in the past, I know how much time and effort and energy it takes to be successful in that industry. Yeah. And as a teacher, you know, I already had a few years under my belt, and I, I love this job. I love what I do. But I just don't want to do it forever. I couldn't see doing real estate and then teaching. At the same time, it just I don't know where I would find the time to do both. So I thought I'd look into options or something to do with the financial markets, because that's something that can be done without as much time to invest into it, you know? Allen: Yeah. What state are you in? Chuck: I'm in California, in Southern California. I live in the city of La Mesa is just outside of San Diego. Allen: Okay. And so they're unionized teachers there? Chuck: I was teaching at a school that had a union I was part of the Union have since left that school for.. Now, I teach from home. I was another thing I reason is because I had more time, I didn't have to go drive and be in a school building all day. I work with homeschool kids Allen: Oh, interesting. Chuck: It's homeschool them. And, you know, they get to that point in their schooling where they're like, I can't help you with that math, or I don't know how to teach you Physics. So that's where I come in. But we aren't part of a union. But we do still pay into the State Retirement where we get our funds from public schools. And from you know, the same way public schools do we are a public charter school. We're just not part of a union. So, that's the only difference. Allen: Okay, so I think you might have touched on this, but besides the money aspect, what drew you to trading? Chuck: I just wanted to not have to work until I'm in my late 60s. And I knew that if I could somehow increase our income, and put that into retirement savings. You know, we're we're starting to fund our Roth IRAs, and we're starting to give money to our 403B's. And we're, we also, you know, my wife's a teacher, too. So, you know, we're starting to we pay into the 403B is like a 401k. But.. Allen: ..for teachers Chuck: For teachers, right. And I was thinking, well, gosh, you know, it'd be really cool if we could just build up our investments faster. That way, we wouldn't have to rely on you know, that number they're gonna give you when you reach that age, it's all this calculator and this crazy math, and they tell you, well, if you teach this many years, and you're this age, we'll give you this much money. And I was like, that's all great, but I don't want to be 68 when I retire, how can I dial that back? So yes, it was about the money, but it was more about how can I start coming back from 68 and make it more like 65 or maybe 62? Or maybe even younger than that, you know, so yeah, that was really the goal was to not have to work until the 68 and how does your wife feel about that? She is on board like this whole thing is just been a huge eye opener. You know, I've kind of been a sucker in my life for all of these crazy money making schemes and it's something I learned from my mom growing up she got into all these crazy money making schemes and and you know, I've met a lot of really bad decisions and so it took a while for me to realize that no, this is legit like this is real. This works this this is not a scam it's not an overnight get rich quick scheme but but it's a legitimate way to increase your income and to reach that goal of financial security a lot faster than you normally would. So she's totally on board. Allen: That's awesome. That's really, I mean, I would say it's becoming more common. But in the.. Originally when a lot of people come to us, you know, they're like, yeah, you know, I want to do this, but my wife, she's totally against it. And she just thinks, like you said, you know, she just thinks it's another one of those things that I'm getting into, that I'm all excited about, I'm gonna spend money on course, or whatever. And then, either it's not gonna work, or I'm not gonna do it. So we have that pushback a lot from a lot of people, and I get where you're coming from. Because I mean, when I was little, you know, I've done it all to you know, network marketing, you know, real estate, sales, all that stuff, everything that I could think of, I even did those chain letters. I don't know if you ever did that, where no, you get a letter.. Chuck: I know what you're talking about. Allen: You get a letter, and it has like, 10 names. And you're like, Okay, you got to send $1 to each people on the name. And then and then you change the last and you put your name there, and then you send out 1000 letters, and then all those 1000 people are supposed to send you $1, and on and on and on. And yeah.. Chuck: Oh my gosh I totally remember those. Allen: That was cool. I think I got like, $1 back. Chuck: Yeah well growing up, you know, my mom bought into, I don't know, if you remember Carlton sheets, you know.. Allen: Yup, we got his programs Chuck: She was into Amway and selling Avon, and, you know, she was always trying to find that, you know, that next thing and, and so that's kind of the mindset I had growing up. But, you know, I just didn't really learn any financial literacy from her, you know, it was, it was kind of a struggle, really. So when I, when it found this, I've always, you know, when I got older, a little bit older in life, I started to realize, like, I don't have a whole lot of good financial knowledge from growing up. So I need to be a little bit more cautious about things. So I kind of made sure that this worked before I introduced it to my wife. And once she saw that it was working, she's like, Let's go, this is great. Are you kidding? Wow. Allen: Okay, so how did you so you said, you made sure that it work? How did you do that? Chuck: So we had a brokerage account that I had just bought some stocks in, we opened it up when our daughter was born, we had a few thousand dollars in there. And you know, just it was just sitting there not really doing anything and never really appreciated and value never went up. It was you know, over the years, when I was in real estate, some of the guys in the office, we're doing penny stocks, and maybe have a couple $100 of that. And, and so over the years, there was a total of a couple grand in there, I read that a little over 3000. And so when I first found out about Options, I used that because she really didn't even know about that. It was like this account that she barely knew.. Allen: She forgot about it.. Chuck: Whatever, it's no big deal. And so I used that to figure out, is this legitimate? Is this going to work? Or is this another one of those things where I'm just going to be like, oh, there I go again, making poor decisions about things don't really work. And at first, it didn't, you know, one of the the the program and the education program that my buddy introduced me to, the thing they used to get me into it was buying options, which totally went against everything that I heard from you, and from another podcast person that I listened to where all you guys talked about as being a seller of options. But the way they presented the course and all the information, it made so much sense. There was logic and you know, a program and a trading plan. And so I put that in, in motion with my little small account and lost a third of it over the course of about four or five months. So that's my start into option. Yeah.. Allen: Yeah that's pretty common. A lot of people go that route because it I mean, it's more appealing because oh, if you buy an option, you can double your money, triple your money 10 times your money overnight, you know. And it's great, because they have plenty of examples, you know, they can show you Oh, we did this trade. And we had this trade we did this trip, they don't show you the other 99 trades that didn't do well. But they show you the few that did. So great. So how did you find out about option genius? How did you get started with us? Chuck: I was looking for more education, more information. You know, I watched tons of YouTube videos about what options are. All the Greeks and all the details and all that stuff. And I go out, mental part of my daily routine is to go out for an hour long walk, walk about three miles every morning, I'll put my earbuds in and I started listening to podcasts about investing and and then eventually trading and now options. And yours was one of the few out there that I could find there aren't that many people doing consistent podcasts about options trading. So between you and this other one that I was listening to. Again, both of you were primarily talking about selling options, and here I was over buying options and like something is.. I'm not doing something right. I'm losing money, and these guys are talking about doing something different. I gotta get this figured out. So that's how I found you guys was through podcasts. So thank you for putting out the podcast. Allen: Okay, no, you're welcome. It's been a it's been an interesting journey for the podcast. So what was the the first product that you tried with us? or what have you had? Chuck: So I went to your website, I signed up for your emails, just your basic emails, here's what we do that kind of stuff. And you sent out a scholarship request, you were offering a scholarship for your passive trading program. And, you know, like I said, I didn't have a whole lot of extra money on the side, I was using a really small account, you know, to buy a program is like, Oh, I'm still not sure about this stuff. But you offered a scholarship and your your introductory video for what you want. And you're like, you know, I've offered this before, like, nobody's ever really done anything with it. I was really kind of disappointed by all the people who, you know, I've given the scholarship to I haven't really had any success stories. So maybe you can be a success story. And I'm like, Yes, that is me. I want to be that guy. So I put together my video and I sent it in and you emailed me, congratulations. You know, we're awarding the scholarship, and I just about my head exploded, it was fantastic. So I watched all the courses. I take notes on all the courses that you teach. I have my little options notebook here that I write everything down, like, word and awesome. And just right when it all was over started, started working the plan. So that's how I found you guys. Allen: And how how's it been? so far? That was about two years ago. You said? Chuck: A year and a half ago.. Allen: Year and a half. Okay. Chuck: It was actually February of 2020. Good Time to get started, right? Yeah, I started placing my first trades, and my first few trades were profitable. I hit my profit margins, just like the plan says everything was going great. Oh, my gosh, let's keep going. Let's do the next month beginning of March, you know, open up my trades, and then Coronavirus, right. And so everything went south, but I could see like this is working. I totally get that this works. We just had this huge adjustment in our market based on what was going on. So I just kept going and going after that. And it's been going great. Allen: But you had the hope, right? Chuck: Oh, yeah, no, I can see that it worked. That was the thing I saw the results, I saw that this new strategy I'd never used before. It works. What all of these guys talk about books that I've read, talk about selling options is the way to make money. It works. It was the first time I had ever sold an option. I was like, Oh my gosh, this stuff works. Kind of like how you talked about in your story where you're like, man, I was losing money. And I looked at the this one option. And it was the one I sold. And I was like what it was like a light bulb moment. Right? Allen: Yep. Yeah. So So how did you handle the the Corona bear market? Chuck: You know, I lost some money, but I just got right back in. Like, I think it turned around within a few weeks. Like actually, as it started going down, I start I just flipped to the other side of the options chain, you know, and started taking advantage of it on that side. And okay, because I could see, okay, we're gonna go down for a few days, or maybe a week or who knows how long but that's the beauty of options is, you know, if there's a clear trend and what's going on, you can jump to the other side. Allen: Awesome, cool. Cool. So how have your trading results been so far? Chuck: Um, I'm keeping track. So that account was so small, and I really wasn't doing what I wanted to do based on what the passive trading formula, you know, they're the three main types of trades and you break it all down by account size and my accounts, I was so small, and I wasn't having as much luck with what the one strategy to build it up. So I rolled over my 403 beat from my previous employer to my current brokerage as a rollover IRA and got it approved for options and started trading there. That was October of last year. Allen: Okay. Chuck: And since October, it's up 26%. Allen: Okay, so what does that like nine months or so? Chuck: Yeah, yeah. And also, if I, if I look at the graph, because most math people would like to graph things. As I look at the graph, I should be right around 30 to 35% on a year over year basis. So using using that strategy. Allen: Sweet, very nice. So what strategies are you using? Chuck: Right now and selling puts to get into positions.. Allen: Okay. Chuck: And once I'm in that position, I do covered calls, and I'm doing them a little closer to the money because I don't really care if it gets called away. As long as I'm, you know, not negative in that particular option, like position, I should say, I look at each position like a little business, right? If I'm going to put this money out there, I want to make me money. And as long as I'm profitable in that position, if it gets called away as long as I've made money on it, you know, when it's all said and done, perfect. So that's what I've been doing. It's just kind of been bouncing back and forth right now. I don't I'm not holding anything right now. I might get assigned this Friday. We'll see depending on where that put closes. So yeah, that's what I've been doing. Allen: Then what type of stocks? Are you doing this on? Chuck: Actually, I've only been using ETFs. Allen: Okay Chuck: So I found that stocks dip, you know, they move a lot I've been I've been looking at, I've been doing credit spreads a little bit like, you know, you're taught to do credit spreads. So, I've been doing a couple of those here and there, I'm starting to get back into trying those out and making sure I can figure out I know what I'm doing. But I like doing it on ETFs. Because I feel like you know, an ETF isn't going to go bankrupt, an ETF isn't going to go down to zero. So I've been using, you know, smaller ETFs, some of the different ETFs that have smaller, you know, price per share points. So that, because my IRA account isn't that big. So, you know, but and I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket, I don't want to do all of it one trade, so I want to spread it around. So I've been using just this list of ETFs that I found that, you know, fit all the criteria you mentioned in the course and just keep selling puts on them until I get assigned and then doing covered calls. And if it gets called away, then I just go back to selling puts again, and it just keeps going around around around. Allen: Awesome. So that puts your selling in the covered calls, they are what weekly every two weeks, three weeks a month? Chuck: They're on mostly I'm doing monthly, most of the time, I'm looking for like a 30 to 35 days till expiration, put to sell all of the ETFs do offer weekly options, you know, I want to make sure that fit that criteria of having weekly options. And there's lots of liquidity, you know, not that you necessarily need it if you're okay with being assigned. But still, you know, if there for some reason you wanted to get out of a trade, you got to be able to get out of the trade. But there is one where I've been doing it a little bit more like just testing out this idea of trying it every like two to three weeks. So I've been doing puts where they'll expire anywhere between 18 and 24 days instead of 30 to 35 just to see what the results aren't, you know, playing around with things and right, keeping tracking data and keeping track of everything to see if it offers any edge whatsoever. Allen: Right. And you're not and you're not keeping the stocks too long. So you're not really worried about the dividend? Chuck: No, not at all. I mean, I'm hoping to build, you know, to get to that point. And like you say in your program where it's like, Okay, you got this host of really good stocks, you get your dividends that are coming in, and then you're just doing calls on top of that to help juice those returns. So but my accounts not quite there yet. Allen: Okay, no worries. Chuck: Or size goes. Allen: Yeah, no, that's awesome. So okay, so you're doing like basic butter, I mean, bread and butter covered or naked puts, get some premium, maybe they expire, maybe they get assigned. And then you turn around right around and you do what like at the money covered calls are a little bit out of the money or.. Chuck: Depending on how if I do get assigned, you know, it depends on where I got assigned at. So if it did go through a couple of dollar drops, let's say it was trading at $40 a share and I sold that put and and then it drops to 38. You know, I'll make sure that I sell the call. So that I'm above my cost basis. I want to make sure I'm not losing money on the position. So sometimes it's a little further out of the money. But most of the time, I'm trying to sell it pretty much right at where I got it sound. Okay, awesome. and collect the premiums to build my account faster. Allen: That's cool. Yeah, I mean, congratulations. I mean, you're doing better than most people out there and a lot of Professionals. Chuck: Yeah it's amazing. I'm floored I really am when I started plotting everything and looking at the returns. I was like, Are you kidding me? This is crazy. Unbelievable. Allen: How long does it take you in the day to do this? Chuck: Oh, not long at all. I do in the morning. You know, before my workday starts or some sometimes before I go out for my morning walk. You know if it I'll look Monday or Tuesday. Okay, let's sell another put in, I just got my list of ETFs that I look at and I say okay, how much did that one expire? Cool, I've got some more money in my account. Let's sell another one. Did I get assigned? Okay, let's look at the chain where where do I need to do my covered call at. Okay, let's do it there. And then I go on with my day. That's it. It's I love it because it's so low maintenance during the school year, my days are unswamped. Like I don't have a whole lot of time to sit here and stare at a screen of the markets and go through and look at charts and all that. So this plan really just fits what I'm looking for. Allen: Okay, so okay, now, I don't know if you've done this. But if you extrapolate and say, okay, you know, I'm doing about 25-30% a year, if I can do that every year, which you know, with the style that you're doing, you should be able to do somewhere close to that, right? Does that help you or does that? Have you done the numbers and be like, Well, you know, I could probably retire five years earlier, four years early or something like that. Chuck: That's been a moving target. And it's really been hard to nail down because all of this is just so recent. It's also very recent, and you sent out that email. I don't remember like a month or two ago. What's your number and you linked it to that article. where, you know, that guy offered to give you as much money as you want you write a number down? How much money would you need to never work again for the rest of your life. And I'm going to ask for other people. And whoever gives me the lowest number wins. I thought that was amazing. Because then I got me to think, what is my number? I never, I mean, I know that this whole thing was designed to dial back my my want to work till 68. Right. But what would this get me if I were to project this out? Could I stop teaching at 62? Could I stop teaching at 59, I really need to look at all of the pieces of the puzzle, to get a clear picture of what that's going to look like and when. But it's very exciting. This is exciting stuff to get to do, you know? Allen: Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, if you, if you're still looking at that way, that's great. But I would like you to look at it from a different point of view as well, now that you've already seen, you know, that it works is power behind it. Now, let's figure out okay, how much do you need every month to pay the bills, so that we don't need to worry about what your big number is in the, you know, in the big number in the sky? Think we need X dollars every month to pay the bills? How much do I need in my account? To cover that amount? Right? So if you want to, you know, like, let's say your monthly expenses are five, six grand, and you know, as an example, well, hey, if I can make that much five, six grand from my trading account every month doing these simple trades, boom! I can retire today, you know, and then it's up to you. It's I could do I want to keep teaching? Yeah, that's great. Or do I want to go volunteer? Or do I want to teach for free? Or, you know, it, the sky's the limit at that point? So, you know, definitely, I don't want people to think that they have to wait till 6568, they could do it a lot sooner. And when you look at it, from that point of view, that's another like, aha moment like what really that possible? Yeah, it is. And it doesn't take as much as you would think, especially when you're, you know, bringing in like, one 2% a month. If you can build it up, then. And once you take a look at it, your expenses. I mean, you're in California, so maybe a little bit higher with the taxes and whatnot. But if you structure it in a different way, it might be a lot less than you realize. Chuck: I think I'm going to do that. Just knowing that, you know, I haven't done a full year, I think once I hit that October deadline, where I've been doing this a year, and I see that number, and I know that it works, that's a really good opportunity to say, hey, how much would I need in my account? In order to do this and live off of it, like pay my bills, pay my expenses, and not have to worry about going to a classroom every day during the school year, or teaching zoom classes or planning lessons or grading papers? Or you know, any of that just, you know, then what would I do with my time? No, I could, like you said, volunteer or tutor for free or do something else. Just Yeah, that's a that's a really interesting thought. Allen: I mean, I wouldn't want you to leave teaching because I know we need our teachers. But you know, just the fact of not having to worry. Like we've had multiple, multiple people that come into our system, where they get to that point, you know, where hey, yeah, I'm making as much as from my job as I am from my trading. But I love my job so much. I want to keep doing it. Yeah. So it feels really good. your self esteem goes up the way you think about yourself, the way you carry yourself all that changes, because now you're like, wow, you know, I'm in control of my own destiny. Chuck: Yeah I can see that I just just from the success I've had, I can kind of see that mindset shift for me, you know, what my thoughts are about the future and, and what's possible. Allen: Like, I know, like, you know, recently after Corona, we've had this really great bull market, you know, things have been going up things have been doubled, tripled since when they from the hit the bottom and they went up. So a lot of people have made a lot of money, especially the buying option, guys, right now they're walking on water, because they're like, oh, everything that every option I buy, it goes up, every call option goes up. So they're making money, but the thing that you're doing, it works in a bull market when things are going up, but it always works when things are going sideways. And it works really good even when things are going down. You know, so if you came to me and said, Oh, yeah, you know, I've been buying options, and I made 40% or 30% this year, really Congratulations, but you're not gonna be able to do that year after year after year. You know, but what you're doing, yeah, it can be done year after year after year. And then you start compounding that eventually, very quickly, within three, four or five years, you know, that number every month of what you're bringing in just exponentially grows and grows and grows and it gets huge. So I'm really excited for you. So it's like the, you know, future looks really really bright for you. Chuck: It really does. It's it's just an having come to you know, financial stability, I will say at a later age in life and thinking about okay, when I got into teaching at least I will be able to retire at some point, you know, even though that was 68 and then stumbling into this It just blows my mind. Because, you know, I wish I had found it sooner just like teaching. I love teaching. I wish I had started doing this earlier in my life. But yeah, the opportunities that trading opens up are limitless. This has just been amazing. And I can't thank you enough because you guys offered me the scholarship. And here I am. I'm loving it. Allen: Yep. Okay, so now we've talked a lot about the good stuff, right. But what now what was maybe the most challenging thing to get you started to doing this or achieve some success with this? Chuck: I think well, two things. One was the account size, small account to start with. But the second was more of a mental thing. And again, I don't know if it had to do with all of those horrible schemes, those money making schemes that I've come to in the past to really just trust and believe in this and know that it works and trust in the process and click Submit on that order and just watch it work. But I think the mental part of it was probably the hardest thing to get over. And I hear so many people that I listened to and read about talk about that aspect of what it is we're doing, where the mental part of trading is probably one of the most important things, because anybody can do a strategy. And anybody can come up with a trading plan. But if you don't have the right mindset about that plan, it's not going to work for you. It's just not. And I think that was the hardest thing that when it clicked for me, it was like, Oh, my gosh, why did it take so long? But I think getting the right mindset was probably the hardest thing for me. Allen: Okay, and how did you go ahead and get that mindset? Chuck: Knowing that there's limited risk, like what we do you limit your risk? You know, the, when there are certain things that you know, people talk about options, I have a friend who used to work in the financial markets. And I was asking him if he knew anything about options, because oh, man, I don't know, the only thing I know is those are really risky. But what we do you define your risk, right? You You have a, here's your maximum loss, you are willing to lose, you're not going to lose your house and your life savings and be destitute living on the street. There's a and you can make that as small as you want. And I think that helped comfort me a little bit and just saying, Well, look, if it doesn't work, this is what I'm going to lose. Am I okay with that? Yeah, that's not going to make a big deal in the long run. So let's give it a try. So that part of it really helped me get over the mindset of losing, or the fear of losing being greater than the fear of opportunity, or the the actual idea of opportunity. So yeah, just the mindset thing that really took a while for me to wrap my head around, and just do it. But I again, reading so many people talk about it, and great examples of how to get over it. Just, it's I'm so glad I did. Allen: Awesome. Awesome. Cool. So let's say if we have a listener who's in your shoes, where you were about year and a half, two years ago, what would you tell that person? How would you tell? How would you advise them to get started? Or what should they do first, second, third? Chuck: Educate yourself. Definitely, you know, I spent several months just educating myself as much as possible with from reputable people. Like I said, I listen to your podcast, I listen to podcasts of other people, I read books, watch the YouTube videos from reputable sources, you can kind of tell the snake oil salesmen out there, so I would always just kind of tell them, you know, ignore those. But, you know, there are plenty of valid sources of free material to educate you about what options are and how they can work for you. So first, make sure you know what you're doing. But then second, get yourself a somebody who knows what they're doing to help you out. This has been such a helpful community that you've introduced me to everybody in our Facebook group, you offer all of the support, you know, it's just been so helpful to know that there are people out there doing it with me, even though I'm here alone in my office, you know, watching the screen or doing what I'm doing, but definitely somebody who's new - educate yourself, find somebody who's going to help you, and then just do it. You just be okay, with losing a couple 100 bucks. Trust me, I think most people have probably spent a couple 100 bucks on something useless Anyway, you know, and so, I think it's worth it to see that this works. And that'll just be a complete different, a complete mind change for you. Allen: Cool. Okay, so now thinking back to the program that you were in the passive trading formula, give me like maybe two or three takeaways that you know, when you went through it, it really hits you and you're like, Okay, this you know, this makes a lot of sense. This is good. I need to start using this stuff. Chuck: There are rules for everything. You have everything there is a template, it's a pre determined, this is how you do it. This is what you look for this is when you see this go. And as a math teacher math is just rules, right? And what you do when you know there are rules for every type. Math. So if you follow these rules, you'll get the right answer. So if you follow that trading rule, you will get the desired outcome. You know that I think that was one of the biggest takeaways from your entire program was that there's a template, it's laid out for you, you know, here, here's what to look for, here's what to do when things go wrong. Here's what to do when things go right. Here's how to be successful at this and then just do it. That's it. That was the beauty of it is how simple it is. And the fact that I don't have to be glued to my computer screen all day. It's perfect. Allen: Mm hmm. Cool. Okay. Chuck: I hope that answer your question, I hope. Allen: Yeah, I did. Yeah, it's up to you is whatever I mean, you know, everybody looks at it from a different point of view. You know, when some people start asking the same question, it's like, some people they talk about, oh, yeah, you know, I'm gonna be able to do this. With like, some people have certain disabilities, and they can't, they can't work or they can't focus, or they can't do some some other things. And they get drawn to this. Other people look at it. And their takeaway is like, Oh, you know, I'm coming at this from like, let's say, a real estate background, we have a lot of real estate investors, they get involved in options, because it makes sense. You know, you're you're buying a house, you're renting it out, you're cash flowing it, well, you could do that same thing with stocks, you know, your covered call is cash flowing your stocks. So it's kind of the same thing. And so different, like I love your answer is great. Everybody looks at it from a different point of view. So I just like hearing what attracted and what people took away the template thing, you know, that that's something, I've heard it but not not too much? And I think it is, it's one of the things we like to do is just keep it simple, you know, you can, like you said, there are other people out there, they're teaching this stuff. But what I find is that they make it so complicated, that it stops people in their tracks from like, oh, man, I'm never gonna understand this stuff. What is he talking about? i? Geez. So that's what we kind of, you know, especially this program is like, yeah, this is really simple. You know, like, just get started, start with one foot, start with another foot, you don't have to go running, you just start walking a little bit, and crawling a little bit, and eventually you'll, you'll get the hang of it. So.. Chuck: Yeah, it's been great. I think the other thing that hooked me the most was you use the analogy of insurance a lot. And that really was like another lightbulb moment. For me. There was a book I was reading, where they talked about it from being an insurance company perspective. You've talked about it from that perspective, I used to work for AIG selling life insurance back before they had to get bailed out. That was an interesting time. But insurance for that perspective, and selling options totally makes sense to me. And being able to define your risk, you know, what insurance market Do you want to go into? Do you want to be a reinsurance company where you're going to handle all the crazy insurance that nobody else will touch? Or do you want to be a super conservative insurance company, that's really what trading options is, you're, you're out there taking on a little bit of risk and collecting some money and just do it month after month. And it's amazing. It's just amazing. And that so that whole insurance analogy just really clicked with me. So between that and and the step by step, here's the template, follow this process, and let it fly. That those two were the huge takeaways for me. Allen: Okay, cool. Awesome. So based on your experience, would you recommend Option Genius to others? Chuck: Oh, yeah, I already have! A buddy that I mentioned, options to he used to work for the wealthiest guy here in San Diego County was the guy manages several billion dollars worth of investments. But you know, his portfolio kind of shrank over the past several years, and he's just looking to hang it up. So he got laid off. And he was the one I asked if he knew anything about options, and he could get all freaked out, oh, they're risky. And I said, Well, you should look into this guy, you should, you know, go listen to some of his podcasts. That's how I was introduced. And if what he's saying makes any sense, you know, I'm happy to turn you on to what they're doing over there. It's It's amazing. It really is. And so, I don't know if he's, I haven't talked to him. I don't know if he's listened to the podcast and ran with it or done anything with it. But I'll probably check in with him here before I go back to school next month. Allen: I appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, you know, everything that we can do to get the word out there, because the situation for.. I mean, you're you're lucky that you're a teacher, and you have that built in pension, you know, it's kind of I've learned a little bit about it, but it's like your teachers are kind of in that situation, or better often. Most companies are most people that don't have that fallback plan. A lot of people are really, really and you have the other thing, I don't know if you, you're in high school teacher, right. So I mean, if you were unionized, I've seen these, it's harder to lay off a teacher. Chuck: Oh, yeah. Allen: But we have so many, so many people that come to us and say, you know, I was a high level executive. I was making a couple 100 grand a year, but then they decided to lay me off and they brought in somebody that's, you know, doing the work cheaper. And now I can't find a job that will pay me the same amount I was making so my family's used to a certain lifestyle. I can't provide it anymore. Yeah, I wish I had found this stuff so much sooner. And so that's why it's like I'm out there like man, you know, we really need to get this stuff out there. People need to hear about it. Chuck: I agree! Allen: Even if they're doing just the basics, you know, just, you know you already have, most people already have a stock portfolio, they already have their indexes, just, you know, just sell a few options every few years, every month, you know, not even every month, they can do it every few months, they can still make a little bit more than they're making now. And in the long run, it'll add up and workout. So Alright, last question for you. What do you think the future holds for you now? Chuck: That is completely up to me. You know, I've always been a believer in that, that I kind of control my destiny and my circumstances, don't necessarily, I'm here because of who I am. So, but I feel like my future has just, it's wide open. It really is I daydream a lot more. I think about the opportunities and the possibilities a lot more. You know, it's like you said, What if 5, 6, 7 years from now, this could replace your teaching income? Would you continue to teach, you know, or would you do something else? And those are the thoughts that I have. And I just, like I said, haven't really committed it to paper and, and, and talked it over with my wife to figure out okay, if I could, you know, would I? Or could I? Or should I, and what would I do? You know, what would I deal with all that time? But those are the, that's that's what I see for me and a future is just so many possibilities. You know, there's so many things that I thought I would have to wait to do until I'm much much older than I am now. And, and the thought of being able to get to do those sooner rather than later. It's really exciting. Allen: Yeah. Is there anything that one thing that you've always wanted to do that you're like, yeah, I'm gonna give it a shot? Chuck: So interesting story. My last job in the restaurant business, I was a brew master. And I worked for a company called rock bottom breweries. There used to be one I know you're in. In Texas, there was one in Houston for a long time. I don't know if it's still there or not. But I was a Brewmaster for the rock bottom breweries, and I absolutely loved it. It was a fun company. It was a fun job, that beer community, the craft brewing community, and this was back in the late 90s. No, this was before everything blew up like it is now. So and I had to get out because of a workplace injury. Well, you know, so many of these little tiny neighborhood breweries are opening up where it would be super easy to manage on my own and just do it part time, B 4 days a week, I've seen people do that business model. I think that would be a fantastic thing to do with my time. Just make some beer for the local community sponsor, some little league teams and some softball teams and just just, you know, work part time and have a great time. Allen: That sounds awesome. Yeah, yeah. So what are you gonna do it? I know, I'm pushing you here. Chuck: I know, I think I should I really do. I think if that's the one thing I could do, if I got out of this, what would I do with my time? I think that's what I would do. I really do. Allen: Sweet , cool. I like it. I like it. It's a good plan. I mean, I wouldn't want you to stop teaching but you could do this in your afternoons. Chuck: Tutoring is an option. And with tutoring, you can set your own hours tutors get paid fairly well, you don't have to, you know, be locked in a classroom for six and a half hours or glued to a computer screen teaching three or four hours a day. Tutoring can just be Hey, an hour here an hour there. And you know, you're still helping students out you're still passing down that knowledge that you know, and, and being a part of the education journey, you know, somebody who's who's never been, you know, to college, or whatever it may be. But at the same time, having all my other time to do other things that I want to pursue, like, like running my own brewery. Allen: That sounds interesting. That sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, I mean, I'm in Houston. Well outside of Houston. So I don't remember that one. But there are several here. And like, I've been to a couple of them. There's one called St. Arnold. I think they they sponsor, you know, the MS. Ms. 150, which is like a bike race. They're big sponsors of different charities and stuff around. I don't drink, but it's just the vibe when you go there. And it's just a whole it's, it's just different atmosphere. So yeah. Chuck: Oh, yeah. And that's what drew me to it was the community, you know, as a job. It's just a job here. You know, it's pretty physical manual labor to run one of those breweries. Yeah. But it is more of the community, you know, sponsoring local events and just reaching out, you know, giving giving money away cuz brewing beer is like printing money. The cost of the materials to make that stuff is next to nothing. And they're selling it for four or five, six bucks a glass that's, it's like printing money. It's crazy. So you know, I would just love to be a part of my community here and give back. Allen: Yeah, I've always thought to get into something like snow cones or something like that. You know, you're just selling. Chuck: Yeah. Oh, my gosh, those used to come to my daughter's Elementary School. Same thing. Yeah. You know, just putting a little flavored syrup on a cup of ice and you're charging four bucks for that. Oh, my gosh, yeah. Allen: Fun thing. Cool. All right. So thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for your time. I'm so happy and proud of your success. Had you really, you know, you took that scholarship, you ran with it, it was all on you, you know, I mean, we we did what we could we supported you however we could, but it takes, like I said, you know, when you saw the video, there are several people that have been through that program, and they start everybody starts out fresh and excited. And you know, but then life happens and they kind of fall off. But not you. I mean, you took it, you ran with it, you're actually doing it. And I think that's the biggest thing, you know, you want to change your life, you have to set your goal, you have to set it and this is something that I'm going to do. And then you just do it month after month you keep at it and you work on it, like you said you had, you know, you lost a little money in the beginning with the different program, and then you found something that made sense. And that's like, the biggest thing is, oh, this makes sense to me, okay, I press this, I do this, I do this. And that happens. Okay, let me try, you tried it, it worked. Allen: And you're like, Okay, I could do this. And then you just kept building on it and building on it. And like you said, Now you're getting you know, you're trying to do the credit spreads, you're learning a different strategy, you're getting a little bit more creative and more advanced. You don't really have to, you know, you've had great success, you know, if the S&P was doing 30% every year, like, we'd all be billionaires, we wouldn't have to do any of this. But it does it. But if you could do that year after year, I mean, you'd be you know, you could be starting your own school and your own Brewmaster school or whatever you want to do. You'd be starting up pretty soon. So I'm really excited for you. I appreciate you. Thank you for taking the time to apply for that scholarship, and then just taking and run with it and doing it and it just makes me so, it makes me so happy. You know, it's like, yeah, you know something, I'm actually doing something that's making a difference for somebody. Chuck: I can't thank you enough, Allen, for extending that, for offering this all the support, you know, for the past year and a half that I've been part of the program, you know, the the coaching and the support community on Facebook, and just, you know, just putting that information out there and sharing your knowledge and your belief in other people. So I just want to extend that thank you to you personally, because I will be forever grateful. Allen: You're welcome. You're welcome. And I mean, you've made me come to the decision, that yeah we want to offer this scholarship again this year, you know, in the past? I don't know, man, is it helping anybody? We just wasting our time? But no, I, you know, I think we need to even if it helps out one person like it's, I think it'd be worth it. So normally, we do it around Thanksgiving. So those of you who are listening, if you're interested in the program, you want to wait till Thanksgiving, I wouldn't advise it. But hey if money's tight, then maybe that's what you got to do. Right. So we're on Thanksgiving, we'll probably come out with a scholarship again, for a limited number of people. But yeah, thank you so much again, Chuck. This has been awesome. Appreciate it. And we'll talk to you soon. Chuck: All right, thanks, again, take care. Allen: Uh huh. Buh-bye LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Before we get into this episode, I did want to remind you that we have Futures Options Live coming up July 30, it's going to be an all day seminar, virtual Zoom event where we're going to be teaching and talking and answering questions all day long. It's gonna, if you haven't been if you don't anything about futures options, and this episode will be great to listen to, to get some understanding a little bit, but we're gonna go deep, deep, deep on Friday, and tickets are going really fast. Hopefully, there are still tickets by the time you hear this. But if you go to FuturesOptionsLive.com that's where you get more information, FuturesOptionsLive.com, and the link will be in the show notes. Now, let's hit the music and on the other side, we're going to be listening to the difference between futures options, and stock options. So what are the difference between futures options and stock options? We get this question a lot, because I do have a Oil Trading Program and oil is a futures. And I talk about it a lot, because it's one of the favorite ways to trade. But really quickly, I wanted to go over and there are several reasons I'm going to give you the top three, you know what now I'm going to give you the top four, let's give you a bonus, right, the top four differences between futures options and stock options. Now, I do still trade stock options. And I probably always will. But by adding futures options to it to my investments, and to my portfolio, to my strategies, it's really been amazing. It's given me really, really great diversification, it's given me a lot more fun in my trading. And it really  adds another element and another way to generate income and passive income really, that, well, let's get into the differences and you can see for yourself.  So number one, the numbers are bigger when you're trading futures options. And there's a couple of different reasons for this. And the numbers being bigger. I mean, they're all all the numbers are bigger. Number one, there's more leverage. Okay, so now, when you're talking about stock options, you're talking about a regular trading account, they have something called portfolio margin. So this is for those traders who have over 100, 130, 150, I don't know how much the limit is. It varies by broker, but you need somewhere over $100,000 in your regular trading account. And you have to have a lot of experience in order to qualify for something called portfolio margin. Regular margin accounts, you know, when you buy stock they give you, if you buy, you know, you have the money for one stock, they'll let you buy two shares, that's 50% margin, that's what normal accounts are. Portfolio margin - they'll give you five times. So if you have you for buying one stock, they'll give you the the let you borrow the money to buy five shares. So it's like five times bigger. Now, that in stock world that only happens if you have portfolio margin. In the futures world, they have something called span leverage, which is very similar to portfolio margin. And everybody gets that right off the bat. So you have more leverage, right when you start. What does that mean? Well, it means that the premium for every option is higher. So you can make a lot more money per contract, than you can in the stock market world for the same amount of risk. And secondly, you can spend less time in each trade, because you can hit your goals much faster. So if you have a profit goal, hey, I'm gonna make 10% when make 15% whatever it is, you can hit that way, way, way in advance. Okay, so in my Oil Options account, my goal is to make 10% on the account every single month, and whatever trades I put on, I'm usually in and out of them in two weeks. So compare that to my iron condors. Right? I'm also trying to make 10% on my iron condor, but I'm usually in there for 30, 35 days, sometimes 45 days. So it's much sooner, much quicker, because the numbers are bigger. The other difference where the numbers are bigger is that the amount controlled by each option is just one futures contract. Okay, so it's not 100 shares to one option, like the stock it's one futures contract is controlled by one options contract. And then that how much control that futures contract has depends on what commodity or what future you're trading. So if you're talking about oil, it's barrels, you know, you might be doing 10,000 barrels per futures contract. That's a lot of money, right? 10,000 barrels, you're controlling a lot of oil with just one options contract. With soybeans, it's the number of bushels. Corn is, you know, bushels. Wheat - same thing. With gold, it's ounces. So the numbers are bigger because you're controlling thousands and thousands of dollars worth of the commodity with each contract. So that's the first thing, numbers are bigger. And that really is awesome. Because you can make a lot more money, you can lose money, too. So it goes back and forth. Right? But if you have the proper strategy, and you have the proper risk management in place, you can take advantage. Secondly, trading on futures options is almost 24 hours a day. So this is great for people who maybe they work a full time job, and they can't trade during market hours. So they come home, and they can still trade the same markets. Yes, it is less liquid. But it's still tradable. And when we teach you the way we do it, you know, it's pretty simple, you could put some trades on and it works great. This also is great for our overseas friends. You know, if you're in a different country, besides the United States or Canada, you can be trading the same markets when you're awake, you don't have to wake up super early to to get the opening bell in the United States. Third, the futures markets, they protect their traders in a way that the stock market does not. So if there are really big moves, there are two different things that the futures market does, that changes what you're allowed to do as a trader, to help you protect, right to hedge yourself to be where you have less money at risk when the markets are crazy, volatile and wild. Now, I don't have time to go into all that because I don't want to make this a three hour episode. But we will be covering those at the at the futures options live. We do cover it in there. And so we'll be talking about those different protections.  But just know this, that the futures options markets protect traders better than the stock market. And then lastly, our bonus one - commodities and futures are actually easier to trade. Because they're easier to predict. Right? Somebody comes to me and says, Hey, what's the stock market going to do next month, next year? Nobody knows. Nobody can tell you with any certainty, or any even close to being correct. Unless they're just very lucky. In futures, it's a little bit different. And there's several reasons why. So number one, technical analysis, if you're good at that, if you understand Fibonacci, or if you understand support resistance, if you understand basic moving averages, you'll do better trading futures, than in stocks, the technical analysis just works better. Because most futures options traders, and most futures traders, they use technical analysis a lot more. There's not as much fundamental analysis used, there's not as much valuation and all this other stuff that people use to trade stocks. So that the technical analysis, all those signals and indicators, they are more effective, and they work better. Number two, the trends stay longer intact. So if there's a bullish trend, you know, in a stock market, it might last maybe a month. In a commodity is gonna last a lot longer. So for me, I love trend following, I love trading trends, you know, that takes away a lot of risk for me in my book. So when when there's a trend, I wanted to stay consistent, I wanted to stay long, I want to I want this trend, just keep going and going and going so that I can extract as much money as I can from it. Three, demand and supply is a lot more important and prevalent. Okay, so in the stock market, you know, demand supply, it's not really that relevant, because companies can increase the supply or decrease the supply of the stock whenever they want. They could do a stock split, there's more supply all of a sudden, right? They can issue more shares, oh, all of a sudden, more supplies. The owners could sell their stock if they want to up more supply if the stock on the stock market. So they can dilute or liquidate or play games with their stocks. And how many shares are outstanding, and that affects the price. With a commodity like, you know, wheat, you really can't do that. You can't just snap your fingers and make more wheat. So how much wheat there is in supply and how much is there in demand that makes a big difference in the price. And there are ways to know what is the supply going to be? What is the demand right now, there it's much easier to understand and so supply and demand is a huge part of understanding futures and how they work. So if you are, you know, if you have a good head on your shoulders, you understand basic economics, it really helps you a lot in the  in stock, you really can't tell, you know, but you have to try to guess, if a stock is gonna go up or down, but you never know, right? stock has wonderful earnings, they have earnings report, they really knock it out of the park, they're making a lot more money than they expected, and the stock goes down. That's totally counterintuitive of what common sense would be okay, if the company is making more money stock should go up. But no stock went down. Or sometimes stock is the company's doing horrible, and they're like, Oh, no, we're losing so much money. Oh, we're hemorrhaging money, but the stock goes up after earnings. So it's really a crapshoot a lot of times. Futures, they don't have that, and they don't have earnings, right? So that's another thing they don't have. They don't have a quarterly report that can mix up your whole trade. There's also no insider information. And any commodity, everybody knows what's going on. There's no insiders that are selling their shares, right? There's no lockup periods. There's no way for the company to dilute shares. There's no way for the company to cut the dividend, because there are no dividends. And there are no earnings surprises. So I just, you know, went through basically four differences between futures options and stock options. Now, futures options is not for everybody. Right? Can you trade them in your IRA? Yes, you can - we'll talk about that on the event. So whatever's stopping you from trading futures options, if you are doing halfway decent at stock options, you should look into futures options. It's not for everybody, I'll get that, you know, but looking into it, it's not gonna hurt you. You might find that you love it, like I did. Alright, so that's the end for this episode. Again, if you have any comments, you have any questions, you can always get me Help@OptionGenius.com. We'd love to answer them. And if you're more interested, check out our website. Thank you for listening. Trade with the odds in your favor.   LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

 If I were to ask you, what your largest expense is? What would you say? You know, what is the thing? The one thing that costs you the most money? Is it your mortgage? student loan payments, car payments, credit card? health insurance? What is it? Well, if you saw the title of this episode, you probably guessed that I'm talking about taxes. And, I mean, you can name them right with all the different types of taxes that we pay. It adds up, we got income taxes for federal and for state, we got payroll taxes, we got property taxes, we got estate taxes, we've got gift taxes, we've got sales taxes, on and on, there's a lot more that I can't even think of. I mean, it is estimated that most Americans pay somewhere close to 50% of their earnings on taxes. Now, I'm guessing that if you're the one that pays the bills, that's not shocking to you. I mean, maybe the 50% is kind of like eye opening, like really? Is it that much? Yeah, unfortunately, it really is. But in this episode, I wanted to talk about taxes and options, and one simple change that you can make to lower the taxes on your trading games. Now, let me start off with a disclaimer, I am not an accountant, I'm not a CPA, not a professional on taxes, nor do I want to be. So make sure that you talk to your tax person about anything that you hear. Right. Now, when it comes to federal income taxes, there are two types that deal with options trading. Now, here we're talking about, you know, your gains on your trading. So if you're making gains, there's two types of taxes that you could pay. The first is regular income taxes. And the second is capital gains taxes. So capital gains is normally the tax that you pay, when you have held an asset for a year or more. And then you sell it for a profit, you would pay capital gains tax on any profit. So if you have a stock, and you own it for over a year, when you sell it, that's the tax that you would pay capital gains. Compare that to if you held the asset for less than one year, then you would be taxed at your regular income tax rate, whatever that is. Now, capital gains is usually much lower as a percentage. Okay, I don't want to go into the actual percentages here, because they keep changing depending on who's in the White House and all that other politics. But for our purposes, capital gains is lower, and is preferred, because of course, it's less. So, of course, the best way to deal with taxes is to not have them at all, to not have to pay them at all. And those of you who are trading in your Roth accounts, will never have to pay taxes on the gains. So if you can, that would be preferable to trade your options in your IRA so that any taxes that you have will not be taxed, you don't ever have to pay taxes on those. So that's really cool deal. Now, if you have a regular IRA, you will have to pay taxes when you eventually withdraw the money, but you don't have to pay it now. And if you're trading in a in a regular trading account, then yes, you will have to pay the taxes depending on your tax situation, quarterly or year. Okay. Now, there is a piece of the tax code that most traders don't know about. That actually helps options traders pay less taxes. It's called section 1256 of the IRS code. Now securities regarded as 1256 investments include non equity options, foreign currency contracts, regulated futures contracts, dealer equity options, and dealer securities futures contracts. Okay, so now what's the difference between section 1256 and non section prophetesses? Well, every section 1256 security, if you have a gain or loss, it is treated as being 60% long term, and 40% short term, no matter how long you own it. Now long term means that your cap is your capital gains tax rate. Okay. And the 40% short term means your personal income tax rate. So, for example, if we have a Joe Schmo trader, he makes $1,000 on an options trade, okay, and if this was a section 1256 security option, then his capital gains tax is 15%, let's just guess. And his personal tax rate is 22%. Okay, for this example, now, he made $1,000 on his trade, right, so 60% of that would be long term 40% of that will be short term. So long term, he would be paying $90 for taxes, and short term, you would be paying $88 for taxes. So for a total gain, or total tax of $178, on his $1,000 game, okay, so he's paying about 17.8% total, on $1,000. But if this was a non 1256 Options trade, and he still made the same $1,000, he would be paying 22% in taxes, which is his personal return rate, and he would be paying $220. So he would have saved $42, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that's just one trade, you got to add it up. But if you look at it percentage, it's 4.2%. So he actually kept 4.2% more money in his pocket, because he's trading 1256 options, instead of not 1256 options. So just by simply switching, you can save or you can keep about 4%, more than you already do. This is money that you've already made. But you didn't have to pay the government. Right. So if you trade for a whole year, let's say, and you make 10% for the year, well, a big chunk of that goes to taxes. This way, you're actually saving 4% of that of the total that you would pay. So instead of paying maybe, you know, 22%, you're paying 17%, or it could be less depending on your personal situation. Or it could be more, though most of the larger traders that we have in our in our movement, in our coaching programs and whatnot, they're usually trading with a lot more money. And so the percentage might be the same. Or it might be more because their income tax rates are different, are probably higher, right? So their tax rates will vary, that amount will be more, but the dollar amount increases significantly when it's non 1256. So now that you know what that is, now that you know what the benefit is, how do you make the switch? Right? How do you go from non 1256 to 1256? And how do you know which options are which? Well, most stock options are non 1256. And by most I mean the options in any company that you trade, or any ETF that you trade. So if you're trading Apple options, IBM options, Microsoft, whoever whatever company option that you're trading is going to be non 1256. ETFs are also non 1256. So if you go into the GLD, the USO, the IBB, any of those ETFs are non 56. And you'll know by looking at the name of it when you're going to try and trade it if it says ETF, it's non 1256. Okay, the main ones that get the 1256 treatment are indexes, and futures options. This is one of the reasons that I have moved a large portion of my trading funds over to my futures options trading account. Because when you trade in size, you know the savings are enormous. So I've been moving more and more money over to my futures options trading account so that I can pay less on taxes even if I'm making the same amount of money. So I do have a special announcement on that. If you are interested futures options and the way I trade them and what I do, we're having a one day live event called futures options live this month, on July 30. So one day events going to be live, it's going to be a lot of fun. You can get your tickets today at www.futuresoptionslive.com. And if you're listening to this episode close to when we publish it, there should still be tickets left. If not, maybe you can, if you're new, we're still interested, maybe you can email us. And if we have the recordings, for sale, or available, we'll let you know. At the live event, I'm going to be going over exactly how futures options work, how they're different from stock options, you know, taxes are just one of the many benefits that they have, and how you can get started with them. Okay, so hopefully, I'll see you there. Now, the other kinds of 1256 options that I mentioned, the ones that I trade are also they're called Index Options. So these are cash settled options on the actual indexes, like the S&P 500, the Russell 2000, the NASDAQ 100, and others. These also get the 60-40 tax treatment. Okay, so if you're a member of our Options Genius advisory, you'll notice that we trade SPX, and we trade rut every month, those are indexes. Those are SPX is for the S&P 500. And the RUT, the rut is for the Russell 2000. You can trade those with ETFs. But the indexes have much greater benefits, taxes being one of them. And so you'll notice that any hedge fund that is doing say iron condors on the s&p 500, or they're probably trading the Russell or the NASDAQ or whatever, if they're trading options, if they're a large trader, you know, they're a hedge fund. If they're a money management fund, if they're Warren Buffett, they all trade the indexes. tax treatment is one of the benefits. Okay, the other benefit I mentioned, there's that they're cash settled, meaning there's no early assignment, that can be a big one, depending on how much you're trading or what you want with your strategy. There are also many other benefits that we are going to cover in a future episode. So stay tuned for that. So let's say right now, if you are trading SPY, if you're trading IWM, for trading QQQ, if you're already trading these, these are ETFs, they don't give you the 1256 tax treatment. So you can do the same trade in an index. And immediately start saving on your taxes. Okay, now, the index options, the S&P or the SPX, the RUT, those are obviously much larger than the ETFs. And so it helps if you have a little bit larger account. But most traders can make the switch today, you do have to get approved by your broker. So you do have to have a higher level, the highest level that they allow. But if you have a track record, that shouldn't be a big problem, you know, you can let them know that, hey, I'm becoming more sophisticated, I want to try these indexes, I want to get the tax treatment, I look at my trading history, I know I can do this. And they'll they should allow you to trade indexes just not much of a big difference. Okay, now again, there are many other benefits to indexes or ETFs. We'll cover those in a future episode. But as you saw in our simple example, with Joe Schmo trader right trader example, just by switching to 1256 options instantly helped the guy make 4% greater returns. And I said, like I said, the larger you trade, the more you're going to save. And this is like free money. I mean, it's just it's, if you don't know about it, you're gonna pay it. Right. If you don't know about 1256, you're just gonna be paying the money in taxes, and you're never even gonna think about it never even notice that oh, my God, I'm paying too much. Unfortunately, most CPAs don't know about this, they have no clue what 1256 is, because most of their clients are not options traders. So you might have to go to your accountant, your CPA, and educate them. And you might have to tell them, hey, these options are 1256 options, and they're not regular options. So they need to be taxed differently. Now, it does mean more work for your accountant, so they're not going to be very happy about that. Truth be told, they might try to take some shortcuts and group them all together. So you have to be very on top of it. And that's why I'm doing this episode so you can realize that there is a difference. And, you know, if you're trading futures options, then it's a little bit easier because you will get a separate tax paper for any futures that you trade and futures contracts themselves or 1256, as well as futures options. Okay, now, mostly all the time, I'm only trading the futures options, not the futures themselves, because there's, there's differences. But if you trade futures or futures options, you will get a separate tax paper at the end of the year, that pretty much lets you know it says it out. These are futures, these are 1256. So that's easier for your broker. But if you are mixing SPX and SPY trades in your regular trading account, you're going to have to separate those and make sure you tell your broker or your CPA, what the differences and how it's going, Okay, because they might not always catch it, they might not know about it. So you have to let them know. I hope that it saves you some money. And I hope to see you at futures options live, the live event that we're having on the 30th. All right, have a great day trade with the odds in your favor. And I'll see you next time! LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Hey Passive Traders. Welcome back to another episode of the Option Genius Podcast. I'm gonna switch things up a little bit today, we get a lot of questions via email or on Facebook from our people reaching out to us. And I wanted to take this episode and to take one of those questions and to answer it. So the question that I am answering on this episode, and I want to do this for future episodes, so if you do have a question, something about related to options, or trading, or anything really, in that realm that you think I can help you with, go ahead and email us at Help@OptionGenius.com, send us an email, ask your question and you never know if we get enough people to ask it, we might get it on on an episode. Now, you know, we'll definitely do our best to answer your question via email when you send it in. But if we get the same question over and over again, for multiple people, then we'll try to answer it here so that it helps more people. Because if you're thinking of something and you have a question, there's probably like five or six other people out there, or probably more depending on the question that had the same question, can't find the answer and your question might help them as well. So go ahead and reach out to us, let us know. And I'd like to be doing more of these episodes where there'll be a little bit shorter, not too much in in length as a regular episode. But we'll get the questions answered in a brief period of time that would help you out. So this question is, the question is basically, what is the difference between a layup spread, and a credit spread? We get this answered a lot. I mean, we get we get it a lot. Because there is a difference. Even though the layup is built on the credit spread, the layup is different, it's a different way of doing it. And so that's what I'm going to be answering on this episode. The reason I am doing this is because lately, we've had a lot of interest in a program that we called credit spread mastery, where we teach the layup spread, as well as other methods of trading, credit spreads. And so because we've had so much interest, we get this question over and over and over again. Now, that particular program, we've had amazing, amazing results since we started it in January of 2021. Incredible results, really, we're with the second batch of students right now. And what we've been doing is for three months, we have one batch and then to the break, and then three months for the second batch. And you're not allowed, nobody's allowed to come in during the class during the batch, right? So we are thinking of opening up a few more spots. Because I do know and I do think that the market is going to get a little bit more volatile, coming up this year. And so it's going to help a lot of people to have someone to bounce ideas off of to get coaching from to see how they are trading through the volatility. So I definitely think that this year, it's gonna be a little bit different from last year, it's not gonna be so easy to make some money. And so that's why we're opening up some more spots in the credit spread mastery program. If you're interested, all you got to do is reach out to us, we'll get you some more information about that, and how you can join up if you're interested. And if you qualify, because everybody doesn't qualify, you have to be able to take advantage of it. So with that in mind, let's cue up the music. And then on the other side, I'm going to answer the question, what is the difference between a layup spread and a credit spread? Take care. So what's the difference? between a credit spread and a layup up spread? They seem very similar Allen. What's going on? What's the difference? Let's go and talk about it. But before we do, I gotta show you our trusty disclaimer. Remember, don't trade with money you cannot afford to lose. You don't want your spouse kicking you out of the house. I love that. I think I'm gonna say that every time from now on. Sorry. It's like so unprofessional for me. Alright, but hey, you signed up for this it you gotta you got to put up with my corny jokes. Alright, to put it simply, the layup is a type of credit spread. Okay, the layup takes the best features of the credit spread and then improves on them by stacking the deck in your favor more and more and more. Okay, so if the credit spread is your strategy. The layup is the trading plan is going to tell you exactly the best way to find the trade, the best way to enter the best way to manage your trade. And obviously, the best way to exit is part of the management process. But remember, the credit spread is the strategy. The layup is the details. You know, how do you find the stock? How do you find the Options that you're going to trade? How do you know if it's a good trade or not? How do you know when to get out? How do you know what to do? All that stuff is the details of the layup. And that's what the layup gives you. So the layup is time tested through bull and bear markets with real trading results. So we've been doing it this way, for years and years and years. And so we know that over time, this process works, right. And if you follow the layup rules, then you're going to be on your way to being a consistently profitable options trader. Because we've already done it, we've done it for you, right, we've done it in the past, hopefully now again, obviously, the disclaimer is there. And past results do not equal future performance. We get that, right? So I can't guarantee that it's going to continue to work. But until now it has been working. And if it stops working, I'll let you know, right? But as of this recording, the layup does work. And it's a way not only to help you be more consistent, but it's a way that doesn't take a lot of time. And that's what I really enjoy. That's what I really like the fact that hey, this is part of passive trading, because it's very simple to do. I can put my trades on, boom, boom, boom, I know exactly when to get out. And I don't have to mess with it. And the fact that we stack the odds in our favor in so many different ways. It's not just probability of profit. You know, anybody can do that. Anyway. Oh, yeah. Find a find a 20 Delta, find a 15 Delta, find a 10 Delta. Okay, I gotta probably profit. No, it's not that simple. Right? That's one way. That's one thing. But that's not enough. You got to look for other things. And we go with me. And we do that in a different video where we tell okay, exactly how are we going to stack the deck and also in different different different different ways? The more ways you can stack the deck in your favor, the more the odds are in your favor? LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Allen: All right, Passive Traders. Welcome to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast, we got a real treat for you today. I have one of my long, long time friends with me today and we're actually doing something special, we're going to do a video as well as audio on the Podcast, we will be having some slides, but when we show the slides will describe to you what's going on in the slide so those of you who are listening will not be missing out. And the video will also be on our media channels and YouTube channel. So you can catch it there if you need. I want to introduce my guest today He is Mr. Doug Smith of Hawthorne Funds. Doug and I go back, man, we go back, like over what over a decade or so. But yeah. Doug: 15 years. Allen: So Doug is Mr. Moneybags himself, Mr. Real Estate, you know, he's been doing real estate for years and years, he launched a very successful company called MyHouseDeals.com where if you are a real estate investor, you can go and find all the deals that are not on the MLS. So it's pretty cool. And that site has made a lot of people a lot of money. But today, we're gonna be talking about Doug's newest venture, this is something that he's been doing for a few years now. And you know, whenever you get together with friends, you talk and "Hey, what's up?" "What are you doing?" And we would share stories of what we were doing and, and Doug A few years ago, came up to me, and he's like, yeah, you know, I'm doing all this stuff with land and doing this and doing that. And I was like, Wow, man, you're making a killing. And he made such a big killing that he just like, he just has to get out. And he's like, Alright, we need to do this on a bigger scale. And so Doug went and figured out how to do a investment fund. And so that's what we're going to be talking about today. I know back in Episode 94, it's called "How I Invest". I shared that one of my investments is in a real estate fund. And that is Doug's fund. And so I asked Doug, to come on and answer some questions and give us some highlights about what investment funds are, how they work, what to look for, when you're choosing one, making sure that your investment is safe, and all that stuff. So Doug, hopefully, I covered everything. If you anything you want to add, please go ahead. Doug: More or less, you covered all the stuff that makes me look good. So we'll just skip all the other stuff. Allen: Yeah, I didn't want to tell all your dirty secrets. Doug: It's good to see you again, Allen. And thank you so much for having me here on the call. I'm really looking forward to sharing everything I can to educate people help you out. Allen: Yeah, I appreciate it. Appreciate it. Thank you for having us. So tell us what are you doing at Hawthorne? Doug: Oh, my gosh, well, I work all the time, which was so funny, because when you and I met, I was like a lifestyle guy. But yeah, for those considering starting up a private equity firm, just know that it will consume you. We buy and sell land outside of Houston, Texas. And so we're buying about a million dollars a month worth of land, sometimes more. And we're selling maybe $2 million a month worth of land, it really just depends on the month. But that requires a lot of people and a lot of emails, a lot of phone calls, a lot of Excel spreadsheets, there's just a lot going on, there's 20 or 30 of us that make all of this happen. So there's always something kind of vying for my attention as it pertains to mining selling land and raising people's money and investing that money properly. Allen: Yep. And so one of the things I do want to point out that Doug, you are doing this for yourself before you started the fund? Doug: Yes, that's right. So not only that, I have my house deals calm going on, I was buying and selling houses, I was selling those on owner financing. And then my business partner and I switched over to land in 2016 started buying that and selling on owner financing. And it was just, it was very profitable, requiring a lot of my capital. And sometimes that capital would take a year and a half or two years to come back. And I was wanting to do more deals as opposed to just sit on sidelines, right and wait for money to come back. So that's when I started the fund around 2018 or so started taking other people's money on as well. Allen: Okay, so you had one iteration, and then now you're in the second iteration, right? Or the second fund?  Doug: Yes, there's the first time that was an equity fund. And then we formed a debt fund, I guess a few weeks ago at this point, maybe a month or two ago and took on 5 or $6 million into that second fund. We've taken out about the same amount into the first one, but there's, they're structured differently, but they The end result is pretty similar for the investors and for us. Allen: So can you give us a difference between debt versus private equity?  Doug: Yeah, sure so that's one thing you said we're gonna talk about on the call is like, what would you want to look for if you're looking at investing in a private equity fund, and the majority of those funds out there are equity funds, and so that means that they're probably buying one or more assets like multi multifamily apartment complex. For example, and they are going to leverage up with maybe 75 or 80% bank money. So that's debt. And then you as an investor, you're a limited partner in these deals. So you're now you're the equity portion, the 25% equity, and whatever it appreciates, you know, force appreciation or just natural appreciation over time, you benefit from that. But that can be a little bit risky. If there's a downturn in the market, or the property's not managed properly, because equity holders can get wiped out, or at least have a lot of their money, kind of like, you know, wiped away. So a debt fund is when you invest in a fund, and that fund becomes the lender against something. So they are now in the bank's position in that first example. So let's say you, Allen, or your friend is wanting to buy a house for $100,000. And you lend him $50,000. Well, he totally mismanaged the project, and you have to foreclose on him, he's not paying you, well, you're gonna become the owner, you're foreclosing become the owner of that house and be able to resell it on the open market, and, and almost certainly recuperate your $50,000, because the house would sell is worth more than that. So that's kind of like a simple way to explain the difference between an equity and a debt fund. Allen: Okay, so now on the first one, the equity fund, you said that they go out and they borrow 75% of it. And they in the investment funds are 25%? Doug: I think there's a fairly typical kind of split, right, equity funds. There are some equity funds that don't take on debt, but the majority do, and that's why they're able to pay out at, well, sometimes the ends up being maybe 15%, internal rate of return over time. But there's, you know, there's some risks, there's some negatives, those are projections, you never quite know how it's going to shake out. Yeah. And your money would be locked up for usually about three, five or seven years, depending on the fund. Okay. And what if you wanted to get out sooner than that? What would you Is there any recourse?   For most funds, you can't. Allen: No, just you can't give it to somebody else, or they won't help you facilitate it change or.. Doug: It might help you, but they're not obligated to do so. The latest fund that we set up, there was finalized one or two months ago, you can get it out. It's an evergreen fund, it is a lot more liquid. So that's one of the advantages of it. Allen: Okay, so now you said yours is a debt fund, right, then and so you are using the funds money to go out and buy the land? Doug: Yeah, so let's say like, let's say we're about to buy some land, and it's gonna cost a million dollars, we're able to borrow from the fund and the fund be a lender on that deal. So my entity that I own - Hawthorne land LLC will borrow. And it's all at the courthouse. It's documented from Hawthorne Income Fund, LLC, which is where all the investors are as members. Allen: Okay, so, okay, so basically, you created your own bank? Doug: Yeah. Here's the deal. Most banks, they do not like to lend on anything that is slightly outside of this cookie cutter box. And what we're doing buying raw land outside of the city, subdividing it and proving it and selling on honor on owner financing there, they've never heard of that most of them. And they're like, we don't know which box to check here on this form. So maybe you can go talk to this or that banker, but we did find bankers, and we saw bankers that will mind on it, but they're a huge pain to deal with. They take weeks to process alone. And there's all these requirements. It's just very, very bureaucratic, so much red tape. So yes, we created our own bank.  Allen: Okay so basically, you borrow the money from the fund, and then the fund gets a set percentage. Doug: Yes, it doesn't get any of the profits or anything. No, it's just the lender. It's very clean. So it's kind of like, it's kind of like a lot of people all they know is about investing in some sort of index fund. And then maybe they'll put some of their money in bonds. And so this is like a lot of people that invest with us there. They're familiar with other strategies, like they might invest in other private equity funds that are a little riskier and maybe they're an equity fund, and they will treat us as if we're like, the bonds. So we're the lower stable like steady investment that they feel like if all the crap hits the fan that we're standing Allen: And so say you're paying 10% and that's paid out every month Doug: It's every month or people can check a box and have it automatically reinvested in compound. Allen: Awesome, sweet. Okay, yeah, cuz I know the first time we had it, we had a, that wasn't a possibility. So actually into our investors who wanted that. Yeah. So you're actually growing and learning at the same time. So that's awesome. Doug: Yes. Allen: Awesome. So who is able to invest in your fund anybody or accredited or how's that work? Doug: Accredited investors, and the minimum is 100,000. So who knows? Maybe 95% or more of American population can invest unfortunately. But those who can enjoy it. Allen: So now accredited, that means what 200, I think it's 200. Doug: If you're an individual, you need to be making 200,000 a year or more if it's a married couple 300 or you need to have a net worth of a million dollars, not counting the equity in your house that you're living in, Allen: Okay. And the minimum to put in is 100. And there's like you said, there's no tie up phase. So somebody come in, and then if they need it six months down the road, they'd be like, hey, I need to get out.  Doug: That's correct. So we have provisions that if anybody's trying to get their money back at the same time, there's a slow process of giving it to everybody. But in general, people get their money back fairly quickly, if they need it. We've not even had our first requests yet, everybody, they're putting their money with us, because they want it to be with us not because they want to pull it, pull it out. But it would take a few days to, who knows a week or two to get someone's money back to them on a typical scenario. Allen: Right. And I mean, this is real estate. So people understand that this is not liquid, you know, most times you go buy a house, it's going to take you two months to sell it anyway. This is putting it in a fund that's invested in real estate. So that when if they need to, it takes time. So.. Doug: Yes, but with a structure, it is pretty liquid. Allen: Okay. Okay. Doug: Like it could be the next day, we get their money back to them, but I cannot go. Allen: So, I mean, I wanted to go over some of the reasons for our listeners, why, you know, why I invested in Doug in the first place. And, you know, this was one of the first investments that I actually made in a fund. And, you know, he came to me and said, hey, look, I've been doing this, and I'm starting a fund. And if you'd like to invest, you know, go ahead, these are the parameters, and this is how much we're gonna pay out. And there's risk involved. Of course, there's risk involved all assets, and all investing and trading and whatnot. Doug: My attorney made me say that. Allen: Oh, yeah, there is. So you know, you don't want to have somebody come in and be like, Oh, man, I'm gonna get rich. And then, you know, it doesn't happen. Doug: We do sell for about double what we buy for. So it's just like, with the margins like that, it's kind of hard to mess up. Allen: So I came up with some criteria, I was like, Alright, so number one, you know, who is actually doing or leading this fund, righ? And in this case, it was Doug. And I've known Doug for 10 years, and those of you guys know him, you don't know this, and you can't tell because he, you know, he looks like a really nice guy and everything on the in the video. That guy is I mean, he's a stickler, he, I mean, I only know this because I've known him for so long. But he tracks his net worth on a regular basis, he accounts for every single penny, in his business man, every single point 001% he knows what's happening and where it's going. And this guy is meticulous on his numbers. And he was not somebody that plays loose and fast, you know, he's got every dotted eye, every T is crossed. And so that was really something that gave me a lot of confidence. Like, you know, this guy, he knows what he's talking about. And he's been doing it on his own for a while. And the numbers just make sense. And so, you know, a lot of times people get attracted to these investments, the only thing they know about is Oh, I can make 10%, I can make 50%, I can make 25% in maybe some cases where, you know, it's, it's, it's more of a scam than anything else. There was like a lot of people investing in this crypto stuff. You know, there are crypto funds that I've seen that are like, oh, we'll pay you 30% a month, a month. Wow. And so you get money for a month or two, and then it folds and it goes out of business because it was a big Ponzi scheme. But in this case, you know, I knew Doug, and I trusted him. And that's what one of the things that led me to it. The other thing was, you know, his experience was there. And then the second part was, does the investment makes sense, is like, What is he doing? Or what is the investment. And in this case, it was something I had never heard about, it was pretty unique, where he's buying hundreds of acres of land, and then he's subdividing them into smaller pieces. And then when you subdivide it, and you smell a smaller piece, you get to sell it for a lot more money. So I think some of the numbers were you were buying it for four or $5 a square foot, selling it for $10-$12 a square foot originally. And like you said, it's pretty hard to go wrong with those kind of numbers. This was not like a apartment complex in some other country that we're going to Airbnb it and hopefully people want to go there and stay there. And maybe maybe it's run properly. This is something that he was already doing. The third thing was, what is my risk? You know, I'm going to put my money into this thing. I want to own that land. As an investor, what's my risk? And I was looking at, I think, well, this is raw land. It's been there for hundreds of years, it's not going to go anywhere. If it's not going to burn down, it's not going to go out of business. You know, he can't take it and run away with it. The only thing that might happen is it doesn't sell, you know, he'll buy it, it doesn't sell it'll sit there and maybe 5-10 years from now we'll sell it. To me that was like the only risk is like if the lead doesn't fill. It's just gonna sit there. No, I don't get my return but leaves my money is still safe. And so all those aspects, I was like alright, let's go. Let's do it, you know, and so that's why I feel comfortable. And those are the three aspects, I would look for investing in any other fund. Is there anything, Doug that you want to add? Like, you know, what are the things people should look for when there's questions I should ask? Doug: I can go into that a little bit. So one of the main problems with a lot of private equity funds that they have this projected internal rate of return. And the majority of funds do not meet their projection, really don't say like 15 to 20%, or whatever, but you can, but here's, here's what you do. So that'll be based on a certain amount of appreciation of whatever asset they're holding, you like reduce that appreciation by just .5% per year or something, and that projection all goes to crap. And the reason that it's so effective is that there is some debt ahead of you. And so you're just dealing with that little thin equity margin. So you play with that a little bit and that's a high percentage of your potential return that can be taken away from you. So that's kind of like the main problem. But yes, I do invest in other funds. And you know, private equity funds can be a good way to invest your money, right? Probably just a mix of right, different things like that. You could be doing Options Trading, like maybe you've got some like long term, like buying hopes, maybe you've got one or 2% of your money in crypto, whatever. But it can certainly be part of your strategy. So that's like the main problem I see with certain private equity funds, the less common one is that they're a scam. You'll see that maybe more like if there's like a crypto fund, okay, maybe like that could kind of like maybe be a scam. Oil and gas is kind of notorious for some guys that come and go with a little scam. They're gonna go drill some wells here and there on the wells and of dry or maybe they run off with your money, but pretty notorious. But for the most part, people running private equity funds do not want to go to prison. Like they're not super incentivized to run a scam. But I'm more than happy to tell you about a story where I was scammed recently in a private equity fund. Allen: No way. Doug: Yeah, I mean, if you want me to go into it. Allen: Yeah, yeah let's go. I'm sure people will be excited to hear about that. How the Mr. Smart Guy got scammed.  Doug: Yeah, that's crazy. Well, looking back, I can see like, now I can see how the scam and where I went wrong. So like I said, I like to kind of diversify a little bit of my money away from these land deals, not because I'm worried about the land deals, but it is nice to dabble in other stuff. I think we're a bunch of like business people, entrepreneurs on this call, right? So like, when somebody comes to us with something, it seems like "Oh, just plop 100 grand, or whatever it is, and your fund, and you're gonna pay me. Sounds great". So there was this guy, I was at this competition where veterans were pitching their business ideas, and we're all investing in some of their businesses. And there was a guy in the audience, and he actually ran a private equity firm himself, which he was on his maybe 6th fund, and each fund was like only a year. So that's kind of a shorter duration than his normal. So that was a little bit atypical from the beginning. And then his first fund got a return of 63% in a year. And so it's like, of course, like, my eyes lit up. “Oh, my God. Wow, that's awesome”. Like, well, what about your second one? Oh, that was 45%. What about these other ones? And and it was I talked to one of the person who had invested with him, and they were, like, fairly happy at the time. And so I went out and I.. Allen: What was he doing? Doug: Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I'll tell you what he said he was doing. He said that he and his team are going out there and buying mineral rights from individuals and then aggregating those, and selling them to companies that were looking to buy larger chunks of minerals into like, they like direct mail and stuff. So that like, you know, old Sue, she's like eight years old, and heritage minerals, she didn't even know about it. And she gets a little direct mail piece from his company saying that they'll buy her minerals, I'm sure at a discount. doing that for a lot of people aggregating them and then selling them in a package. So it kind of made sense, you know, aggregate and sell for a higher price. And so but here's the deal, I'm not an oil and gas guy. And so I was not able to properly vet the investment. I was just sort of going off these other investors seeing kind of happy to seems legit. I went out to his office, and I met with him and his staff out there. He's got like, all these people with firm handshakes and strong like backslaps, you know, like, and I'm just like, maybe a team of 15 or 20 people there are a lot of them were rice, MBA, Rice University MBA graduates, and it just seemed, it seemed kind of legit, you know, the, and here's the deal. They're all almost all veterans. It was a veteran owned and operated business. So like, wow, you go in there. And there's like all these like, swords on the walls and stuff like, you know, and flags. And just like, this guy seemed like Miss Captain America. Like, I was like, you know, 15 years ago, I was running an internet business and this guy was out there like killing terrorists or something. It's like, okay, I was like really looking up to this guy and a lot of other people were too and so over time, he took on maybe 60 million from people over the course of five years or something like that. And ultimately, we found out through an email from him like two months ago that he had squandered almost all of our money and that he was basically using fun money to pay a staff which you cannot you cannot do that the fund money has this very designated purpose, which is to invest in whatever asset you're investing in and had just basically raped and pillaged the the bank account for the fund. And it's very hard for like 30 or $60 million, because I think ultimately the losses were 30 million. But for me, it was like, almost all of my money. The early like first two funds, they mostly got their money back. But beyond that it was it was scam time. Allen: Oh, wow Doug: And so yeah, so like he was holding this managing the funds. And we still don't know if he ran off with some of them on his own. Or if he was just trying to pay his employees and save his company and make desperate business moves to sort of save things or salvage things. And the oil and gas has been going downhill. It's been in a, I guess, a trough over the last year or two. Maybe it's doing better lately? I think it is. But that really hit him. Just, I guess maybe when the pandemic was starting and maybe..  Allen: Yeah it was, you know, oil went in the toilet pretty much. Doug: Yeah. So I kind of like, we're like, he'll go to prison, which I don't know why in the heck, you'd want to do something that would lead him to prison. That's crazy. Like any sane private equity fund manager, their main goal is not to go to prison. So then what do you? How do you not go to prison? You don't do anything illegal? Yeah. Tell that to made off? Yeah, it's crazy. So anyway, so but looking back, I've got some insights as to why I kind of got scammed there. I understand it more now. Allen: Okay, tell us tell us. Doug: Basically, if anybody's really like his disguise themselves, it's like a Veteran Business or Christian business or something like that. That's usually a little bit of a red flag, because they're trying to make themselves seem like a very reputable, or moral and principled, and all that, it's like an overreach. Allen: And they're taking credibility from another organization kind of thing. You know, they're tying themselves to something else. Doug: Yeah. So that's one. I mean, there's many things that came together, when you go on his website, which are websites probably even not even there anymore. A lot of his team members, they had various positions, but their background on LinkedIn, and all ends up being sales. Like they were all in sales before, like the Geologists was in sales. So that was kind of a red flag. He had a huge overhead, like, he's, obviously all these MBAs, I was like, maybe this is a red flag, but I wasn't so sure. And here's what I messed up doing too, is like, I know, his professor at Rice, or that was his professor. He is one of our fellow members. And I could have asked that guy because I asked him later and he said, “You didn't know that was a scam? It was pretty obvious”. He came in here. And every time they were raising money for something, he was dropping $20-$30,000 at a time, everybody else was dropping, maybe 1000s. So I thought, well, he's probably just dropping all the investors money. You see what I'm saying? I was like "Oh I got it". And he was, uh, yeah, he seems like he's maybe trying to compensate for something, make himself look a little bit better than he is. And then I got to know another investor in the oil and gas business later. He's like, "Oh, we've known that was a scam for the last 12 months", just the types of returns he's been paying out are not feasible in this industry. It doesn't make any sense. Allen: Oh wow. Doug: And so basically, I mess up by not asking those two guys before I invested, I just asked that the the satisfied investor that I knew. And actually when I asked him right before I invested, he said he was less satisfied with the fund, and that he would not recommend it. But I went against his advice, because he could not give me a firm reason as to why I should not invest. It was more like a gut feel that he had. My own brother who ended up investing had a negative gut feel about it, too. So basically, in the future, if I get some of these red or yellow flags, I'm just gonna sit on the sidelines, and I'm gonna sit out of that deal. Another problem is like he was, I'm 40 now and he was my same age. And so like, I'm thinking, Okay, this is a guy, like, I've had, like, 20 years of business experience at and so but I'm not sitting across from another guy with that amount of experience, even though it's just it kind of felt like it because he was in the military 13 or 15 years. And so that's life experience, for sure. But like, as far as like business, this guy was green. I'm throwing a bunch of money at this guy that's green and so as everybody else so that's a red flag especially in oil and gas. I think they need to be in the industry for like decades because that's that can it's very tricky, complicated industry and, and very volatile. And a lot of fortunes have been made and loss. I don't want the guy that's like new to the industry. Right? Yeah. So yeah. And also I messed up. I should not necessarily be investing in stuff that I don't understand very well like oil and gas. Unless I'm willing to put the time into that. So the outrageous returns were red flag. Anybody saying we're gonna get you 60 something or he didn't guarantee that but right. I don't know. It's just like, that's not super realistic. I mean, it can be done, I guess. But red flag.  Allen: Yeah, I mean, our traders they can get it but We don't run a fun doing that, you know, they can do it on their own. They hear the trades, he learned how to do it and go for it and do it. And some markets, you do it in some markets, you don't in some markets you lose. But when you have a fund, you obviously have all these expenses, like you said, you know, the staff and the work involved and all that information, all the lawyers that you paid, I remember you telling me, you know how much you paid to the lawyers to make all the documents and the accounting and the photos and all the auditing. And that's done on a regular basis and all that stuff. Yeah. So it takes a lot of money to put this stuff together and actually run it. Doug: Yeah, totally. Oh, here's the company. Here's a couple more things about him. Like, he didn't let his investors mix and mingle. So I never really met any other investors besides that one guy like, there's other guys that run funds, they'll like even sometimes do lunches and dinners or like a group events for the investors because they have nothing to hide, let the investors check. Allen: This, I mean, if you're legit, if you're legit, you want that, you know, you want the happy people to mix with the new people. So the new people are like, Oh, yeah, are you doing it? They're like, Yeah, I do. It is great. You want that to happen if you're legit. Doug: Yes, totally. And we never got any documentation like showing which minerals we owned and what was sold. Like, I want to see like legitimate notarized documents, stuff that was filed somewhere like, so that's the problem with some funds, too, is like they're not obligated to show you all that stuff. Like, who regulates all this stuff? sec. sec. That's not I was thinking that may see that maybe needs to be something that maybe at some point becomes regulated. I hate to like, I don't I'm not like a fan of more regulation. That might be actually kind of handy. You know, like, it's crazy like the if you want to be a scammer with a private equity fund, you can. It does not end well, though. So you're not incentivized in that. That's when I shocking to some people would want to do it. You go to freakin jail. Allen: Yeah, Oh, I mean, you take the money and run to another country and live in it. Doug: There's like international police now. They'll get you anywhere. Allen: You can't go to like some island that doesn't have extradition or something? Doug: You'll be like the only white guy or whatever. Yeah.  Allen: Head on down to Cuba and you'll be the king. Doug: It baffles me that anybody would want to do what he did. But I again, I don't think that's the norm. I asked a couple of attorneys. I said, How often do you see this? And they said not very often? Allen: No, because I mean, I know with your stuff ever since we'd invested with you. It's like, we get regular emails, we get regular update, since like hey this, look, we bought this land and hey, we bought this property. And here's the address. And here's the photo. And and before we before we even invested, I mean, you took us on a tour, like, you know,  Doug: Yeah, we were actually on the land. Allen: Yeah, we saw the land we saw where it was subdivided. We saw, you know, people that were there, you know, that purchased other plots already. And they were building stuff. So I mean, it was everything was on the up and up, and it's still on the open up still, you know, if you want access, you call Doug up, and he'll explain everything. And if you want to go see it, he'll give you all the details and you go take a look and check the deeds are whatever you want to do. Doug: Yeah we'll send our statements or deeds, whatever. Also, some people if they are hesitant about investing in a fund, like for us, we're willing to sell people the notes that we generate. So like, they can get about a 10% return if they just own the notes, but it's a little bit more volatile. Because every now and then you might have a borrower that defaults, and you have to foreclose and then resell, so like investing the fun is just simpler. But if you're one of those people that just like I don't trust like somebody else having control over my money, there's other ways to get the same return with what we've got going on. That's why we changed our name from Hawthorne funds, the Hawthorne capital, because we sell notes, and you can lend against notes or you can invest in the fund, the fund is just the easiest. Awesome, cool, cool. How do people find out about you or talk to you about this? shoot me an email at Doug@HawthorneCapital.com That's D-O-U-G Doug@HawthorneCapital.com Allen: Alright, I'll put that in the show notes as well. And you know, one of the questions that I got after I did that episode 94 was like, you know, if you're making so much money in the stock market in an options, why are you investing in real estate or something else. And right now, at least in this market in this economy that we've had, you know, the stock market is doing amazing, it's doing great. I mean, this year, not so much. It's kind of, you know, going up a little bit last year was really good. But still as Options Traders, were making a killing. And I see my investments in my accounts in there, you know, just increasing and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We're at the point now where I mean, it's got to end sometime, you know, and it's time for if you have a bunch of gains in your accounts, it's time to be diversified, especially with you know what they're saying with inflation coming down the road that's gonna be coming pretty hard. Land is a good thing to invest in when you have inflation because you can automatically just raise the price. Things lost more when you have inflation so. Doug: Well for us you know what the way that's affected is land has gone up in value. Big time over the last year, which a lot of us didn't see coming. We thought just you know, in a recession with our heading into a big recession, that would just decrease the value of a lot of stuff. We used to, we used to buy land for about four, or $5,000 per acre. And now we're buying it for eight to $10,000 per acre. Wow, no, we sell it for a lot more to so we're kind of in the flipping game we buy. And then a few months later, or sometimes it's maybe a year, we sell the little pieces because we buy a bunch and we chop it up a little pieces. So we'll sell those, but then we sell them on owner financing. So we collect on my income income stream over about 15 years. But we've seen that the market moving inland for sure. Allen: So who's buying these little pieces from you? Doug: Blue collar individuals who live in the city and want to be able to go out to the country on the weekends and enjoy time with their family and their dogs. And maybe they want some get some animals out there and maybe have a little swimming pool or something like that. They want to be on the country and there was already such a demand for that pre-pandemic, but it just exploded here with the pandemic. But our model works like pre pandemic during pandemic post. It doesn't really matter for us. It just, it changes some of the numbers a little bit like if we have to buy for more than we sell for more. Right, the demand is there. And we just we do a lot of advertising on Facebook to sell our ranchettes. And we also are on MLS and all these other places. But with Facebook ads, we're able to we spend about $2 per lead, and we're able to ramp that budget up or down and get as many ranchette buyers as we want. So it's just a matter of the sales team handling all those leads. Allen: Really? Doug: That was that was true before the pandemic, we didn't need the pandemic to make our business work. Allen: And what about the land, finding the land? Doug: We look on the MLS, there's a website called lands of Texas, there's one of those for just about every state. So we look at a bunch of land, and we try to get a deal on when we can but usually maybe the best we can do is about a 10% discount. No, we're looking for land that has access to roads on a couple of sides that we can chop it up into where each little ranchette it will have access to a road. So normally we'll buy one or 200 acres at a time, for example. And these are all over different parts. It's not like one all together, it's the subdivision. And yeah, so then we'll chop it up. And we need to give each of those little pieces access to road because it costs a lot of money to build roads. And that would make our deals a lot less profitable. If we had to do that. Allen: Ah, I see. So you buy the properties that already have roads, and you add the utilities or? Doug: Yes, we bring in we'll put in a water well, that costs about $6,000, maybe seven, and they will put in fencing usually cost about 5000 put in a gate for maybe another 1000 culvert driveway. Every now and then a pond that we bring we bring in power can cost one or 2000 per ranchette. So like the typical like 10 acre ranchette, we will have bought for about $80,000. And we will put about 20,000 and improvements into it. So now we're in it for 100. And they will sell it for maybe 180. Allen: Hmm, okay. Doug: And the fund lens as we do these things, it lands on the land, and then it lands on the note that we generate. So that's kind of the margins we're dealing with lately actually are probably selling for more than 180. Actually on that scenario. Allen: And how long do you think this will last? This will run? Doug: I don't see how it would end. Allen:There's plenty of land out there? Doug: Yeah, there's plenty land, plenty of buyers. I've got a lot of investors investing with us. And once a.. Allen: So you're not closed or you're not you're not full, you're still taking investors.. Doug: Okay yeah, that's good question. Fund to opens and closes as needed as so we took on about five or 6 million last month. And we close it because we have to deploy capital for new purchases, because as soon as we take it on, we have to start paying our investors. So we're not going to take on like 10 million when we can only deploy five. So as we're about to buy more land, so we'll open it up, temporarily take all that money and then close it. And we'll just accept a certain amount of money, whatever we need at that time, whether that's 2 million, 5 million, whatever it is, then we'll close it. Allen: So you have basically like a waiting list. Doug: Yes. Allen: Awesome. Cool. Cool. Cool. All right. Okay, I think we've covered everything I had all my questions. Is there anything else that you wanted to share anything else our listeners and our watchers need to know before they go out and invest funds? Because there's a lot of funds on now that you know, with the crowdfunding and all that stuff? What do you think about that? Doug: I think some of the inferior funds are going that route because if you've got a solid fund, you really pull a lot from your own network. And so you don't have to go like I don't have to go like list my fund on some sort of like fundrise or realty mogul or whatever. Because I get all my money just from my like word of mouth. Everyone just talks right. And that's how most like well operated funds are because they will take a cut of whatever you raise and so you get sometimes like slightly newer operators or they don't have. They don't have a network, or maybe there's not as good of word of mouth or something. So I'm not like a fan necessarily of investing in that kind of stuff. There is a cool website that came out called Vera Vest. It's fairly new, and they research, they do this sort of a background check on certain private equity funds. And so you can kind of go and make sure that they're, you can ever be fully sure, right, but make sure they're probably not a scam. But those operators are paying very best a fee. I don't know if it's like a monthly fee or what, for them to be like gold verified, or whatever it is on that website. And then so if they are, they're showing up high on that website, and they get a lot of new business from investors, or even a new investor capital. I say it's kind of like the BBB, you know, the Better Business Bureau where you have to pay them for drinking. To get the young people, people still believe in it. They're like, Oh, well, I mean, not too much anymore. I don't hear about it anymore. But people before were like, Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go check the BBB. I'm like, okay, but, you know, if we pay them, they'll say good stuff about us. That's kind of on my other business My House Deals with, we had had 42,000 something paying subscribers at the time, and we had five complaints in the BBB, that's five out of like, 42,000 something. And these are people that had never even raised the issue with us. First, they just went straight to BBB, because they wanted to refund or whatever. And the BBB gave us a D or F rating. And yeah, we went in there. And they basically said that we were like, poorly operating our company, I said, five, I'd like for you to say here's our list, I printed out like this huge stack, here's all of our customers, by people complained. And they said that basically, we need to pay them some more money. And then we would be like A-Rated. That's like, this is a racket. It is a racket! Allen: It is, it is. Doug: So luckily, nowadays, people can just look at Google Reviews. And those can be manipulated a little bit too. Like if the company is like sending all their customers to leave reviews or.. Allen: For something free. Like they're giving away a free service or something. Doug: Yes, they do that on Amazon too. Like.. Allen: Oh, Amazon full of fake reviews. I mean, they buy the reviews, they don't even give you know, it's like they'll there are companies out there you can hire and they'll just go out and give you like, Yo you want 20 fake reviews, okay, pay us. And we'll go and our people will go and, you know, they have all these fake accounts and everything. And they just yeah, Amazon. I don't I don't trust anything on Amazon like I have. It's super hard to know if the reviews are good. Doug: Yeah, they need to do some coding to kind of look for that. But there are certain plugins you can install. Like if you use Chrome as your browser, like a fake spotter review, and they'll analyze, see whether that they think that Amazon review is legit or fake, and I'll give it they'll give it a rating. That's pretty cool. Allen: Interesting. Doug: Yeah, at least we have that we don't have to depend on the BBB anymore. Allen: Yeah.Yep. Cool. All right, Doug, I appreciate everything you've shared with us. Again, Doug's email is Doug@HawthorneCapital.com Doug: ..or email my assistant Ellen@HawthorneCapital.com. Allen: Okay. Doug: We'll put you on the email list. So like maybe every, every four, six weeks or so you'll get an update that shows what we're doing. So if you even if you're not looking to invest now, it's fine. Like maybe three years from now, you've been getting our updates, and you've been getting educated and seeing what we do. Then if you felt like investing you could. Allen: Yup and full disclosure, I am an investor. I was in the first fund and we were over the money into the second fund. But yeah, so you know if you're, if you're interested in getting into a fund, do your due diligence, please, you know, this is you turning over your money to someone else, hopefully, they have experienced hopefully, they have a track record and they know what they're doing. And they'd like, you know, most of them most of these funds are not scams, because they do take a bunch of money to put together and investment to start up and they have something to show for it. I think the bigger fear is, you know, if the investment goes south, you know, how much of your investment Can you lose? Can you lose all of it, etc? Doug: Yeah, that's gonna be case by case each fund is going to have a different risk reward profile. So you really got to look at that. Allen: Yeah, yeah. How would you know? Doug: Well, ideally, either you're in that industry kind of like sort of like or you have a friend who is okay, you people that you want to run it by people and really get to know the operator, maybe talk to a couple different people who run you know, similar types of funds if it's more it's pretty common as multifamily apartments. Of course there's some commercials there's some office buildings and stuff that has been beat the heck yeah, I was talking to somebody at the gym that he put a put a bunch of money in a fund that invested in hotels. He put in his money and right before the recession. He got hammered. Allen: Oh, boy. Yeah. So do they like do those funds, then they go out of business and then they everything gets foreclosed? Hmm. Doug: The lender forecloses on the fund because the fund has borrowed money. Allen: Okay, so what can the individual investors do and when that happens? Doug: They get whatever's left over after the bank gets paid. Allen: So they can't sue,they can't do anything? Doug: Well, if there was like fraud committed, yes, but a lot. Some of that there was no fraud. It was just gonna be a poor investment. Allen: Oh okay, yeah if you guys do your due diligence. Make sure you know. Alright, Doug I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. We’re gonna put this up to everybody and you know, at least my recommendation is that Doug is a stand-up on his guy, most of the time and again, I’ve known him for years so yeah. Thanks Doug again and talk to you soon! Doug: Thanks Allen! Allen: Alrighty, bye bye Doug: Alright, bye

Passive traders, welcome to a very special episode of the Option Genius Podcast. This is episode number 100 hundred. No, it's not a hundred hundred. It's just 100, but yeah, it's one zero, zero. We made it to triple digits, which is a pretty good feat. They say most podcasts don't even make it for the first 15 episodes. So to get to a hundred episodes, I think it's been like two years and to have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of downloads and people listening to every episode? Wow. I am so humbled. I continue to be so humbled. I've said it before, but it's like, I can't believe it. You know, I never thought that anybody would want to listen to me that much, um, much less, several hundred thousand people. It's insane. I did want to do something special for this episode. We did go ahead and let's go be kind of like, uh, the best of, you know, so I looked at all the different episodes, see which one got the most downloads, which ones are the ones that most people email us about and ask questions about. And I went through and I said, you know, which ones do I want to highlight? Meaning that they're so good that I want to, you know, make you listen to them again, take the best things and be like, okay, we don't need the whole episode. Just need little snippets, right? Little pieces of it. So that it reinforces something that maybe you've forgotten, or maybe you didn't know, or you missed it the first time. So things that I thought were really important to get through, things that will definitely help you. And so that's what we did in this episode. So I went through identified eight episodes that I thought were really, really good to re go back and rehashing and go back into them. And then we cut and pasted the most important parts. So each episode might've been my 28 minutes or 30 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever, but there was, but three minutes worth of four minutes worth that really just summed it all up and, you know, hit the spot kind of thing, no stories. Cause I know sometimes I can go on and on with the stories, but I think these stories are important that people say they enjoy that. So there you go. But I also want to take this time to appreciate everybody for sticking with me and for all the wonderful comments and for all of the wonderful reviews that you guys have posted over the years, the last two years or however long we've been doing this, I read every single one. I really appreciated all those reviews. They do help other people find the podcast. They do help tell the different podcast services that, hey look, people like this and it should be shown to more people. And if you have not left a review, please, please go do that right away. It really, really helps. And I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart and it really helps other people because deep down it's about helping to me, you know, I could go out and trade for my own and I don't need to do the podcast. You know, we don't make money from a podcast. We don't have sponsors. We don't, it's just something that we do to spread the word, spread the message and say, hey, if you're stuck in life, if you need to make more money, if you want to have more free time, if you want to have less stress, if you're looking for something and you know that you can do better, then this might be something that would work for you. So come check it out. And if you like it, then we can tell you more. If you don't like it, that's fine too. But even if you just listen to the podcasts, like many people have, they just listen to the podcast, it gives them a little boost and then they go out and they keep doing it. So that's the whole point, you know, it's a motivational home and some people complain. Oh, why don't you tell us all the different strategies and how do you adjust, uh, Forty-five day Iron condor trade that's in the money and all this stuff. And it's like, that's really, really specific. And I think maybe in the future we'll get into those. But I think that that information is already out there in many different sources, right? Many different places. And if you want, and you have to get visual and you have to do a video where you can actually see the trade and all the different details and whatnot. So I try not to get into the more complicated issues on the podcast. The podcast is really about mindset. It's really about getting you to see what's possible, giving you that extra boost of momentum, letting you hear from other people who are doing it, who have done it, we're doing it. And me sharing the things that I wish that people had shared with me when I got started. And that's the really, the big thing about it. You know, we were doing the high probability trading live event this weekend, and there was something that we went through. We went through all of this different content with, through two days of content. And when I was going through my slides and my notes beforehand, I realized that my god, there is really, really good stuff in here, you know, but the person that he's new or the person that is not ready to hear will not notice all the depths that is in the session. And we had several sessions, some of them were pretty basic. Some of them had a lot of content in them. So it was me talking with slides and I just get going on and on and on the surface of it, if you weren't really paying attention, it's like, oh, this is basic. But every single line in there was put there for a purpose. So if you were coming at it from somebody who was on the low end of the option continuum where you're just brand new to options,I put it in a way where it wouldn't confuse you and you could get understand what I'm talking about. If you were in the middle of the continuum, I put it in a way where he could tell you, okay, this is the next step that you need to take. You know, you need to do this and you need to do this. And these are the things that you need to focus on. And then if you're on the upper end of the continuum, you could have really gone really, really deep because I shared stuff in there that I've learned, and he took me 20 years to learn. And I've never seen it anywhere shared anywhere before. I've never seen videos on it. I've never seen any other gurus talk about this stuff because most Gurus don't last for 20 years, to be honest, unfortunately, they're good marketers; they're not really good at trading. So most people don't last 20 years, I've been able to luckily and Option Genius has been around for, I think, 11 years now. So we've been doing this a while. We know the same thing over and over and over again, and it just works. And so I appreciate you guys. It's been a long journey. But we are making a difference now. And I see it every day. I see it from the people that came to the live event. They were the comments that they made, the emails that we got afterwards, the way that they're excited about learning to trade options. And they're excited about what their lives can be like, because they have hope, it really makes life worth living when you can go out and help other people. And I think that is the whole basic of it. So really, if you are listening to this podcast, I want you to understand, listen to it, learn and go take action and go do the things and go do the trades and go make the money and then go help the other people. Cause that's when you'll feel really, really good about yourself, you'll feel good when you eliminate the stress and the, and the bills and all that. And you're doing well and you're feeling successful about that, but you take it to the next level when you're starting to help other people in different ways. So thank you for listening to my little lecture there, but now let's get into the episode. So for the very first episode, I have a clip from Episode 74, which is the Passive Trading Manifesto. And I came up with this, I said, what is a passive trader, you know, define passive trader. Describe what I passive trader is thinking is doing, is feeling, and that is what I came up with for the manifesto. And it's just very, it's very short, but it's something that I think you will see yourself in at least part of it. And you'll be like, yeah, that's me. I fit here. This is the group that I belong to. This is what I want to be doing. That describes me. And I can't wait to get more. So let's listen. A passive trader is a new breed of investor. Smarter, confident, relaxed, and free. Passive traders are winners. They keep the odds on their side, take calculated risks, and make consistent profits over and over. Passive traders are flexible. They know how to adjust when the market does and still be profitable. They play their own game and use wall street’s secrets to their benefit. Passive traders are independent and can think for themselves. They know that no one cares about their money more than they do, so they manage it themselves, and better than the experts. They do not rely on financial planners, mutual funds, or robots to charge insane amounts of fess while providing below-average yields. Passive traders are patient. They sit back and let the gains come to them by keeping things simple. Passive traders are determined. They know their “why” and it pushes them to stay focused and never give up. If you asked a money manager they’d tell you that passive trading is impossible – the little guy is not supposed to beat wall street. Yet it is happening every day. Passive traders know that life is a gift and should be lived to the fullest. Money is not the end goal. So passive traders make their money work for them, generating an income 24 hours a day, 365 days a year so that they can spend their time doing whatever makes them happy. Passive traders are in control of their destiny, their finances, their emotions, and in turn, their lives. Passive traders… Define their own destiny March to their own beat Make the world better Live their ideal life Passive traders are motivated knowing that the odds are in their favor.  I AM A PASSIVE TRADER!  Okay. So for our second clip, we have one of the most popular episodes that I've ever done. It is episode number 26, which is called the Ultimate Options Trading Strategy. Now, there are lots and lots of strategies to trade options. Many of them work. I can't say all of them because I have tried all of them, but I know the ones that we teach, they do work. And if you only do each one individually, if you only do covered put, covered calls or they get books or credit spreads or condos or butterflies or calendars, or if you gonna do any of those or any variations you can do very well. If you're good at, and you practice, you only need to do one, but if you do more than one, that's fine too, depending on what you need. So in this episode, I break down. What is the ultimate, the ultimate options trading strategy? With our account balance what do we want? Do we want up and down roller coasters? No, we want slow and steady increase. In order to have that you have to be trading in a way that is actually boring because you know what you’re doing, that’s why it’s boring. You’ve mastered it, because you’ve excelled at it. The alternative is to do what you’re doing right now jumping around from strategy to strategy. I know what you thinking. Say, “Hey Allen, what about diversification, don’t I need to diversify? If I have maybe some earnings trades over here or maybe I have some naked calls over here or maybe I have some box spreads over here.” Yeah, you should diversify if you have an account that is well over six figures and you are already consistent and profitable. That’s it right there. If you are over six figures, and I’m talking about mid-six figures; $400,000, $500,000, more than that, and you are already consistent and profitable then you can diversify as much as you want. If you’re on the top end of the continuum, level’s nine, level 10, then you are making money so you are going to stick with what you know automatically. You’re going to go to the bread and butter and you’re going to do those every month or every week or whatever your timeframe is. Then with a little bit of extra cash you’re going to try other stuff. That’s the smart way to do it. If you don’t have over six figures, if you’re not consistent, if you’re not profitable already, then forget about diversification. Until you can make money with one strategy month after month, trade after trade. You have to be consistently profitable before you add another strategy to your arsenal, are you getting this? Is this sinking in? Yes? Hope so. Anybody that tells you otherwise is full of it and probably just wants to sell you something, that’s the truth. Stop all the noise, stop listening, stop jumping around, because the noise is there, the offers will always be there. If it’s not options, it’ll be Bitcoin. If it’s not Bitcoin it’s going to be marijuana stocks. If it’s not marijuana stocks it’s going to be sports betting, that’s the newest thing that’s going to come on, right? The Supreme Court just announced on Monday that states can now make it legal to bet on sports. Well, guess what? There’s going to be stocks on sports betting and they might even have options on sports and betting and all this stuff. Who knows what they’re going to come out with in future? That’s going to be the new hottest thing. If you keep jumping from one to another, to the nother, to the nother, you’re never going to get good at anything, you’re never going to be profitable, you’re never going to be consistent. Go back to the basics, back to the fundamentals. Choose one strategy and work on it until you know it inside out and you are profitable because that is the name of the game, that is the goal. That is the only thing that matters. I don’t care what strategy you use, I don’t care how you do it, I don’t care when you do it. If you are profitable you are winning. That’s the only way to know if you are winning, I don’t care how much you know. I don’t care if you know more than me, I don’t know if you know more history than me, I don’t care if you know more math than me, more about statistics, more about options, more about everything. If you are not profitable it doesn’t matter so go back to the fundamentals, go back to the basics, one strategy. You focus on it, you work on it, you back test it, you paper trade it, you real money trade it until you are profitable. That’s it, that’s the answer. Now, if you can’t figure it out, if you already tried, you tried your best and you can’t do it, then reach out to me, maybe I can point you in the right direction. Maybe I can work with you like I did with Simon and we can identify what it was that works best for you or that makes the most sense for you, and then how to actually implement it. In the beginning you don’t need complicated stuff, you don’t need complicated indicators. You don’t need complicated chart patterns, you need a strategy that you understand, that makes sense to you and you need toThen if you can do that then you tweak it. Then you work on it. Then you look at, like Simon did, you look at the entrance of the trade, you look at the management of the trade, you look at the exit of the trade, and then you improve your percentages. That’s how it works. Right now, Simon, like I said, he’s only doing one strategy and, yes, he is well over six figures in his trading account. That’s okay, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need to be doing anything else. I know people who only do one iron condor every single month. They do it on the same underlying, they do it on an index, and they trade literally over $100,000 worth of one iron condor every month. That’s the entire trade, that’s the whole strategy, one iron condor, six figures in that condor, every month. I hope this makes sense, I hope this is sinking in. I hope you got to this. Then finally, no matter which strategy you choose, whether it’s the condor, the credit spread, the ratio, the butterfly, I don’t care what it is, whatever it is, no matter which one you choose, make sure that the odds are in your favor. Peace.   Okay now let's get into some serious topics. Okay. This is episode number 96. It's called how fast can you start trading for a living? And really the basic here is that I got an email from one of our students. He got laid off and he needed to know what to do to get up to speed as fast as possible. And this was the advice that I gave him. Just an update for him - he did take the advice he is doing it. He did happen to go back and get a job. But his trading is on par to be doing very, very well. So there's always hope, right? Like it says this too shall pass. So whenever you're in a bad situation, whenever you think everything is falling apart, just remember that everything works in seasons. You know, winter comes and it's hard and it's tough, but then there eventually is a spring. There is a summer and things get great again. So just all you gotta do is get to it, get through it, use the people that want to help you, take advantage of their help and do the best you can to get through it. I got an email from one of our members and I wanted to read it to you because he just got laid off and he wants to know how he can replace his income with trading. It's crazy that we get so many people in this same situation. It's great that when you have a job, right, you have an income source. You want to get into trading. You don't really like the job or you don't really like your business or whatever. You're like, oh man, I wish this trading thing could work out. I could get it. And you know, you, you invest in one of our programs and then you don't really follow through because life gets in the way. And I know how that goes. You know, it's, it's really the why. Right? Your why about trading? Wasn't strung out until something happens. Any jars you can. It's like, you know, it's like you, you might be driving along the street and you're not really paying attention to the road. And then all of a sudden the car comes out of nowhere, almost hits you. So here's, Todd's email. It says CLO Allen, I'm going through a life change. I want to get your opinion. I'm currently a member of your programs. I joined almost a year ago, have not been able to devote enough time due to work and family obligations. Totally understandable. I'm an engineer and work in the construction industry for a healthcare organization or read your book, listen, all your podcast sessions, at least once while going to work. Thank you for that last week. I was laid off from my job. And now I'm trying to decide my next moves. My wife works full-time and we have funds to carry us along for a couple months, but I will need to replace my income fairly soon and relieve the stress on my wife as an aside. Yes, that's very, very, very important because you are not, you know, when you get laid off, you're not the only one that suffered the whole family suffered, especially the other spouse, because that person has to carry the load, right? They're not used to carrying the full load. Now they have to carry the full load, and then they also have to worry about you and your mental status and the pressure on them. You also have to work off, so you don't want to add divorce to your problems. So be very, very careful about how your spouse is handling the situation. Make sure you give them enough time and enough attention to leave their pressure, take some of their work, you know, their homework or whatever other work is off their plate while you can. And if you're looking to go into trading. Discuss it with your spouse, explain what you're doing with them. So they don't think that you're just sitting at home, doing nothing all day playing with computers, watching TV. Okay. So that's a really important point. So let me continue. He says, I'm trying to decide if I should jump back into the construction rat race again, so I can draw a salary and benefits. Assuming I can find a job fairly quickly. Otherwise I would really like to immerse my time into your programs and start trading. I realized I have to get up to speed and take some time to learn your methods and develop my own trading plan. My main concerns are being able to learn your program soon enough and be able to replace my income. I was making 120,000 a year, but need to replace approximately 5,000 a month. Take home. I plan to start paper trading this week and scale up as I learn more, eventually I will have $250,000 in capital that I could scale up into an account. How realistic is it for me to replace my income with this size of an account? I would appreciate your opinion and any comments. Thank you. So that's the email I want to read to you what I wrote to him. And then I want to give you my thoughts on this and a little bit going a little bit more detail. So I told him, you know, Hey, I'm sorry that this happened to you. Very, very, sorry. My first thought was, Hey, you know, you need to get out of where you are. I know where he is. He's in a different state where things might be slowing down. So I'm like, Hey, you know, get out of there and get your butt here to Texas, because we can't find enough people to do construction, but that might not be possible. Um, so I don't think the issue here is if you can generate 5,000 from 250,000, the issue is how long it will take you to get there. And from what you wrote, this is me talking to you from what you wrote, you would be in your best interest, I believe for you to get out of the job for now as a fail safe. Okay. Maybe not a full-time thing, just something to bring in some guaranteed capital and keep the health insurance, if possible. Cause that's a big. Concern for a lot of people trading when you are super stressed out and you have to win is super hard. Trading already is very hard, but doing it with one hand timing on your back, it's much harder while you are looking for the second job, or even after you get the part-time job, spend three to five hours a day on your trading. Do that with the courses and programs you already have. You should be able to have the skills to do it full time in a few months, but having the skills is different from being emotionally ready. So you're going to have to overcome that aspect as well. So if you can start with a smaller goal, say 1000 a month on a a hundred thousand dollar account, that would be a great place to start. And then you can scale it up from there. And then I told him, because he's in the programs, I want to see you on the coaching call on Thursday. I want to see you and your paper trades, you know, groups. I want you to posting that. I want you to get a critique. So I want you to get my opinion, my advice. And I want you to send me a man told him, Hey, I want you to send me your training plan and a concrete plan of how you expect to get to 5,000 a month, including your asset allocation. And this is covered in one of the programs that he's already fired. You can do it, but having a job would relieve a lot of the pressure, but even with a job three to five hours a day, learning and trading, because enough is enough. Screw these jobs. It's time to learn how to make it from trading.    Okay. Here's clip number four. This comes from episode 87 - How to Scale Up Your Trading. So now let's say you've already been doing trading for a little bit. You've been pretty safe. You're being conservative and now it's time to get big, right? You're you're feeling good. You're feeling confident. How do you go from where you are now to the next level? And it's, and it's not what you think.  It's not about more strategy. It's not about more complicated stuff, more trading or more analysis or more software. It's all mental, it's all mental scaling, all mental 90%. There might be some things you need to do a little bit different because you're playing with bigger numbers and then there's less there's limitations to what you can do at bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger numbers. You know, we're talking about in the millions, but when your individual and you're scaling up 99%, I would say is mental. So take a listen.   This is the question I get often and got this question recently from a listener. The question says, the one thing I struggle with is constantly being scared out of the market. I have a trading plan with iron condors and credit spreads and failed to follow it by not trading frequently enough or with enough size. How is the best way to scale up your trading to make a bigger income out of it? Basically, the fellow is saying that he does trades, mostly spreads, but he’s hesitant and scared to not do it enough and not do it with enough money when he does do it. He’s thinking about how can he scale up his trading to be better at it or make more money from it? The first thing you need to realize is that fear is not always a bad thing. I mean, it’s there to alert you to danger, right? That’s why we get scared, something dangerous happening, but it’s also there to alert you to opportunity as well. We look at fear as a negative thing, but fear is just a common response, right? It doesn’t have to be something that is bad for us that we are afraid of. Anything outside of our comfort zone can be scary, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad for us. A lot of people are scared of placing their first trade. They’re scared of investing money in the stock market because they’re afraid to lose it, which is one possible outcome. Yes, but you can mitigate that and you can protect against that. When you look at it and you say, look, there are trillions of kazillions of dollars, whatever invested in stocks around the world, what do those people know that I don’t, that I’m afraid to put my money in the stock market? What are the people that are trading profitably and consistently? What do they know that I don’t know that I’m not consistent? That’s why I’m afraid of making trades or making bigger trades. How much do you actually want to make? If you’re trading too small to hit your goal, right? If your goal is a thousand dollars a month, but you’re only doing one trade that can only make a hundred dollars a month, you’re never going to hit your goal. Then the goal will help you scale because that’s just mad. You’re like, oh man, I can’t get my goal. Okay. I need to do more because I need to get to my goal. The other side is to have confidence. That comes with doing the trades over and over and over and over. If you use real money, it can take years as you go through the different markets, right? You go through a bear market. You go through a bull market. You go through a sideways market. You go through a correction. You go through a dip. You go through all these different things. It takes years to understand how to trade through all those different environments. Now, as passive traders, we have the odds on our side and the trades are built in to withstand these shocks, but it can still impact us. The biggest impact is on us mentally.  Number one, like I said is you have confidence in your trading plan. If you’ve put on a whole bunch of trades and you’ve seen them work, you’re going to have more confidence. If you are trading with a group or other people are doing it, or if you have a mentor that’s been doing it and he’s telling you, hey, look, this is the way we trade. This is how it’s going to work. If you’ve seen it work, then you have confidence. Number two, if you have experience doing the same strategy hundreds or thousands of times, that’s basically how you get the confidence in the trading plan. Then step two of scaling is to increase your position sizing, obviously, right? Yeah. I want to scale. Okay. Step two. Step one that we talked about was, what did we talked about? Step one, being able to control yourself. Step one to scaling is being able to control yourself. Step two is to go ahead and then do it to increase your position sizing. Now remember, remember how you thought about going to school or training for whatever you do now for a living, for your job, right? Do you remember getting trained for that? If you had to go to college or get a certificate or go to a seminar or whatever, you did all that, you put up with all that because you were training. You were learning and it took time. It’s the same thing here. Trading takes time to learn, but this puts you in a real life seminar and you are paying your dues every day. The time that you put in, you’re paying your dues. You put your trades on, you monitor them, you debrief them at the end, right? What happened? What went wrong? What went right? What did I do right? How can I change it? How can I make my results better? You rinse and you repeat. You got a good plan, keep doing it over and over and over again. As your account size gets larger, you can go from one contract to maybe two, then maybe to three, then to five, then to seven. You go at your own pace. There is no race. There is no time limit. As long as you’re doing constantly better, you’re being consistent like I said earlier, the account will grow in size and you’ll get more confident and you can trade more. It’s up to you. You want to go from one to five? If you got the money and you’ve had the experience, okay, fine. I wouldn’t advise it. I’d go from one to two, two to four, four to six, six to 10. Take it small jumps. It doesn’t need to be overnight because there’s no rush. It’s not like, oh, my next door neighbor just bought a Mercedes. I got to buy one too so I need to do a hundred trades this month. No, forget him and his Mercedes. Who cares? Right? Be confident with who you are and what you have. Don’t rock the boat. We don’t want to take unnecessary risks we don’t have to. For most people, it’s better to move from say three contracts to four contracts, to six to 10 small increments because there’s no such thing as missing out on the trade of the century. There is no trade of the century. It’s like, oh my God, if I don’t invest now, I’m going to lose. I’m never going to get this opportunity again. No, it doesn’t happen. There’s no such thing. They said that before years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, six months ago, they’ve been saying that forever. As long as you get in and you can consistently make money, you’re fine. It’s just going to grow. Everything is the same. You don’t need to put all your money in one trade when you’re not ready to do so. Okay. Now, step three to scaling. Once you have increased contract size, you need to increase the account size, or maybe you need to do this in the account size before you do the contract size. Either way, but one usually comes after the other. You do this obviously by adding more money to the pot, put more money in your account. Right? Now, you can do it the other way and you’d be like, you know what? I’m just going to grow the account, and whatever I make, I’m going to keep it and just scale that way. Or you can say, hey, look, I’ve got the confidence. I’ve got my emotions under control. I got a good strategy. I got a good mentor. I feel confident to be able to go to the next level so I need to add a few thousand dollars more into my account so I can go from say, two contracts to four or four to eight, right? I’m going to go incrementally higher. I’m not going to go from two to 10. Don’t do that. Two to four, two to five, slowly, slowly, build it up. Go to the next level, trade there for a little while, get comfortable. Then you can go again to the next level. It’s like going up steps, right? Once you’re adding more money to the pot, you can do something or you can add something to your account that’s called portfolio margin. What portfolio margin means is that you get additional leverage and you get the ability to make money quicker where less money tied up actually. For most brokers that I’ve seen, portfolio margin starts at $125,000. If you have that in your account, you get portfolio margin. Normally, when you open an account and you apply for margin, they give you two-to-one margin. If you put in $10,000, they’ll let you buy $20,000 worth of stock, but they charge you interest on the money that they lent you. We don’t really advise that. Right now, when you’re passive trading, you need to have a margin account. If it’s a non-retirement account, if it’s not an IRA, then you got to have margin enabled so that you can do spreads. You can do naked puts. But we don’t borrow the money. Portfolio margin is a little mix of both. Portfolio margin, I believe it’s like four to one or five to one in terms of margin. If you have a hundred thousand dollars, you can actually trade with $400,000. Big difference. You could buy a lot more, but I’m not telling you to buy a lot more. I’m telling you to do it because on your trades, they can charge you less in margin. What I mean by that is if you do a naked put that is very, very, very, very far away from the money. If you have a regular margin account, they might charge you, I don’t know, they say $3,000 in margin to do that trade for example. I’m just making it up. Okay. If you have a portfolio margin account, they look at it, they calculate that margin differently. They look at the actual risk of the trade. Because they can tell that you’re so far away from the money and that the odds are so far in your favor, there’s not a big risk of you losing money and so the amount of margin that they’re going to charge you or hold for doing that trade is going to be a lot less. It might be, say $500 compared to 2,000 or $3,000. With a regular account, they’ll charge you $500 a margin for a portfolio margin account. What happens there? Well, I can make a much greater return percentage-wise on my money. Right? Dollar-wise, they’ll be the same thing, but then I can decide, hey, what? Do I want to do two of these or three of these instead of one? Because I can, right? Because I have more leverage. I can do that. If the trade goes against me, of course, I’m still going to end up losing money and I’ll lose more because now I have three contracts versus one. I need to be able to know and be good with that. That’s why they only give it to you if you have over a hundred or $125,000. But that’s what I did. Right? For myself, when I started scaling, I went horizontally. I’m going to lay it out, two different types of scaling. What I did, I went horizontally, meaning I put small amounts into many different accounts. I had a Roth account. I had a regular IRA account. I had one each for my wife. I had a SEP account. I had a corporate account for the company. I had a couple of personal accounts. Then I would do different trades in all the different accounts, so I got a little bit, a little bit, a little bit in all of them, right? Yes. I have a lot of money in the market but they’re spread out in all of these different accounts. That’s what I call horizontally. In hindsight, the process worked and now all of the accounts are fairly large, but it took a lot longer than necessary because each account did not have enough money in the beginning to do everything I wanted. I was limited in the trades I could do. I was limited in the strategies I could do in the beginning because each account did not have that much money. If you have, let’s say a hundred thousand dollars, right? You put it in one account, you can do certain things with it that you can’t do if you open 10 different accounts with $10,000 each. That makes sense? What I’ve done now is I still have those accounts, but I went vertically right now. That’s how I’m scaling right now. I’m going vertically. I’m working on growing just one account to a certain level.   Okay. Episode number 64 is next. This is our 5th episode. Title is called Selling Puts Versus Owning Stock. Now I brought this one up because when I first started in options, selling puts wasn't very enticing to me. I really didn't understand it. It wasn't something that I practiced. It wasn't something that I did. It wasn't only until years later when I actually understood the power and the reasoning behind it. I mean, I always understood the theory behind it and why you should do it and why people do it, but it wasn't until I actually started doing it where it came and fell in place. When I came up with the whole passive trading situation and the whole brand and the whole formula and you know, the fact that, yeah, I don't want to be trading all the time. I want to be just relaxed, less stress free and not having to be stuck in front of the screen all day. And for that, the naked put works really good. So in this episode, I compared selling naked puts to versus owning stock and see how we did.   So I am finishing up the book called Passive Trading. Has been taken me I think over two years, but I’m finally getting close to completion. My editor told me that it’s probably better to add a few examples of trades that I’ve done in the past and some examples of the different strategies that we’re talking about. So I was like, “Yeah, that makes sense.” So what I did was I decided to go into the past and pick a stock and say, “Okay, this is a stock. What if I did what I’m telling everybody to do? How would it work out without knowing anything about the future or anything like that?” The example was for naked puts, selling naked puts. That’s one of the strategies I cover in the book. I talk about it, say how to do it, this and that. And I said, “Well, what would happen if I take my strategy, how to do it, and go and apply it in real life?” So I picked Walmart because Walmart is not a stock that I own. I don’t follow it on a regular basis. It is on my watch list because it’s a good company and it pays dividend. It might be one that I want to get into, but up till now I don’t own it and haven’t traded it very much. So I said, “You know what? Let me go into Walmart. Let me try it and see.” So 2018, January 2018, Walmart was trading at $98.59. That was really good because in 2017 the stock was up 42%, so had a great year in 2017. What’s it going to do in 2018? I don’t know. I don’t remember. And I haven’t traded, so I don’t know. So what I decided was I am not going to own the stock. I am only going to sell naked puts on it. If I get assigned on those puts, then I will see what I have to do there. Maybe I will sell the stock and keep selling more puts or maybe I will keep the stock and start selling covered calls. Either way, I’m going to have to do something, but I’m not going to roll. That was the decision. I wasn’t going to roll my putts. I was just going to take the stock. So I started on the 2nd of January, okay? First trade I did sold some puts, made 3.6% because the puts expired. Nice. Did another trade in February after that one expired. After the first expired, I did it in February. That one also expired. 3.2% gain. Then I did do one in March. 3.54% gain. Did one in April. 5.54% gain. Geez. This is easy, right? All I’m doing is selling naked puts on Walmart away from the money and I’m getting really nice monthly gains, and I’m not having to watch it. I’m not following. I’m not adjusting. I’m not doing anything. I’m selling the put, waiting till it expires, and then selling another one. That’s all I’m doing. Then, May came. Those puts expired. 2.83% gain. June, 1.85% gain. July, 3.9% gain. August, 2.53% gain. September, 2.75% gain. October, 4.89% gain. And November. Oh, November I finally get assigned. So on December 21st, Walmart closed at $87.13, which was 37 cents lower than my sold strike, so I had to buy the stock at $87.50. Now, you might be thinking, “Oh wow, Allen, yeah, anybody can make money selling naked puts in a bear market.” Walmart went up 42% the year before. It probably went up close to that in 2018 when you were doing it, right? Well, yes and no. 2018 was a year when Walmart traded from $98.59 at the beginning of the year. That’s when I started trading. It went up to $109.55, so it did go up. But then once it got there, it turned around and went down all the way to $82.40, and then it ended the year at $93.15, which means that the stock was actually negative 5.6% for the year. So if you had owned this stock, if you had bought it on January 2nd, first day of trading in 2018, and you held it to the end of the year, you would’ve lost 5.6%. Now, you would’ve gotten the dividends, so maybe it’s an even, but still that’s dead money. You’re not making any money on this stock if you are only buying it and holding it for the whole year. But if you had done what I did and you had sold naked puts the whole way, you would’ve made 34.65%. Let that sink in here. I was selling naked puts on a stock that went up and down and up again and closed down. So this was not a stock that just went up in a straight line. This stock lost money on the year. But because of the naked put strategy, I made 34%, okay? This is without owning any stock. I didn’t own the stock until very end of the year, until December 21 when I actually had to buy the shares. Until then, I didn’t own any stock, and I didn’t really spend much time on it. I just put the trade on, let it expire, and then put on another one every month. Takes literally five minutes or less. Didn’t watch the news on Walmart. Didn’t care about earnings, or announcements, or what they were doing, or how the stock was doing. Doesn’t matter. Didn’t care. All I did was sell a naked put every month. Let the one expire, sell more, let it expire, sell more, let it expire, sell more, let it expire, some more on a stock that went up or down. Now, I understand if this was a stock that had just gone straight up, then yeah, you could say, “Oh, yeah. It just went straight up. Of course you’ve made money.” True, but this was not that. This was a stock that went up and down, right?  The next one's gonna be a little bit weird. This was episode number 54. Learning to trade is learning is like learning how to snorkel. It's like, what snorkel did he say snorkel? Yeah. I said snorkel like snorkling, you know, you put the little two with your mouth, you put the goggles on and you go put your hand in the water and bring it through the tube and you look at all the grass or fish or whatever you could see down there right? So this was a video actually that I shot in Cancun when I had gone with my family and my boys and I, we were, it was an all-inclusive place. So they give you circling equipment if you need it and whatnot. So we took it and were snorkeling, and really, they were learning. I had done it once before, but I had forgotten about it. So I was trying to get used to it again. And then I was showing them how to do it. And they both loved it and it was awesome. It was a great experience. But while I was watching them learn, I kept thinking to myself, oh my God, the stuff that they're saying, there's stuff that the behaving new traders do the same things. And so I saw the parallels and I said, okay, how do I get them to up on how to get them to be successful at it? And at the same steps that you need to take also work when you're learning how to trade. So take a listen and maybe you'll learn how to snorkel, enter it at the same time.   I just wanted to shoot this quick video podcast to let you know that I learned something yesterday that I wanted to share with you guys and it’s really … Right behind me in the water, we took our kids snorkeling for the first time, the seven year old and eight year old boys. Sorry about the squinting it’s really sunny today, but we took them snorkeling for the first time and I don’t know if you’ve ever been snorkeling, but you get a little mask you put on and you get a little snorkel and you breathe through the snorkel and you look down in the water and you see whatever’s in there.   Now, there wasn’t much to see out here. There was some fish. You go a little bit further over there, there’s some seaweed and stuff. There were some pretty cool fish, a couple of big fish actually. They were really excited about that, but when they first started, I had prepped them ahead of time before we came on the trip. I told them, “Hey, we’re going to do snorkeling. It’s really cool. It’s really cool. You put this thing and you can see all the water and all this different world, all that stuff.” They were all excited. They were wanting to go. When we got here, it’s kind of like trading, right? You hear about it, you picture it in your mind. It’s like, “Oh my God, this is so cool. I want to do this. I want to do this. Yeah, I’m going to be awesome at it.” Then you get your equipment, you get your mask, your snorkel, you get some instruction. “Yeah, this is what I’m going to do.” Then you go do it for the first time and you totally freak out because it’s not easy and it’s not normal. You’re not used to it because you’re not breathing with your mouth anymore. I mean, you’ve got breathing with your nose, you have to breathe with your mouth. Then if you get a little water in the top of your snorkel, then drinking water and then the water is coming in your mask and your eyes are burning from the saltwater. Believe me, we had that same experience. Basically, we walked them through it. It’s the same thing with trading.  The first thing you have to do is you have to put your mask on, cover your nose, get used to breathing with your mouth. Open mouth breathing, breathe with your mouth. Once you got that done, you put the snorkel on. You got to make sure it’s all tight and snug and then you have to breathe with the snorkel. You’re just breathing with the snorkel. Once that’s done, then you stand in the shallow water, you put your head down and you just look around, focus on your breathing, don’t even worry about what you’re looking at, just focus on your breathing, making sure all your technical aspects are right, making sure you’re following all the rules, making sure step-by-step you’re not making any mistakes. Then once you have all that done, then that’s when you get into the water and you go deep and you start floating and then you can go a little bit farther. First time is going to freak out. You’re going to … It’s going to be like, “Oh, it’s not happening. It’s not happening the way exactly that I planned in my mind.” There’s a fish and you’ll freak out or there’s a piece of thing, something touching my foot. All that stuff happens, especially in trading. It doesn’t go exactly as you want, but if you go back and you stick to it, eventually you end up like my boys. I mean, they loved it. They loved it so much, they want to go again today and they want to go … There’s some shipwreck off the coast of the Island. They want to go over there. It blew me away how I couldn’t get them out of the water. I couldn’t get the snorkel off their faces because they were like, “No, no. More, more, more.” There’s nothing to see here, but they were so excited and that is how I want trading to be for you. Whatever your issues are right now, if it’s not going well, if you don’t know what steps to take, if you don’t know exactly what instruction you need, it’s there where it’s available. You just got to take the simple, simple, slow, slow steps, right? Get your stuff, get all your equipment, practice the easy things. Practice putting on paper trades. Getting on the trade, putting it on, getting out, putting it on, getting out. Practice finding trades. How do I find a trade? What do I go through? How do I make it streamlined as possible? Right? Because I don’t want you to just put on your stuff and just jump in the deep water right away. That’s what most people do. That’s why they get burned. I have a lot of people, a lot of students that told me, “Oh no, I don’t want to do paper trading. I’m going to put … I got $20,000 I’m just going to let it ride on one trade.” You’re freaking crazy because you’re going to lose a lot of money that way and they do. Then they come back and they’re like, “Yeah, I should’ve listened to you.” Well, that’s too late now. You just learned a very, very expensive lesson. Let’s not do that. Let’s do it snorkel time, right? One at a time, because in snorkeling, you mess it up, what happens? You just stand up. You drink some salt water, no big deal, but what could have happened and what almost happened with my second son is that he almost gave up. He tried it the first time. “Oh man, daddy, I don’t like it. This is horrible. I don’t want to do this anymore.” He threw the mask down and he threw the snorkel down and he just stormed away. That’s what we cannot have happened to you because if it does, then you lose out on a passive income stream that has the power to change your life. I mean, take a look around. I’m here on a weekday in Cancun, enjoying with my family and my trades are still working, right? I mean, you can see … There are not there many people here, right, because this is a private beach for a private resort. There’s not going to be a lot of people here. This is not like the cheapest resort on the place as you can imagine. That’s what comes with from trading properly and passive trading and the ability for you to be able to take vacations, not have to worry about your trades as much. I mean, I checked on my trades this morning. It’s actually the same time frame here in Mexico as it is back home for me. I checked on my trades this morning and they’re fine. They’re doing great. I’m making money, my options are … They got [inaudible 00:06:13] going on everyday so I’m not worried. I checked it. It’s all done, but I got to take the chance and the day, or at least a few hours, to teach my kids a skill or have an adventure with them that they are probably going to remember for the rest of your lives because I remember the first time I went snorkeling and it was with a school trip. It wasn’t with my parents, but they were here with their parents and I think they’re going to remember that for the rest of their life, which is pretty cool. All right, for our next clip, I am going to say something maybe a little controversial, maybe, maybe not. It depends on your perspective. Now there's a lot of people out there talking about FIRE, which is financially independent and retiring early. This one is coming from episode 47, where I talk about the same thing, but I talk about it with options. And I talk about why the fire thing sucks the way normally it's taught to do and why using options makes it so much better. You get the same result, but you have a lot more fun and you live a lot better until you get to the results. So if you're interested in retiring early, this one is a really good one for you to listen to.   The title of this episode is “FIRE”, which is Financially Independent Retire Early. That is a new movement. It’s not really new, but it’s a movement that has become popular lately, and you can read articles about it, and people are writing books about it, and blogs and there are even podcasts about it and everything. It’s basically retire early, become financially independent. They call it FIRE. Cool. Okay. This is especially big amongst millennials, because I guess they don’t want to work for the man, and they don’t want to work till they’re 65 years old. But it’s really cute, though, how millennials think that they create things that have been around for generations. It’s like the desire to retire early. It’s like, “Yeah, this FIRE thing. It’s cute that you gave a name to it, but you guys didn’t create this. People have been wanting to do this since the start of time, really.” Anyway, according to the tenants of FIRE, you have to do three things. You have to earn as much money as you can at work. You do have to work. You have to earn as much money as you can. And, you have to get a side hustle. A side hustle, just another name that they gave to a second job. Whether you’re working online, for yourself, as a freelancer or you actually have a second job, or you do something else like trading options, you have to have a side hustle to make as much money as you can. The second thing you have to do is you have to save as much money as you can. And they do this by basically living as paupers. That’s what they tell you to do. Live like a poor person, like a homeless person. You don’t need a car. You can ride the bus to work and take a bike, because that’s healthy for you. Eat less food. Don’t eat so much. Don’t go out to the movies. Watch Netflix at home, all these kinds of things, where you’re trying to save as much money as you can. And then, with that money that you save, you invest it in something like index funds. You put it away, let other people manage it, and that’s the cycle. Earn as much as you can, save as much as you can, invest it. Now, if you follow that formula, it works. There are people in their 30s that have enough money saved that they can live off the interest off of their investments. Their investments or whatever they invested in is making money, and they can live off of that interest, which is awesome. They don’t have to work. Most of them don’t have kids. Even if they did, they still have to live frugally, of course. Because even in your 30s, even if you’re making $100000 a year as a job, you’re still not going to be able to save that much that you’re going to be earning a lot of income, or a lot of interest from your savings, from your investments, to live middle to upper class. These folks, they have retired. They’re not working, but they are living low to middle class, somewhere around there. That’s cool if you like that sort of thing. I don’t. I think you can have your cake and eat it, too. I want you to retire early and still be rich. That is doable, if you take control of your money. Now, I agree with the “make as much money as you can” part. I agree with that part. I agree with the “save as much as you can” part. Now, I don’t think you should live like a pauper. I think you should enjoy your life, even now, while you’re working, and you’re saving. I love driving. I love my car. I’m never going to give that up to save a couple hundred bucks in gas and insurance a month. But if that’s something that you want to do and that will get you to your goal faster, then do it. But your side hustle should be to learn to grow the savings you have as much as possible, instead of losing control of your money inside of a mutual fund. Does that make sense? Your side hustle, you have to make as much money as you can. You go to your job, you get your income, you save your money. What do you do with that money? Well, you can give it to somebody, index fund, mutual fund, and let them do it for you, and hopefully the market goes up or maybe it will go down and then pay fees for all that information and whatever. Or, you spend your time, and you learn how to do it for yourself, because there are people out there that will charge you to manage your money that are not going to do anything that you cannot do for yourself. You can actually do it much, much better. That’s what we’re all about. That’s what we’re trying to teach you. That’s the point of this podcast, to help you to learn how to do that. Take advantage of your own future, instead of giving it to somebody else, and then you can fire yourself much faster, years and years sooner. I did some calculations to prove my point, here. Over time, the stock market has averaged about eight percent a year, eight percent yearly return. That’s pretty good. But when you sell options like we do, we have the ability to make 10% a month. A month, not a year. Stock market, 8% a year, options 10% a month. Hmm. Which one is bigger? I don’t know. You could sell options one month out of the year, make 10%, and then take the rest of the year off if you wanted to. But these trades and these option selling I’m talking about is very high probability trades that can make you at least 10% a month. Ten percent, that’s my goal. That’s what I try to make every month. But I know traders that do a lot better than that every month. It’s definitely possible. Now, look. I know right now that might seem like a bit of a stretch to you, maybe if you’re not making 10%, or you don’t understand the strategies. Ten percent is a lot. That’s 120% a year. That is fabulous. If you asked me, “Oh, nobody every does that, Alan.” Uh, yeah. I do. I’ve done it before. It’s not impossible. But let’s be a lot more conservative. Even though 10% is possible, let’s just aim for 5% a month. That’s 60% a year. Still, very, very impressive. There are guys on Wall Street that will chop off their right arm if they could make 60% in a year. That’s really good. If you start with a $10000 account … Let’s say you start off with $10000 in your trading account and you’re making 5% a month, in 5 years, you would have over $186000. Five years from now, $10000 to 186000. That’s really, really good. What could that kind of money do for you? What would your life look like? Would you have a new car? Or maybe a new bike for you FIRE people? A new house? a new plane? I know, okay, okay. Maybe 5% seems a little high right now for you, maybe because you’re new to options and maybe you’ve tried to make it work before, and it didn’t work for some reason. All right. Let’s say you screw it up, and you don’t make 5%. You only make 3% a month. Let’s cut down our expectations. Do you think you could do that? If 5% is possible, and the odds are in your favor, do you think you could make 36% a year? That’s in addition to whatever you’re making on your stocks right now. You take that, and you add it to the 36%. That would be really good, right? Would you be happy with just 36% a year? That’s really good. I’d be happy with that, because in 5 years, if you have a $10000 account, your account goes from $10000 to $59000 in 5 years. That’s almost six times what you started with. We’re still talking about life changing money. It would be awesome, right? But I get it. Okay. Maybe 3% is a little high. How about if you totally, totally screw it up and you don’t even get 3% a month. What if you only get 2% a month? That is 60% less than our goal amount. But that’s still 24% a year. How would your account do, then? Making 2% a month? That would triple your account in five years. Your $10000 account in 5 years goes to $30000. And then, in another 5 years, from $30000, it goes to $98000, because it compounds. Every year, it’s just going to compound and compound and compound. Remember, we’re only starting with a $10000 account, here. $98000 in 10 years, that’s fire your boss money, right there. That is actually 2% a month is more than what Warren Buffet has made. He’s averaged 22% over his life. If you can do 24%, it’s possible you can do better than Warren Buffet. Now, he started with millions of dollars that other people gave him. I’m not going to compare that and say you can be the second richest man in the world, or whatever. I’m not going to say that. But you can do better, have better returns, than he does. These are all hypotheticals. Now, let’s look at a real example. Let’s figure this out. For most people, a really good average income would be about $100000 a year. Is that fair to say, you think? Would you be okay with that, if we used $100000 as an example? Let’s say we want to make that. We want to make $100000 a year income. That is $8334 a month, $100000 divided by 12 months. I’m going to leave taxes out of this, otherwise it’s just going to get too complicated. But first, what we need to do is we need to figure out how much money our account would have to be worth, because we’re trying to make $8334 a month. How much money would we need if we were making 2% a month, to be able to make that? That number is $416700. If you have an account that size, $416700, and you make 2% a month, you would be making $8334 a month. You would be making $100000 a year. We need an account of that size, $416000. But we don’t have that right now. Most of us don’t. You don’t have it. Okay. I get it. No problem. Right now, let’s say we only have $50000 in our account. I think that’s more normal. I think most of us have at least that, or maybe more, maybe a little bit less. It’s okay. But let’s just say we have $50000, and you can make 2% a month. If you have $50000, and you make 2% a month, question. How long do you think it will take you to get your account to be able to give us an income of $100000 a year? You start with $50000, you make 2% a month. How long will it take to get to $416000? You think it will take 20 years? You think it will take 30 years, 40 years, maybe? Well, I did the math on investor.gov. It’s a website. They got all these nice financial calculators that you can play with. It would take just nine years. Imagine that. If you’re 50 years old right now, you could be making $100000 a year in income before you hit 60. When you actually do retire, you’ll still be getting your Social Security, your pension and whatever else that you have in your investments. Sounds like a really sweet retirement to me. Am I right? If you have $50000 right now, and you only make 2% a month without any stock appreciation, in 9 years you would have a 6 figure income from just the income from your option trades. Oh, and on top of that, you’d be working about a couple hours a week. I think that’s the kicker. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. We’re going to be working hard? Uh, no. Now, for some of you, you might not have the $50000 right now, and that’s okay. This is an example. You could start with a lot less. We have traders in our community that are starting with less than $5000. When you have a smaller account, it just takes longer, but you can still do it. Trades are the same, strategies are the same. Everything is the same. But the important thing is that you need to start now. Can you imagine it? No more credit card debt. No more worries about college costs. No more worries about not having enough money for emergencies. That’s pretty cool, right? I think so. It is. It’s an amazing way to live. You could lose $80000 a year and not even be mad about it. My wife got mad, to be honest. She did. I told her it was going to be a slam dunk. I was like, “Yeah, yeah. It’s going to work. It’s going to work,” and then we lost the money and she got mad. I didn’t get mad, but she did. All right. But what if you are super, super new to investing, and you’re just awful at trading. You’re the worst. And you don’t even get 2% a month. What if you only get 1% a month? That’s 12% a year. How many of you guys would be happy with 12% a year. I would. I think so. That would mean that your $10000 account, in 5 years, increases to $18000, and that’s without any stock appreciation. That’s just the income from your option trades. Even if you’re only making 12% a year, 1% a month, it’s still significant money. It’s still better than what you can do in the stock market, because you put your money in the stock market … Stock market is getting 8% average, sometimes 7. Some people say seven, some people say eight. I just went eight. But if you calculate all the fees, all the commissions you pay, you’re going to be looking somewhere around 4%, 4 and a half percent is what most people get out of the stock market. If you can make 12% on your own, and you compound that money month, after month, after month, after month, because when you look at the stock market and when you put your money in an index fund or a mutual fund or whatever, that money doesn’t compound every month. It compounds every year. When we’re doing our option trades, these are monthly trades, sometimes less than a month. If you have $1000 in your account, or let’s say $10000, to keep it simple. Let’s say $10000, and you make 10% in a month, well now you have $11000. The next month, you’re not playing with $10000 anymore. You’re now playing with $11000. It compounds every single month, and that’s why it can grow so fast, much faster than in the stock market if you put it in an index fund. Does that make sense? Good. Because that’s what I want for you. If you want to retire early, if you want to be financially independent, you don’t want to live like a pauper, like a poor person, like a homeless person, then the best thing for you to do is follow the plan that I just laid out. Number one, try to make as much money from your job as you can. Number two, you’ve got to have options as your side hustle. You’ve got to be selling options. You’ve got to be trading options, selling them, not buying them. Number three, save as much money as you can. If you don’t need to go to that five star restaurant, don’t. If you don’t need to go to the movies, get Netflix. It’s fine. You’ll watch the same movies later on. Once in a while, you want to splurge, do it. Enjoy your life. Don’t live like a pauper, but don’t live above your means, either. Save as much money as you can. Spend your time that you have, your free time, your side hustle time, learning how to trade, selling options, practicing, practicing, practicing, getting better, asking questions, getting education. Find other traders that you can talk to and ask questions from, learn from, model what works, because I’ve done it. Others have done it. We have hundreds of people in our community that have done it and are doing it right now. We’ve interviewed people on the podcast that are doing it right now.    Okay. And lastly, we have episode 30. What should my first trade be? So this is for you folks who haven't tried options yet. Usually thinking, Hey, what do I do? What do I do? I'm afraid to get in. I don't want to lose money. I don't understand all this stuff yet. What should your first trade be? And that is the answer that I expose. In this next clip. So take a listen.   Really, what I would say is, okay, if you have an account already and you own maybe 100 shares of stock, okay? Hopefully it’s maybe an ETF, maybe it’s a big company like Coca Cola or Disney or something like that. I would go ahead and just place a covered call. That would be my first trade. That would be my advice to go in, take a look at it and say, you know what, let’s say Disney is trading at $100. In the next 30 days, I don’t think it’s gonna get to 110. That would be a 10% gain, it’s not gonna get to 110. I want to go and sell the 110 call. And maybe I only get $20 for it. That’s okay. This is not about how much money you can make, it’s about just getting your toe wet, just doing it, popping your cherry so to speak.   And so, that’s what my advice would be to be for that. Your first trade, if you have some stock, never done this before, covered call, it’s easy to get approved for. Almost nobody gets rejected when you apply to add options trading to your account if you just say, “Hey, I just want to do covered calls.” Because that’s the one that the brokers for some reason, they really think that’s the safest one even though it has as much risk as a naked put on the risk graph. That’s another story, we can get into that later so, if you have some shares and you want to just do it and you just want to get a taste of it, what option selling is all about, go ahead and sell one call above where your stock is trading at right now. We don’t want to lose your stock, we don’t want anything to happen with your stock, we want this option to expire and we want to take that money that we get, right?   So, let’s say we sell 10% above the price. So, if your stock is trading at 100, we sell 10% above that so at 110, we sell that 110 call option, do it for about a month, maybe a month to 45 days away and whatever you get. Maybe you get $15, maybe you get 30, $40, whatever you get, that money goes into your account. That’s yours. No matter what happens, that money is yours, you never have to give it back. And then for the rest of the time, until that option expires, I just want you to watch it. I just want you to look at it and be like, “Okay, I sold it and I got $30 for it,” let’s say for example. Let’s say you got 30 cents for it, which is $30 credit to you so, you got $30 and every day, that option goes down in value.   Little bit, by little bit, by little bit, by little bit, it’s gonna go down, down, down in value until hopefully, it will expire worthless and you’ll still have your stock, you’ll still have any dividends that you’ve gotten from the stock but you’ve also gotten the $30 that you got from the call option. So, that will give you a nice taste of what option selling is all about. It’s very basic, it’s the simplest trade you can do and if you hone the stock, you can do that. Now, if you do not own stock you can do that. Now, if you do not own stock already or if you have a small account then covered calls might not be the best for you.   There is something that I’ll call the, “Poor man’s covered call,” but that’s a little bit more complicated. We’re not gonna get into that right now. What I would say if you don’t have any stock and you still want to do your first option trade. I would say probably you do something that at our company, we call, “The layup spread.” Now, the layup spread is a credit spread with some twists to it.   The criteria for getting in and if you want to learn how we do layup spreads, then you can go to simonsaysoptions.com/layup and get the guide. It’s really cheap and it walks you through exactly how do you pick a trade, how does a trade work and what are you looking for, okay? So if you need, if you’ve never done it then pickup the guide, it’s really cheap and it will go step by step tell you how to do everything. Now, the reason that we call it, “The layup spread,” is because in basketball, the easiest trade you can make for most people is the layup, right? You’re standing really close to the basket, you just jump up, bank the ball and just throw it into the net and percentage wise, that’s the most made shot.   So, the other shot … we were thinking about calling it, “The dunk spread,” because if you go for a slam dunk, that’s kind of easy, right? That’s probably the easiest … that might be easier than the layup but for myself and for Simon, Simon is the one who wrote the guide and who does these, we really have never dunked in our life and so for us, a dunk is not the easiest trade or not the easiest shot in basketball because we have never done one, we couldn’t do one if our lives depended on it and so for us, it wasn’t the dunk that was the easiest, it’s the layup that’s the easiest and so, we called it, “The layup spread,” because it’s probably the easiest trade you can make and so, that’s why we call it that.   It’s a spread, meaning it has two options, you sell one and then you buy another one but really it’s something simple and basically what you do is you find a stock that you like, you want it to be … for your first trade, you want to find something that’s really big. Like an ETF, you can take a look at SPY, that’s the S&P 500 ETF, that’s a good one. Or find a large company, maybe Apple, Facebook, Google, any one of these large tech companies or just … those would be good to work with and you see the chart. Now, you don’t want to find a chart that’s just moving up and down, up and down all over the place, you want to find a stock that’s moving in one direction, smoothly. So, relatively if it’s going up, you want it to go on your screen, if you look at the chart, you want it to go from the lower left to the top right and you want it to go up slowly, slowly, slowly, not have really, really big moves but small moves and just generally going up, up, up. Or if you want one going down, you do the other way but you don’t want it to have big jumps and big movements.   You want it to be [inaudible 00:11:48] have a decent slope going up but smooth. We don’t want it to look like big hills and have gaps in the middle and what not. So, you go through some charts, find one that you like and then what you do is you want to sell away from the direction. So, if it’s going up then we want to sell some puts. So you take a look at the chart and say, “Okay, in the next month of so, I don’t think it’s gonna drop more than 15% in price,” and I can’t go through all the mechanics here. If you want to know in detail, then you have to get the guide but the answer to the question is what I’m trying to get to here.   So basically, how it works is if the stock is going up, we think it’s gonna keep going up, we don’t think it’s gonna drop but if it drops a little bit, it’s okay. We’re gonna pick a point where we do not think the stock is gonna go so, if it’s training at $100 and it’s just been going up, up, up, up, we don’t think it’s gonna go all the way down to 90 or 04 or 85 or even 80 so, we pick a number or we pick a price where we do not think the stock is gonna go in our timeframe. Maybe 30 days or 60 days, however long we want to sell the option for and then, that’s the option that we sell. That is the put option that we sell and then we buy another put option right below it, the next put option there. And you can get into this trade for as little as $100. The average trade is probably gonna be around $500, sometimes … you do that, that’s the spread you have. The probability’s in your favor, probably 80 to 90% probability of that working out and you can make 5%, 8%, 10, 12% in that short timeframe of a month or so. So, I think it’s a very good strategy because it’s less risk, it’s very calm. Basically, you’re just selling some options, have the odds in your favor, the trend is also in your favor, which is a good thing and then you just sit back and you just watch it and you just let it expire. In this particular strategy though, you have to know when you’re gonna get out. So, you can say, “I’m not gonna do anything. I’m not gonna adjust it, I’m not gonna change it. And so, if I’m risking $100, I have an opportunity to make $10 but I’m gonna risk $100 so if I lose it, I lose it.” So, in this case if you’re putting up $100 as your margin, you’re gonna lose $100 if you don’t do anything and the trade totally goes against you, 100% against you if it goes. If it doesn’t, the other option you have is that you can get out if you’re down a little bit or if you can learn to adjust, you can do that. There are different ways to play the trade in the beginning. If this is your first ever trade, I would probably put up 100 bucks and just not do anything, I would just watch it. That’s it. See how it goes, see how it feels. If you lose the 100 bucks, see how that feels. That’s a learning experience right then and there. You know? It’s like, “Oh man, I just sat here, I didn’t do anything. I lost 100 bucks, this is horrible, I don’t like this. I’m not gonna do this anymore.” But if you understand how it works, most of the time it’s gonna be profitable so, if it’s something that you enjoy doing, then you can look into it further. Because for some people, selling options might just be too boring. Putting on a trade and just waiting for it for a month, man, that sucks. I don’t want to do that. I want to be a gunslinger and I’m gonna be a better, I’m a poker player. I want to just, bet, bet, bet and hopefully I’ll hit the lottery. If that’s you, then option selling is not for you and this is not the Podcast for you anyway. But if this is your first trade, like I said, if you have 100 shares, covered call would be good. If you don’t have 100 shares, the layup spread is something that is right up your alley. Now, of course, you could do other things. You could be selling naked puts, you could be doing condors, butterflies, straddles or something. That is pretty popular, strangles and straddles are good for people but I think if this is your first ever trade, you’re just looking to get in, you’re just looking to get your toe wet, get an experience of what it’s really like, covered calls or layup spreads. And again, covered calls are really simple. You can get more information on our website and credit spreads are … the layup spread is a credit spread with a little bit of the twist and the twist is how Simon actually chooses the trades that he does because you can go into any stock and say, “Okay, I’m gonna do a credit right on this trade, on this stock.” But to really get maximum gain out of it, to make sure you win on most of your trades, you’re gonna have to do a little bit of digging, you’re gonna have to look at the chart, you’re gonna have to look at what stocks should you be trading and what stocks you should not be trading and so, Simon actually goes through that in the guide, in the layup guide and you can pick that up if you want to. It just puts more odds in your favor, so to speak, those are the two things I would recommend. Again, if you wanted to learn about covered calls, you can go optiongenius.com/covered calls, we’ll put the link in the show notes and then, if you want to learn about the layup guides, you can pick it up at at simonsaysoptions.com/layup guide. Alright? If you have any questions, please let me know and remember, trade with the odds in your favor. 

80 miles. If you go on a car trip or road trip somewhere and drive for 80 miles, it takes a little bit over an hour. But on a bike 80 miles, whoo it can take all day long. Yep. So last week, I actually biked for 80 miles. Now I didn't do it on one day, I did it over three different days. But with the wind in my face, going up hills, down hills going out about 10 to 13 miles an hour, it took a long, long time. So this week, I didn't do 80 miles. I did 60 miles so far. And I am hoping to do another 35 miles on Sunday. Why you ask why am I putting myself through this? Well, there is a charity ride ride coming up in a week and a half that I have registered for and it's called the MS 150. Normally, it's 150 miles to over two days. But in 2021, because COVID they've changed it. So they made it a one day ride. And you can either do 70 miles, 80 miles, or 100 miles. I opted for the 70 mile one because well, I'm not exactly ready. Last time I did 35 miles in one day, my thighs were screaming in pain. But, I am going to do this ride, no matter what even if I'm not ready. Even if I'm the last one to cross the finish line. They close up the whole race everything. Everybody goes home. I'm the only one there on the road pedaling. I'm going to do that until I finish and I'm going to do it. Why? Because I put my mind to it. It's something I decided I'm going to do. First I thought you know, I want a hobby -join a bike team, sign up for an event, lose some weight, get something exercise, but now it's not about any of that. It's about crossing the finish line and pedaling that whole 70 miles. Is it going to take me eight hours, nine hours. I don't know, takes some breaks, maybe a lunch break and you know, a little time to calm down your muscles that are probably going to be cramping and spasming. Hopefully it doesn't take more than nine hours. But yes, it will take a long time. And it's going to be very difficult. And it's going to be something probably the hardest thing physically I've done ever. But I'm going to do it. It's really mind over body, mind over matter, right? Because I set my mind to it. And I made a decision. And I said, that's it. No, there's no backing out. There's no stopping. There's no quitting, no matter what happens, I'm going to finish this race, because I want to. So what is it that you want? And how bad do you want it? I want this thing. And so when you're out bike riding, you're out there by yourself in the heat for hours and hours at a time sitting on this small little seat that's very hard and your butt is hurting. Your butt goes numb if you're a guy, you know other areas in the groin, they go numb, your arm start hurting, your legs are hurting. It's not fun, especially when you do it that long. But I want it. It's mind over matter. I want it bad. I want to be able to say yes, I finished this ride. I did it. I set my mind to it. I finished. How bad do you want it? There are lots of people that email us, come to us buy some of our products and say yeah, "I wanna learn how to trade, I have to I have to" that's the words they use. And then a very small, tiny percentage of them actually follow through and actually do it. I hope that's not you. What is it that you want? And how badly do you want it? If you don't want it bad enough, it's not gonna happen. It doesn't matter. It's not about trading or exercise or losing weight. This is everything. How badly do you want it? Here's a question only you can answer. But the thing is, it is something that you can answer. And you can change your mind and you can change your desire into making something so badly wanting that you'll do whatever it takes. You'll sit for hours and hours on this hard little bike, pedaling in the heat, sweat stinging your eyes, wind blowing in your face, trying to push you down. legs, cramping, feet hurting, just going going going. I mean, I'm going to do it because I want to. What do you want to do? What do you want in your life and how badly do you want it? That's it. That's all it comes down to that is the secret to success. How badly do you want it? If you want it bad enough, you're going to find a way. If you don't want it bad enough, you're going to find an excuse. Even if you have the most perfect opportunity in front of you. Market has been going up. Markets are up 60% ss I say this, from the time we had the COVID, bear market, it's up 60%. Even if you didn't trade a single option, all you do is throw money in the market, you would have made money. And yet people are still on the sidelines. People are still Oh, I'm, I'm trying to open my account. I'm changing. I'm trying to find a better broker. Oh, wow. Stop making excuses, get it done. Mind over matter, put some urgency behind it. This market is not going to last forever, it's going to change, it's going to start getting more volatile, it's going to go down and up. And who knows what is going to do. Mind over matter? How badly do you want? And that's it. If you want it bad enough, you will figure out a way. And that's my message to you. How badly do you want it? And yes I keep asking because you need to give me an answer. You need to say this is what I want. And this is what I'm willing to do to get it. This is why and I want I want it. I want it. I want you to come up with your own answer. You don't need to tell me. You can tell me if you want. I'll be your accountability partner. You can email me help@optiongenius.com - you let me know, hey, this is why I wanted this, this is what I want. And this is what I'm going to do it. And if you do that, then we will email you back on your deadline and say hey what happened, did you do it? hope you did. Because everything you want can be yours. Everything is achievable. But you got to want it. How badly do you want it? Figure that out, change your life. That's it for this episode. To be honest, I am completely still exhausted. And I still have more training to go. But wish me luck. I'm going to do it. And maybe on the next episode I'll be telling you about all the stuff I learned on my ride. But until then trade with the odds in your favor and answer the question "How badly do you want it?" LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

No sex for you. That's right, I said it, no sex for you. Well, not for me anyway. Like that was ever gonna happen. But still, hey, passive traders, I've been reading a book called Your Next Five Moves. And it's a book about business strategy. So the author of the book is saying that a Grandmaster of chess, when they play chess, they can think 12-14 moves in advance. So if I do this, he's gonna do this, if I do this, he'll do this, if I do, this opponent will do this. For 14 moves, right? In business, the author says, you should be thinking at least five books ahead. I'm reading this book trying to apply it to Okay, you know, that's for a business, how do we apply this to trading? You know, how many steps ahead should a trader think? And how do we apply these strategies to trading? So I'm reading through the book. And obviously, in chess, you kind of have a finite area, right? So the chess pieces can only do certain things, you can only move in certain directions, whatnot. And so when you're a grandmaster, and you do a move, you can sometimes kind of force the opponent to make a conflicting move. So if I do this, he has to do this kind of thing, right? Because if I put him in check, then he has to get out of check by moving this or this or something. So you kind of you can kind of structure that out many, many moves in events, even in business, you know, the guy says, Well, you know, you gotta have, you gotta be in charge of yourself. And you have to know that, hey, if I'm going to ask for a job, or a raise, and my job, then I need to know what could happen. So first of all, I need to be prepared, I need to show my value, I need to ask properly, I need to know what's in the best interest of the company and present it that way. So you have to have your presentation plan, that's like one move. The second move is what's gonna happen if they say, yes. The third move is what's gonna happen if they say no, and then can I back that up? Am I going to give them an ultimatum? I'm gonna do this. And if I do quit, then what am I gonna do that? what's what's my mood that so basically just thinking about, so if this happens, I'll do this. And this, and this giving ourselves options right? Now in trading, we are trying to be in control, and we try to stay steps ahead, but the market does whatever the market wants. So we're more in a reactive mode than in a active mode. That's why it's passive trading, not active trading. If you're a day trader, good luck. You know, I don't have the stomach for that all the time. So, how does a trader think many steps ahead? Well, number one, when you put on the trade, you have to have a trading plan. So that's obviously a step number two, the trade can go in your favor, or the trade can go against you. So you got to know what to do in either situation. Number three, the trade if it goes against you can go against you very wide, violently, and suddenly, or if you go very slowly against and you have to have moves for both of those aspects involved, you have to go thinking ahead for what are the small moves? What are the small things that could upset my trade? And then what are the big things that could upset my dream? Real micro and the macro? And then what are you going to do when the micro ones What are you gonna do on the macro lens? Right? And then you have to worry about not just the trading aspect, but you got to worry about your personal aspect. So what happens if I cannot get to the trade? What happens if something happens to the trader, right? Maybe he has a headache that day, maybe he is sick, and he has to go to the hospital for several days, then what happens to the trades? You have to have all of these things thought out in advance to be the best trader that you can. So yeah, there are several trades that we can do, as are several moves that we can do as a trader, and just really thinking about what is the risk? And what am I going to do to counter that? So I'll do this. This could happen. What do I do with this, this could happen? What do I do? The longer you get into trading, the longer you do it, the more trades you put on, the more you'll see what could happen, what could go wrong? And then you'll have experience and you'll be like, Oh, yeah, I remember that happened one time before. This is what I did. And it worked out. Well. That's why we also do backtesting, the more experience you can get under your belt. The more situations that you see, the more it'll be muscle memory, and then you'll be like, Oh, if this happens, I can do this. If this happens, I can do this. Because when you're first starting out, you don't know what you don't know. And that's why it's so important to have a mentor to have a coach, have somebody guiding you along and be like, hey, relax, calm down. This is what's going on. How are you going to deal with it? You can do a you can do B, to C to D which one? What are the pros and cons of each? What do you think is the best one proceed that way and let's see how it goes. Now mentor coach is not going to guarantee that he can help you be profitable, or get you the right answer every single time. Sometimes it's just not possible, right, they're gonna be lost, it's, of course, that's part of the game. Otherwise, it wouldn't make any money for us. If it was so easy, you just win every single time, there would be nothing you make, right? That'd be like buying a CD, you get like 1.1% on a CD. So the reason that we make money trading is because there is risk and there are losses. So you have to also have a move for how do you handle the loss? emotionally, and financially? You have to be aware of both situations. So now, coming back to no sex for you. All right. You're probably wondering, okay, how'd you get to this from that? Oh, well, in the book, the author Patrick Bet-David. He was a young kid, and he's telling his own story. And His goal was to become, have his company do a million dollars in sales? And so he was doing well or something. And then he was, I guess he was outside of a nightclub something happened? I don't know. I don't remember the exact story. But somebody asked him, hey, how are you going to know? What's your goal? Are you know that you're successful? Or what are you going to do to make yourself successful? I think that was the question, what are you going to do to make sure that you are successful, and he said that he was not going to have sex until he got a million dollars in sales in his company. And he took him something like 18 months or something like that, that was really cool. You know, because that was for him that was a big deal. Because he was like, in his 20s, or 30s. And he was very sexed-up. Supposedly, that's that's what he says in the book, he liked to party you'd like to hang with women, you'd like to drink. That was his thing when he was younger. And so for him, that was a big, big, big sacrifice. What is the equivalent to you? Right? How are you going to know when your moves are lined up? And how are you gonna know when you hit your goal? And what are you going to do to motivate you to hit your goal? So, you know, part of this podcast is, I'm trying to attack you in different ways to try to get you to take action, try to get you to think about different things that maybe you haven't thought about yet. Or maybe if you have thought about them, but you didn't get my second thought, or you didn't think about them enough. So I'm trying to re-hit you be like, Oh, hey, think about this. Oh, hey, what do you do about this? Oh, eight? What do I do? I can't give everybody the answers, because the answers are different for everybody. So the question is, if you haven't gotten started yet, or if you hadn't hit your goals yet? The reason is probably not because you are lacking all the tools. The reason is something internal. And you can make whatever excuses you want. I don't have the money. I don't have the time. I don't know, the proper education. Those are great. You have the same amount of time everybody else has. You have access to all the education you need through Option Genius. And in terms of money. Well, you know, what are you gonna do? How badly do you want it? What is the goal? Number one, do you know your "why" is it really, really important to you? And what are you going to do to get it? So in the beginning, it doesn't even take money to start, you need to back testing, you need to do paper trading, that doesn't take a lot of money. It's free. For the  back testing, you can buy software, it's like 500 buck, a year, for some back testing software, build up track record. And then you can find the money. There are lots of investors out there that will fund somebody take a chance on you, if you've been shown that, look, I know how to make money. I mean, I've done it, I know other people that have done it. And even if you give them 100% of the gains, you look to somebody, you say, Look, I know how to make money, funded open account, I'll trade it for you, you keep all of the money. I'll do it for you for free. That's kind of weird, right? You get to work for free, make all the money that guy gets all the money or the other investor gets all the money, you get nothing. Yeah, if that's what it takes. That's you're getting your practice with no money at risk in the money with real with real money in the markets. Right? I mean, you can't get like any better, no risk situation and obviously, we lose money, the guy's gonna hate you. That's the way it goes. If you are motivated enough, you will find a way. Now, for those of you who are not motivated enough, that's where it comes to. Right. That's where that's where this question no sex for you or this idea comes from. So if you don't have that motivation to just go nuts and do whatever it takes, then maybe you need to sacrifice something, maybe you need to take something out of your Life until you hit your goal. So you got to carry and you got to stick. So what is it? No fast food? No beer, no TV? I don't know, what is that thing that you spend time on or money on? That is pleasure for you but it's taking away time that you could be spending on learning how to trade and getting better at your trading? Figure it out, and then set your goal and say, Hey, you know what, I'm gonna make XYZ dozen dollars in the next month, or I'm going to make 50 trades and the next two months, or I'm going to make, you know, I'm going to learn this strategy. And I'm going to put on my first trade. And I'm going to make 10% on one trade, whatever, whatever your short term goal is, or maybe your long term goal, you know, the author, Patrick's goal was $1 million in sales. And obviously, it takes a whole while to get to that number, right. So maybe for you, it's a "I want to make $50,000 from my training". Great. I love it. That's an awesome goal. What are you going to give up? Or what are you going to stop doing? To keep you motivated, keep you hungry until you get to that goal. That's what sex is for you. So maybe it is sex. I'm sure your spouse might not agree or your boyfriend and girlfriend, whatever. But if that's what he thinks that's what it takes, and then maybe you'll get some help from them, right? You'll get some extra motivation from them be like "Hello, hurry up here, please and get your gold" and it would be hilarious. But still, what is it figured out? What is the goal? Figure out what you're willing to sacrifice? Until you get triple? All right. So if you do if you do this, I would love for you to email me and let me know what you have decided to do. That would be cool. Just let me know. Email me help at option genius, calm and let me know what you're deciding to do what you're going to what you're going to sacrifice and give up until you hit your goal. So let me know, give me an email with your goal and what you're giving up. I would love to get these emails from you guys. I answer every one of them personally. So just let me know and keep the odds in your favor. Talk soon.

Hey, passive traders. Howdy Ho, how's it going? Today I'm coming to you with a challenge. Yes, I'm actually going to challenge you, I had something I want you to do, or at least try because even if you try, it's gonna be better than not trying at all. And I believe that the word challenge has been watered down, you know, challenge used to be something tough, something hard to do something not everybody could accomplish. But now it's like, challenges in China that this ice bucket challenge, you know, thrives on your head, okay? No big deal. Right. So this particular challenge is actually going to be difficult. And it's not something that you're going to be able to do overnight, most likely, it's going to take some time, but I believe that this is a goal. That is very worthwhile. Now, let me give you a little background before I tell you the challenge, okay? They say, scientists, that is tell us that money can make us happy to a certain degree, right. So if you're making less than 75,000, they say, if you make more money, then you will be happier. Obviously, you'll have a better standard of living, less stress, all that good stuff, right. But after 75,000, the more you make, it doesn't really help that much, your level of happiness doesn't really change, you just stay at the same level. I believe the number is probably 100,000. Now, just because 100,000 - 6 figures is a good goal, everybody's like, Oh, yeah, make six figures. It's like a cool thing. So I would say, hey, that number is 100,000. So if you were making up to 100,000, you know, if you make more, you'll get happier. And then maybe after that, then you don't get happy anymore. But the thing is, that's really I think the point of life is to be happy. And then how do you after you're making that much money, then it becomes not about you, but it comes about how can you help other people, right, and then that's where it comes to the challenge. So I want you to be happier, I want you to be more successful. And I think that this challenge will be able to do both. First off, they have something called tithing, in Christianity. In Islam, they have something called Zakat. In Judaism and Hinduism and Buddhism, it's voluntary, I believe, to give money, not mandatory, but to encourage. So all the major religions have some sense of giving back to help, the less fortunate. The need. That's what I'm talking about. How much money of your income Do you give away? Whether it be a religious thing, or to a charity, or local cause? or whatever you want to do? How much of your money do you give away? Now some of you are thinking, Oh, Allen, hold on, they're barely making ends meet as it is. Don't be telling me about me giving away money. That's fine. You don't have to do it right away if you really can't, but I do believe that there is something that you can do. And if you do get it, it'll make everything better. It'll make you happier. And it'll make you more effective and more productive and wealthier. I've seen it with my own eyes. So here's the thing, if you're not giving anything, right now, zero. Now give me anything if you want, you know, tallied up to how much money do you give every month, on a monthly basis? Or on a yearly basis, however you want to figure out figure you know, find out what you make? How much did you give away to journeys to your religious institution? Maybe you know, give a loan to somebody that never got paid back. Because you knew Yeah, it's not very bad, that's also, you know, giving money to a friend or relative or whatever like that. Find out how much you make, find out how much you gave, what percentage is that? If you're not doing anything, if you're zero, I want you to get up to 5% I want you to give away 5% of your income. Okay, now this is for people who are like, really strict wrangling really, it's tight, everything is tight. And I think you should make it a family affair for all of us. The family should be on board with it. Wife, spouse, kids, husband, everybody. And maybe they all pitch in to help decide where the money goes. That'd be really cool thing. It's a good lesson to teach the kids as well. If you are giving something, but you're giving less than 10. Let's bump it up to 10. Okay, because if you already know how to give, then you got to make it a habit. You got to make it consistent. Okay, I'm going to get this much. Now I got to figure out where is it going to go? And that's the fun part. That's the fun part. We figured Oh my god, there are so many great places and great things that I want to help the world in. Which one do I get to help out? Eventually, the goal is to go higher. So for those of you who are giving 10% or more, you're not off the hook. Because the challenge the real challenge is to get you up to 20%. That's right, 20% of what you make your income now I'm not talking about taxes. I'm not gonna make it complicated. This could be before or after-tax, whatever. However you want to do it, that's up to you. But the challenge is to get up to 20% of your income given in a way to whatever you want whatever organization you want to, okay. How do you get there is an issue. So there are two things, two things you can do. Number one, you can lower your expenses, obviously, right? Now, I don't want you to lower your standard of living, I don't want you to live like a popper. So you know, cut the things that maybe you don't really use or need anymore. You know, maybe if you have a Netflix, and if you have an Amazon Prime, if you have a Hulu, and if you have a Disney plus, maybe you don't need all four of them. How much TV Do you watch anyway? Maybe you just need to or want to cut something, save some money. Maybe if you eat lunch out, five days a week, maybe you Brownbag at one day, not only will you be healthier, but you'll save money, you feel better about yourself. So, these little cutbacks, not only will they make you more financially stable, but they will also make you healthier, you know, you'll get out and do active stuff instead of watching TV. So we can only hope, right? The other way is to increase your income. Now 20% is a stretch by anybody's imagination, right? You're gonna have to really put your pen to paper and figure this out, like how much how can I do this, right? Go from 5 to 20 or 10 to 20, it's a big deal. So you're gonna have to make more money. And whether that's income from job income from business, investment, or trading, it's going to give you a logical, tangible, physical goal that look, I need to make "s" because that's the challenges. And then you got to figure out how you're going to do it. Now, it's not gonna happen overnight, like I said, can take some time. But I do believe if you set your mind to this challenge, and if you take it seriously, and if you do it, and you strive, and if you're on a 5%, right now, even if you get to 10, you know, and you'll get all the way to 20. Eventually, you will, if you want to, but even if you get to 10, that's going to make huge differences in your life. And then eventually, you know, maybe you feel like, okay, I don't need to give the whole point. But if you stop, you have 20% of your income just sitting there that you can use to build wealth, to build anything. Right. So it's basically building a financial discipline, to spend less, but also, it's pushing you to grow and to make more. And I think that's the real benefit. So yes, you'll feel better about yourself, you know, you're helping other people, you make a difference in the world. And who knows, by giving more money, it'll probably come back. That's the way it works, right? The more you give, the more you get back. But it will also force you to be thinking about more income. Now, obviously, we all think about Oh, man, I gotta make more money. I gotta make more money. Yeah, but this is a real number. You need to make a real plan. And then enact put that plan in motion. You know, step one, step two, step three, step four, and then you can drag and so how do you how good did I do? And you can make it a game? Because that's what is a challenge. It's a game, I'm throwing down the gauntlet and challenging you, and you get to make the world a better place. Now, for me, I'm right now I am about 20%. I'm not saying that to brag. I'm just saying that it is possible. Okay, I didn't get there years ago. Right, it took some time. But we built in a habit in my family, me and my wife, we both had a habit. Okay, we're going to start with, we started with 12 and a half percent. That's what we started with. And then we did a little bit extra, oh, hey, you know, this guy needs some help, we need to, you know, he needs a couple grand to fix his car, or this kid needs, you know, to pay his tuition payment for the month for the semester, give him some money here, or send it to charity or, or whatnot. But we came up with creative ways to do it. One of the things that I do with the kids is I've given money to this organization called Kiva, K-I-V-A-dot-org. Basically, what you do is you loan micro loans to people in other countries. So if you give maybe $1,000, each loan that you give is only 25 bucks, right? So you take the 1000 put it in the website and send it to them. And then you choose who to give the loan to. And you can give each person $25. Now, obviously, the people might need more. So there are several people giving loans. But the people then pay the loans back. So you get more money to lend to more people. Now the point here is not to make interest on it. You've given it the money away, but it gets repaid and then you get to learn it again to somebody else and get repaid and learn again, learn again. So I do this, my kids. And so now my boys, they're 8 and 10 right now, they get to choose who we give the loans And I haven't added any more money into it because the money comes back and we get more loans. And every couple of months, we look at it and say, How much money do we have? Okay, let's make some loans. And they decide who they want. They go through all of the available loans and look at the pictures and look at the description of what they need the money for, what country do they live in? Are they a man or a female? Are they a group? Are they individual? Are they going to be able to give the money back? Does it make does it make sense what they're trying to what they need the money for? They make all these decisions on their own, and then they pick. And then they track, like, How much money did they get back, you know how their loans doing. So they feel good about themselves. But they're also learning how to be a good lender, which eventually is something that I want them to know, because I want them to be making investments, that's part of the job, right, you have to know how to get your capital back. So we're using doing good to teach. So if you have kids, I think that's definitely one of the plays, one of the ways you can do it. But again, the challenge is to get yourself up to 20%, giving the money back or giving the money away. I'd be interested to know how many of you guys would actually check me up on this challenge, and how many are actually going to be able to accomplish it, it's going to be amazing. But if you get up to 20%, the feeling that you're going to feel it's unbelievable, where you actually, you know, you you feel on top of the world really does not only do you want less, like you desire less, it just makes you desire less things be less materialistic, because you're, you're not only looking at what you need, but then you're thinking, Okay, I need to raise, like I say, you're going to give away $20,000 a year, okay? You have to look for places to give the $20,000. And so you have to research. And when you're doing the research, you're going to find out all the things and all the people and all the places that are suffering, and need help. And you're going to feel so grateful for the life that you have. And whatever situation you're in right now, you're going to feel amazing. For a while, you know, I'm really in a blessed situation to be able to give away $20,000. And then you're going to help those people and you've got a few really good budgets. Not only that, but you've also increased your income hopefully. Right? And then the big thing about it is that the way the US taxes are, you don't even have to, it doesn't have to be a full 20,000. If you're making 100,000 You don't have to give away the full 20 like to make 20% because then there's taxes and stuff. So the more money you give, the more tax break you get. So you're not really having to in order to get 20% of your income, you're not really having to give away 20% 100,000 it's because of the tax breaks. So it's really cool. I thought I'd share this with you. It's an interesting idea. I think it'll definitely help you. So yeah, it's not easy. It's a challenge, right? Are you gonna, do it? I hope you do hope you give it a shot. Because not only will it change your life, it'll change your family's life and change the world. So with that, remember to trade with the odds in your favor, and good luck. Take care LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Welcome back. Do you remember a song I don't know, when it came out? It was I think it was in the 60s or 70s or something and it goes something like one is the loneliest number one is the loneliest. Now I apologize for my singing. And I think I was off key. And I don't even think that's how the music goes. The melody goes to the song sounds probably off on that too. And I don't even remember what they were singing about. But the message of the song to me is that yes, one is the loneliest number. I think it was about something that guy was alone, he lost his girlfriend. But the point is, for me is that yes, when you have only one of anything in your life, you don't really have a backup plan. Right? So if it comes to income, you only have one source of income. If you lose that source of income, you're kind of stuck up the creek without a paddle, right? And so I was reminded of this today, I got an email from one of our members, and I wanted to read it to you, because he just got laid off. And he wants to know how he can replace his income with trading. It's crazy that we have so many people in this same situation, it's great that when you have a job, right, you have an income source, you want to get into trading, you don't really like the job or you really like your business or whatever you're like, oh, man, I wish this trading thing could work out, I could get it and you know, you you invest in one of our programs, and then you don't really follow through because life gets in the way. And I know how that goes. You know, it's really the why, right? You're why about trading wasn't strong enough until something happens. And he jars you away. You know, so you you might be driving along the street, you're not really paying attention to the road, and then all of a sudden the car comes out of nowhere almost hits you. And after that you're like the best driver all the way home. You know, just jars you in. So this is a normal occurrence. But the older you get, or the longer you've been in a job, the chances of being laid off are increasing. Unfortunately, it's just the nature of the work ethic. And so you really need to have that backup in place. And unfortunately, for a lot of people, they're not ready with the backup plan when they get laid off. So here's Todd's email, says: Hello, Allen, I'm going through a live change your opinion, I'm currently a member of your programs joined almost a year ago have not been able to devote enough time due to work and family obligations. (Totally understandable). I'm an engineer and work in the construction industry for a health care organization. I read your book, listen all your podcast sessions at least once while going to work. Oh, thank you for that. Last week, I was laid off from my job. And now I'm trying to decide my next moves. My wife works full time and we have funds to carry us along for a couple months. But I will need to replace my income fairly soon. and relieve the stress on my wife. As an aside, yes, that's very, very, very important. Because you're not, you know, when you get laid off, you're not the only one that's suffering, the whole family suffer, especially the other spouse, because that person has to carry the load, right? They're not used to carrying the full load. Now they have to carry the full load. And then they also have to worry about you and your mental status and the pressure on them you also have to worry about so you don't want to add divorce to your problems. So be very, very careful about how your spouse is handling the situation. Make sure you give them enough time, enough attention to leave their pressure, take some of their work, you know their homework or whatever their work is off their plate while you can. And if you're looking to go into trading, discuss it with your spouse, explain what you're doing with them. So they don't think that you're just sitting at home doing nothing all day playing with computers, watching TV. Okay, so that's a really important point. So let me continue. He says I'm trying to decide if I should jump back into the construction rat race again, so I can draw salary and benefits, assuming I can find another job fairly quickly. Otherwise, I would really like to immerse my time into your programs and start trading. I realized I have to get up to speed and take some time to learn your methods and develop my own trading plan. My main concerns are being able to learn your program soon enough, and being able to replace my income, I was making 120,000 a year, but need to replace approximately 5000 a month take home pay, I plan to start paper trading this week and scale up as I learn more eventually, I will have $250,000 in capital that I could scale up into an account, how realistic is it for me to replace my income? With the size of an account? I would appreciate your opinion in the comments. Thank you. So that's the email, I want to read to you what I wrote to him, and then I want to give you my thoughts on this and a little bit going a little bit more detail. So I told him, you know, hey, I'm sorry that this happened to you very, very sorry, my first thought was, hey, you need to get out of where you are, I know where he is, he's in a different state where things might be slowing down. So I'm like, Hey, you know, get out of there, get your butt here to Texas, because we can't find enough people to do construction. But that might not be possible. So I don't think the issue here is if you can generate 5000 from 250,000. The issue is how long it will take you to get there. And from what you wrote, this is me talking from what you wrote, it would be in your best interest, I believe, for you to get out of the job for now, as a fail safe. Okay, maybe not a full time thing, just something to bring in some guaranteed capital and keep the health insurance if possible, because that's a big concern for a lot of people. Trading when you are super stressed out, and you have to win is super hard. Trading already is very hard. But doing it with one hand timing on your back, it's much harder, while you are looking for the second job or even after you get the part time job, spend three to five hours a day on your trading. Do that with the courses and programs you already have, you should be able to have the skills to do it full time in a few months. But having the skills is different from being emotionally ready. So you're going to have to overcome that aspect as well. So if you can start with a smaller goal, say 1000 a month on $100,000 account, that would be a great place to start. And then you can scale it up from there. And then I told him because he's in the programs, I want to see you on the coaching call on Thursday, I want to see you and your paper trades in our groups, I want you to posting there, I want you to get critiques, I want you to get my opinion, my advice. And I want you to send me a bit I told him, Hey, I want you to send me your trading plan, and a concrete plan of how you expect to get to 5000 a month, including your asset allocation. And this is covered in whatever programs that he's already part of, you can do it. But having a job would relieve a lot of the pressure. But even with a job, 3-5 hours a day learning and trading. Because enough is enough screw these jobs, it's time to learn how to make it from trading. Okay, so that was my email to him. You know, you can let me know if what you think if I gave him the right advice or not, really, this brought me back to my situation. And how I got involved in trading full time was also being laid off. And I eventually ended up losing over $40,000 of my wife's money before I got serious turned it around. And I don't know if you know my story, but pretty much that was my story in a nutshell. But really, I was doing all kinds of training and losing money at it. Until really I sat down with my wife and we had like a, you know, come to Jesus moment and be like, Alright, I'm going to give myself three months, if I don't figure this stuff out, I'm going to go get another job. And at the end of those three months, I don't think I've ever shared this. But at the end of those three months, I still wasn't making money, but I wasn't losing money. So that to me was a huge step. So if I'm not losing money, then I can tweak the results I'm getting and start making money. You know, I've overcome the major hurdle of screwing up. Now I just need to screw up a little less, and fix it and start winning and start doing the right things eventually took a while for me to make a full time income from trading. But even for the person who sent me this email, that's not his immediate concern. Right? He was making 120. Now he's trying to get up to five, which is a little bit less than he was making full time. I'm sure even if he can get to four, he would still be happy on the size of his account, it's totally doable. If he had the experience, if he had the knowledge, if he had the strategy. You could do it right now. But that's not where he is yet. Right. So the question really is how fast can you start trading for a living? So I have a few notes here. Number one, the thing you got to understand is that the stress can be overwhelming. So if you have to win like if you have if you say I'm going to put on these trades and from these trades I can make $5,000 and every single one of them has to win in order for me to pay my rent, send my kids to school, get the gas in the car and eat, that's very, very stressful, you are not going to win, you're not going to be able to. Okay? trading is trading, there are losses, it's just the nature of the game, every trade is not going to win every month, you're not going to win. So if you have to win every single month, in order to pay the bills, it's not going to work. Eventually, there will come a month where the money's not there. And then what happens? Well, now you're taking out of your trading account. So your trading accounts getting lower, lower your whatever you make all your gains, you're taking it out to live on all your losses, whenever you do lose money, you're still you're taking money out of the account to survive. So eventually, your account is going to get smaller and smaller, it's never going to grow, unless you're making a lot more than you're spending, which is going to be hard to do, especially in the beginning. Right? When you are desperate to win, what happens? You take more risks. Unfortunately, that's what happens. You don't play conservatively. You take more risk, you do a little bit more, because you're like, yeah, you know, you justified and you allies in your mind, and you come up with some justification to take more risk, even though in your gut, you know, you should. And what does that do? Well, that gives you ulcers, that gives you high blood pressure that keeps you up at night. So you can't sleep and it ruins your mental health, it ruins your life, it ruins your quality of life, you'll gain weight, all of this stuff, you're not going to eat right, you're not going to exercise it, it's just a it's a spiral going downhill, and one that you really really do not want to be on unless you totally have to. That's one of the reasons you know, get a part time job. Even if you don't get a part time job. Get a some you know, right now there are so many companies out there that are looking for like the freelance type people, you can drive for Uber, you can deliver groceries, you can deliver food, and it doesn't have to be a full time thing. You can do it when you want to and stop when you want to. And there's no shame in it. Okay, that's the one thing a lot of people have to overcome, you know, driving for Uber, oh, my god, no, I would never do that. I'm too good for that. No, you're not. Right. What is the end goal? What is the Why? The Why is to get off the rat race, to get off the hamster wheel, to be able to trade for a living and have the life that you deserve to eventually hopefully get your wife off of her job too if she wants to quit her job. Exactly right? So don't feel that you are too good for a part time job no matter what it is, as long as he's bringing them onto the table. Money is money. Green is green. Right? It pays the bills, when you also have to win, the stress, like I said can be overwhelming, you're going to feel worse about yourself, you're going to feel horrible about yourself when you lose, and that's part of the game, losing. But when you feel like you have to win, every time you have a losing trade, the blame is going to be on you, you're going to place the blame on yourself, I screwed up. I didn't, I didn't see that I didn't read the chart, right, I picked the wrong stuff, I picked the wrong strategy. And that's going to lower your self esteem, it's going to lower your confidence in yourself. And when you do that, it's just like a, you know, like a set of stairs going down. You do it a little bit and then gets worse, and it gets worse until you hit the bottom and then you just give up. And that's not what we're trying to do. We try to pick you up, we're trying to move you higher instead of bringing yourself lower. So, unless you absolutely absolutely have to, I would not suggest for anybody to put their back to the wall in this situation and saying, you know what, if you got to eat, you got to win on your trades. That's the wrong way to do it. That's the wrong way to trade, especially for the long term is or growth. The second thing we're gonna say is that it takes time to trade through different market cycles. So we got bear markets without bull markets, we got recessions, depressions we had up, you know, growth. We have now we have pandemics that we need to deal with. We had a tweeting president that we had to deal with and uncertainty about that all the time. There's different market cycles. And so when you think about trading for a living, you are thinking about what the market is doing right now. And as I record this, the market has been moving much higher. It's been moving it artificially, it's being inflated, that's not gonna last. So right now yes, you can put your money in something and have it go up above it, you can take money out and survive up that. How long will that last? If it changes, then what are you going to do that if you don't have the skills, so you need to develop the skills of trading through a bull market, bear market sideways market really fast crazy up and down roller coaster type market and the thing is, if you are trading for a living, and you don't have a cushion, like if you don't have other sources of income, or you have to win a certain amount, and you have to push the limits, you don't have the luxury of not being in the market all the time. Actually, no, I'll say that, again, you don't have the luxury of being out of the market, when you shouldn't be in it. Because times happen when it's not a good market to be in, when things are too volatile. When they're too crazy, when there's too much unpredictability and uncertainty, those are the times when we as option sellers, need to be on the sidelines, and just watching the clown go by, right, which is watching the parade go by, wait till things calm down, and then we get back in. And that's one of the beauties of selling options is that we go on a cycle of a cycle basis of month to month basis, expiration expiration, we don't have to be in the market all the time. But if you're trading for a living, and you're doing it on a limited amount of capital, so you have to extract a certain amount every month, you have to be in the market. And that can also cause you big losses, because if you're in the market at the wrong time, or you don't know how to handle the market when it switches, then that could cause you a big gain of your chunk of your portfolio. And then again, the smaller portfolio you have, the more stress it is to make to make your nut to make your amount of expenses that you have to come up with. Right. So those are the thoughts I had. Now I have some notes here about how to actually do it, what are the steps. So you take all that I've told you into consideration, you know, plan that if you're thinking about switching to quitting your job, or if you've been laid off, and you want to trade for a living, take all that stuff into consideration. Okay, now, here are some steps that you can take number one, I want you to pick one or two strategies to focus on the ones that make the most sense to you, not 100 different ones, we're not the goal is to get as fast as we can to make our expenses. Right? The thing that works the best for you. And if you've been trading for a while, go through all of your trades. Go through all your history for the past several years, what worked for you. What makes sense to you what seems easy to you? Now's not the time for you to figure out the nuances of Elliott Wave, you can learn that later on right now we need to put money on the table, right, we need to put cash in our pocket. What is the easiest, fastest way to do that? To me, I think it's selling options. Number two, have a small amount originally, and then scale it up. So if you notice in the email, I told him, you know, not, I don't have to try to make 1000 on $100,000 account, he'll eventually he says he has eventually like 250 I'm not I don't want him to risk the whole 250 when he doesn't know what the heck he's doing. But if you can take a smaller portion of that, say 100 and make 1000 per month as a goal originally, that's 1%, that is doable. That is confidence building that is hey, I made money. I'm successful. I'm consistent. I'm profitable. That's the goal. Right. And though that's not his eventual goal, that's not a long term goal. But it is a current goal, I think you should start small, hit your goal over and over again, build up that confidence, build up that muscle memory that you know exactly how to put the trade on, what to look for, how to manage it. And then you can scale it up, you can add contracts, you can add more trades of the same strategy in different stocks or whatever. But you start small and you start hitting it and getting hits, hits after hits after hits, wins in your belt confidence, then you start scaling. So you're not going to go if your goal is 5000 a month, you're not going to you're not going to try to hit 5000 your first month. Unless you've been trading for a long time and you know exactly what you're doing. You're going to start small, you know, 1% 1000 on $100,000 account is doable. Very, very doable. Then, once you hit the 1000 Okay, great. I've done that a couple of months. Okay, now I'm gonna try 2000. Now what I can do is I can just repeat, rinse and repeat what I've already been doing, maybe with a little bit more capital, right, I can take a little bit more of a risk. And I'm not risking, hopefully, you're not risking the whole 100,000. Right, whatever strategy you're using, but you can do it with a little bit more. And so you can get to 2000 and then she can get to three and four, five. Okay, at that point, maybe think okay, five is the limit 5% a month is a is really hard to eliminate for me, I can't do it. That's when you can add more capital to the account, let it grow. And then it goes back to being easy. Okay. 1% is easy. For some people 5% is too stressful. So then you need more capital so that you're only making 1%. So now eventually, if he has $250,000 and he needs to make 5000 then all he needs is 2% if he can learn how to consistently make 2% on a smaller amount like, let's say 100,000, then when he puts in more money and he gets 250,000, he can easily make 2% on the 250. Because it's the same thing. It's the same trades, it's just using bigger knowledge. Maybe it's more spread, maybe it's more contracts, maybe it's instead of two stocks, or three stocks, this four or five stocks. But it's the same strategy, the same trading plan, the same system, just done with bigger numbers. So that's why I want you to hit small start off, and then you can add more money, or you can grow and scale from there. Number three, just like I told him, in the email, three to five hours a day of learning, of trading, and back testing. So the trading, not gonna take you long, right? I mean, yes, you're going to be sitting in front of the screen, you're gonna be watching all the numbers go up and down, and the charts and the candles and whatever you're gonna be watching, up and down, up and down the daily ticks, you move them up to CNBC, or the Fox Business or whatever, on all day, we'll be watching all that stuff, because you have nothing else better to do. Do you need any of that stuff? No. Do you need some further screen watching? No, what you really need to be doing is back testing your strategy, putting on as many trades as you can as fast as possible. And getting that experience getting that no-how figuring out what went wrong. Why did go wrong? How can I avoid that in the future. Now the learning aspect is not as hard as you think it doesn't take as much time as you obviously do. But that will not take you three to five hours a day, for months on time on some hedge, right, it takes a small amount of time to get the basics down, takes a smaller amount of time to figure out the strategy, what takes the bulk of the time is to do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And that's why you have the backtest. Because right now he cannot afford to do it real money every month after month, he needs to do it right away, he needs to get experience under his belt right away. And you do that with back testing. So one of the software's that I prefer is option Explorer, it does cost some money, you can get a two week trial or trial or something like that, you know, if you're not working, you sit in front of that screen for six hours a day, five hours of it should be a back test. I mean, you do hundreds of trades in a day, if you sit there for six hours or seven hours or eight hours a day, literally hundreds, that is what you need to be doing. The other thing I have is yours, you don't want to be listening to idiots. I'm not gonna give you any names. But you only listen to people who have done what you are looking to do. Okay, because I know there are Facebook groups out there. I know there's plenty of YouTube videos and YouTube channels and whatnot, everybody tries to sell you their next course and their next prop. If they are not making money, if they don't have results that you can see, they don't have hundreds of customer success stories. Don't listen to it. Okay? Because that's going to take you down the wrong path. We need to focus, we need to dial down, fix one thing that works, and do it over and over again and learn. And you're not going to learn from a group, you'll get small pieces of advice, you might post a trade. And you'll get some people that says Oh, hey, you know, check this out and check that out. That's great, that might help you. But if you do the back testing, you'll figure that out yourself. Because you never know when you get advice from somebody online, what their experience level is, how much they know, how many trades do they put on. Because a lot of times people that are posting comments in these three groups are people that don't know anything. And they have all day to sit around and give other people advice when they're not doing anything themselves. That's the problem with free groups. Now, this fellow, luckily, is in our programs. And we have groups of people who have been through our training. And so they know our methodology. And so if he comes and post something, a question in one of our groups, he's going to get a real answer from somebody who knows what they're talking about, or from me, or one of my staff. And that is invaluable. Right? So it's amazing that he has done this already. He doesn't have to pay for it, because he's already in the program. So he's going to get that where he can take something and say, Look, this is what I'm thinking about doing. Can you critique it, and we will critique it and find out what's going right and what's going on. That is invaluable. Okay. And then the other thing I have is yours, you want to pay for quality information from somebody that you trust, and you have access to. So this kind of goes back to what I said. There's tons of things out there that you're going to see about stuff for sale. People talking about "Oh, you're gonna make a million dollars overnight". Oh, you know, you 500% Oh, we made 500 trades in a row that weren't most of it is all bull crap, unfortunately, and they get away with it. So if you're going to buy something if you don't have a course or If you don't have a program that you're already part of, I think you need to pay for quality information, you pay for something seven bucks, you pay something for 100 bucks, you're going to get what you pay for. Even unfortunately, now, some people charge you 2, 3 or 5,000, and it's junk. But if you don't know, if you're just starting out, you know, the library is a good place, books are a good place. And I would even say, I mean, this podcast, I try to be as real and as honest as I can. Other podcasts are not. So you know, I'm even hesitant to recommend listening to podcasts. YouTube videos are wolves kitchen, any idiot could put up a YouTube and put up a website. So have you figure if you're watching, or if you're going from webinar to webinar, you're gonna realize that most of them are jobs that people don't know the type, but they're really good at marketing, they're not good at trade. You know, and you got to really pay for quality information from somebody you trust, and they don't just have access to, you know, our programs, they have access to me, because that that's like super important. Right? If you cannot talk to somebody who's actually doing what they're teaching you to do, then you're on your own is no better than than a scammy YouTube video. So you really do need that access. But sometimes you have to pay a little bit more and get it. But if you can get access to a full time trader, or somebody who's doing this, somebody who's been through all the different markets, that is invaluable. And so for this fellow, I'm urging him that I want to see him on our coaching calls, I want him asking questions, I want him to post in the group and get responses from myself and the other profitable traders. And I gave him homework. You know, if he had not been part of our program, I would not be able to do that. But as a customer, it's like, dude, I want you to succeed, you showed me that you have an interest in succeeding. Now, I'm going to make you do it. Now you have access to me. So do this work. Right? And hopefully he does. And hopefully I'll be able to hold this in and help him through this. Number four, on my list of how to do it, you need a job. It's not full time job part time job, just to ease the stress, to increase your income. And to relieve the pressure on yourself. And what I would suggest, if you're in the shoes is whatever income you make, from your part time job, I would suggest you take that money and give it to your spouse, don't even keep it, don't pay your bills with it, let her handle all that. Or you just take it and give it to your spouse, say look, honey, you know, this is the money I made from my Uber-Driving. I'm gonna give it you give it to you, anything I make for my trading, I'm gonna take it out, and I'm gonna pay the bills with it. But here, I need you to have this so that you know that I'm not leaving you all alone in it, you are not in this by yourself. Because like I said earlier, you need to pay attention to that person, your spouse's mental status as well. Number five, keep doing what's working and tweak to improve your results. So maybe you're doing maybe you've tried 100 different strategies in the past, find out what's working. And when you find what's working, keep doing it. Don't go away from it, don't deviate, just do what it's working over and over and over and over and over and over. The thing that we have, as human beings, we have this tendency, if something starts working, we think that "Oh, hey, I can make this better". I can improve this. Oh, let me try it this way. Oh, what if I do this? What if I did that, that's great. You do that later. You do that after you're making money. So if you join one of my programs, and I give you a trading plan and say, Look, do this, because this works for me. I want you do it exactly like it says, only until you're profitable and consistent and making money and you have oodles of money in your billionaire, then go play with it and change it and try to fix it and make it better. Until then do what it says because it's been working. If it's not working, I'm not going to sell it. Or if I tweak it, or if I change it, because I'm doing it every day. Then I'll go ahead and change it until you look I changed it. So you don't need to worry about that's like one thing off your door but don't try to fix it. It's not broken. don't fix it. Just do it over and over again. Shake was working and just repeat. rinse, repeat. rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. You're gonna get bored on your mind. Just do it. And then number six, no gambling because you don't have the extra cash. Yes, maybe you'd love to put some money in Bitcoin because it's going to go to a million dollars. He that's wonderful right now you can't afford right now we're working on income. That's what we're talking. We need to get income up. We need to get you to a point where you're self reliant. After you have enough money, then yes, you can go buy a Rolls Royce or or a second house and do it on Airbnb or whatever you want to do. That's fine. For now, there's no gambling. There's no you know, high flying stocks. We're not buying calls or puts or whatever. We're not shorting. We're not buying Bitcoin or any other crypto or whatever that's gonna go to the moon tomorrow. We're focusing and focusing on income, doing the one or two strategies, doing them over and over and over again, trying to hit our goal, our small goal originally, and then increasing it as we show positive results. So we're not risking a lot in the beginning, over getting that experience, and we're doing it over and over and over again, and then increasing as we go. So after, you know, a couple months, if you hit your goal, increase the goal. See, if you hit it again, and increase it again, increase it again, keep going back for feedback, right? If you have access to a mentor, go back, get feedback, hey, this is what I did. This is what I do, right? What I do wrong, get some feedback from somebody who's actually doing what you want to be doing. And then just keep doing it over and over again, and scaling it. And eventually, yes, you can do this really, I don't know how long it's gonna take. But if you can put in the time, and you can do the back testing, and do hundreds and hundreds of trades, then it shouldn't take as long as you think it would. Okay, so let this be a message if you've been laid off. Or if you want to start trading for a living. Can you do it in a month? Probably not? Can you do it within a year? Yeah, I definitely think so. You know, if you're putting three to five hours a day, and it's taking you more than a year, you're doing something wrong, your time is not being spent effective. If you can put three to five hours a day or more, then yes, you can definitely do this. I have 100% faith that you could do. Now, whether it's, you know, anytime after a month or two months, or three months, up to a year or longer, I don't know, it depends on every person. If you're motivated, you'll find a way. And I think if you're listening to this podcast, you already found the way. You know, this stuff works hopefully, beaten in in your head long enough over and over again. Yeah, this stuff works. I'm doing it approve, look. Now you just got to find the motivation. You gotta find the time now obviously this guy before he said, Hey, I joined because I was interested and I liked it. But I didn't have the time because my business and my talent. Okay, great. Now the business or the work is not there anymore. So now you do it. family will still be there, family will always be there. But you're doing this for the family. Right. So that's it for this episode, guys. Remember, always trade with the odds in your favor, I hope you do never get laid off. But if you do have a backup plan in place, or start trading, and doing it in a way so that you get to quit instead of being laid off. It done your time. Don't let other people dictate to you what your end goal is, you should dictate your own. And so don't let one be the loneliest of all. 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How to be a black belt spread master. Black belt. Hiya! Like karate, right? Black Belt, that's the best belt you can get. So how can you be a spread master with a black belt? Let's talk about that. First thing we got to do, though, is go over the disclaimer, of course, trading and falls risk. It's not suitable for everybody, you can lose money, you probably will lose money. So don't raise too much. You don't want the spouse kicking out of the house. Right? Got it. Okay, so the last from the class, right? Karate Kid, the original, with Mr. Miyagi, that one rules. I love Jackie Chan. He did great. But the original Karate Kid, the original Miyagi, it was just kick ass. And I'm gonna have to tell you a little bit story here. Karate Kid. My parents actually took me to see this in the theaters. And I loved it. Right made kind of dates content your whole life, but I loved it. The original one is just a classic story of this guy. He's a little bit nerdy, he's skinny, he moves to this new town, he doesn't have any friends. He meets a girl. And then he gets picked on by this group of thugs, you know, and they know karate. And they're beating him up of over and over and over again. And then finally there's this guy's This is recluse, right? This guy who just takes him under his wing becomes like a father figure to him because he didn't have a father and teaches him how to defend himself and teaches him karate and karate is for defense. That's a very horrible, horrible accent. But, you know, that's what Mr. Miyagi teaches him. The Karate is for defense, and it's about life. And it's about meditation and being calm and peaceful. And all these things he gives him shows him how to do respect, right, how to give respect. And that's what karate is about. But the thugs, all they're talking about is no mercy, no mercy, right. karate used to win and beat in pummel, and, and destroy. And so we have the rest of the movie. And eventually, hopefully, you know, hopefully, you've seen the movie. If not go watch it. But I'm going to spoil that for you here. There's a karate tournament. And, of course, The Karate Kid wins in amazing fashion. Right? And then there's Karate Kid, part two. And so he goes to Japan, I'm not gonna tell the whole story. But that one was good, too. So if you haven't watched them, the originals, you got to go back and watch them again. And then now on Netflix, they have come out with a new series called Cobra Kai. So I guess they wanted to make more money from The Karate Kid. Right? And so they brought back all the actors. And they have a whole new series, where it continues the story. It's I think it's like 30 years in the future. 30 years have gone by since the original Karate Kid movie. And you see, all the actors have grown up, and they're all there except for of course, unfortunately, Mr. Miyagi Pat Morita, because he is unfortunately, he has passed away. But all the other actors are there. And that was I've been watching that. And it was cool. And I love the I mean, the acting is really bad. To be honest, the acting in this series is pretty bad. The story is like ehhh, you know, but I love how they showed the other side of the story. Like in The Karate Kid movie, you see everything from Daniel-san perspective. He's the kid who's just moved here how hard it is for him. You know, he's got a single mom, his mom is annoying. He's trying to make friends. But he's getting beaten up all the time. You see it from his perspective. In the in the Cobra Kai series. It starts you off. The main character is the main thug, the one that was torturing Daniel-san, and it shows you from his perspective, and he's telling the story of how this kid Daniel came to his town and messed up his life. stole his girlfriend, beat him in the tournament, made his sensei hate him, all this kind of stuff. So I loved how they showed both sides of the coin, the flip. And I mean, it was really well done. That part was really well done. Anyway, why am I telling you all this? Because after I saw the karate kid, I, of course, wanted to learn karate. Just like after I saw Top Gun, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. And after I saw Jaws, I didn't go swimming for years. But when I saw Karate Kid, I wanted to learn karate. So I told my parents, I want to learn karate, I'll put me in a glass looking too hot for me in class. So they did, buster, right? And so I joined a karate class. And I'm you see they have these belts. So you want to of course, you start off as a white belt, meaning you know nothing. And then you get a different color belt as you grow and you get better and better and better. And eventually you get to a black belt. And then when you get a black belt, it goes even higher. From there, you can get degrees of black belts. So I started off as a white belt, know nothing. And they started with basic stuff, right? How do you throw a punch? How do you do a kick? How do you Block a Punch? How do you block a kick? How do you block this and that and so you got four or five or 10 you know, basic moves, and you practice and that's what we did. That was the whole glass practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing practicing. Maybe you do a sparring with somebody else a little bit in very, very slow motion. But you're practicing the same moves over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Eventually, I got tired of the same moves, and I'm ready to move up. So I go to my sensei (Sensei, as your teacher) I go to my sensei and Sensei, please show me some of the moves for the next belt because I want to practice at home. And I want to get really good so that I can take the test and I can go to the next belt. And what he told me is that I already know the moves. What are you talking about, Sensei, what I found out was that the moves in karate are generally the same at all the belts. The thing is that there is more complexity at the higher levels. So what he showed me is that in slow motion, he stood in front of me, and in slow motion, he threw a punch, and I blocked it. And I was able to block it, because that's what I learned as a white belt, he did a little kick, and I blocked it. But then he did it a little bit faster. And he pulled me on my butt. Right, because I didn't know how to block it, even though I should have been able to block it. And then he moved to the side a little bit. And he punched me from the side. And I didn't know how to block it. And then he hit me from the back. And he did I don't know how to block it. And then he had, you know, he hit me with to like combination really fast. And I didn't know how to block it. Even though I knew the moves, I didn't know the combinations, I didn't have the speed to block him. So then he told me to do the same thing to him. And he used the same moves to block everything I did didn't matter how fast I did it, or what side I did it, he was using the exact same moves, the block the basic block, the basic, you know, the the basic kick and punch and all that stuff to beat me, it was just the same thing. So that was his lesson for me at the time he goes, you need to focus and work on perfecting the moves that you already know, before you go to the next level. And so he sent me back, right? And do the block do the kick Faster, faster, better, better, crisper, more, more provision. So in The Karate Kid movie, if you if you watched it you remember it you know you remember wax on wax off, wax on wax on paint the fence up and down defense up and down. Those were the moves that Mr. Miyagi was teaching Daniel-san, and he made him do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, until he got so good at these basic moves, that he was good enough to go into the tournament and fight and win. You know, it was the same moves and Mr. Miyagi, he didn't have any belts, so he didn't tell Daniel-san. Okay, now your white belt. Now your green belt. Now your Brembo may even have any moves. He was just teaching karate, or karate, I guess if you say if you say it properly. But it wasn't about going from belt to belt. It was just learning he was about learning how to do the thing. Right? So now when we talk about credit spreads, we talk about learning the trade, learning how to do it, it's about learning the thing. So if you're a basic trader, and you want to get a really, really good trader, is there extra stuff that you got to learn? No, the moves are the same. The rules are the same, the basics are the same. There's more complexity, definitely at the higher levels. It gets scarier when you're dealing with larger numbers. You know, when you're not putting 500 into a trade, but you're putting 50,000 into a trade? Yeah, you can scare the heck out of you. That's more complexity. But the work that you got to do is the same. The basics are the same, you keep doing the same thing, punch, kick, wax on, wax off, that's all the same. It's just more complexity at higher, higher levels. So you got to do the work. Right? Now you take a look at Bruce Lee, the master of karate, right, the king. He's known to say that I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 different kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. Because if you focus and you excel and you expert at one particular thing, you can beat anybody else that that's not proficient. Okay, so even Bruce Lee did the same thing. The same exercise is the same, you got to master the basics. Every time I start losing money. The first thing I do is I stopped doing everything complicated. And I go back to the basics. Just take out everything, go back to the basics. That happens in everything I do, whether it's trading, or whether it's with my family, whether it's with marketing, whatever I want to do even like chess, you know, if you're if you're a good chess player, you start doing all the gambits, right, you start doing all the moves, but there might be a time when you start losing over and over and over again and you're like, I don't know what to do. If you don't know what to do, you go back to the basics, right, go back to the beginning. And then you build up again, slowly, slowly, slowly. So just like in karate, just like in chess, just like in anything else that you want to learn. You got to do the work. If you want to be a master If you want to be a credit spread Master, and that's what I want you to be in this program, that's the reason for this program, you got to put in the work. And that's why we do it over and over and over and over and over. And yes, it can get methodical, it can get boring. But that's how you become a master. That is how you become a credit spread black belt by doing the same move 1000 times 10,000 times, being able to put on a trade in your sleep, being able to have the rules ingrained in your brain so that you can recite them. And then eventually, I want you to be so good that you can teach other people, you can teach your kids, you can teach your family, you can teach your friends, your co-workers, you can teach them how to do this stuff. That's how good I want you to be a black belt, credit spread master. That's the point of this program. That's where I want you to be at the end of the program. And we're going to do it by putting in the work. So if you're with me, hey, yeah, we're gonna do it. We're gonna get you there. That's without any doubt in my mind that I can get you there. You have to put in the work. And you already know what that means, right? So if you're ready, let's do this. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Howdy, howdy, howdy, passive traders. This is Alan Sama, back with another episode of the Option Genius Podcast. First of all, I want to say thank you again, for listening, thank you for spending the time with me wonderful to be in your ear. And if you're one of our power listeners, I'm gonna talk to a fellow this week, Matt, who said he has listened to every episode three times. So, Matt, thank you for being a power listener. And for those of you who would like to help the podcast or who have already done it, by leaving a rating and review, I totally, totally appreciate it, it really helps us get the word out there. And if you have not done so, I would please admonish you Please, I'm asking you nicely. If you could leave a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts, or it was Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to him, just please leave a review and let us know how we're doing. I love to read them. And we love to, you know, check them out. So they're a lot of fun. Anyway, this episode is called how I invest. So I want to do two things on this episode. First of all, there's a book that just came out called “How I invest my money”. And so I'm going to give you a review of this book, I just finished it. And then secondly, I often very often get asked how I invest my money and how I separate my accounts and what I do with my money. And so I'm going to be sharing that as well at the end first the review then, and then I'll tell you what I'm doing. So that's going to be fun. So stay tuned for that. First of all, there's a guy, Josh Brown, he is almost always on CNBC sees a lot on NBC, either money manager, and he's got a blog, he's pretty popular, he shows up in all of the financial media, and they interview him and stuff. And I like him, you know, he makes a lot of sense the stuff he talks about whenever he gives advice, or whenever he says things, it's always simplified. So it's not doesn't use a lot of Wall Street jargon and stuff. But he looks out and he seems like he's looking at that particular, whatever they're talking about. He's looking at it from the eyes of an individual, you know, somebody who's working and who's given their money and trying to make sense of the stock market and stuff. And so, you know, I think that I kind of do the same. I think that's something that I have, where I can take complicated issues and boil them down and make them really simple to understand and explain them. So I think he does that as well. So it's really great. So one of the things I was watching on CNBC, and the host of the show mentioned that this guy, Josh has a new book out, and it's called, “How I Invest My Money”. And like, Okay, I need to get that. So I got it right away. And, you know, when I got the book, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna be excited, because you know, this guy smart, he's gonna tell me what he's doing with his money. And then when I actually got the book, I got even more excited, because it's not just one guy, it's 25 different people who are money managers, and they're all explaining how they invest their own personal capital. So I'm going to read the jacket, the back cover, it says the world of investing normally sees experts telling us the right way to manage our money. How often do these experts pull back the curtain and tell us how they invest their own money? Never. How I invest my money changes that, in this unprecedented collection 25 financial experts share how they navigate markets with their own capital. Sounds like oh, this is exciting. 25 people, you know, and I started reading about some of these people in the book. And they're like, wow, they're all money managers. They all some pretty smart from really good institutions, or, you know, they went to good colleges. They have been on CNBC, and they have been on Wall Street Journal, and they've been on Barron's and Reuters and interviewed all these places. Some of them have written books, they have all these letters after their name. So CP, FP, and XYZ and ABC and all these different letters that are supposed to mean something. So as your Oh, I'm really excited. So I read the book, and I will tell you on a score of one to five, you know, like on Amazon, one to five stars, I'm going to give it a one. I don't think you should waste your time or your money on this one. You can get it zero probably get zero, but I think one is good. Even if you can give it here. I think I'm still doing a one. Because the people did seem like they were honestly and openly talking about their own investments. Is that harsh? I don't know. I mean, that's my opinion. And I am saying that not because they're not nice people, not because they, you know, don't know what they're doing. But these people are holding themselves out as financial experts. Right? They are even saying this 25 financial experts. That's what it says on the back of the book. And they go on TV and they go on the radio, and they go on articles and newspapers and blogs and they tell people what to do as financial experts, not to me, an expert is not somebody who's struggling, but it is somebody who has already reached the goal that I want to get to. And that can help me - they've already reached the mountaintop. You know, and they're putting their hand out and saying here, hold my hand, I'll pull you up. I don't want to hire an expert that is five levels below me. Does that make sense? Especially when it comes to money management. Now, like I said, all these people have degrees, they all have appeared on TV and magazine. Many of them have gotten awards, like the 40, under 40 Award in their financial, whatever, you know, it's a financial money manager or 40, under 40 in financial management. That means they've been managing money for around 10 years, which is we've been in a bull market for 10 years. So these experts have never even traded or invested or manage money in a bear market - in a really tough market. You know, we had Corona, we had the March, we're on a bear market, but that doesn't really count. Good. we bounced right up in a month. Right. None of these people even remember the.com bubble. They weren't I don't know, they were like, what, eight years old, the.com bubble, they don't remember the S&L scandal in the 80s and how that happened. They don't remember what happened when, in the 70s. When inflation was super sky high, maybe they read books about it, you know. But to me, that's not really an expert, they don't have the experience to back it up. Now, I'm not that old. I'm 44. So I'm a little bit older than some of these people. But I do remember what it was like trading my own money, through the Great Recession, not even play with other people's money. That was my own money, what was on the line. These people, they don't play with their own money, they risk your mind. Because they're managers. They're not investors, they're not traders. They're not wealth creators, right? So if you're looking for really great financial advice or strategies, this is not the book, I would say that out of all these financial these 25 experts, I would say only three of them are actually really wealthy. Three of them could be defined to me as a financial expert, someone who is wealthy, and by wealthy, I mean that they could stop working today, and they have enough income and assets so that they don't have to work for the rest of their lives. That is well, that, to me is the goal. The goal is not for me to retire at 70 years old, and hope the money lasts for the rest of my life. That's the goal for these people. For most of these people, that's what they help people do. That's not the kind of expert I was expecting. So that's why I'm a little ticked, you know, out of the three in the book that are really wealthy, one of them got lucky with venture capital. He has a management company, where he is a partner in the money management company. He doesn't do any of the money management. He is a partner, he made an investment in a money management company. But he's really a venture capitalist, the second guy, he made all of his money in real estate, he admits it. He's like, Yeah, I don't do this. He has another, you know, he's a partner in a money management company. And that's how they made it into the book. But he made all his money in real estate. So he wouldn't know how to manage money. I mean, I don't think you should hold yourself out as an expert until you've actually achieved the thing that you're an expert in. Right? If you're a wealth advisor, you got to have some wealth, in order to be a frickin advisor about wealth. The one thing that all these people said in the book is that almost all of them own their own business, all of them own their own business. And for them, that is their largest investment and their largest asset. And that's really cool. That's great. You're a small business owner, or somebody, they're doing really well. So it's a medium business owner. So these folks, they make money by managing other people's money. They don't make it by investing, or trading. They spend most of their time looking for new clients. And that's probably why they agreed to be in the book for the exposure. You know, it's like being on TV, they get exposure, people see them and like, Oh, this person sounds smart. Maybe I should call them up and see if they can take care of money. So most of these people spend their time looking for exposure, looking to do marketing, looking to make new clients, they need more clients, so that they can have more assets to manage, so they can make more money. And then when they get a client, what do they do? Do they manage the money? Do they trade it invested? Do they come up with a real good plan? Well, they try to come up with a plan, but then they put the money in investments that are managed by others. So they're like the middleman. And that's not definitely not the advisor that I would want. You know, if I want a goal, if I have a goal and say, Hey, I need to get to this location. I wanted to get advice and directions from a person who's already been there before. Who knows the pitfalls, who's been there, done it, hopefully multiple times. That's the kind of person I want to give me directions and leading the way. I'll follow that person. Right. There was one girl on this, bless her heart. She is a financial expert, like everybody else in the book, you know, giving advice to everybody. And then she admits that she is Saving money in a savings account or bank hoping that when she turns 40, she'll be able to afford a trip to Hawaii. That's not what I was expecting when they say financial expert. You know, somebody who can't afford a trip to Hawaii doesn't really have total - what's the word? You know, the total control of their finances? You're not there yet. I mean, you're working hard, you're struggling. There's nothing wrong with that. That's great. That's awesome. You know, save that money. And go, or I mean, if you're listening to this, I got some frequent flyer miles, maybe just just reach out to me, I'll give you I'll send you a new trip on your flight to Hawaii. Really, please. It just broke my heart when I read that. I was like, man, but you know, I mean, they say that money management. The whole business of money management is where people that drive Toyota's are giving advice to people who own Rolls Royces. And it's true. 100% true. I mean, that is why the retirement situation is country's so screwed up. I mean, you got the blind leading the blind. And these people are the ones in this book. They're not average money managers. They're the top of the class, the cream of the crop, right? They won all the awards. Imagine if you don't have one of these money managers, and you just have an average money manager. Ouch, that's really sad. You know, you get some guy from Edward Jones or Ameriprise or something like that, Oh, my goodness, that's painful. But what the the co author of the book and I said, you know, Josh Brown is listed as the author. But he does, he does have a co author and it does seem that the book was done by the co author, Josh brown probably just wrote one little section. But it does look that the co author did hold the work and got all these information from all these people. You know, at the end, he tells you what you should take away from the book. And he says that these are people just like you and me, they have struggled, you know, they have to go through life, just like all of us. And that the important thing is not the money and money is not that important. But the other things that we value is the most important thing in life. And that's great. That's great advice. I love that advice. that money's not that important. But if it was coming from a life coach, that would make a lot more sense. Maybe a spiritual advisor, you know, that would make a lot more sense. Not from a wealth advisor. Okay, not from someone who's managed or entrusted to manage and grow my financial assets. Does that make sense? It's kind of like the doctor, you know, telling you Well, you know, getting healthy. I know, that's my job getting you healthy and keeping you healthy. But that's not the most important thing. Yeah, the most important thing is spending time with your family. Yeah, Doc, I know that. But your job is to keep me healthy. Can you do your job or not? Or do I need to go find another doctor? Same thing with these guys. If you're not wealthy as an advisor, how are you going to make anybody else?  Well, you can't. And that's why most of them are putting their money in like passive investments, not passive trading, but passive as in index funds. And they say that I go, I'm a firm believer in index funds from people give me money, I put it in an ETF. People give money, I put it in a bond fund, they can do that on their own. Why do they need you, Mister financial expert? You know, Vanguard is open anybody, anybody can open an account, the vanguard put their money away. And if they don't want to invest, or they don't want to trade or they don't care, they don't know anything about the market didn't want to know, then that's the great place, they should go put it in Vanguard and they don't need a money manager charging them fees, for no reason. I mean, after reading this book, it really makes me value what we are doing here at Option, Genius, teaching people about passive trading. And how I mean, it's actually making a difference in people's lives. I mentioned earlier that I talked to a fellow named Matt earlier. And this guy, super nice guy works at Costco drives a forklift. I mean, he's a hard working guy, right. But he spent the last year learning how to trade options. Why? Because it can make a difference in his life. He's at the point now where he made $500 in a month by selling options. And it blew his mind. That $500 opened up a whole new world gave him hope, hope that other financial experts are not providing. So we don't have just, you know, passive trading is not a book. It's not just a couple of words. It's not just a trademark. It's an actual movement. And we are changing people's lives. After reading all this and looking at, you know what these people are doing? I mean, I think it might be time for me to start a money management firm, because people need better choices. It might just be time for me to do that. You know, nobody else is stepping up. Me and might as well do it, then.I don't know. Anyway, so that's the book. Don't get it. Don't waste your time. Let's get on to me, right? How I invest. This is a question that I get asked all the time. People like, Hey, you know, you're telling us to do this and do that. And do you actually do all this stuff? Of course, I do all this stuff, what am I gonna tell you do something I don't do myself, right. So a few episodes ago, I did a show on scaling. I talked about vertical scaling, horizontal scaling. And I explained about a mistake I made. I don't know if it was a mistake. But it was just a way my situation was where I started off with several different trading accounts. Many of them were retirement accounts. But because of that, they were very small. So I had several simple small accounts. When you have small accounts, it's harder to have 100 shares, so that you can actually go and sell covered calls or naked puts, right, you can still do spreads, you're on a few shares. But if you take all that money, put it together one account, it's easier to make you grow. But that's my situation. It is what it is, right? So I'll tell you right now, I have currently 14 different accounts that I manage directly, like our retirement accounts. So these are, I have a Roth IRA, my wife has one, my three kids have a Roth IRA, I don't qualify, I make too much to put money in the Roth IRA. So now I have an open regular IRA accounts for me in my life. So that's what four or 567 accounts right there. And then I have several Sep accounts that I have from three different companies that I worked at, probably should consolidate, those just haven't gotten around to it. So 10 accounts are just retirement accounts. And then I also have an HSA account that I can manage. We have other accounts that I just oversee, like the kids 529 plans, I don't get to manage that. So that's fine. I also have Well, let me tell you what to do in the retirement accounts. And retirement accounts is just passive trading, straight up high quality stocks that pay dividends. Dividends are reinvested automatically, you know, I just you go into your account, you check the box and say, Yes, I want dividends reinvested automatically, you don't want to deal with it. And then I sell options on these stocks for extra yield. So whether it's covered calls or naked puts, sometimes even credit spreads once in a while, but in retirement accounts, it's basically plain vanilla, simple, passive trading, okay. And these accounts have been growing and growing and growing up to the point where, you know, there's a lot of money in these accounts. And maybe I need to be diversified, right? less money in the stock market. In addition to these, I also have two accounts where I trade oil options exclusively. So I enjoy trading oil options. It is one of the programs that we offer. And so these two accounts are for that one's a small one that I use in our class. And then the other one's a larger one, I also have a regular trading account that I use for my membership trades. So we have three memberships at option genius that you can join, we give trades, our loads, we have option genius, the advisory, we have Simon says options, and weekly trading system, all of those give trades every month. So I do every single one of those trades in my own account with real money. You know, basically, I'm putting my money where my mouth is, so I give you a losing trade, you know, I lost money on it, too. I think there's only fair, unlike a lot of other gurus and whatnot that you know, they don't really trade, I'm actually doing the trade. And then I have a trading account, that is a much larger trading account that I'm putting more money into. So I want that one to really, really grow. And then in addition to that, I have another trading account, that is a managed account. So it's friend’s, I'm managing that account, and I have complete access to do whatever I want in that account. All right. In addition to that, I do have partnership in a real estate investment company. So that is basically me and my friend, a friend of ours, a friend of mine, actually sorry. And what he does is he does the work, I put up the money. So he goes and he finds houses that are beaten up broken down, and he'll buy them, fix them and then flip them. And then now we're adding rentals to that. So if we don't sell the property right away, then we will rent the house out. And now we're generating passive income from the rental of the houses as well. Secondly, in real estate, I have an investment in a land fund. So this is a friend of mine. He's been in real estate for over a decade, maybe two decades now, the last four years, he's been doing something that he calls, it's called land flipping, but something similar to that where he goes out and he will buy huge amounts of acreage of raw land. So maybe 200 300 acres, you'll negotiate it by that and then he will subdivide it into small tracks. So like 10 acres each, like a little Ranch, and then he will sell those to individuals. So he takes you know, he goes out and buys a whole big thing and cuts it up into little pieces and then sells those little pieces off and he can double or triple his money every time he does. So he's been doing really, really well the last few years and then he decided to You know what, he doesn't have enough money to make it grow really big. So he started a fund in order to get money from other investors, so that he can do really, really bigger deals. You know, so instead of doing like a million dollar deal or $2 million, he and now you do $5 million deal. So he raised the money for that I invested in there, he pays me 50% a year, that's a good investment.  I don’t have to do anything, I'm diversified. He's gonna pay that money, because that's what he has agreed to. And then, you know, is it risky to invest in a fund for somebody else, it's somebody else's managing? I think it is, you know, you got to always have the mindset of what could go wrong. and in this situation, I gave him the money because A, I know this guy, I've known him for a long time, that doesn't mean he can't, you know, rip me off and take the money and run. But B, this guy is a very meticulous person. So he looks at all the numbers, he's got spreadsheets for everything he knows down to the penny, what his net worth is. And he tracks it all the time. And so he is very careful about every single penny that he spends, and what the fund spends. And so I trust him, he's been a good friend. And he's very meticulous, exactly the way I would want somebody to be managing money to be. And he showed me the results that he's been doing. He's been doing amazing. He showed me the numbers, little black and white Look, here's what we're doing. We just ordered more. And so the money's been in there for a couple years now. And he's been doing amazing. So he makes a lot more he pays 15%. I'm happy with it. I also have investments in cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin that's been doing well, I want to buy more, if it comes back down, right now, it's pretty high. But eventually, I think long term is going to go much higher. So I have that. And then I do have ownership in some small businesses. So I like to help people that are looking to start up their own business. And so if they have a good idea, maybe if they have some experience, people have come to me and say, Hey, this is my idea, this is what I want to do. And I love marketing. That's my thing. You know, I enjoy trading a lot. But I really enjoy marketing, and psychology. So I tell them, okay, I'll invest with you, I'll give you some money, you're going to run the business. And I'm going to help with marketing. And so that's what I did with my other friend with the real estate investment company, he came to me and said, Hey, I would like to start flipping houses, but I don't have the money. Okay, I could put up the money, we'll do have an app, you do the work, I'll put up the money. So that's I have other businesses that I am also invested in, and I get income from there. So the other question that I often get, so that's how I've invested my money. That's what the different things we have. The question I get is, Alan, do you actually make money from trading? Or do you get it from your company? Option Genius? Well, it's a tricky question, because I do both. Right, option genius is growing, and it's doing well, it's helping people. And the only reason that we're growing is because we're helping people. And I believe that our prices are relatively cheap compared to what other people are charging for inferior information. And so what we're doing well, do I take out the money from my training accounts to live off of? Yes, and no, if you go back to the beginning episodes, I talked about the five finger strategy where you get to five different sources of income, so that if anyone gets cut off, you know, you're still okay, you got the four other income sources, and then the fifth one hopefully, will grow back. The other thing you can do when you have that is that if one of them is doing really, really well, you don't have to take the money out. So my trading account, the last several years, have been doing amazingly well, last year was a record breaking year. So I'm just letting the money sit in there and grow and grow and grow. And I don't need to take it out to live. Because I have the other sources. It wasn't always like that, in the beginning, I was living off the trading. Now. I just live off whatever cash flows coming in. If I don't need to take the money out of the trading accounts, I could let them grow. If the stock market starts dropping, then yeah, I'm gonna take that money out, I'm gonna live off that money. I'm gonna take it out and use it. That's fine. But if something is growing, like if I have a new business that I invest in, right, and it starts doing well, I don't want to take that money out. I want that money to be reinvested in the business so that the business continues to grow. It doesn't make a lot of sense to take, oh, yeah, I need you know, I own 50% of this business around 25% of this, I want my money out, I want to, you know, if we made X dollars every month, I want 25% of that. That's not going to help the business grow. You can do that technically, Yes, fine. If you need to you do it. But if you don't have to, that doesn't make any sense. Reinvest the money back in to whatever is working, let it grow. Because what I've seen is that there are seasons, you know, I've talked about the waves. Things are going to be going really, really good. And then they're going to not be going good. And they're going to go down and they're going to get worse and I Oh my god, I can't get any worse, and then that's when things start getting better. So while things are going good, you got to keep your floor your foot to the pedal foot to the floor, whatever, put the pedal to the floor, there we go, put the pedal to the floor, what things are going good. And then when they stop, when they slow down, that's when you can reevaluate and be like, Alright, what am I gonna do? And that's when you take the money out. So it's really a tricky question, hopefully, you know, for being as open as I can. Hopefully, this helps you. And you know, in the beginning, everybody's not going to have this much, you're not going to have all that it's taken me a while several years to get to this point, you know, where I have so many different accounts and the investments in real estate and investment in other companies and the investment, other investments in whatever. So it does take a while. Don't think that you're going to get there right away in the beginning is just pay. Let me find one strategy that works. Let me start generating some cash. And if you need the money, you can take it out. If you already retired. There's no reason to make that count grow. Right? Whatever you make, take it out, take it out, enjoy it. But if you're like my friend Matt, you know who's still in his 40s he's still working. He's paying 500 bucks a month from auctions. Put that money back in your account, leave it there, keep it growing, keep it growing. Let the compound interest grow, and let it compound your account into tons and tons of money exponential growth. So that's my two cents for this episode. Hope you found it valuable. And remember, always trade with the odds in your favor. Take care. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Passive traders. Let me welcome you to 2021. One of the resolutions this year was that I was going to have a podcast episode every week. But this is the first episode of The New Year. And you are probably listening to this in February, which means I am behind, I apologize, I'm going to do my best to make it up and catch up and have at least one episode every week, if not more, depending on what's going on in the markets and whatever lessons I need to impart. So hopefully, we'll be able to take care of that and catch up. I wanted to say thank you for having a wonderful 2020. Corona aside, you know, that impacted everyone's lives to some degree, those of you who lost people, I'm greatly sorry, and my condolences. But when you look at the market and overall economy, not the economy, but the stock market economy and the stock market are two different things. We learned that in 2020, the returns and the investments that we made in the markets and our options trades did amazingly well. Amazingly, amazingly, well, I don't know if we're gonna have another year like that anytime soon. Passive trading, just keep but all of the strategies worked amazingly well. We have students that didn't have a losing trade all year, as hard as that to believe. You know, I know I had losing trades, but they showed me their results. And it's like, no losing trades the entire year, and they're doing fantastic. And they've continued to 2021. In this episode, I did want to talk about what we can expect in 2021, and how we can make money from it. So, you know, 2021 started relatively calm. We didn't have any issues with the inauguration, Biden took control, and Trump left peacefully, no big deals, no rights, no, cool, no, nothing big. I mean, we have a little issue at the Capitol for a day. And those guys were beaten back and they left. And now there's investigations and all that going on. But, you know, the government seems to be running smoothly. The Democrats do have control of the Senate and the House and the Senate, they have a 5050 with the tiebreaker. So they can get more stuff passed, but they don't have complete control, because a lot of issues, they do need 60 votes in the Senate. So they're gonna have to get all of their dems to vote in that favor, and then they'll have to have 10 Republicans to vote for them. So that's probably not going to be an easy thing for them, that's gonna keep a damper on things, meaning that they don't get to pass every single thing that they want to pass, which is a good thing. Right? I think when it comes to politics, the less laws they pass, the better the last day and a few of the better. And I will agree with Trump on that, that every time they pass a law, they should take out a loan. No. But it is what it is. And as soon as long as we have, you know, one, either the House or the Senate in one control, and the other party controls the other one, that's fine, that's great, it works best. And the market does the best in those and people are normally happier. When you have both of them being controlled by one party, things can get really out of control. The biggest thing for us is the Fed, the Fed continues to keep saying that they're going to keep rates at zero, they're waiting for inflation to come up. And they're expecting more and more stimulus from the government. So as long as the rates are at zero, as long as the Fed is continuing to pump money, markets are going to continue to move higher. as they've done the last several years, we've had a very fed induced bull market that has just pushed stocks higher and higher and higher. And we're probably going to continue higher. That doesn't mean that they can't go down. In the meantime, we could easily have a 10% correction, we normally get those once a year. easily. We can have overdue for one soon. Does that mean it's time to bail? No, maybe you take some profits. And then if it comes down, then maybe you get back in, you buy the dip, because as long as offense keeping rates too low, it doesn't make any sense for why the market will not go up. We also have the democrats and Biden pushing for more stimulus and more unemployment coming. So that's going to go towards people that are sitting at home and a lot of these youngsters have decided to put their unemployment checks and their stimulus checks and go gamble in the stock market. And so we have a lot of speculation, a lot of pumping of stocks, like what they used to do and the penny stocks really pump and dump that's going on right now. With GameStop and AMC and all these other stocks that are just jumping up for no reason. The beaten up names like those, they are going to continue to be volatile. You know, don't expect similar things in other companies to cruise lines, airlines, all those companies. If there is a small chance, you know that a beat company or company is about to go out of business is going to turn around or have some good news, there's going to be somebody to pilot in there, and then they're going to promote it and say, Hey, this is great good buy this, buy this, buy this, and then the stock will rally. So just keep an eye out for that doesn't mean that it's a bad thing, necessarily, it's part of the way the market works, of course, over corrections or whatnot, it's fine. As long as the hedge funds don't get killed, I'm happy. Or if they do get killed, I'm still happy. The only time I'm not happy is when they get killed, and they have to dump all their stock, which leads to a few down days in the stock market. A lot of times in the history, you know, financial news doesn't cover it. But you know, if the market goes down three or 4% 5%, in a couple of weeks, or in one week, especially, it's because there was some very large player that blew up. And they had to sell everything in order to satisfy their margin calls that might be going on right now as we speak. Market was down today. And it might be because of that. So we'll see. Now, what's going to do well in 2020. Right, let me take a look at the agenda for Mr. Biden, the environmental names should continue to do well. So who is that? Well, the electric companies, the companies, anything related to electric power, wind power, solar power, and all of the solar names. So there is a ETF called Tam ta n, which covers them, I own that. It's done amazingly well in 2020. And I expect it to continue to go up as long as Biden is pumping more federal money into alternative energy. I believe the cannabis companies are also going to be doing the marijuana companies, you know, they haven't done well, that launch for the past few years. But the democrats are more favorable towards marijuana and making it legal. Maybe there's a push to make it legal nationwide, I don't know, we'll see. I don't know if they have the votes to approve that or get it passed. But they'll probably be relaxing some laws and make it easier for these companies to do something. So that's definitely gonna, if anything changes in that regard, these companies are just gonna shoot up super high. Infrastructure companies are also going to be doing well. You know, the companies that build the roads, pipelines, all that kind of stuff. Caterpillar is one united rentals. Another one, that's a good quick way to get jobs and people back to work is to start building stuff, looking at building homebuilders and construction companies going to continue to do well, home builders, usually they stay in the suburbs. And that's where everybody's moving to, there is a shortage of homes in the suburbs. And so they are doing really, really well, lumber prices are through the roof. Right. But that's because there's so much demand. And with rates, so low, people are going to continue to be moving to the suburbs, people are leaving California, they're leaving Texas, they're leaving all these states that have very high taxes, and they're moving to places like Florida and Texas and Tennessee, which have zero state tax, and land is plentiful, and there are plenty of cheap properties here. So if you've been thinking about moving to Texas, come on down water, fine. It's hot as hell. But other than that, you know, if the mosquitoes don't get you, you'll be fine. What's gonna suffer is I believe the rates. So if you have a read, it's probably not going to do well probably going to drop and there might even cut the rates or the dividends. Office Building rates aren't going to suffer. Urban Development rates are going to suffer people, you know, reach that focus on properties inside major cities. And the malls are going to continue to do poorly. I just went to one of the biggest malls in Texas are not Texas, but in Houston. And there was nobody there. Weekends are pretty busy. Because we have a lot of people coming in from Mexico to Houston. But with Corona, they've closed the board on again. And so there's less, there's still people coming. But there's less weekday man places dead. There was nobody there. I don't know how they're paying rent. But those are going to suffer the stocks that shot up in 2020. In the work at home stocks, I believe they are going to suffer because they're they're going to be tapped out. There's not that much more demand for something like a DocuSign. And most people that were going to start a Shopify store or you know, something like that they've already done, and they're going to realize that it's harder than it looks. And they're probably going to lose customers because people are going to quit, you know, when they were all excited. And yeah, I'm going to work at home. I'm going to open my own online business and I'm going to go open a Shopify store. Okay, great. And then it takes a few months for you to realize that it's not that easy, and Shopify is expensive, so I'm gonna shut this down. So I think Shopify and DocuSign and those types of companies will do that, or do poorly, not as well, not for me, I guess, but not as well as it did and so the stocks are not going to rise. The unknown. Really healthcare, healthcare is an unknown. We don't know how they're going to react. Some of them are going to do well because of the vaccine rollouts. Others are not because there's a shortage in Drugs, there's a shortage in pills. And so if they can't sell their pills, and they're not going to make a lot of money, also oil companies, that's a strange one, right? oil companies are unknown. Yeah, because oil is trending higher, oil dropped considerably. And then since the drop, it's been going back over, it's up to 60. And at $60 a barrel, a lot of oil companies, they make money. So oil companies, I think will do well, better than they did last year. Even with the headwinds, the reopening trade itself, like I said, I think that's going to continue to suffer. And the reopening trade is basically cruise lines, airlines travel company, you know, entertainment places, all those places are going to continue to suffer, because Corona is not going away. We having the vaccine rollout, that's fine. But Corona itself is not going to go away. And the new variants and the new strains that are coming are coming fast and furious. It's not just one Corona, it's several Corona and then you're having there's one from South America, there's one from Brazil, there's one from the UK, and then who knows, we might have some of our own. So yes, the drug companies and the makers of the vaccines are gonna have to stay on top of this. And probably, they're probably going to start changing the vaccine and make us take more than one next. So that's going to be a very interesting scenario where, you know, oh, you have the vaccine from this company. Okay, great. Well, now you gotta go and get it from this company, too, because this one doesn't cover from that. And it doesn't cover that it's going to be, we're not out of the woods yet. Overall, though, it's still a stock pickers market. I've said that last year, I said it over and over again, every stock did not do good. The markets themselves overall did well, because they were carried by certain stocks, every stock not too well. It's going to be contained, some stocks are gonna be trending higher, some stocks are going to be in the toilet, some stocks are just gonna be going sideways, and some are gonna go up, and then they're gonna go down and they go up, and then most of them should rise until the Fed takes away the Punchbowl. Until the Fed starts making comments, they start changing. When they have their, you know, their meetings and their posts and their speeches, when they start changing their vocabulary. That's when things are going to go south. And if the market gets spooked, and if they think that the Fed is gonna start raising rates, as soon as that idea takes shape, we're gonna go straight down, and it might be more than 20%. So I'm gonna be very afraid, because this move higher has been really, really extended. Probably never liked this anything happened before. And everybody's talking about, oh, are we in a bubble in a bubble in a bubble? Well, if you're talking about a bubble, then you might be in a bubble, right. And it's an artificial bubble created by the Fed, and they know it, and they're looking for it, and they're waiting for inflation to increase while inflation is already here. Right? Well, prices are up food prices are up, I don't know what the hell they're looking for, or why they haven't noticed it. But they're gonna see it, they're looking at unemployment, you know, unemployment is still there, because of the virus unemployment, it's gonna stay there for a while. So I don't know where this goes, I don't know, if they're gonna be able to have a smooth landing. The first time they had QE. And after all that great depression, Great Recession stuff. Janet Yellen was in charge of the Fed, and they kind of had a smooth landing, you know, they were doing a lot of quantitative easing, but then they started taking it away taking away, she's now in charge of the Treasury, which might be a good thing, because she's had experience with this. And she might be able to help the Fed, if there are any issues. So that's positive. But if we see something like that, then definitely I believe the market is going to tank. And so until then, we're free to enjoy the spoils and have the market go up. When that happens, put some hedges on very, very quickly, get out of your, your bullish trades, lower the low, cut back on some of your positions, and then just wait and see what happens. And eventually things will recover. And we will continue to be selling options, our positions. And we will continue to do well. We just might have some hiccups this year coming up. So beware of those, you know, expect, expect the hiccup don't expect to be making money every single month. Expect hiccups to come. And that will keep you on guard and vigilant. Now, that's it for my 2021 promotion or  predictions. I do want to thank everybody that turned out and supported us for the live event that we had a couple weeks ago in January. It was amazing. We had a lot of fun. We had a lot of people show up. It went off beautifully. I was you know, nervous and scared and everything went wonderfully well. I mean, the second day in the morning, before we got started, we actually lost our internet in the office. That kind of freaked us out. We're like oh no internet. But then, you know, five minutes later it hopped back on and we were able to start off without a hitch so that was wonderful. We got overwhelmingly positive reviews and comments from everyone that attended. So thank you so much. Thank you for that. I really appreciate And people have been asking, when's the next one? When's the next one? I don't know. So far, I don't have plans for our next one for high probability trading that we did. But I do think that I would like to do one for futures options. So, you know, maybe we'll do a one day, this time, basically cover futures options, and why they're important, why you should be looking at those as a good way to diversify away from stock options, you don't have to leave completely, but I believe there's a lot of that's the new untapped market. And so, you know, a lot of speculators and stuff are really coming in to the stock market game. But in the futures market, it's wide open. And we just have to go in and take advantage of it. So I think I'm going to do a one day live event training on futures options and how to trade them and what to look for, and the differences and the pros and cons and all that stuff, how to get approved and whatnot. So if you're interested in that, please let us know. Send us an email help@optiongenius.com. We'll put you on a waiting list. We don't have one now, but we'll put you on it. And we'll let you know when that comes. In the meantime, I hope you have an amazing year. Merry, merry, happy new year to you and your family. I hope you have another great year. You know, stay vigilant in terms of trading wise it should be in good year, but it might be a little bit Rocky. Other than that, I'll be here. So if you have any questions, you can always email me and we will trade it together. All right. Take care and remember to trade with the odds in your favor. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

It's time to get real. This is gonna be the last episode of 2020. We're recording this in early December of 2020, we're going to get it out to the last week. And it's been quite a year. Definitely. And who knows what's gonna happen next year, we never expected all this stuff to happen this year. Hopefully, it's been a good year for you. It's been an amazing year. For those of us who have been in the markets and long markets, and long stocks. It's been incredible. It's amazing. You can't go online and not run into somebody posting how much money they're making, just buying calls, a lot of people are gambling, a lot of people are gambling, that doesn't mean passive traders have not done really well at all, we've done amazingly well. And, you know, the numbers are just astounding to me, as I am on this journey with you, you know, I have enough that the income from my investments allows me to do whatever I want. But it's not billionaire status. And so, you know, as the accounts grow, as the numbers get bigger and bigger and bigger, I'm having a hard time mentally focusing and realizing like, oh, wow, what the heck is going on, it's just keeps increasing, increasing. So I'm facing that issue. But I know a lot of you are facing several different issues. So what I want to know and I want you to focus on is 2020 happened, things happened. Market was the way it was COVID, Corona, whatever you want to call it, market shut down a lot of job losses, there were stimulus fed everything. 2021 is gonna be a way different year. And it's nobody knows what to expect. But it's going to be different. It's gonna be different from this year, vaccines coming soon, hopefully, who knows. And things will get back to normal in terms of people going out and traveling, some of the economy will come back a lot of the economy's not going to come back. How are you going to play it? What are you going to do differently? One of the things that we are doing is in the first week of January, we're having our first ever event. So a live event, it's going to be two days, January 8, and 9th. And I want to invite you to come hang out with me. Let's talk, let's learn, let's trade let's train, please go to optiongenius.com/live to get all the details. Go ahead, check it out, see what we have, we got some guest speakers coming. Got a lot of great content of how to take you to the next level. Wherever you had now, wherever you were, how to get you to the next level. What skills do you need? What do you need to overcome? What's stopping you break through all the boundaries? Make your goals say hey, this is what I want. This is where I'm now. How do I get there? Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang? What are the steps 1234. And we're gonna just knock it out. So we're gonna be asking questions when we talking live, there's an opportunity for you to be one on one with me as well. We're gonna have some hot seats, you know, bring people on say, all right, show me Let's go. Let's diagnose it. This is some coaching right right now. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. Please, if you can't make it, there's a you can get the recordings. So optiongenius.com/live, I am very, very, very nervous. To be honest with you, and seriously, like, you know, I've told my team like, Hey, we're doing this, but in my mind, I'm like, oh, man, do I really have to do this? Or do I want to do this, but we have so many people on the announcement list. And so we're like, yep, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's plan it. You know, it's not going to be a pitch fest. We got speakers, but they're not selling anything not gonna be having, you know, “buy this product and buy” this product and buy this product. No, none of that stuff is just real live learning, trading, working in like a workshop type event. So I hope to see you there. It would be amazing to show your support. If the podcast has helped you in any way. It would be nice if you came in just gave me some moral support and be like, yeah, you're doing great, good job. We love you or whatever. You don't have to love me but you know what I mean? You know, it's the introvert in me talking. It's the the lack of confidence, I guess in front of getting up in front of people and being like okay on the spot. Let's just talk because it's This podcast is like me, I'm just sitting here. Nobody's watching me. I'm just recording this. I know what to say. And I can say it. But live is a totally different story. You know, you mess up. There's everybody watching you “Oh, no what I do now? Oh, anyway, but it's time to get real. You know, we need to get to the next level a year of our life has gone by, and we've been cooped up. So it felt a lot longer than normal. But how closer are you to your goals? How close are you to the things you want it? Only you can answer that question. And how can we get you to them faster? That's the real thing. You know, whatever it is you want out of life. We can't just sit around and wait. We can't take our time. We want to push the envelope. We want to push the gas pedal down. And we want to fly. Right. And I mean yesterday. Poof last night, I took the family out to go see some lights. And you know, the Christmas lights. And it was it was fun. It was a lot of fun. It was a great we had a great time. But on the way there. The Google Maps took me down like a shortcut or something, was up there made road to digital shortcut. And it was this little lane, not even highways, just a little road houses on both sides, no divider in the middle, nothing. And I'm going pretty quickly. It's dark, not really too many lights. And all of a sudden there's a railroad track that comes cuts across the road. Now, if you've seen railroad tracks you going over them sometimes they're flat, sometimes they're hilly, this one was hilly. And I did not slow down. I did not hit the brake. I went at it as fast as I was going and yeah, man we flew, the minivan flew. And it was fun. It wasn't fun when we hit the ground, the bumper, like scraped the grout, the kids are like they were I don't know what they were sleeping when they were quiet. And we heard them like when we went airborne. And then when the van started going down, and we hit you know, the ground again, you heard the kids in the back, *Kush* fall back down in their chairs were literally up in the air. They had their seatbelts on, thank god knew probably would got heard otherwise. But yeah, you heard that boom, Daddy, what's going on? Yeah, but he was a lot of fun, it's fun to fly. You know, sometimes it's fun. Sometimes you got to put the brakes on. And 2020 was a hard year for a lot of people. But it's time to buckle down and say, all right, we can't do that. Again, it's not time to buckle down anymore. We need to push, we need to get better, we need to do things we need to move forward. And so that's why we're doing this live event. That's why I'm breaking out of my comfort zone, trying something new is like alright, you know, everybody's still at home. Everybody knows how to use zoom, this is great. Everybody can understand what we're doing now. So you don't have to fly. You don't have to rent a hotel, you don't have to buy food, do it at home in your pajamas. That's great. I wish I could be in my pajamas. I might be, who knows? I might be in my pajamas.. but it's making everything so connected more, even though we are not connected physically, we'll be online, we're able to see each other, it's gonna be a very interesting experience. I'm definitely sure that you're going to take something out of it, you're going to learn something, and you're going to get your questions answered, or we're going to work on getting you whatever you need to go to the next level. So I hope you do Join us now. In terms of going in the future, like what do you do? If you haven't, go get the passive trading book. I would start there and say, Hey, what's the roadmap? What's the game plan? And basically, that's what we're doing on the live event. We're like, okay, where are our people now? Where do they want to go? And how do we get there? What are the steps? 1-2-3-4 however many steps are? How do we get there? And that's what we're going to go through. So once you register, email me, and let me know where you are, and let me know where you want to be. And I can use that when we're creating the content. So the steps are, you know, we understand the steps were like, okay, we need a strategy, we need to understand the market, we know how he's going to do, we need to manage our trades properly, we need to have asset allocation properly, we need to be safe, so we're not, you know, risking a lot of money and losing it for what-not. And then we need to build and we need to invest properly. And that's how we do the passive trading. So we're gonna cover those in detail in depth on the training, and I can't wait. So I guess this episode has turned into an advertisement. Live event. I didn't mean to. I'm just really excited about it. So I really appreciate you guys listening the whole year. And we've been doing this episode. I think we're doing this the second or third year of the podcast. I'm not even sure I think we got we're getting close to 100 episodes. So I think it took us three years to get there. But I appreciate everything I appreciate you appreciate our customers, you know, you guys, the fact that you are listening to this, you give me an outlet, and you give me a way to help, and a way to give back so much that I've been given. And I really would love to hold your hand and say, Hey, walk with me, let's do this together. You know, it's an amazing feeling. And one of the things like one of the mentors that I have, he says that you get so much when you are doing it yourself, but you don't really, really understand it, and really, really learn it until you help somebody else do it. And so it's a progression, you know, and that's what option genius has allowed me to do. That's what this podcast allowed me to do. The passive trading formula or oil options program all our memberships, it is just, it's, I am so grateful and amazed. And like, really, you know, we announced a live event a week ago, by now it's been three weeks or four weeks. And we put out and said, hey, you know, if you're interested, go to this website, and let us know, you know, give us your name and email address and get on the list. And we had a ton of people, that first email that I sent out, I wasn't even talking about this. It was just like two lines at the bottom of the email. And we had like, 80 people signed up right away. Like what? That many people are interested in coming to a live event listening to me talk. Wow, I mean, we do have 1000s of people listening to me talk on every episode, but it's just, you know, every step you take is like, Okay, this is a new thing to do. Do people actually listen? Are they gonna show up? That's a no, oh, my god, it's gonna be live. What if nobody shows up? What if they think I'm crazy? What do they all make fun of me? Oh, no, you know. But it's time to go to the next level, it's time to go to the next steps. And you got to get out of your comfort zone as well. So if you haven't been trading, I'm telling you, you missed out on a great, great, great year of an opportunity. Next year, my assumption is that we're going to be the markets still going to be heading higher into the first couple months, at least after that things will very calm down, the volatility will go away. And we might have a correction, we might have a bear market next year or 10% 20% down, I don't know how much. But once the Fed stops printing everything, once the economy starts going back to normal, things will flatten out, we might have an up market next year, but it's not going to be as easy it was this year to just buy stuff and watch it go up every day. You know, that's not gonna happen, I'm almost guaranteeing that that's not gonna happen, there's gonna be a lot of sideways movement, there might be some down moves. If you don't know how to trade it, it can be scary. But we can do it together, we can hold your hand and take you along the way. And it's still, with passive trading, the way we do it, it's still a way that you can still be profitable. So you know, it's amazing. And I am living proof that it works, along with the 1000s of other people that are doing it with us. So hopefully, we'll see you on the live event. I wish that 2021 is an amazing year for you. I wish the best for you and your family. If there's anything that me and my team can do, please let us know. Thank you for everything. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your time. Thank you for all the reviews and the comments and the emails that we get from you guys. It just makes it all worthwhile.  So Happy New Year! Merry Christmas if you are into that and we will see you in the new year.  LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

What gaps in your trading are you suffering from? Yeah, I said gaps in your trading, not trading gaps. Normally, a gap is something on a chart where the stock, you know, it makes a jump in it, there's a little hole there in the chart, I'm not talking about those type of gaps. I'm talking about the gaps that occur in how well you're trading. So let me explain. Obviously, you want to be a better trader, that means you're going to make more money, that means you're going to be able to do more things in your life, you're going to have more time, you're gonna be able to buy more things that are state of mind, peace of mind, all those great things right now, you already know that hopefully, you already have an idea of what you want the money for. Of course, it's not just the money, it's, you know, break down bottom line, we want to be happier, we want to live better lives. So that's why your trading? I agree. That's great. Awesome. That's step number one, we get to know why. Right? why we're doing it. But then it comes to Okay, this is what I want, how do I get there? And it's like, we're on one side of a cliff. And then there's a chasm, right, a gap. And then there's the goal on the other side of the cliff, which is being a profitable trader. So now you have to figure out, Okay, how do I get from one side to the other. And for everybody, there's a different gap. Everybody doesn't face the same gap, but depends on many different things. So now I'm going to go through several of the gaps that are out there that trip up the most people, okay, then once you understand what your gap is, then you can go and you can fill it in. And you can take care of it. And we have resources to help you. So once you figure out what your gap is, you can email us and say, “Hey, this is my gap, how can I fill this in?” Okay, and we have programs where we look at, we've looked at all of these different gaps. And we've have, okay, in order to somebody has this gap, they get this, somebody has this gap, they get this, if somebody has this gap, they get this. So we've tried to identify every single gap that's out there, and I'm going to cover a few of them here, and how to fill them in. And that's the only way you can really get to become a successful trader is of all the gaps are filled in. Now, these are not like little potholes where you can, you know, just, oh, it's uncomfortable. But yeah, you get through it, no, these are big holes in the ground. And if you don't fill them in, if you don't take care of them properly, then they are going to stop you in your tracks and you are not going to get to your goal, even if you have all the other gaps filled in, but you have one left eating going to get there. Okay, so let me go through them. And then you can figure out which one you're suffering from, or maybe more than one. Now, the first one is the knowledge gap. So this basically means that you do not have the knowledge to go from where you are now to where you want to be. Okay. And there are different phases of the knowledge gap. Because you cannot just say, Okay, I want to be a wonderful trader, just give me all the knowledge in my head, like upload, right? Can't do that. You start slowly, slowly, slowly with the first things you don't know. And then you build on top of that. So if you are in this gap, and if you don't know what to do, if you are new to trading, if you're new to investing, or if you're new to options, whatever, you don't have the information, you start with the book “Passive Trading”, and you can get that for free at passivetrading.com/free. Just go there, get the book, start reading it, start learning it, we get other bonuses that will help you as well. And that is how you start to overcome this gap. It's not gonna happen overnight, you're gonna fill it in, fill it and fill it in enough to get by then you're going to go further and you see Oh, there's another knowledge gap. Because as you go on, as you start this road, you're going to realize what you don't know right now you don't know what you don't know. Hmm, makes sense. You do not know the things that you need to know but you still don't know. And so as you go along the road, those knowledge gaps will appear and you'll be like, Okay, I'm stuck here. I don't know how to do this. Then you find the answer. What I don't want you to do is say I have to master everything before I start. No. Let's not do that. Then you'll never start because nobody knows everything. Nobody masters everything. And especially comes to trading. Nobody masters trading ever. You do really well, but nobody masters it. Okay, nobody masters the market, you trade the market the best way you can. And you hopefully you come out successful if you trade your way, it's a proven way. So yeah, you should work, but nobody masters the market. Okay, so now you have this knowledge gap, start with that book, start with the basics. And it'll give you the information that you need to move to the next level. And then you'll get to another gap. And then you can show that in and then you can fill it in and fill it in. Okay, so that's gap number one, the knowledge gap. And this is not just one time it occurs over and over again. The second gap, very, very important. And this one most people don't have, it's the skills gap. And by they don't have meaning they suffer from this, they don't have the right skills. Okay. So what this means is that you actually know how to do the process, you actually know how to put on the trade, how to monitor it, how to manage it, how to exit it when you should, when you shouldn't, you can get a trading plan to tell you this stuff. And that will give you some knowledge. But it will not give you the skill until you do it until you do the thing over and over and over and over again, until it's in the back of your mind. It's like the back of your hand. And you could be like, yeah, I can do this in my sleep. Even then you probably gonna screw up. The other day, I put on a covered call trade, and I screwed it up. Yeah, I screwed it up. I bought 100 shares and I sold two options against it. And I later on I realized my thing, and I'm like, Oh my god, what the heck did I do, you know, the amount of money that I was supposed to make on that trade, I gave it away when I sold the second option. So now even though if the trade is going to work out, which is going to, I'm still gonna add best I'm gonna break even. So yeah, skills are very important. Okay, even after 15 years of trading, you can still mess it up. So if you mess it up, now, I don't fault you. Right, but you got to put in that effort, you got to overcome the skills gap. And the only way to do that is to just do it over and over and over and over and over again, I can't make you do it. I can't sit there and watch you do it, you have to do it. Okay, I can encourage you and on the sidelines but you got to do it. Right? If you never do it, you'll never overcome the skills gap. And we do have students, and I've seen them, I've talked to them, they want all the education, they want to buy everything. And they go through everything, and they do it multiple times. But when it comes time to actually putting on the trade, they back off, because they don't have the skill. They see that huge skill gap. And they're like, Oh, no, I don't know how to do it. Well, baby steps, baby steps, paper trade, try it, do a small little trade tiny trade, you know, so that if you lose the money, if you lose all of the money on the tiny trade, it's not going to kill you. Right, it's gonna go towards your education. It's like an investment, I'm gonna try, I'm gonna risk $100 to do this trade. And even if it blows up, that's $100, I invested into my education. And I put a trade on and I learned it. Right, I learned what not to do. In that case, if it blows up, but at least you did it you know, once you get over that hump, once you get this skills gap down. I don't know if you ever will. But just like the knowledge gap, there are different skills gap, you know, putting on the trade, that's one skill, managing the trades and finding skill, finding trades, those are all different skills, and you have to do them over and over again. Eventually, they become like second nature, and you get really, really good at it. So you know what you're doing. That's where I need you to get to, to become a really consistent successful trader, you got to overcome that gap by doing actual work. Third, the motivation gap. Now, I talked about this earlier, hopefully, you already know why you're doing this, why you want to be a trader. But if it's only to make money, that probably will not be enough. In the beginning. Let's say you have a lot of debt, you want to quit your job. See that's different. quitting your job is different from I want to make a lot of money. That's a different motivation. And I love that one I love I want to quit my job, or I need XYZ money to be able to send my kid to college, or I need this to because my car is about to die and I need to replace it. Those are better than I need more money. I want to make more money. Because more money in your bank accounts, is gonna do anything for you. You're not gonna be much happier. You're not gonna it's not gonna change the world is just numbers on a screen. So whether it's 1000 or 5000 or 10,000 on the screen, it doesn't make any difference. And eventually that wears off. First couple of times. You'll be like yeah, no a lot of money and then they'll be like, Oh, yeah, it's not that much. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I did it. Okay, I got a lot of money. I got 10,000 in my account. Yay. It'll go away. So You have to understand what is your motivation. So the motivational gap is really big for a lot of people, sometimes they don't feel the need to trade, or they know feel the need to overcome the skills gap. Now give the example of my father, right, he was motivated to make more money. And so if you put in front something in front of him, like a course, or a seminar or two day, like a two day workshop or something, he would buy it, because he was motivated to make more money. And you would actually go and do the thing, you would go and try to get the knowledge because he knew he had a knowledge gap. So you try to fill in the gap of knowledge. But then when it came time to actually doing the thing, he almost never did the thing. He never overcame the skills gap. Why? Because his motivation gap was not filled in. He wasn't motivated enough to make a bigger change, he was motivated a tiny, tiny bit, to invest in something and to try to overcome the knowledge gap. But he was not, his motivation gap was blocking him from overcoming the skills gap. So this kind of gets tricky, right? I told you, there's lots of motivation gaps, there's lots of skills gaps, there's lots of knowledge gaps, there's gaps all over the place. But you can do them if you go through the path, and you fill them in as they go along. So yeah, your motivation has to be really great. In the beginning. For me, my motivation, when I first started was my wife is working two jobs, and I want her to only work one job, and I want to be a provider in the household. I want to take care of my family. I want to have kids, I want to get out of this rinky dinky apartment, right. The only way I can do that is if I'm making money. So that was my motivation along with I don't want to go back to work because I had just gotten laid off. No, I don't want to go back to work. I need this to work. That was my motivation. And that was the same motivation for several years, until we got to the point where the money was there. It was coming. He was flowing. And then I kind of lost my way. And I was like, Okay, yeah, I'm making money. That's great. Okay, I'm kind of tired. I'm sick. I'm like, bored of life. I gotta find something. What am I gonna do? Okay, I went and I raised a, I learned how to race NASCAR's. I mean, it was like a $3,000 for a one day package. You know, we actually go and you you do a NASCAR 200 miles an hour per hour and do that. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that's great. You know, I got some adrenaline, but I'm still not motivated. You know, I don't feel like getting up in the morning. Why? What is that be motivation gap, really, really big motivation gap. And I learned that the key to filling the motivation gap, after you fill the little baby motivation, gaps of I need more money, more money. Once you have the money. The next motivation gap that comes is I need significance, I need something in my life that I'm doing that I gain significance from that I feel important that I feel growth that I feel loved. And the only when I started to train people and to teach people, that's when I started getting that. So this podcast is in a way, helping me overcome my motivation gap. So thank you for listening, I do appreciate it. I do appreciate all your support all the comments, all the feedback, emails, all their positive reviews. I appreciate all of that. So thank you very much for that. Thank you so much. Now, after we have the motivation gap, we have the habits gap. Now these are any, you know, daily or weekly habits that you have that are stopping you from achieving your goals. So does proper trading, have habits that you need to have in order to succeed? Yes. One thing is you got to watch your trade. Right? You can't just forget about it. It's not set it and forget it kind of things. Because the marking can go up and down. Even with the odds in your favor, you should still monitor your trades on a daily basis. Depending on the strategy. If you're doing cover calls, then Okay, maybe not every day, maybe you do it once a week, maybe once a month, that's up to you be too many on how aggressive or conservative you are. If you're doing something like our oil option strategy, I would like you to check in every day and see how oil is doing how your trades are doing. If you go 234 days too long, and you're not checking, that could be a bad thing and you might be negative, you might start losing some money. That's not a good thing. That's not going to help you on your goal. So that is a habit that needs to be instilled. And so one of the habits I instill and I tell everybody is you should have a time every day that you check on your trades. Same time every day for me, I do it at one o'clock, one o'clock Central. I have an alarm on my phone, he goes off ding ding ding ding ding, time to check my trades. Now I'll drop whatever I'm doing. And I will log in, and I will check my trades. If I need to adjust or do something, most of time, I don't need to do anything. So it didn't take very long. But that is a habit that I had to instill. I have other habits that I've also instilled, that have made me a much better trader. And we talked about them in our trade hacks program, which is very cheap. And if you want it, you can get it on our website, it's called trading hacks, I don't have the time to go into all of those, that's, you know, several hour program, and it goes through all of them. But if you have a habit program problem, then something like that, the hacks that we have come up with can definitely help you because you don't have to change yourself. Right? You don't have to have the willpower because willpower doesn't work. If you've been on a diet, or being like, yeah, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this willpower doesn't work, you have to change the environment, you have to change your behavior, you have to change your habits, you have to change something other than yourself. Because willpower by itself will not work. And so the trading hacks program that we have, it covers several different easy things that you can implement, that you don't have to change anything about yourself or your trading. But like I said, with the one o'clock check in, right, that's one hack that I've implemented, that has really, really helped my trading. So if you do something like that, that can make a big difference, doesn't have to change my trading, doesn't have to change anything about my style. But it's just a reminder, like, Hey, you need to do this, this is a skill - a habit sorry, not a skill, it's a habit that I needed to implement. And once I did, it made a big difference. The other one is your environment, the environment gap. So where you trade has a big impact on how you trade? Do you have a nice quiet spot that you can trade from? Do you have the freedom to trade, like if you're hiding from your spouse, and you're still trading, that's going to be a lot of stress, that's not a good environment? Right, you got to get your spouse to buy in, don't be trading behind her back, or his back and try to think that Yeah, you're gonna be a great trader, there might work for a little bit. But overall, that is a very negative environment, right? When you're trying to hide it, you're gonna feel guilty, you're gonna feel bad, and Heaven forbid you lose money, oh, man, that's just going to compound everything. So your environment needs to lead you to be successful. Do you have a fast enough internet connection? Now you don't need four different monitors. You don't even need two monitors, you just need one screen that you can trade from. But you need a good enough internet connection that that's there, you need maybe a phone where you can check in on your trades smartphone, you need some basic stuff. But if you don't have it, that makes it much harder for you. And if you don't have a spot where you can actually sit down and learn and go through the environment go through the education, right, if you join one of our programs, there's a lot of information that you're going to get. If you don't have a spot to properly go through it, then what's the point? So the environment is another gap, probably one of the most easier ones that you can overcome. Right. And so that's the last one. So we got knowledge gaps, that are recurring, they happen over and over again, you'll learn a little bit, you'll move forward, then you'll realize oh, I need something I need to know something else. So then you learn the next thing. Don't try to learn everything at once. Learn them in bites, right, move forward, learn some more, move forward, learn some more when you get to a gap, learn some more, fill it in, move on to the next one. Skills gap. There are also several of those because you don't know what skills you need yet. So focus on one skill, work on that move forward, then you find Okay, I need another one. So now you get the education for that one knowledge for that one. And then you do the scale. And you fill that in then you go forward and you go forward. Motivation gaps. This is when you have to figure out for yourself. What is it that's going to keep me focused, keep me motivated, so that I don't give up. That's the thing people give up. They just stop. You know what I'm talking about is passive trading. I've been doing this for a long time. And I've seen the results. And I know this works. And I know it's great in the feeling that you get when you're doing it well is amazing.   So I don't understand why people stop in the middle. Now I know it can take work. I know it can take a lot of time. But if you have the motivation, you should be able to overcome the rest of the gaps. That's probably the most important one that you need to overcome the motivational gap. Everything else I can help you with. Right, I can't help you motivate yourself. Then you got to habit gaps. Right if you know something that you keep doing over and over. And again, that's hurting you, that is a habit that you need to change. You can't break a habit, you need to replace it with something else. Right? So if you have a habit and your habit is Oh, I don't I don't I forget them on my trading plan. I don't stick to my trading plan, or I don't stick to my rules. My rules, say, of the trade is down so much money, I got to do XYZ, but I don't. Well, that's a habit that you need to change. If you already know that, you're that's half the battle, right? Like GI Joe, no knowledge is off the bottle. Yeah, I think you GI Joe. And so now you have the knowledge. Now you got to change the habit. So you overcome that gap. And then the last one is the environment, which is probably the easiest one. So I hope this helped. I hope you can overcome these gaps. If you have any issues, you can reach out to us help@optiongenius.com and trading hacks is the name of the program that can help you overcome a lot of these habit hacks. In terms of education, and skills, we can help you there as well, we have several programs that can help you depending on what you want to accomplish, what you want to be trading. So reach out to us there as well. And again, thank you so much for listening, trade with the odds in your favor, and have a great day. Thanks. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Check this out: High Probability Trading LIVE Hey, passive traders, how's it going today? Listen, we're thinking about doing a two-day live event. Not sure yet if it's going to happen or not, but the information is at optiongenius.com/live. If you want to be on the announcement list, just go ahead and go to that website and put in your email and your name, and we will let you know. And if we've decided that we're going to do it, then the information to figure it out and sign up is going to be there as well. It’s going to be two days of content, hard hitting trading content. And I'm probably gonna bring in some guest speakers as well. So I'm getting excited, the more I think about it, the more excited I'm getting. But I am very nervous because I'm super introverted and for me to do something like you know, we're meeting a lot of people. So that's why it's virtual. I don't have to go in front of a large stage or anything, but it is going to be really cool. So I'm already starting to think of what topics we can talk about what is the, you know, what's the best, that will help everybody. And so if you have any ideas of what you would like us to talk about, you know, go ahead and fill out that the name and email at that page, option, genius, comm slash live. And then let me know what you think. And let me know what you want to hear about. Cool. Alright, so I got an email today from a reader of the passive trading book. And I thought that this could be a pretty good episode based on what she said. So she said that she loved the book, she went through it, it was great, she learned a lot. And she's really, really focused on doing it. And she's, uh, she's already in real estate. So she understands the whole options and how they work and how they relate to stocks. Now, the problem is that she's only got a couple $100 to work with. So what should she do? Now, this is a very common situation, it's a very common problem that a lot of people have, they want to get started, they love the idea, but they don't have money to trade. And obviously, yeah, it takes money to trade, right? This is the one thing it takes money to do everything but especially trading, it does take money to get started. So what do they do, and on this episode, I'm going to give you some idea and it's actually a controversial idea, because it's not right for everybody, it might be right for you, it might not be right for you might be the most awful advice that anybody could ever give you. So I'm not giving you advice, per se, I'm giving you an idea. You have to know yourself. And you have to know if this is the right thing for you. If it's you know, too much or too risky for you, then don't do it. If you think you can handle it, then it might be the opportunity or the idea that finds you the funds that you can go and start trading. And you've probably already thought about this, but I want to go through with you a little bit more. So my first ever trade was not stock. It was a commodity trade. And I was I don't know what I was like 12, 13 years old. And we got this pamphlet in the mail. It was a brochure, it was like a sales letter for a course on how to trade futures. And I read it, I was mesmerized. I'm like, Oh, this is awesome. This is awesome. Dad, we got to get this, we got to get this. So we paid a couple of 100 bucks, whatever got the manual in the mail, opened up a futures account. And we traded soybeans, and I still remember this. We traded soybeans, one contract, and we made $25000. And I was on top of the moon. It was awesome. And then my dad shut down the account. I'm like, What happened? He goes, No, no, no, I didn't want to keep doing this. I just wanted, to show you what it was like and the actual idea that he had was that he was going to open the account, and we were going to lose money. And then that would stop me from ever wanting to trade again. Because he thought that commodities trading commodities was very, very risky and not do it. His whole thing backfired on him because he wanted to teach me he wanted me to lose money to teach me not to do this. And in fact, the opposite happened. We made money and the bug I got the bug - it bit me and ever since then I wanted to trade, but he shut it down. I didn't have any choice, right. I was too little. Fast forward and in the future. I have just dropped out of college. I came back home to help my dad with a new business he owned he just bought and things were really money was really, really tight. I mean really, really, really tight. To the point where like we don't, we're hoping we have enough money to eat every month. Even less than hand to mouth. And so in the mail, I get another brochure about a course about trading futures. And this one was even better than the first one because this one talks about technical analysis and the guy will actually help you with recorded messages to tell you what he's trading and bla bla bla bla. And, you know, times are so tough. I'm like Dad, we need to do something, I want to do this. How do we do this? So we bought the course. And I started following it. And at that time, this was pre website, or pre, you know what, they didn't have websites. We had AOL and stuff like that. But they didn't have Google, Yahoo, any of this stuff. So the charts had to come in the mail, you had to subscribe to a service. And they would print out the charts every week, at the end of the week, and they would mail them to us, he get them by Monday. So you'd have the charts and they would be newspaper size. And then every day, whatever happened, you would have to fill in the chart, you'd have to draw your lines, your support, resistance, all that stuff. And then every week, you would get a new set of charts. So you have to draw the lines again. And that was really a good way to learn for one thing, but I did it for a while and I show my Dad, I'm like, Look, Dad, I'm doing really, really good. I want to do that. So he went ahead, and he borrowed $8,000 on a credit card. So he took a cash advance on a credit card, he gave it to me, we opened up a futures trading account. And I knew that this was all the money we had. So we didn't even have it. Right? We didn't even have it. And at this point for him, it was a like a last-ditch effort. Like hopefully this works. If it doesn't, well, we're not gonna be able to pay off these cards anyway. So credit goes to hell kind of thing. I think this was the last card he had with any remaining balance. So yeah, you know, no, no pressure, right? Anyway, so you know, I'm going through all the charts I'm looking for the perfect opportunity, the perfect trade, the perfect trade. Finally, I find one and I'm like, Oh, this is it. This is gonna work. It's an uptrend. It's going great. Following all the lines, all the sports, everything, okay, Dad, I'm doing this, I put my first trade on one contract on the Japanese yen, Japanese yen was going up, it was gonna make me and I was gonna make a fortune. So I put the trade on close to the end of the day, and put my stop loss in. And that's it, I go home. And at night, I'm thinking man, I'm under how much money I'm gonna make or how much money I'm gonna make. I'm gonna pay all the bills, life is gonna be good. All this stuff. The next day I wake up, you know, I get to get to the office, I check. Oh, Yen is up, Yen is up alright. I'm making money, how much money do I make how much money they make in my account. And there's like $23 in my account. And I'm like, wait, what happened? Where's my Japanese yen contract? And there's no contract. And only wait, I bought a contract yesterday? Well, this must be like a glitch or something. I don't know, am I right? Am I signing in to the wrong account, what the heck is going on. And then I looked further. And it said that it stopped me out of the trade earlier in the day at the open. And when wait this doesn't make any sense. And so then I went back and I looked at it again. And basically what happened was, the Yen had gapped lower at the open. And then when it finally did open, it went up all day. But it opened lower, much lower than my stop loss. And so as soon as it opened, very, very low - hat's when my order was executed. And I was kicked out of my trade. And then that basically took away everything in the account. All eight grand was gone. overnight. One trade. And the sad part was the really frustrating part was that that trade would have made 1000s and 1000s of dollars because the Japanese yen continued to rise. Now, what's the moral of the story? What's the lesson to be learned here? I don't know, if you're gonna trade Yen, you got to have a lot more liquid because it moves up and down. I guess. That's one Moral of the story. But the reason I'm bringing this story up is that the idea is to do what we did. There's a potential to borrow money to trade with. And so I was talking to a fellow. And what he does is he works with companies like mine, where we're selling programs, right coaching programs that are not super expensive, but they're not dirt cheap either. So people might like to finance it. And so this guy, he works with several banks, and basically, he wanted to offer financing to my customers. Now, I don't know how I feel about that. He knows like if you can't afford the program, should you borrow money for the program? I think I'm okay with that. But if you don't have the money for the program, then how are you going to trade? Right, I don't want to take I don't want you to borrow money to buy a program and then not have anything left over to trade unless you know that that's the plan unless you say, yeah, you know what, I'm going to be paper-trading for a while until I learn, and then I'm going to invest the money, and then I'm going to do it. So when I was talking to him, what he was saying is that the way their program works is you, let's say, you come to me and you say, hey, I want to join your program, I want to finance it. So the Okay, so I turn it over to him. And they have a form that you fill out, it's a personal loan, and they they work with the world's largest banks, right. So it's not like some, some little corner shop, these are real big banks, and they look at your information. And then they put give you an offer, they say, all right, we will offer you $10,000, we will offer you 20,000 will offer you 30,000 as a loan, and these are the terms this is the interest that you could pay every month, etc. And then if you like it, then you say yes, or no. Or if you don't want the whole amount, if you don't need the 30,000, you take, you know, I'll say I need 10,000, I need 5000 or 2000, or whatever you want to take, you can you can take that amount. Once you have that money, then my company charges you for our program, whatever the cost is that you agree to. And that's how it works. And then you make the payments directly to the bank. So I was thinking about I think, wait a minute. So you're telling me that the people, the customers, my customers can borrow more than the program is cost? And he said, Yeah, they can. So I thought that was very interesting, I think, well, if somebody wants to, so they have good credit, they can borrow enough to pay for the program, and they can borrow the money to trade with. So that way they take the money that they're trading with, they earn a profit on that, and they use that profit to make the payments. So in essence, they're getting it for free. They're just working for it, but they're using their profits to pay off the loan. And that would be an amazing way to get started very quickly. And he said, Yeah, technically, they could do that if they wanted to. So that's interesting, you know, so I'm still thinking about whether we should do that or not. If you're interested in something like that, let me know the good and the bad, you know, because I'm thinking about it, I'm still debating it, I don't know if it's a good thing. For some people, it can definitely work. I've seen people that it has worked for where they've borrowed money to trade with, and they've done really, really well. And I've seen other people blow up, there was a guy on Facebook. And he he posted that he borrowed $200 on a credit card where he was going to have a 0% interest rate for one year. And he borrowed $200 on his credit card, he's going to use that $200 to trade with. And I'm scratching my head, I'm like, Dude, what are you gonna do with 200 bucks, you're gonna buy some calls, hopefully, you'll make some money, hopefully, you'll be able to pay it off. But you got to make 100% in a year, you're it's a crapshoot, right 50% chance you're gonna make 50 million, you're gonna lose it all. But I don't know, maybe he's gonna make it. But if he's only using $200, I have a feeling he doesn't know what the heck he's doing, he's probably gonna lose it $200. And, well, it's not a big deal, he's gonna have to pay back the credit card, I don't know why you would only borrow 200 though. Geez, if you if your bank is only going to give you a line of credit on a credit card of $200, you got bigger problems, you don't need to be trading, go get a job. But the thing here is, this might be a way for you to get started. So either you borrow money from a friend, you borrow money from the bank, you borrow money from somewhere else, I wouldn't advise you to borrow money from your credit card like my dad did on this, you probably knew that, hey, you know, this is a sinking ship, we might not be able to pay it, that's a bad thing. You shouldn't borrow money that you can afford to pay back. Right? So hopefully, you're not in a situation where you do have to borrow money. But if you are, please think about it before you do. Most of the time, when you borrow money, people are under a lot of pressure. And they feel that they have to pay it off right away. And so they take risks that they shouldn't necessarily take and they blow up, they lose all the money that they borrowed. And then not only do they feel really horrible about losing money, but then they still have to pay back the bank. And that can mess up their credit, they can mess up their relationship with their spouse. So you really really have to think this through before you do it. I'm just putting it out there. It's something you've probably already thought about it.  If you've ever wanted to get into trading and you don't have any money, like, we're gonna get the money, we're gonna get the money, I still think the best way is to paper trade to learn without having the risk. And to build up a track record and the look, you know, I've been paper trading for six months. And I've done all these trades. I've done several trades every month, and I'm consistently profitable even a couple of months where, you know, I could have lost money, I could have lost a lot of money, but I didn't manage it properly. And here's my record. And then you can find somebody that can either borrow, you can borrow the money from or we'll put up the money and you trade their account and you get paid a fee for it. You know you get a piece of the profits. I would rather have you do that than borrow the money. But even if you are about to borrow the money, please paper trade it first. Whatever you're thinking of trading paper traded first, so that you don't end up and do what I did. That's why I told you that story in the beginning because it's a warning, right? I didn't know what I was doing. I had a course. But I didn't have like a live mentor. I didn't have a group, I didn't have any community. It was just me by myself with my little charts that come every, every Monday in the mail, and I'm drawing my lines. And even though I had it, right, even though I had the trade, right, I had nailed it, I knew the direction I knew was going up, I placed the stop loss in the wrong spot. And I was trading the yen when I shouldn't have been, because my account size wasn't large enough to be able to trade the yen properly. Does that make sense? I was trading the wrong instrument. And I didn't have anybody to tell me that.  That's why we have coaching programs. That's why we do coaching calls with students. So they can tell me what they're trading and I can coach them and walk them through and say, you know what, if your account is that big, maybe you're overreaching here, maybe you need to trade more, use your feet, something else. And so we walk you through it so that you don't make that same mistake because I know how painful it can be. I know how you can do every single thing, right and still have it blow up in your face. And so if that's happened to you reach out to us get on the phone with us book a call, we can talk about it, we can tell you what we have to help you. And I think, you know, if we need to, we can even help you figure out how to finance the program. But we'll have to make sure that it's gonna work for you first. And so that's why we get on the phone. And we have to talk to you see what your background is, if you're the right fit for the program, then we will give you an invitation to join. And then if it if need be, we can tell you how to finance it if you have to. But again, that's something that we really don't really push. And we don't encourage you to very much. Just because you're going into debt for something I don't want you to go into debt for. Right, I don't want you to start behind, I want to put the odds in your favor as much as possible. And so when you're dealing with that, you have that extra added pressure. I know what it's like to have a lot of debt. You know, at the worst, I think I had myself I had over $100,000 worth of debt. That's not even including car and mortgage and all that stuff. This was just like credit cards and stuff that I had borrowed from. And it's not easy dealing with debt. It's something it sits on your shoulder every day. And it's a pressure that you feel, you know, you're feeling like Atlas, he was the in the Greek mythology, he was the guy that had to hold up the earth on the back on his back. And that's what it feels like, you know, there's something there on your back all the time, and you feel it. And I don't want you to go through that if you don't have to. So my point here is that I never thought I never talked about this before, I've never really mentioned it pushed it, because it is very risky. But if you need to, if you're the right person, if you feel that you're mature enough, you can handle it, you have a trading plan already that's working, that's consistent. Maybe this is the way to go. And if you need to give us a call, reach out to us help@optiongenius.com is our email. If you want to get on the phone with us, we can explain how we can help you just reach out to us via email and we'll tell you what we can do help@optiongenius.com. Oh, and if you do want to find out about that live event that we might be having, it’s optiongenius.com/live. Alright folks, thank you and trade with the odds in your favor. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

I'm thinking about doing a two day live virtual event, we can get together right now because of the current situation. So I was thinking we could do it online and open it up to everybody. The idea is to have two days of content, and collaboration and trading and just talking and sharing a lot of ideas, information and having dialogue back and forth. If you're interested, I haven't firmly decided if I want to do it or not. But we're thinking about doing it in January the 8th and the 9th, it's Friday and a Saturday, it's probably going to be all day for both days. And if you're interested, please go to Option Genius slash live. And you can join the announcement list. Of course right now, I haven't decided to do it yet. So we don't have any of the details. Exactly what we're going to talk about. I've thought of some ideas, but exactly what we're gonna talk about not sure yet. I am planning on inviting a couple speakers. So if you want to be on the announcement list, then go to optiongenius.com/live , just put your name and email address and you'll be on your list there. And then if we do decide to do it, we'll let you know. And we might even let you know on the list. And as for suggestions, like Hey, would you like to learn about this topic or this topic? Would you like to hear from this person or this person, but I do not want this to be a pitch fest. We do have that a lot in the financial industry where they pretend that they're going to give you a lot of information, but all they do is pitch you products over and over and over again. And that's not what this is going to be definitely not at all. So if you're open to that, go check it out. Optiongenius.com/live, put your name and email sign up for the announcement list. You know, you don't lose anything if you do that. Cool. Now, are you sedated? Do you even know what that means? I didn't know Sedated is a medical term. At first I didn't know my wife had explained to me why my wife is a registered nurse. And she likes to watch these medical shows. So you know I'm sitting there watching her with her. And there was this one show where this guy comes into the emergency room and he can't communicate. And he's wildly gesturing and room making noises and all these weird stuff. And the doctors jump on him and say oh is it items an item and they they hit him up with an injection and then eventually, he comes down, he stopped shaking and he's like, are half asleep or something like that, I guess that's what they call sedation, right? Where they give you some type of medicine so that you calm down and you I guess come back to your senses or whatnot. But the thing is that I was thinking about that. And I'm like, you know what, that's the way most people live. If you really think about it, you know, about 80% of people who work for companies are unengaged at work, meaning they're sedated at work. They're not giving 100%. Most small business owners are overwhelmed - either they're doing too much or they don't have enough staff, they don't have enough income to hire the right people, or they can't find the right people or right now, you know, their businesses are so uncertain. They don't know what to do. They're going to open, they're going to close they're going to how are they going to serve their customers so they can have any more customers. And it's very rare to find someone who is actually living life, on their own terms, in a way where they actually enjoy themselves. I mean, I think all through life since when we're born to, you know, when we're adults, we are told to behave in a certain way. We're told to believe a certain thing. We're told to live in a certain way and act a certain way - and I don't think that is helping us. And I think that's why maybe we see record numbers of people going into depression and having mental health issues, record numbers of people not getting along. It seems worse now than I've ever remembered it. And you know, we've had some crazy times I lived through the Cold War. Well, not the Cold War with JFK, but the cold war with Russia and Ronald Reagan - Gorbachev. I lived through that I remember that it was kind of scary. And this seems worse because it's in our own country. People, you know, ready to rip each other apart and why I don't want to get into the politics of it and all that. But the thing is that like when we're born, we're full of energy, and we're happy and we accept everything. And we think everybody loves us because they give us so much attention and encouragement and they're always there for us and they're helping us if we fall down they pick us back up, right? And then as we get older, something starts to happen. And we start hearing the word No, no, no. So many times we start hearing negative things. People are putting us down, people are telling us we're not right. And we're stupid or whatnot. And, oh, you don't look good today, or you don't acting like a right mean, the way you're supposed to act. And it's start sending conflicting signals, like, hey, maybe there's something wrong with me, or maybe I need to conform, then we go to school, it's the same thing. You know, we're told me you gotta properly behave, sit in your desk, do this, do that. Follow the rules. My son, he's 10 years old, and he's learning at home he's doing at home school, he's having trouble with his homework, because he gets a lot of homework, and he has to do it on his own. So up till now, he's done amazing in school, because he knew exactly what to expect. And he knew the rules. He knew how it worked. But now, he's on his own. And there's nobody to watch over him all day long while he's doing. I mean, obviously, my wife is at home or somebody is at home. But nobody's on top of him making sure all of his assignments are getting done on time to time basis. And so he's falling behind. He's not doing assignments, he's, he's goofing off, he'd rather watch TV starting to even lie to us and say, "Yeah, I did my homework" , and then we find out no, it wasn't done at all. That's, I think, what's wrong in today's society, that we are all in a sense, sedated. And we're told what to do, what to behave, what to think, or how to act. And it's really, really insane. One of the things that we are sedated about or is the whole aspect of retirement, right? retirement means that you save up money for the whole life, and then eventually, when you are have enough money, then you can stop working and you can officially retire. And I don't think that's the way it should be at all. It's nothing has nothing to do with how much money you have. It's how much money do you get every month without having to work at it. If you have $10,000 a month coming in, that you don't have to work for, then you don't have to work. Unless your expenses are more than $10,000. You could retire tomorrow, you read a hit song, and you get people paying you license fees for that using that song, then you're done. That's it. It's over. But why do people think that they have to have 1,000,002 million $5 million saved up somewhere invested somewhere so that they can withdraw like 4% a year and live off of that? And that's a requirement? Because that's what we're told to believe? That's the myth that's given to us by wall street? Why do they want that? Why do they want us to believe that? Well, because they get to control the money. The more money they control, the more they charging fees. If you give them 100,000 to invest, that's great. They make a little bit if you give them a million dollars to invest, they make a lot more for doing the same amount of work. Very little work, actually. Right. So it's all about the game. And it's all about the way it is. So if you feel yourself being stated, if you feel that you're not living life to your expectation, if you feel that you're not living up to your purpose, it's up to you to change. A friend of mine was telling me a story. He's like, yeah, you know, I was talking to this guy, and he got a new job. And I'm like, Oh, cool. You know, why do you get a job? He goes, Well, I called him and asked him, Hey, when would you get a new job? because well, you know, I was working at this place didn't really like it. And I'm not a tree. So I left. It makes plenty of sense to me. I've not a tree. So I left. Exactly. I didn't have my you know, I'm not a tree. I don't have roots in the ground. I can make my own decisions as an adult. And I can change. I can change my environment, I can change my situation, I can change what's going on in my life. So what's the point? The point is, you're listening to this podcast, because you want to change, you want things to get better. Your finances can change when you trade options. That's fine. But is that going to change your life to the point where you are no longer sedated, and you're completely happy? That's what you need to work on. So really, the question is, who are you? And if you've never been asked that question, if you never thought about that question, I urge you to take a few minutes. You got the holidays coming up. You have some time off, hopefully. Think about it. Half an hour, hour, whatever it takes. Who are you? Really? No, no, I'm a doctor. I'm a lawyer. I'm this I'm that I'm a father. No. Who are you? If you're who is in your name, you know if your name is John, who is John? Deep down? What does he want? What makes him happy? And then you can start to design the life that you deserve. Cool. That's it for this episode, folks. And remember, if you are interested in being on a list for the live event, please check out: optiongenius.com/live. Take care, trade with the odds in your favor.   LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

In this episode, Kori takes over the podcast to share the results of her first ever trade and the results. Hi, traders. It's Cory today, for those of you who don't know me, I'm the customer satisfaction manager here at option genius. I handle everything related to well, you guys from customer service, incoming coaching students. I'm talking to you guys today because something really cool happens like really, really, really cool. And I'm super excited. a month or two ago, I started going through the passive trading formula. It took me a while because halfway through the course portion, I decided I wanted to make a workbook for all of you guys to make learning easier. So all your incoming students, you're welcome. But that's beside the point. Let's get to the exciting stuff. My whole life. I've been worried about finances, my parents' finances, my siblings, and especially mine. I don't know why. But I've always been fixated on them. Because of that, it's always been very important to me, that I'm smart with my finances. I don't want to be you know, I can't be in debt, I need to make sure that I have more than enough to cover my expenses. And saving is a huge deal for me, I always want to be sure that I'm making the right decisions financially. So when I first started working at option genius, which was around nine or 10 months ago, I believe I was super excited. Because that way I had the option and the ability to learn firsthand how to trade options. But despite that, I was really scared. So I kept pushing it off farther and farther. Because I didn't want to lose money. I was terrified of losing money, because when it's in my savings, it's safe. Even though I you know, I'd seen Allen trade and I'd watched his account grow as well as our students accounts, I was still super scared. But I knew logically that if I just did it the way I was taught in the end, I would make money. But again, I was scared. But one day I was watching Allen put on a trade and I decided that if I was ever going to learn how to trade it had to be now otherwise I would just keep pushing it off and pushing it off and pushing it off. So when I got home that day, I decided that I was going to go ahead and go through the course right then in there. While I was going through the program, I decided to put on my first options trade using the passive trading formula. I was super nervous. But I followed Allen's formula to a tee, which was obviously the right call, as you'll see later. My favorite part. So I picked one of my watchlist stocks, Disney, I saw that it was going up on the chart and looked like he was going to continue that trend. So I decided to put on a call credit spread. I'm pretty conservative when it comes to risk. So I made sure to choose one with an 85% probability of profit, I had a lot of confidence in the trade. So I went ahead and put on 10 contracts, which made the margin requirement around $5,000. For that spread, I felt so accomplished after that the initial rush of having put on my own trade was amazing. I don't think I've ever felt something like that in my life. I think it was because it was my first real step in my trading journey and something I'd worried I'd mess up for a long time. You know, because I've been thinking about doing this for a while. And that was it was a big leap for me. The first week I was in the trade was pretty nerve racking. I'm just kidding. I was actually really calm through the whole process. Having worked with Allen really helped me see how well the formula works. And it gave me that confidence that I needed to not worry. Am I checked in on the trade around every four days I believe in the beginning it was showing I was down a couple of dollars here and there. And but as the trade kept going, I saw that it kept going up. Like one day was at $10 the next day was up $45. And then last Friday, it was up $585 that's crazy, right? Once I saw how much it was up, it was around 12% I think I decided it was time to exit the trade. Unfortunately, it was after the market closed. So I went ahead and put in the the closing order so that when the market opened on Monday, I would be out I was a little scared doing that. Because what if the market went down over the weekend and my trade ended up not working out. That was a big concern for me. It didn't really matter in the end, because today when I checked my account, I was out of the trade with a 12% profit. I ended up making $600 on that trade, my first ever all by myself no help from out on trade. I was so excited. I just had to share with you guys. Having a winning trade is always great. But having a winning trade. The first time you put one on is amazing. I'm literally jumping up and down right now in my chair. I feel like my confidence in myself has shot through the roof, not just with trading but everything in general, because now I know that I have the skills to be able to trade profitably for the rest of my life. Thank you guys so much for listening. And as Allen always says, trade with the odds in your favor. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Hello. Hello. Hello. I want to do a little bit different today and I am going to be answering a question that I got from a podcast listener. This is a question that we get frequently, and I do encourage you to send us questions. If you have anything regarding trading or investing that we can help with, I'm more than willing for you to reach out to us. Email us, it's help@optiongenius.com. Hopefully we can help you. If there is something we can do and point you in the right direction, we will, if not, we'll tell you straight out, hey, we are not experts in that. We don't know. Maybe we'll try to find a resource for you or something, but we do our best to help everybody out as much as possible because in the end, we're all in this together, right? Nobody's getting out of this alive. Might as well help each other and make the world a better place. Right? This is the question I get often and got this question recently from a listener. The question says, the one thing I struggle with is constantly being scared out of the market. I have a trading plan with iron condors and credit spreads and failed to follow it by not trading frequently enough or with enough size. How is the best way to scale up your trading to make a bigger income out of it? Basically, the fellow is saying that he does trades, mostly spreads, but he's hesitant and scared to not do it enough and not do it with enough money when he does do it. He's thinking about how can he scale up his trading to be better at it or make more money from it? The first thing you need to realize is that fear is not always a bad thing. I mean, it's there to alert you to danger, right? That's why we get scared, something dangerous happening, but it's also there to alert you to opportunity as well. We look at fear as a negative thing, but fear is just a common response, right? It doesn't have to be something that is bad for us that we are afraid of. Anything outside of our comfort zone can be scary, but that doesn't mean that it's bad for us. A lot of people are scared of placing their first trade. They're scared of investing money in the stock market because they're afraid to lose it, which is one possible outcome. Yes, but you can mitigate that and you can protect against that. When you look at it and you say, look, there are trillions of kazillions of dollars, whatever invested in stocks around the world, what do those people know that I don't, that I'm afraid to put my money in the stock market? What are the people that are trading profitably and consistently? What do they know that I don't know that I'm not consistent? That's why I'm afraid of making trades or making bigger trades. Is there a secret out there that they know that I don't? Well, most likely not. There are certain ways to do things and once you learn those things, you can follow them methodically, but the problem is fear and emotions. I'll get to that. The second thing you need to realize is that being out of the market is not a bad thing either, right? We don't have to be trading every single expiration cycle. You don't have to be exposed all the time. You get to pick and choose. If the markets get scary and volatile, there's nothing wrong with taking a step back, catching your breath and reassessing to decide if you want to get back in, or if you want to wait until things calm down. Now this fellow thinks that it's a problem that he's not trading enough. He wants to trade more and he's not trading with enough size. It would be a bigger problem if he was trading and he was losing money, but that's not what he said. He said that he has a plan, but he's just not doing it enough. If his plan is profitable, then it doesn't matter if he's trading every month because he's making something. As long as you're making something and you're compounding it, eventually it's going to grow and just let it grow and grow and grow. If you're not comfortable in the market all the time, and if you're not comfortable making your trade size bigger doing more contracts, there's nothing wrong with that. You're okay. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. Don't think that. Don't think negative. That's a negative. No. As long as you're profitable, you decide how much you want to trade. The gains will be smaller, right? If you have a goal, I need to be a millionaire or have 10 million dollars or whatever, yeah, it'll take you a little bit longer. But you can still compound it, and that compounding is exponential. You might not get there tomorrow, but you will get there. The third thing is called market risk. This is something that nobody ever talks about, which is being at risk because you're in the market. It's hard to take this into account, but when selling options, you have the ability to look at each and every exploration cycle as a separate time period. If you miss one, no big deal. We had one of our students, he was going in for surgery. He's like, yeah, how do I protect my trades? How do you protect your trades is you get out, right? There's no telling what's going to happen in your surgery. Now, heaven forbid something really bad happens to you, but he was expected to come home in a couple days, but yeah, sure. Hey, why are we taking that risk at all? Get out of your trades. Take the time off, recuperate, go through your surgery, get better, rehabilitate. Then when you are back to normal, then you can go back in again, right? We as option traders have that ability. Now fear and scaling are a different thing. For me, it's been a process of focusing on managing your risk and protecting capital. As you slowly gain more and more confidence in your ability to become consistent, you will become more comfortable taking on more risk, which leads to generating more income and obviously growing the account. Does that make sense? Before you scale, or at least when it comes to a point that it is consequential to you, you have to take control of your emotions before you can start doing that. Now, that point is different for everybody. For some people, they can handle losing a hundred dollars. For some people, they can handle losing a hundred thousand dollars. It's different for everybody. I have seen traders freak out. Putting on a trade, they get out when they're down $200. I mean, what happened? Why did you get out? I couldn't handle it. I was losing money. I'm like, yeah, you were technically down on paper for one day, but the thing rallied and you would have been up today. The trade would have worked. Why did you get out? I couldn't take it. I couldn't take it. Okay. Well, then you know yourself, and if you can't handle a $200 loss then maybe trading is not right for you, or maybe you need to get a handle on your emotions. Right? I've seen other traders on the flip side, they risk a million dollars with no trading plan or any understanding of what to do if the trade goes South. I've seen everything in between. I mean, when I started the Option Genius Service, right, one of the first people I talked to, this was like, way, way, this was years ago. One of the first people I ever talked to, the guy said, hey, I just joined your service and you just put out a iron condor. I just put a hundred thousand dollars in that trade. I was like, what? How much is in your account? He goes, a hundred thousand. I mean, you put the whole thing in one trade? He goes, yep. I said, how do you know it's going to work? He goes, well, your site looked good. My site looked good, that was the reasoning that you put a hundred thousand dollars in one trade? Are you out of your mind? I mean, you don't know who I am. Right. Because at the time, I didn't have a podcast. I didn't have my picture anywhere. I told him, I remember I told him like, dude, you don't know who I am. I could be some kid, some teenager sitting in China putting up a website trying to scam people. He was quiet. He's like, oh yeah, I never thought of that. I mean, luckily that trade worked out great. After that, I helped him to not put all of his money in one trade, which would be a good thing for anybody. But I digress. There are people on both sides. There are the ones that can't take any risk and there are the ones that are super risk-takers. The thing is that it's all pretty much mental, it's in your head. It is fear, plain and simple, right? Trading one contract is technically the same as trading 10 or a hundred or a thousand. It's the same trade, just different numbers. The numbers are a little bit bigger, but yeah, it can be a huge block, a mental block. Part of it comes down to knowing your dollar goal. How much do you actually want to make? If you're trading too small to hit your goal, right? If your goal is a thousand dollars a month, but you're only doing one trade that can only make a hundred dollars a month, you're never going to hit your goal. Then the goal will help you scale because that's just mad. You're like, oh man, I can't get my goal. Okay. I need to do more because I need to get to my goal. The other side is to have confidence. That comes with doing the trades over and over and over and over. If you use real money, it can take years as you go through the different markets, right? You go through a bear market. You go through a bull market. You go through a sideways market. You go through a correction. You go through a dip. You go through all these different things. It takes years to understand how to trade through all those different environments. Now, as passive traders, we have the odds on our side and the trades are built in to withstand these shocks, but it can still impact us. The biggest impact is on us mentally. I've done podcasts in the past where you've got trading scars. That was the name of the podcast, trading scars. When you're trading and you take hits, it causes a scar mentally, not on your body but in your brain. Well, not physically but is a memory, and so when you're in that same situation again, you have to learn how to react properly so that you don't get another scar. You don't get hurt again. Now that's with trading with real money. Now, if you're paper trading or you're backtesting, you can get that experience much, much sooner. Even if you're doing one, I would suggest you do the other two. If you're just doing paper, I would expect you to do some backtesting and eventually get to real money so that you can know what that feels like. If you're only doing real money with a smaller account, then do backtesting and do paper trades and get as many trades on as you can handle. Get as many trades on as you can do as soon as fast as you can, that will help you get the experience. Only through that experience will you feel calmness, will you feel confident and be like, yeah, you know what? I can handle this. I traded through the Lehman Brothers collapse in the great depression or great recession or whatever they called it. Right. When the Corona thing came, I was like, oh man, I've been through this. It wasn't that bad. Oh yeah, because I've been through it. I've been through worse. Right. Been through bull markets, been through bear markets, been through corrections. After a while it becomes like a sixth sense. You're like, oh yeah, I know what the market is going to do. If it does this, I'll do this. If it does this, I'll do that. But I feel confident that I can make adjustments and I'm going to get through it. But if you've never been through that environment before, it's like, oh my God, the end of the world, the market dropping every day. Oh my God. Oh my God. I'm going to lose all my money. Get out, get out. The worst possible time. That's what most people do because they don't have the experience. Do the paper trading, do the backtesting. The third aspect of having confidence in your system or your strategy. The thing has to work too, right? The way you're trading has to work as well. You got desire, you got experience, you got confidence. Three legs of the stool and you got to have all three. You could also look at this in a different way. If you tell yourself that you have, let's say $3,000 and that you have to make it work. Man, this is it. That's all the money I have in the world. I got to work. It's got to work. It's got to work. I got to make money. I can't lose this money. Under no circumstances can I lose this money. My wife is going to chop my head off or something else. Right? Then it is just too much pressure and you will either lose it or you will not trade it properly, which will end up making you lose it. So yeah, if you have that much stress on you to not take a loss, then you're going to lose it. You can't do that either. That's why we always say, trade with money you can afford to lose. If you can afford to lose it, that takes away a whole negative aspect of it that will destroy you. In order to scale, step one is to be able to control yourself. That includes being okay with losing money. It includes understanding and being okay that you can lose all the money in your account. It includes not freaking out when things get volatile. You do this in a number of ways. Number one, like I said is you have confidence in your trading plan. If you've put on a whole bunch of trades and you've seen them work, you're going to have more confidence. If you are trading with a group or other people are doing it, or if you have a mentor that's been doing it and he's telling you, hey, look, this is the way we trade. This is how it's going to work. If you've seen it work, then you have confidence. Number two, if you have experience doing the same strategy hundreds or thousands of times, that's basically how you get the confidence in the trading plan. Then step two of scaling is to increase your position sizing, obviously, right? Yeah. I want to scale. Okay. Step two. Step one that we talked about was, what did we talked about? Step one, being able to control yourself. Step one to scaling is being able to control yourself. Step two is to go ahead and then do it to increase your position sizing. Now remember, remember how you thought about going to school or training for whatever you do now for a living, for your job, right? Do you remember getting trained for that? If you had to go to college or get a certificate or go to a seminar or whatever, you did all that, you put up with all that because you were training. You were learning and it took time. It's the same thing here. Trading takes time to learn, but this puts you in a real life seminar and you are paying your dues every day. The time that you put in, you're paying your dues. You put your trades on, you monitor them, you debrief them at the end, right? What happened? What went wrong? What went right? What did I do right? How can I change it? How can I make my results better? You rinse and you repeat. You got a good plan, keep doing it over and over and over again. As your account size gets larger, you can go from one contract to maybe two, then maybe to three, then to five, then to seven. You go at your own pace. There is no race. There is no time limit. As long as you're doing constantly better, you're being consistent like I said earlier, the account will grow in size and you'll get more confident and you can trade more. It's up to you. You want to go from one to five? If you got the money and you've had the experience, okay, fine. I wouldn't advise it. I'd go from one to two, two to four, four to six, six to 10. Take it small jumps. It doesn't need to be overnight because there's no rush. It's not like, oh, my next door neighbor just bought a Mercedes. I got to buy one too so I need to do a hundred trades this month. No, forget him and his Mercedes. Who cares? Right? Be confident with who you are and what you have. Don't rock the boat. We don't want to take unnecessary risks we don't have to. For most people, it's better to move from say three contracts to four contracts, to six to 10 small increments because there's no such thing as missing out on the trade of the century. There is no trade of the century. It's like, oh my God, if I don't invest now, I'm going to lose. I'm never going to get this opportunity again. No, it doesn't happen. There's no such thing. They said that before years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, six months ago, they've been saying that forever. As long as you get in and you can consistently make money, you're fine. It's just going to grow. Everything is the same. You don't need to put all your money in one trade when you're not ready to do so. Okay. Now, step three to scaling. Once you have increased contract size, you need to increase the account size, or maybe you need to do this in the account size before you do the contract size. Either way, but one usually comes after the other. You do this obviously by adding more money to the pot, put more money in your account. Right? Now, you can do it the other way and you'd be like, you know what? I'm just going to grow the account, and whatever I make, I'm going to keep it and just scale that way. Or you can say, hey, look, I've got the confidence. I've got my emotions under control. I got a good strategy. I got a good mentor. I feel confident to be able to go to the next level so I need to add a few thousand dollars more into my account so I can go from say, two contracts to four or four to eight, right? I'm going to go incrementally higher. I'm not going to go from two to 10. Don't do that. Two to four, two to five, slowly, slowly, build it up. Go to the next level, trade there for a little while, get comfortable. Then you can go again to the next level. It's like going up steps, right? Once you're adding more money to the pot, you can do something or you can add something to your account that's called portfolio margin. What portfolio margin means is that you get additional leverage and you get the ability to make money quicker where less money tied up actually. For most brokers that I've seen, portfolio margin starts at $125,000. If you have that in your account, you get portfolio margin. Normally, when you open an account and you apply for margin, they give you two-to-one margin. If you put in $10,000, they'll let you buy $20,000 worth of stock, but they charge you interest on the money that they lent you. We don't really advise that. Right now, when you're passive trading, you need to have a margin account. If it's a non-retirement account, if it's not an IRA, then you got to have margin enabled so that you can do spreads. You can do naked puts. But we don't borrow the money. Portfolio margin is a little mix of both. Portfolio margin, I believe it's like four to one or five to one in terms of margin. If you have a hundred thousand dollars, you can actually trade with $400,000. Big difference. You could buy a lot more, but I'm not telling you to buy a lot more. I'm telling you to do it because on your trades, they can charge you less in margin. What I mean by that is if you do a naked put that is very, very, very, very far away from the money. If you have a regular margin account, they might charge you, I don't know, they say $3,000 in margin to do that trade for example. I'm just making it up. Okay. If you have a portfolio margin account, they look at it, they calculate that margin differently. They look at the actual risk of the trade. Because they can tell that you're so far away from the money and that the odds are so far in your favor, there's not a big risk of you losing money and so the amount of margin that they're going to charge you or hold for doing that trade is going to be a lot less. It might be, say $500 compared to 2,000 or $3,000. With a regular account, they'll charge you $500 a margin for a portfolio margin account. What happens there? Well, I can make a much greater return percentage-wise on my money. Right? Dollar-wise, they'll be the same thing, but then I can decide, hey, what? Do I want to do two of these or three of these instead of one? Because I can, right? Because I have more leverage. I can do that. If the trade goes against me, of course, I'm still going to end up losing money and I'll lose more because now I have three contracts versus one. I need to be able to know and be good with that. That's why they only give it to you if you have over a hundred or $125,000. But that's what I did. Right? For myself, when I started scaling, I went horizontally. I'm going to lay it out, two different types of scaling. What I did, I went horizontally, meaning I put small amounts into many different accounts. I had a Roth account. I had a regular IRA account. I had one each for my wife. I had a SEP account. I had a corporate account for the company. I had a couple of personal accounts. Then I would do different trades in all the different accounts, so I got a little bit, a little bit, a little bit in all of them, right? Yes. I have a lot of money in the market but they're spread out in all of these different accounts. That's what I call horizontally. In hindsight, the process worked and now all of the accounts are fairly large, but it took a lot longer than necessary because each account did not have enough money in the beginning to do everything I wanted. I was limited in the trades I could do. I was limited in the strategies I could do in the beginning because each account did not have that much money. If you have, let's say a hundred thousand dollars, right? You put it in one account, you can do certain things with it that you can't do if you open 10 different accounts with $10,000 each. That makes sense? What I've done now is I still have those accounts, but I went vertically right now. That's how I'm scaling right now. I'm going vertically. I'm working on growing just one account to a certain level. I have a goal for this one account, whatever money I'm putting in is going into this one account. I'm not spreading it out into all of them. I'm putting it all in one and I want to get this one to a certain level that I can use to generate monthly gains that I can either withdraw if I need to, or I can just let it stay in the account and grow. That's my plan now. Get this account to a certain level that I want to, and then when it gets there, then I don't need to put any more money into my accounts. Then I can take that money that I'm earning and make an investment somewhere else. The money that I make in that account, I can take it out if I want to, if I want to invest in somewhere else, or I can just leave it there, I'll let the account grow. I'm at the point now where it's like, you know what? I don't know if I want to have more money exposed in the stock market. Let's diversify. Let's put some over here. Let's put some over here. Let's invest in different things. Now I'm doing vertically. Initially I started out horizontally. It was great, but I probably could have gotten my goals faster if I went vertically from the beginning. Doing it vertically, you're focusing on just growing one account and that were actually shown to get faster results, but it's all based on your own financial situation. I did it the other way because I had different IRA accounts, a Roth, my wife, and there's limits on how much you can put in each every year. Okay, I can only put this much in there. Your Roth, IRA, you only put like 5,000 or $5,500, something like that. I don't qualify for anymore. But when I did, I was putting I think about 5,000 a year and that's the max you can put. If you have $30,000 you want to put in the market, then you have to put five here, five here, 10 here, 10 here, et cetera, et cetera. That's why I ended up with those horizontal accounts instead of putting them all into one main vertical, large trading account. That make sense. The important thing is to get started. The more you trade, the more confident you will get, the more profits you will generate, and the more you will be inclined to add funds to your account. It's just that simple. For some of you, I know that you have a spouse or a partner that's involved in your decisions and it can be challenging when you want to scale and you want to trade larger, you want to put more money in the account. I know that. They may not be on board with it, right? But if you follow this path, you have concrete results to show your spouse. You can show, look, look at the history. Look at my trades, look at this. I'm doing good. That will ease their mind and then it will make them not only okay with the idea, but it will get them supporting your trading a lot more. Right? The main thing they're worried about now is that it's going to not work. But if you have proof, if you can go to your spouse and say, look, I just did 600 trades. Look at this, trade after trade after trade and I made this much money. Then I think they're going to support you. Don't you think? Don't you agree? Like, yeah, but if you show them three trades. Look, I did three trades. Okay. Let's put a million dollars. Let's mortgage the house. No. Right? Cool. So 90% of trading is mental. You master that, and scaling is a piece of cake. All right, folks, make sure you trade with the odds in your favor. Don't ever forget that part of it. Take care and be safe LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Passive traders, how you doing? What's going on? Hopefully, you are safe and sound wherever you are listening to this and I hope the markets are treating you fairly. Or, better than fairly, because we want what's fair, right? We want, in our favor. So we had a question from someone coming in and the question was, is it still, or is it a safe time to get back into the oil markets? And if you are following us, you might know that I do have a coaching program where we teach people how to trade oil options and these are futures oil options. And I have been doing so for, it's been over five years now, I believe, quite well, actually. And so that's why a while back I started teaching people how to do it. And now we have, I think we have close to over 400 people that have gone through the program and lots and lots of success stories. Lots of people are very happy that they've joined and we do have a few openings and people are still coming in. So really, I wanted to talk about oil and what has happened in oil this year in 2020 and what I think will happen in the future. So the biggest thing that happened in 2020 in terms of investing so far, was definitely the coronavirus, right? Coronavirus hit the US really bad in March, actually hit the markets in March. And we went into a bear market in the stock market and then pretty much a V-shape bounce back. It took about, I don't know, a month and a half or so, or two months, and then after that, we were off to the races, going much higher. Overall for the year, markets didn't do that much, but it dropped 20% and then came back. So that's a big deal. In addition to the stock market, oil also took a tumble from where it was trading. And then there were a lot of headlines in April, lots of headlines, all the news going crazy, oil went negative, oil went negative, oil prices are actually below zero. You can get paid to get oil. And of course, that's a bunch of BS. So let me put some, let me talk about it. Let me explain it. The spot price of oil, which is the actual real price of oil if you were to go buy a barrel of oil, it's the spot price, that's how much you can buy it for. That never went below zero. Never, ever and it hasn't happened, will never happen, because oil is a commodity. It is a physical substance that has cost, right? It is worth something and it has a cost to locate it, to drill it, to get it out of the ground, to transport it, insure it, store it, all that stuff. It costs money to do all that right now in the US, in the shale, it takes about, I don't know, $40, $45, $40 to $45, depending on the company, somewhere in that range, to get the oil out of the ground. If you go over to Saudi Arabia, they're drilling it. Their oil is a little bit easier to extract and so their costs are cheaper, probably somewhere at $12 to $15 per barrel, somewhere around that range, but still it costs money. And so no, there was never a time where anybody could go into the market and get paid to buy oil. So let's put that to rest. And if you look at a chart of oil right now, you will see it never went oil. And when I talk about oil, there are different types of oil. The one that went negative supposedly was called WTI and that is the one that we trade in our program. The other type of oil, which is traded in the United States, is Brent. And Brent oil itself never went, even trading wise, never went below $26 or so a barrel. That is the oil that is used, the crude oil that you get from overseas, the Middle East and such. But in reality, there are dozens and dozens of types of different crude oil. So the ones we trade mostly are WTI, and you can also do Brent in our program. We trade WTI. WTI is the one that is pumped in the United States or drilled in the United States and in Canada. And all of that oil makes its way normally through pipelines and gets to a place or city called Cushing, Oklahoma. That is where they are stored. That's where all the oil is stored. That's WTI, that's the one we trade. So a lot of times, if there is some unease in the Middle East or something like that, it impacts Brent a lot more. It does impact WTI a little bit, but it's not to the same degree. So WTI is a little bit more stable in that sense. There's less risk of an attack or something like that really making WTI go nuts. But if something happens to Brent, WTI does move in tandem, so that's a whole different story. But what happened was, the trading in WTI for one day did go negative. It did. And that was what the headlines were talking about. It's not that the spot price was negative. It never was. It was for one day. Basically what happened is that we have this very large oil ETF, ticker symbol, USO. If you want to trade oil, but you cannot trade futures, like if you're a mutual fund or a hedge fund or whatever index fund type thing, if you cannot trade futures, they created this ETF, which tracks oil prices and it's called USO. Now in order... The way they do that is they buy front month oil futures contracts. Now oil is traded as a future, which means it's a contract and it has an expiration date, just like the options. So you can have a option on a future. So you have an option, which is a derivative and then oil contract futures contract, which is also a derivative. So you have a derivative on top of a derivative on top of oil. Seriously, I'm not trying to lose you. I know it's getting a little complicated here, but really I'm not trying to. I'm trying to make it as simple as possible. So anyway, you have USO. They buy front month futures contracts, and you can, futures contracts go for several months. So you can buy one for now or in the future. That's why they're called futures and the prices are different for all of them. They're all individual, different securities. So they only buy the front month. What happens is every month when they get to expiration day, the USO has to sell all of its futures contracts, and then they have to buy the contracts for the next month. So basically, they just roll it forward. They do not own any oil, right? So there's another ETF GLD, which tracks gold. Now GLD actually owns gold. So they have gold stored. They don't have to play this game. Maybe they do a little bit, but not as much. USO doesn't own any oil. They don't store any oil, so they have to play this game with trading. Now, what was going on is, that oil was decreasing in price because there is a lot of supply. There is a ton of supply right now, and there's a lack of demand, because of the Corona. It was totally unpredicted, markets shut down, country shut down, business shut down, everything shut down. Nobody needs as much oil. And so what happened was, that the drillers are still drilling oil, but now nobody's using the oil and nobody's buying the oil. So the oil was being stored in Cushing, Oklahoma and the storage facilities were getting fuller and fuller and fuller. They were roughly at about 80 or 85% capacity. Okay. Now, if you want to store oil in Cushing, Oklahoma, you have to have a contract, you have to have a deal with them. You can't just walk in and say, I need a billion barrels of storage or whatnot. You can't just do that. You have to have an agreement with them in place. So you have an entity and you have a trader, USO, which has thousands and thousands and thousands of contracts that they have to get out of. They have to sell, right? And it's expiration date, so they got to sell them today. They got to sell them on that day. They don't have a choice. Otherwise, they go bankrupt. They go caput. They cannot take delivery of that oil. They can't. So they have to get rid of the contracts. Who do they sell the contracts to? They can only sell them to people who have capacity to store it, right? You, me, any individual trader, we cannot take delivery of oil. So we do not trade on expiration day. We do not take contracts, our brokers will not let us. It's just not done because you cannot take delivery. Only people who taking delivery are trading on expiration day. And those were the only people who could buy these contracts from USO. Now, normally in a common market, normal market, everything happening, people take those contracts and it's a done deal. It's normal. But, this was not normal. Nobody knew what was going to happen with Corona. Nobody knew when demand was going to pick up again. And so what happened was, all of the buyers that USO normally deals with, they know these guys, they're friends, they work together. They reach out to them and say, "Hey, we need you to take over these contracts from us." The buyer said, "No, can't do it. Not going to do it this month. I still got plenty of oil stored up that I haven't gotten rid of. My capacity is low. I don't have that much allotment. I can't do it." And USO freaked out. So they said, "All right, fine, I know the price is whatever, 30 bucks a barrel, $25 a barrel, $25 a barrel," whatever it was, said, "I'll give it you for $20. Just take it for $20." And the buyer said, "Nope." "All right, I'll give it to you for $15." "Nope." "I'll give it to you for $10." "Nope." "I'll give to you for zero. Come on. Just take it, just take it. Just please just take my oil. Just pay me and just take it from me. Just take these contracts." "Nope. I can't take it because I got nowhere to put it." "So even if you give me the oil at zero, what you're doing, Mr. USO, I cannot take delivery. It's going to cost me to take delivery of this oil. I have to pay for storage." "How much is it going to cost you?" "Well, I don't know. It's going to cost me some money." So USO kept dropping the price. They went to zero and then they went negative. They said, "Here, we'll pay you to take the oil." "Nope." "We'll pay you more. We'll pay you more. We'll pay you more." I think it got down to, at one point, it was like negative $35 or $37 a barrel at one point. That is what they were paying these people to take contracts from them and then take delivery and store it. So we as individual investors, or most people on Wall Street, could not take advantage of this. There were only a few select firms that could have taken advantage of this. So for them, yeah, it was a windfall, right? For us, you and me, it didn't make any difference. For oil traders or option traders, it didn't make any difference. Why? Because number one, oil options had already expired. The options that we were trading had already expired. And because of the rules that we use in my system, we were already out of the oil markets. We were not trading at this time. So that saved us. The rules and my system, it worked, this is proof. It worked and it saved us and we were not trading at this time. Number two, the day after this happened, oil prices went back up, because this was a anomaly. It was a technical glitch in the system. It was just supply and demand. No demand, prices go down. Hey, I need you to get rid of this, here, please take it. So they got paid. Everybody could not take advantage of this. This is not a normal thing that happened. If you look at the price of a price chart, you won't see it on the price chart. And that was gone. That only happened that one day for that one futures contract. Not all of futures contracts, not olive oil. It was that one futures contract on one day and it expired and it went away and the problem was gone. Now I hope USO has learned its lesson. And they did say that they do not, where they were spreading their risk into not trading only the front month option. So now they trade whatever the current month is, they buy some of the next month, they buy some of the next month. That's going to lower their profits and that's going to lower how much USO actually tracks the regular price of oil. So if oil is going up a dollar, USO's not going to go up the same amount because it's not going to track as much, because they're in different contracts. So getting technical here. So just USO is not going to be as efficient tracking the price of oil because now they have to hedge themselves. They have to protect themselves so this does not happen again. Okay? But, so if you're going to ask me, "Hey, did oil prices go negative?" I'd be like, "Not really." Oil never went negative. Technically there was a glitch. If you could have taken advantage of it, you did well. Most of us couldn't. Next thing you know, oil was up the next day, right? And it started going up since then. So what happened? Well, this was a pretty big anomaly, a pretty big glitch. And even before this happened, liquidity, or not liquidity, volatility in oil had increased. And so if you look at OVX, which is the oil volatility index, it's like VIX, you know the VIX for stocks, the SS&P, OVX is the same thing for oil. If you look at that, volatility had increased before this happened, before April 2nd, I believe. And so the, the brokers themselves, the futures brokers, when volatility increases, they start to increase the amount of margin that you need per each contract. So basically what that means is, that things are getting crazy. Things are getting volatile. The market is waking up, it's jumping around, you need to have more money for each contract, which means that you are being protected, right? You're having less money at risk. If you only have $5,000 in the account, you can't be trading two, three, four different contracts. It lowers how many contracts you can trade. So you have to get out of some contracts, which is good because things are acting crazy. That's one of the ways the futures markets protect their traders, us little guys. After this happened, several brokers decided to stop letting individual investors trade oil. That was oil, as well as the options. Was this fair? I don't know. I'm not a broker. I really can't decide. I can't say. But I do know that if you were at a broker that did not, and all the brokers did not. There were several brokers, interactive brokers, trade station, DeCarley trading, which is somebody that we recommend. They are a futures only broker and all the other futures only brokers did not stop trading. If you could have traded, and I could not. I was at Ameritrade, Ameritrade stock trading. A lot of the other big firms stopped trading, E-Trade, Schwab, they all, they stopped it. So I could not take advantage. But you have a security that has just gone down in price significantly. It's lower than the cost, right? Oil is trading at a price that's lower than it costs to create. What is going to go happen to that price? It's going to shoot up. It has no choice. It has to go up. That was the easiest money you could have made ever in the history of the world, maybe. You have things selling and I think if you look at our oil chart now, the lowest they got to was like $6 on the oil chart, right? But let's say it went to $7 or $8. Let's say you could have bought it at $8. If you could buy oil at $8 and it cost $40 to get out of the ground, yeah, that sucker's going to go up. That's easy money. So yeah, we did have people in our program that were trading and they made the easiest money in their lives because you know it's going up, right? You just sit back and buy as much as you can and you hold on for dear life. And since then, that happened in April, right, and oil has rallied. It's been trading for the last several months around $40 a barrel. And it's in a very tight range. It just goes up and down a little bit, little up and down, up and down, up and down. I have been gritting my teeth waiting for Ameritrade to let us back in. They still haven't done it. I'm recording this, it's November, they still have not let us back in as individual investors. Other brokers have and so I had to switch an account to another broker and now I'm trading it over there. I waited and waited and waited, and finally said, I can't take it anymore. I mean, this is the perfect opportunity to be trading oil. It's calm, it's moving sideways. Oh my God, it's easy. Money is just sitting there. Please, let me trade. Please, let me trade. Nope. They're not letting me. Okay, let's go to a different broker. So I took out a large account over to another broker and I've started over there. Two months ago, I started, made 7% in the first month. This month I made like two point something. I got out early because of the election. The US presidential election's coming up in a few days and I have really limited all my positions. I don't want to be in any oil positions. I don't think anything's going to happen to oil because of that, but I'm not taking the risk. Okay? So yes we are back. Oil is back. It is a great way to trade. It is doing really, really well. I mean, it's going sideways. I don't know what else you could want is to be an option seller, right? Very little risk, sell as far away from the money as you can. It's great if you do it properly. And the way we do it is, we do it properly, right? Because we have, back-tested, not back-tested, but actually tested with real money. I have for several years. Different strategies, I found the one that works the best and not only does it work the best, but I came up with the different rules to protect myself and to hedge myself and to make sure that, okay, in this situation, we need to do this, in this situation, we need to do that and that's why we were protected. That's why we were out of the market even before oil went, quote unquote, negative for the day, right? We were already out. And that was because of our rules. So we were protected. So I'm happy, I'm ecstatic. I'm like, Hey, this is it. It worked. This is why we have the freaking rules to protect ourselves. This is why I can say, yes, this program works. And this is why I say you should join the program, right? You should join if you want to trade oil profitably. Yeah, join the program. If not, you can try to figure it out on your own. Good luck, it took me several years to do it. Have at it, be fun, hopefully you don't lose all your money in the process. But yeah, so that's where oil is right now. It's moving sideways. It's doing good. We're going to be making money. I'm waiting until after the election is over and then we're going to go full fledge back into it. Been already doing it for two months now and we did great, very simple, very easy trades. After the election settles, everything goes back, we're going to go 100% back into it and it's going to be a lot of fun. I do expect oil to be very calm for the next year. We'll see how it happens. We'll see if there's anything with the Corona vaccine and all that stuff. We can't predict the future, but from what we are seeing, we're going to make a lot of money. https://optiongenius.com/oiloptions So if you've been thinking about our program, it's time to get in now so that you can start paper trading, so that you can start practicing and so you stop wasting time, right? Because every day that goes by is a day that you're missing out on theta, missing out on this money for selling time. Every day that goes by is a day you cannot sell time. So stop sitting on the sidelines, get involved, start paper trading, doing something, and trade with the odds in your favor. Thank you and good luck. https://optiongenius.com/oiloptions LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here! https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book Podcast Transcript: I hope that wasn't too loud. That's my new toy, and I am super excited about it. I'm stoked about it actually. But first some background, making money could get boring. Now I say that because passive trading can be monotonous. When just about every trade you make makes money, you take it for granted. It kind of loses its charm and the dollars, they just become numbers on a screen. So it can get really out of hand. Like you, just, there's no more fun anymore. And that's good in a way, so that you don't get emotional about it in case you lose money, just, oh, the numbers went down. That's okay, it's not an indictment on me that I'm a bad person or I'm stupid, or anything like that. The numbers went down and then, they'll go back up. And that's how it becomes for a lot of traders, but that's bad because you lose interest. It's not exciting anymore. It's not fun anymore. It doesn't have that same oomph that it had when you first started, you know? And that's when you start to screw up, that's when you start making mistakes, that's when you start falling down and not paying attention. So a few years ago, I added a bonus for myself. Every time I would have a positive month, where I would make money for the entire month, I would have what I called the celebratory lunch, with my wife. And this would be special, maybe once a month, no kids, no distractions, nothing else. It would just be me and her setting time apart, scheduling it and saying, we're going to lunch and we're going to some nice place. And, it was because I had a positive month and I would be super happy. I would love it, I would look forward to it. And it made a huge difference. I actually started trading better, just because I knew I wanted that day off. And yeah, I did take the whole day off. So it wasn't just a celebratory lunch, it was like a celebratory day off. But the big thing was the lunch. I wanted that time with my wife. Now we normally do date nights. You go out at night and you get a babysitter or somebody to watch the kids, but this was different, this was during the day. I mean, we would make the time and we would splurge and we would celebrate. And the cool thing is that we would go to these restaurants where, everybody else there was rushed. People coming in, workers, or they're coming in their suits and ties, and they're in their whatever outfits, or their office outfits. And they would come in and they'd have, maybe like 30 minutes to eat and they'd be rushed. And the waiters would be rushing around and we'd be sitting there for like two hours, just enjoying ourselves, talking and catching up, and relaxing. And the waiter would be like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't bring your food out fast enough. We're like, ah, don't worry about it, we're going to be here for a while. You take care of your other tables. Don't worry about us. And that was another way, where I would be so grateful and thankful. It was a monthly reminder of what I have that other people didn't, because they had to rush back to work. They're on the clock, it's a daily grind, the nine to five rat race, and they couldn't get out of it. Whereas me, I was lucky to be celebrating with my wife, something simple, hey, we made a positive month this month. And it wasn't just that we made money that month, 'cause the worker people, they're making money too, right? But it was the fact that I was able to have the time, to spend the way I wanted to, and so it made it a much bigger deal. So it wasn't just a fact that yes, I made money that month. It wasn't just the fact that I was spending time with my wife. It was a celebration, and it was a reminder of what a wonderful life it is. And it would bring me joy and it would bring me some humility, try not to get over, you don't want to get over-pompous. You want to stay humble, right? You don't want to get a big head. You don't want to be like, oh yeah, I'm perfect, I'm a great trader, I'm a God of wall street, master of the universe type thing. No, that's not me, I don't think I'm ever going to be like that. But that's another thing why I needed to do it. I needed to have that celebration because as an introvert, that's one thing I don't do enough, is to celebrate the wins and to have fun. Or maybe it has nothing to do with me being an introvert, I don't know. But I do know that that is something I need to work on. That is something that I need to change in my life as well. Because now when we have the little ones, the little kids, it's important to celebrate everything, even all the little things. Not every little thing they do, we don't encourage them, but when they do something important, we really make a big deal out of it. Because I know my parents didn't do that for me, everything was expected. I didn't have a high school graduation party, didn't have a college, well college graduation wasn't a big deal, but dropped out of three different schools before I finally graduated. So that wasn't a thing. But, everything was expected, you were expected to get good grades. You're expected to do good. You're expected to not get any speeding tickets. You're expected to behave properly, and all that kind of stuff. So there wasn't a lot of celebration. And so, I think that's carried off into my behavior and I'm a lot more serious than I want to be, and one of the things I want to change about myself is just be more joyful, and be more happy and kind, and all that comes from being happy. And so, if you celebrate more and you get to be happier, in a sense, and so the lunch, it worked great. I got all these reminders. I felt good about myself. My wife was smiling and she was proud of me, and it was a reminder that she was proud of me, and it worked awesome for a while. Problem is, the lunch was only once a month. And so yeah, once a month I would get that. But you want that constant dopamine hit, you want these constant reminders to feel good about yourself and to be happy. And so it's kind of like, all these video games and the social apps, like Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter and all these things. And even slot machines, they are addictive because you get the constant dopamine hit. Every time you make an action, you get a little bell or you get a little emoji, or you get a little like, and those become addictive, because we really crave that. And in our mind, every time you get one of those little messages, there's a little chemical that's released in the brain. And that chemical is even more powerful than heroin and crack. And so, you do become addicted to it. And studies have shown that Facebook and all these things, are addictive. And so I guess to me, this was my "like", that I went to lunch and I got a like, but it was only once a month. So it did what I wanted it to do, but it wasn't often enough. So about a month ago, one of our passive trading formula students, posted in the private Facebook group that we have, that he made eight profitable trades that month. And we encourage our students, post your trades and push your trades before you do them even, so that you can get them critiqued. Other people can give you ideas, to see if you make sure you're doing it right. And we do want to celebrate everybody's trades and everybody's success, right? So he posted, he had eight profitable trades that month, which was awesome. It was great, and everybody's congratulating him and giving him likes. And then the next day, another student posted that she was profitable on 10 trades in a row. And she had done, I think, three trades for three months, and then three trades another month, and then four trades the last month. And so for three months she was profitable on every single trade, and that was wonderful. And that pumped me up even more, right? I got really excited. I'm like, oh, this is awesome, this is awesome. And these, they're having success, they're having great results. That pumps me up more than my own trades. Doing well on my own trades, that's great, that's ho-hum now. But when our students are doing well, that really, really gets me juiced. And so I wanted to figure out a way to congratulate them. You know, I mean, I can't take them out to lunch, but how can I congratulate them in a way where they get a little bit of that dopamine hit, and they feel good about themselves? And so, I saw that in the groups, when you're typing in a reply, you can add these emojis. And one of the emojis is a bell. A service bell, that's what it's called. And so, I gave them one bell for every positive trade. So the first gentleman, he got eight bells. The second lady, she got 10 bells, and then other students got bells as well. So I was looking through, okay who else posted positive trades? Gave them bell, bell, bell, and I got to tell you, it was super fun giving out bells. It was a lot of fun. And they liked getting the bells too. It's like a public acknowledgement that you're doing well and you get one bell for every positive trade. So, it's like a cash register going ch-ching, ch-ching. If you're a retail store owner, every time that cash register rings, hey, you made money. So this is great. The bell goes off, boom, hey, you made money. Ding, there's a bell, you made money, congratulations. And so bells are also a big part of wall street, right? Now that you think about it, right? Every day, the stock market, the New York stock exchange and the NASDAQ, they're opened by ringing the bell, ding-ding-ding, and then they're closed by ringing the bell, ding-ding-ding. Now, right now it's totally, they don't need the bells, especially on NASDAQ. Everything is computerized, automated, nobody's even there, but on the New York stock exchange, they have a floor and they actually have traders. And so the bell tells you, ding-ding-ding-ding, markets open, markets closed. And so it's really cool, the bell is a big part of trading. And so now, I am making the bell a thing at Option Genius, and we are going to give students bells for every positive trade, right? So every time they post a positive trade, they're going to get a bell. And I thought, hmm, what if we rang a real bell? Would that make any difference? I don't know if you ever remember this or if you've been to this restaurant, but it's a fast food place called Long John Silver's and its sea food, and I used to go there when I was little. I don't see anymore around here, where I live right now, in the suburbs of Houston. But when I lived in Miami, there was one near our house and they had amazing hush-puppies, I love their hush puppies. I would just go in there and order like two dozen hush-puppies. Just fried corn bread, but they were super good. But if you've ever eaten there, you go inside and it's like a seafood theme, because it was seafood. And they would have this bell by the door, by the main door, the entrance and exit door. And it had a little plaque and said, hey, if you got good service or if you were happy, ring the bell and it would have a bell that you would see on the ship or on a dock, or something like that. And it was a pretty big bell with a rope tied to the little thingy inside the bell that rings it. And so you're supposed to ring the bell every time you got good service and that'd be cool, because that's positive reinforcement for all the people that work there. That, hey look, somebody enjoyed their visit. Somebody enjoyed their food. Somebody liked the staff. And it also tells all of the other people eating at the restaurant, right? That whole, hey, it's social proof, right? Somebody likes this place, somebody else besides us likes this place. And so as a kid, I would just ring the bell all the time, it didn't matter. I just loved ringing that bell, it was crazy. It was just fun ringing a bell. And so now I've taken it a bit further. So I ordered my own bell from Amazon. And every time I have a profitable trade, I ring the bell and I love it. I mean, it's a constant reminder that I did a good thing, right? I was successful, I made it, I did what I was supposed to do and a trade worked. And it works in two ways. Number one, I need to move. Like I need to actually physically move to go to the bell and press a button, right? And number two, it's auditory. So it impacts two senses. And of course, I mean, on the screen, on the monitor, I see the dollar amounts that I made. So I guess that incorporates sight too, so three senses. So every time I have a positive trade, there are three senses that are involved. One, I see the result on the screen. Two, I actually have to move towards the bell and hit the bell with my finger. And then three, I get to hear it as well, and it's loud, and it's like, there you go. It's loud and people can hear it. In the office building that we're in, next door to me, there is a lawyer and I have been driving him crazy with all the bell rings lately. He's been getting mad. He doesn't say anything, but whenever I see him in the hallway, he's like, hey man, what's with the bell? It's hilarious. But the important thing here is, the only time you can ring the bell, is after a positive trade. And I've been ringing it on the podcast because I just want you to hear it. But it's important that you don't use it unless it's a positive trade. So after you're out, trade is over, you are done. You exited the trade, everything, don't do it before that. Don't say, oh yeah, I made most of the money, I'm getting out, now I'm going to get out. No, no, no. You only get to ring the bell, you only get to take credit, after the trade is over, okay? You can't just ring it whenever you want. Because ringing the bell is special and it's a celebration. If you don't do that, then it's going to lose meaning and it's just going to gather dust. So make sure it's important, it's special, and that it is a celebration. Now it's kind of like, if it's on your birthday and you're blowing out the candles on your birthday cake, that's special. It's once a year, if you do that every day, it wouldn't have any meaning. It would be like, whatever more candles, foof. But the fact that it's a big deal, you got candles, you got a cake, you got people singing, and then you blow it out and everybody claps. It's a big deal. Maybe not for adults as much, but it should be. If you don't enjoy your own birthday, then that kind of takes a little bit of life away. So celebrate, enjoy the little things. Enjoy the big things especially, if you're not enjoying the big things, start with the big things and then start enjoying all the little things as well. So if you want to get your own bell, you can just search for service bell on the internet. I got mine from Amazon. It's like five bucks or something. That's what they're called, they're called a service bell. And they look like, well, it's the bells that you used to see at motels and hotels, even some doctor's offices. So you would ring it in case there was nobody at the counter. So you probably remember them, they are silver and they have a little button on top. They're black on the bottom and you just press a button on top, and it goes ding, like this, ding. So I would urge you to go and get yourself a bell and celebrate every positive trade, okay? If you don't want to do a bell, don't do a bell, do something else, but make something that interacts with your senses. Something that you have to move physically, do it, makes a noise or makes a smell, something that gives you some sensation. And then every time you do that, you get that little bit of dopamine and it becomes addictive, and then you want to get that trade. So sometimes if you're in a trade and you're like, you know what? I can take my money now, or I can get a little bit more. And you're like, no, you know what? I'm going to get out of the trade now because I'm going to ring that bell. So you take the profits and you don't risk it. So, it can work out in your favor as well. So remember trade with your odds in your favor so that you can ring the bell more often. Take care. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here! https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book Podcast Transcript: Hello. Hello. Hello. I had a interesting phone call yesterday. And so I thought I'd share with you, it's an interesting story. A guy calls the office and I just happened to pick it up and he's wanting to know about passive trading, what it is, how it works. And so I asked him, I said, "We have some questions that we normally ask people." And I say, "So are you doing any trading right now? You know anything about options?" And he says, bravely, or very proudly that, "Yeah, I do. I just turned 10,000 into 25,000 trading options." And I said, "Whoa, that's awesome. That's great. Congratulations. Well done, good job. How much do you have in your account right now?" And he says, "Well, I have 25,000." I said, "Oh, okay. So you had 10 before and you turned it into 25?" "Yes." "Oh, awesome. Great, great. What are you going to do with it now?" And he says, "Well, I'm going to take the 25, break it out into five and put 5,000 in each different trade." So I'm like, "Oh, okay, cool. You're going to be smart. You're going to diversify." He goes, "Yeah, exactly. I'm going to be diversifying." So I was like, "Okay, so the first time you did it, you put the whole 10 in one. Right? How many different stocks did you do?" He goes, "Yeah, just one." I go, "Okay, so you put one trade in one stock, the whole 10 and it turned into 25. Now you're going to break it down and diversify." And he goes, "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing." And I was like, "Okay, cool. So, let me see," this is me talking. I was like, "Let me see if I can try to explain to you what you did. Now, what you did was basically you went to the casino, Wall Street's a casino. So, you go to the casino and you end up at the roulette table. Now the roulette table has all these different kinds of bets that you can make. You can bet red. You can bet black. You can red odd, even. What you decided was you going to take all your money and you picked one number and you put it all on that one number and you let it ride. And you hit, which is awesome. I mean, the odds of that are really low, but you hit and it paid off. It paid off big, that's awesome. That's great. So, now what you're doing is you're taking your winnings. You split it up into five little pots and you're going to put them on five different numbers." And he's like, "Okay." I'm like, "Yeah. So, now this is around two. The first spin you hit. The second spin and you put it on five different numbers. What do you think is going to happen?" He goes, "If it's a roulette, I'm probably going to lose." I'm like, "Yeah. Yep, exactly. That's what's going to happen if you do the same thing." And he's like, "Well, well, why is passive trading so different? Why is that so much better? I knew what I was doing. I made a smart choice. I made a smart bet." I'm like, "Yeah, maybe you did. But the chances of you duplicating it, not very big. The odds are against you. Now with passive trading I'm with you in the casino. I came with you, the same car. But I didn't go to the roulette table. I went to the blackjack table and I sat down." And he goes, "Well, blackjack it doesn't have good odds either." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's true. If you play the regular way, black Jack doesn't really have that good odds either. But see, I don't play it the regular way." "What do you do?" I said, "Well, when I play blackjack, or basically passive trading, but when I'm doing blackjack in this scenario, I start with my two cards and I start with either an 18, 19 or 20." He's like, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah. I start with either, an 18 and 19 or 20 on every hand. Now, sometimes it gets really, really close to 21. Some trades are really close to 21, but nothing is guaranteed, so I can't say 21. So, we'll just say I start with 18, 19 or 20. Now, how many hands do you think I'm going to win, if I start with 18, 19 or 20?" He goes, "All of them." I'm like, "Well, yeah. You do lose on occasion, but yeah, I win on the majority of them. I win on most of them. So, both of us went to the casino. You went to roulette, you did one swing or one round or whatever it's called and you won big. Then you do the second one and then you lost it all. Now you're busted. You're broke. You're got no money left. So now you have to wait for me to either run out of money or get bored, because we came in the same car. So, you're going to be waiting a long time because I'm doing well at the blackjack table. Now, you know how at the blackjack table they have space for six or seven people or eight people? I don't know how many people can sit there, but they have space for multiple people there." "Yeah." "Well, I'm playing the whole table. I'm playing every single seat. I'm doing multiple hands and I'm starting every hand with 18, 19 or 20. And so the thing is that, I'm going to lose eventually. Occasionally I'm going to lose. But when I do lose, I lose small. I don't lose it. So that gives me staying power. That lets me sit there at the table all night long, just playing, playing, playing, playing, playing until I get bored because most likely I ain't going to run out of money. And that's the difference between buying options and selling options. Now passive trading takes it a little step further. If you're only selling options, you still have some risks you have to worry about. Passive trading takes it even further to the next level. That's why I'm really a big proponent of passive trading." So he goes, "Oh, okay. Where can I find out more?" I go, "Well, just go get my free book. And you can do the same thing. The book is at passivetrading.com/free book. Just go there and pick up the book, learn all about it, see what you think. Learn how to play blackjack with 18, 19 or 20. Depending on whatever strategy you use, that's what number you get." And so, right now I understand what this guy is coming from. There are a lot of people like him in the market. The market is very volatile right now. Stocks are going up, stocks are going down depending on what stock you're playing. And it's a little crazy, but it's a gambler's market. And so if you are a gambler and if you're not in this for the long run, and if you're just in it to make some quick money and hopefully you place a bet and it pays off. This is a great market for you. It's very volatile. That means there's a lot of premium and the stocks are moving up and down really crazy. And then now we have the election coming up. So there's going to be a lot more volatility, a lot more volatility. And so if you're a gambler, then this is great. You can turn your 10 into 25 and then you probably turn your 25 and zero. And then maybe you get some more and come back in and try it again. But if you do hit the 10 to 25, I hope you take some money off the table. Don't risk at all. Just whatever money you came with. Take that 10 off the table, go put it in a savings account and then play with whatever money you made. Because eventually you're going to blow it, if you're a gambler. If you're not a gambler, if you're in this for the long haul, if you're looking for a real passive income, if you're looking for real something stable to do, then selling options is the way to go. Add passive trading onto that, take it to the next level. And you could be there playing all night and it doesn't matter what happens. It doesn't matter how volatile it gets. It doesn't matter who wins the election. It doesn't matter if there's stimulus or no stimulus. Doesn't matter if this company is doing well or that company is doing well. We play the odds and we just keep rolling. We just keep playing with the money and that's it. That's how it goes. And so, I've been doing this for a long, long time. And in the beginning, when I first started, lost a bunch of money, did all kinds of crazy things. Made money too, along the way. I had some big winners just like this guy did, but you learn that those are few and far between. And so eventually, over time, I realized that. Hey, you know what, I need something sustainable, something long-term, something that's not going to take all my time either. And that's another major factor of passive trading, it doesn't take a lot of time. And so right now, it's a great time to start. Things are going to get more volatile, I believe. We don't know when this Coronavirus is going to be going away, or if it's going to go away, or what the world is going to look like when we returned back to normal. It's going to be maybe a new normal, who knows. But I think eventually things will go back to the way they are now, or they were before. So we'll have pre-COVID and then during COVID, then after COVID. And after COVID eventually things that go back to pre-COVID, and life will go on. And passive traders will still be trading and the gamblers will be gone. So, don't be a gambler. Trade with the odds in your favor, my friend. Take care. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here! https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here: https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer  Podcast Transcript: Allen Sama: All right there, passive traders, welcome to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast. Today I'm here with my good friend, Justin Boyum, who is a US Army veteran. He's also a very successful businessman, speaker and a professional and executive coach. Being a veteran himself, he does look out for the other veterans and their families, and tries to help them find fulfilling careers, create strong relationships, and live joyful lives. How are you doing, Justin? Justin Boyum: Doing great, man. Allen Sama: What you've been up to lately? Justin Boyum: Lately, I have been doing some events, going around talking with other veterans and professionals out there just trying to learn more about how people are dealing with our new COVID era that we're in and dealing with lockdowns and the different strategies that are available to them to accelerate their careers or their business. Allen Sama: Awesome, sweet. So, the reason I wanted to bring Justin on is because as a veteran, he goes through and he's been trained in making quick decisions. As we are traders, we need to have the ability to take limited information and act on that. Some people I've talked to in the past are like, "Well, I want to know that everything is going to be perfectly exactly the way I needed to before I make a trade." That's just not how it works. We need to take imperfect information, we have to be okay with not knowing everything, and that knowing that we might be wrong on our assessment and still be able to adapt. Allen Sama: So, when I was talking to Justin, he was saying the same things. I was like, "Man, this is some really good stuff." So when he talks to his students and his clients, he talks about how to be high performance and how to make those quick decisions and how to make the decisions that will put you in the position that you can excel. So, Justin, tell me something about the stuff that you learn in the military, because you were active, right? You were in a war zone. Justin Boyum: Right, I did a tour in Iraq during Iraqi Freedom in Basra. Yeah, absolutely. So, realistically to talk about exactly what you mentioned, right, being able to make quick decisions. I mean, one of the first things that they teach their leaders and their officers, and the sergeants is the worst decision that you can make is no decision, right? So, they teach you to be able to really make decisions. You got to use the information that you have in front of you. That doesn't mean that every decision you make is always going to work out perfectly, but the worst thing to do is to be inaction. Justin Boyum: I think one of the more beautiful illustrations of this is in the HBO series that they did for Band of Brothers. They showed the Battle of Bastogne, which is very key battle in World War II. They had a new lieutenant that was less decisive, that was going to lead this effort initially. One, the soldiers already knew that too. So, there was a lot of concern about like, "Are we going to be able to handle this?" But sure enough, they go into action. That's when the combat starts, and he completely freezes. It's causing them to take on casualties and have all these issues. So, they send in another captain from another unit just to run in there and take over operations. He quickly figures out, "Where's everybody at? I've got to make a decision, we get going." Justin Boyum: And then they go in, they actually complete this mission, which was effectively you can really pinpoint that that's where the Allied forces really won the war was winning this particular battle. It was because somebody came in, and he just made decisions, right? It wasn't always perfect. He did some crazy things in that. Go watch the series, if you want to see it, or read the book. It's a fantastic book. But I mean, realistically, the difference was that he went and made decisions. He got into action. Yeah, there's going to be risk that you have to take. You have to just do whatever... You have to calculate that in your head quick enough. What's an acceptable amount of risk? You got to go. Justin Boyum: But obviously, in a war effort, you've got to make that decision or you're going to lose a [inaudible 00:04:21], right? So, there's a little bit of a raised stakes there. But I think in general, when I talk with my students, whether they're building a business, following their careers, making more sales for their book of business, wherever it is, they've got to be able to raise that necessity to that warlike effort. If I don't go do this, these are the potential results or lack of results I'm going to see. There are a number of ways to attach meaning to that. But absolutely, you got to be able to make decisions and go. The worst thing you can do is do nothing. Allen Sama: Yeah. So, I mean, there's two things that you mentioned there. One of the things is that we find that people, they want to be successful. They want to make more money trading. They want to live a better life and have a better lifestyle, but they are afraid to get started. They're afraid to make that first step and get in, because it's like, "Oh, I don't know this, and I don't know how to do this. This is confusing to me." Allen Sama: And then there's that other person who's a little bit further down the line. He has put on a trade, and he has followed the rules. He's doing everything properly, but then the market, like the market does or the stock, it doesn't cooperate. So, now, the person doesn't know what to do and they're flustered. They're taking losses. It's not the same as in a war zone. We're not dying here, we're not getting hurt. But when you lose money, it feels the same way. Justin Boyum: Well, you got to think about the ripple effects of that, of course, too, right? What does that mean for your family? What does that meant to the new people you're connected to? Right? What does that keep you from being able to invest in, right? Maybe this person that likes to invest in charities, that like sports things, like my community, like the veteran community or what have you, right? You not being able to perform at a high level, which is why I love to talk about high performance, because in order to be successful at anything, especially when you're dealing with something that can be volatile like a market, you've got to really be very highly clear and be able to take that bolt action, because there's real meaning behind, "What if I don't do it?" Justin Boyum: I looked at this as, say I was somebody who was in cold call sales.  I don't know if you've been in cold calling before, but you got to go and make 100 calls a day and maybe 5 of them will pick up, right, depending on what persons you're calling or how good you are with your outreach. But in general, when people are first starting out, at least you're looking at like a 2 to 5% success rate of even getting to talk to a human being that doesn't hang up on you. That can be difficult, but we'll break that down to say 20 calls. If you stopped at 19, that 20th call might be the person that said yes. Whatever solution is, you're selling product solution, right? Justin Boyum: By not making that next call, you've sacrificed that other person's joy or their ability to get what they want. Who does that effect, right? The people that are not near them, right? So, it's important that you'd be able to do those things and be able to overcome that fear of rejection or failure. You might get in them or "Oh, yeah, I had this happen one time, and it didn't go well," right? Well, what if I stopped cold calling after the first person that called me an idiot on the phone and hung up on me, because I didn't like the way that made me feel? Well, that kept me from making the next call, where I could have served somebody at a very high level and gotten them what they need to do, which not only helps them, but helps my business, helps my family, and all the different ripple effects that go from there. Allen Sama: Okay, so how would you walk somebody through that situation? So, I'll try to put it back in the trading scenario. So, there's a guy who is in a new environment, doing something new, not too experience, hasn't been through the ups and downs before, but he has made the jump. He's very scared, but he made the jump. He's done some trades. But now all of a sudden, because like right now what's going on in the stock market, the stock market has been going up. For the last several years, it's just been going almost straight up. Allen Sama: Now after COVID, we have some turbulence, we have a big market drop. A lot of people got scared. But then even after that, the market rallied back higher. Now everybody and their brother is wanting to trade and buying stocks and telling, "Oh, I'm making so much money." Well, that's great, but I mean, you're not doing it properly. You're just jumping in and you're getting some quick gains, because that's just what the market is doing, just going straight up. It's easy to do right now. But when it turns and I do believe it's going to turn pretty soon, there's a lot of uncertain activities and events coming up, the election and all that. Allen Sama: So, let's say somebody has done that. They don't have that much experience. They got in, they played some trades. They've made some money. They're a little bit maybe overconfident, but now the trade turns around. They're at a point where, "Okay, I need to make a decision. Either I need to get out of my trade, or I need to buckle down and stay in or I need to change my trade or adjust it somehow." Can you walk them through, or do you have some steps that they could take or some questions they could ask themselves? Justin Boyum: Right. So, I think that keys in. So, most people, it's what we've been talking about as we've been going through this. There are three major areas that cause most people to fail or quit at their goals. The very first one I think that we've been talking around now is fear. Fear is something that really drives a lot of decision makings. Sometimes when we're in a place where we're operating with fear, we tend to make bad decisions. We're going to make decisions that don't really serve us definitely. Allen Sama: That's cool. Justin Boyum: Or you might just go quit, right? Hey, I got into this trading, because I wanted to make 10K a month. I don't know what the average person if they really commit to this tends to make, but let's say they want to make 10K a month, allows me to quit my job, allows me to really freelance my time better or manage my time to be able to spend more time with my family or retire, whatever I'm going to do. So, I would come back to what was that original goal that you had? Because fear, sometimes it could be like, "Hey, I'm concerned about what the outcome may be." Maybe it's not what I'm going to be wanting, right? Maybe I go invest this money in trading, and I actually end up losing money. Maybe it's going to be harder than I expect. Justin Boyum: Maybe they're a little bit afraid of the process that's going to be a little hard or maybe they've got some stories in their background films like, "Well, I've always failed at some of these things or I have a bad experience before. So, I'm not going to go and do this again." Even if they've learned a strategy from someone like you that says, "Yeah, this can be successful if you do it right." So how do you overcome that fear? I think that you'd have to really go back and attach that, have the clarity around why you're doing what you're doing. Now, certainly, you want to follow a great strategy and you want to have a really good, effective plan. But just like in the military, right? Justin Boyum: I mean, sometimes we can have excellent plans. We've got the greatest military in the world, because they've done a lot of research. They make sure that they look at what's acceptable risk to them and what we need to do to be okay with something. But even with that, if you read any military book, stuff hits the fan, right? You got to be able to deal with that and be able to make decisions and move forward. Sometimes you're going to take some losses along the way. Sometimes they can really work out great for you. Justin Boyum: So, I would go back and look at somebody... So, in this case of if I was going to work with somebody who's a trader and going, "Hey, I really wanted to make this 10K a month, but I'm really afraid of making this decision because the market is volatile." I'm like, "I don't know if I want to get out of this." I said, "Okay, well, why don't you write me a check for $10,000?" Because by not making the decisions and staying with your commitment, that's what you're doing. You just go ahead, write me that check for this month. You'll tell your family that you wrote a check for $10,000 a year or do you want to play, right? Allen Sama: Right. Yeah, because you're losing, you're leaving it on the table. It's the same as not having it. Justin Boyum: I wasn't working with the trader, but I had that with somebody who was a sales representative. He was a real estate guy. He's like, "Hey, I wanted to be able to sell this much real estate so I could make this amount of income." He was thinking like, "Man, this is really hard. It's very competitive. I live in a major metro, so I can throw a rock and hit another real estate agent right now." He's like, "Man, I think maybe I need to go another direction." But the problem is that that fear was going to follow him to whatever other opportunity he was going to go to. So, it's about whether or not did he really want to commit to this, he got into real estate because he like to be able to help people, find that solution that dream home and that lifestyle. Obviously, allows him to do his lifestyle, manage the time that he wants to. Justin Boyum: But by saying, "I'm not sure about this," or "I'm not going to make that decision, or "I might just get out of this altogether," I was like, "Well, you said you want to make 10K a month, just go ahead and write me that check. Go home and tell your wife that's what you did today." Because that's what you're doing. I've been there too. I've been in a place where I was in a sales role or I was trying to start my business. That's my goals. Justin Boyum: By not taking action, I might as well just say, "That's what I need to just give up today." That keeps me from being able to go to donate to the charities that I think are important, being able to take my kids on the vacations that they deserve, send them to private school if I so choose or whatever, right? That's the ripple effect of not making decisions, right? Sometimes you might step on it, it might not work out what you want. But all you're going to end up happening by getting out is that you have regrets. Oh, that could have worked out. Allen Sama: Right. Yeah, yeah. Justin Boyum: Well, you want to be smart about it, right? Hey, look at the market and look at the information that you have available to you and try to make the best decisions. Yeah, but there's no guarantees, certainly not in trading, just as much as there's no guarantees that my business is going to just do anything, right? I got to go perform at a level and do the things that are important, but actually go out there and do it. Allen Sama: Yeah, right. Yeah, man. That's the hardest part. And then the thing is that we teach all our people to do it in a way where you're putting the odds in your favor. So, you're lining it up. So, you have as much success built in before you get started, but there's always that fear there. There's always that thing. So, I guess what that means is like you bring it back to what the goal is, what the why is, right? So, that overcomes that initial fear. Justin Boyum: I would agree with you about give yourself the best odds. They do that in the military. In basic training, they talk about squad tactics, right? They don't let you go and set schedule like an operation unless we have three to one odds and personnel, right? If you've got a 10-person unit and there's another 10-person unit that you're going to go and ambush, that's not good odds. Then you're like, "We're not taking that risk." Right? You can establish your boundaries of what's good for you- Allen Sama: Right, what's acceptable. Justin Boyum: ... and operate within that system. Okay, but if you said, "Hey, I set this goal." Okay, well, then you need to adjust. Okay, well, what kinds of trades am I going to make? Right? So, when I talked to a real estate agent, I go, "Okay, well, you got to sell this much inventory. Well, what if you just instead worked in a higher level of real estate and you don't have to make as many sales?" Right? Or "Hey, that's a complicated market." Okay, well, maybe you can go into one that sell more inventory, right? But you have to sell more to reach that same goal. Justin Boyum: There's different ways to do whichever one, but you've got to figure out what's your framework that you're going to work within. These are my boundaries. I think, in the military, we called that the left and right limits, right? Okay, anything in this field division is what I'm responsible for. Anything outside of that, I don't go past that. Allen Sama: Interesting. Okay, that's cool. I like that, the left and right limits. So, I'm going to focus on whatever is in front of me. So, one of the things we have people do is we do a personality test and a risk assessment. So, it's like how much risk am I good with? Am I a risk taker, like a real gambler? Or am I just like, "Hey, I'm super conservative. If I lose $1, I'm going to have a heart attack thing"? So, based on that, then they decide what strategies we want to work with them. So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay. But now, let's say we're in the midst of the battle. Things are not going exactly as we planned. Like you said, the stuff is hitting the fan. Now, what do I do to make the proper decision to help myself? Justin Boyum: Well, I think ultimately, again, you're going to have to look at the parameters of what's your framework, right? So, I love to use this analogy all the time. Have you ever seen the movie Moneyball? Allen Sama: Yeah. Justin Boyum: It's a baseball movie, right? We talked about basically, the order to win a baseball game is I don't need to go get all this flashy stuff, I just need to make sure that I score more than the other team. The best way to do that is to make sure that my guys are getting on base, right? So, basically, what you're looking at is just more turns on base or more at bats or however you want to look at that. So, I always just talk to my people of like if they're looking to build a business, right? So, MLM, trading, whatever you have to have, you have to get on base, right? Give yourself the ultimate opportunity to do that and when. Look, there's military operations where they have withdrawn, okay? Justin Boyum: There's been major motion pictures about it, like We Were Soldiers, right? That was a battle that did not go well, right? They had to figure out how they're going to get out of that and move on or go do the next thing. Sometimes you have to make that assessment, where this particular opportunity isn't working out. We need to cut losses, and you need to be comfortable with that. What that means, "Hey, okay, I might be taking a loss here," but what you don't do is you let that stop you from getting back in the game. Hey, I got to go to this next at bat. Justin Boyum: I'm sure anybody who's in... I keep going back to real estate, because it's an easy analogy, because it's about investing and stuff. But hey, I'm sure not every investment work out, right? So, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't go. You can do the best you can to give yourself the best opportunity to make money. But at the end of the day, when you're making the straight, again, more at bats. The more you do within your framework, whatever kinds of stocks that you use, you can do the backwards math on that and what's it going to take the win, right? The Oakland A's in the baseball didn't win every game. They just give themselves the best chance to win every time. Allen Sama: For those you guys who are listening and have read the book, I did not talk to Justin beforehand, because Justin, I talk about that as one of the pillars, the Moneyball, getting on base? Justin Boyum: [crosstalk 00:18:21]. Yeah. Allen Sama: Because a lot of times... Yeah. Well, what we teach is making very small conservative bets, but just winning over and over again. So, our straitening strategy wins about 80%, 90% of the time. So, we're not hitting homeruns. We're not trying to double, triple our money every time, but we're putting on small, small bets. So, we're making 10%, 10%, 10% in an easy way, in a way that doesn't take up a lot of stress, a lot of time. We're just sitting back and making 10%. That really adds up to a lot of money. Justin Boyum: I mean, that's a fantastic strategy, right? I agree. Using the Moneyball analogy, I'm glad that we see eye to eye there. I love that, right? It's just a matter of you just put yourself in the position to win. That's what the military does. They put themselves in the best possible chance to succeed at admission, right? Back in the World War II times, right, there was a lot different scenario. But nowadays, even more, we go to a military operation, we expect to win, right? It's because they've put in those parameters and that framework to make sure that they'll win. Same thing, it sounds like what you're teaching your students is, "Hey, give yourself the best chance to win. Justin Boyum: And then hey, if something doesn't go well, that's okay. You got to figure out how to cut your losses. You can stick it out. You can determine that, but just be at peace with your decision. Don't let that be the thing that holds you back." Right? Hey, I got rejected at the bar by the pretty girl, it doesn't mean I'm not going to ask another girl, right? Allen Sama: Right, right. Okay, so what it seems like I'm hearing you saying is that in order to get in, to get to bat, you got to overcome that initial inertia. You got to have a deeper meaning. I tell a lot of people this. We ask them, "Why do you want to learn how to trade?" They're like, "Oh, I want to make more money." It's never about the money. There's always something deeper there. It's I want to be more successful, I want to be respected. I want to take my family on vacations or whatnot. So, that's the first step. The second step, once you're in the game, once you're in the field and things are happening, you have your... What was it, the Y and the Z or the X and Y? Justin Boyum: You can say left and right limits. Allen Sama: Left and right limits. Okay, so you have your limits, you focus on what's in front of you. You don't worry about all the noise, because in trading, there's noise every single day. There's, "Oh, Trump sent out a tweet," and this person is doing this and this stock over here. This guy said this is going to happen." That guy said that's going to happen. So, there's tons of noise. So, I like that, the left and the right limits. You focus only on what's in your field of vision. You don't worry about anything else. You have your set trading plan or in your terminology, I believe you called it... What was it when you mentioned that before they go into battle, they have their... Justin Boyum: Well, they just have their acceptable risk, right? Allen Sama: Acceptable risk. Justin Boyum: Or their framework for what is... So, like I said, in that scenario I used, you might be on a small squad and you're going through a reconnaissance, right? You're going through this area? Oh, I see this is an area that we might do an ambush. And then they go, and they see that the enemy element that they're looking at is twice the size of what they have. That's not an acceptable risk. You let them go by. Right? Same thing with you're talking about. Hey, I'm not taking huge risks. I'm taking more at bats at smaller risks. So, I can protect myself long term, right? Which is a great framework to use. It's the same thing, right? Hey, left and right limits. Justin Boyum: Okay, so then I see the shiny object. Oh, this big stock might be something big, but it's in a different market. Well, you better determine, "Is that the thing that's going to be useful to you? Is that helpful?" Is taking that risk moving you toward your goal or using the same strategy to build over time so that you have that protection that you're looking for, right? I would suggest depending on what you're teaching your students or what their goals are, hey, don't go off of that big, shiny object, right? Unless you've done the research and you know that you're going to give yourself the best chance to win, stick to what you've got there. Stay at what's your acceptable amount of risk, right? Allen Sama: Right. So, it's not like- Justin Boyum: When one of my clients come to me and they said, they want to do something crazy or they might think it's crazy to them. I'm like, "Hey, that's not crazy. Let's talk else." Figure how we can make it happen. We're going to figure out what's acceptable. Is this serving your purpose? In the military writing concept, it always starts with mission, right? Hey, this is the mission that we have. Here's our situation that we're in. Here's how we're going to execute that. Here's what we're going to do if something goes wrong, right? It's all planned out, it's all structured in that way again to give them the best chance to win. Or if they're going to lose, they do it without losing a lot. Allen Sama: And then they have the right tools, [crosstalk 00:23:06]. Justin Boyum: Of course, you got to have the right tools and resources and the training in order to go do those things. [crosstalk 00:23:11]- Allen Sama: So, what was- Justin Boyum: ... what's the situation and information? Let's do that. Allen Sama: What was your position in the army? Justin Boyum: So, I had various positions, so I was an officer. So, at the end of the day, most officers are leaders, right? They're more management style, more strategic thinking. So, technically, I was trained as a logistics officer. So, it was really about moving equipment, making sure people have what they needed, how do we move X equipment to Y location. But I also held roles such as company command, where I was dealing with over 200 people with various types of departments and equipment and moving them to missions and goals here and there. When I was deployed, I was an executive officer for an intel in sustainment company. Justin Boyum: So, basically, dealing with all of the super secret squirrel intelligence equipment, making sure it was functioning, and that they had what they need to be able to support the mission in Iraq and do their job. So, it was very unique. It was nothing I expected. When you go in the military, you think you're trained for one thing, and then you deal with something a little bit different. So, you always got to be in that place of dealing with ambiguity. I think the same thing applies outside of the military, we you've got to be able to deal with things. Justin Boyum: Maybe you don't have a huge clear picture of it, but you operate within your framework and the way that you like to structure yourself. You're going to do better than you otherwise would have, which is why I love to teach with my students that idea of high performance. How do we structure you so that you can make sound, clear decisions? You know exactly where you're headed, you know how you're going to get there. Allen Sama: Okay, so let's go to there now, but how do you that? How do you become high performance? How do you have huge success without all the information? Justin Boyum: Sure. So, we can go back to the Moneyball thing. I think this really works best and tied in with the military. So, the military is really the best one in the world because there is almost nothing that's a surprise. Our military doesn't do a lot of things that are shocking, right? Sometimes maybe on a particular mission, something could go a little bit different than we planned, but everything has a structure. There's a standard operating procedure document for everything within every unit all the way down to the individual level. Here's how you're going to operate down to what you wear every day, right? Justin Boyum: I wear this every day. I've got my canteen on one side. I've got my ammunition on the other. So, everybody knows where everything is. You've got a question how something works, there's a book or a regulation to tell them how to do it, right? It's all very systematized, right? They send you to boot camp first, right? The reason they send you to boot camp first, we're going to send you through the wringer of here's what it's like to be in the military, make sure your mind is right. Allen Sama: Because you have to build that discipline, you got to be able to- Justin Boyum: You have to have the discipline. You've got to be able to be comfortable around firearms and dealing with... We always called it embrace the suck. Sometimes you might be sleep deprived, you might have to go through this. You've got to low crawl and get in the dirt. You got to do all those things, you've got to have your mind and your foundations right for that. Well, the same thing applies out of the military, you've got to be highly structured. The world highest performers in the world measured by study, anybody you think of, they all demonstrate certain characteristics and habits that allow them to succeed. It's not a super huge secret about... Justin Boyum: Sometimes you might be lucky. You've invented the super widget that nobody ever thought of. You might get the next iPhone that changes everything. For most people, that's not going to potentially happen. You might be creative and that's awesome if you are. But the end of the day, you also still have to be able to perform at a level that allows you to build a business around that and build that influence. We start on a personal level. Justin Boyum: Again, we go back to clarity. High performers have demonstrated the ability to seek tremendous amounts of clarity. They know specifically what they want, why they want it and how they're going to go get it. They're really connected to it. You go back to the Simon Sinek stuff, Start With Why, right? You've got to be connected to that, right? Justin Boyum: Second thing that high performing individuals are able to do, they're able to generate energy. It takes a lot of energy to be a successful person. Most people won't go do the things that they need to do in order to perform at that consistency type of level, right? If you're able to build your business, it might take you for a little while to go 80 hours a week to go develop all the marketing and everything and put everything in place. Can you maintain the energy on that? Justin Boyum: Again, we get back to the three things that stop you. First one is fear. Second one is fatigue. People will just stop because it's hard either physically or mentally or emotionally. They'll fall back to what's comfortable. While high performers are able to generate energy over that. You imagine what you would be able to do, Allen, if you had like five times the energy you do now, right? Allen Sama: Yeah. So, by energy, you mean the food we eat, the way we sleep, all that? Justin Boyum: Well, yeah, it's not just physical. It's mental, right? It's emotional. Yeah. I mean, how much sleep are you getting? Well, first things I usually talk about when someone's coming to me that they can't reach their goals, I'm like, "How much sleep are you getting?" Right? What are you eating? How much are you exercising? Do you meditate? How do you renew? How do you maintain that level of momentum? So, that you can overcome those times when it feels like you don't want to do it, right? We've got like a multi-billion-dollar industry for teaching people how to lose weight. Secrets, do you know how to lose weight? Allen Sama: Yeah, everybody knows how to lose weight. Justin Boyum: Everybody knows how to lose weight, but you've got all these personal trainers and coaches teaching people how to do it and helping them do it because they can't generate that energy and that mental focus themselves. That's what high performers can do, right? And then the next part that we can use to overcome those challenges is you got to be able to be productive. You've got to be able to increase your productivity. Allen Sama: Okay, what do you mean by that? Justin Boyum: So, when we talk about being productive, sometimes it's like, "Oh, I got to do all these things. I got to work harder." Well, not necessarily. It's more or less, "Am I working on the things that are moving me forward? Am I being productive on things that are actually useful," right? Limit those distractions, stay in that left and right limits? I talk to people and I'm like, "Okay, if you got one project to do, let's figure out what the priorities are. If there's anything on your list that doesn't actually move that project forward, then it's not that important." Allen Sama: Right. So, this is working on the 80/20 or the one thing that- Justin Boyum: Yeah, 80/20 rule, however you want to say it. Yeah. Allen Sama: Okay, all right. So, we got three, right? We got know your why. We got increase your energy, and then we got increase your productivity by knowing what to focus on and ignoring everything else and all the noise. Justin Boyum: Right. And then the next part and here's the thing is... I love this for the military style of analogy here. High performers are able to raise necessity. What do I mean by that? We could go back to the war effort, right? It was highly necessary that they completed that mission because people would die, right? We all might be speaking German. That level of necessity. High performers are able to go, "Hey, I need to complete this mission," "I need to go build this business," "I need to go make those trades," "I need to be highly focused in the way that I operate myself. Because if I don't, my family is going to have to move out." or "I'm not going to be able to go and serve the people that need my help." Lift that up. It's connecting to the why still, but it's really attaching that, this has to happen. There's no turning back. Allen Sama: So, this is like focusing on maybe the negative and burning all the boats, saying, "I don't have a choice. My back is to the wall." It's either do or die time. Justin Boyum: Yeah, and high performers are able to do that, forward their projects, right? Because it might seem like, "Hey, if I don't make this trade, that's not going to be the end of the world." Well, you need to be able to show up like it would be. Allen Sama: Interesting. Cool. So, how long does it take to get all these steps in place? Justin Boyum: Well, certainly depends what you want to focus on. You've got to decide like, "What is it that's really holding me back?" We can always do more of a lot of these things, but it's really about putting together systems. Like military style, let me put structure in place that allows me to put these things in as a habit that I can repeat on process. I can be very deliberate with them. It's not something that I just inherently have. Some people are a little bit more risk averse than others, right? Justin Boyum: Some people are really able to go out there and be courageous and go take bold action, just because that's in their nature. Some people maybe aren't, but we can always be doing more. You can do it as a habit, you can actually make it happen. It's not something that you just inherently have all this, right? I will never be 6'10 and in the NBA. I can't control that. I can't control how old I am. I can't control gender. I can control a lot of things, but I can control how productive I am. I can control my sleep schedule, if my kids allow it, right? But I can do a whole lot of things that I do have control over, that's going to give me a way better chance of getting on base than somebody else. Allen Sama: Makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Justin Boyum: Right. So, I mean, in general, I work with my clients, I have a number of ways. I generally start new clients off on a 12-week program where we implement all of these strategies and habits over time and apply it towards what that goal is. Hey, I'm going to go be a day trader and retire. I'm going to make this much money because it's going to allow me to do X, Y, and Z. Great. I really want to go and meet the love of my life and be the best husband and father I could ever be. Great. Or achieve any goal, you've got to be at a level where you're performing as a habit. Can you get lucky and buy a lotto ticket? Sure, you can. Is that repeatable? Probably not. Allen Sama: Which one would you say is the most important out of the four? Justin Boyum: Well, the four that we've mentioned so far- Allen Sama: Are there more? Do you have a lot more? Justin Boyum: I do, I have two more. Allen Sama: Okay. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Justin Boyum: I alluded to it, right? So, high performers also demonstrated a lot of courage. They're able to step outside their comfort zone, right? It's not comfortable to go do something brand new to you or be able to continue to move forward when maybe it's not going so well. So, you've got to figure out, "How can I attach again, go back to that meeting? How can I show up as a more courageous self?" Right? And then the last step, most high performers.... Again, this is something that's obvious when you think about it, I think anyway, but high performers are able to develop influence, right? Justin Boyum: How can I go get the people that are going to help me get where I want to go, and I can bring them along with me? How can I pour into the other people and continue to build my sphere of influence? Think about anybody successful you've ever met, they didn't get there by themselves? I don't care who they are. Even if they're one of those people that seems more independent and reclusive, they got somebody helping them to get to where they wanted to go. Allen Sama: Of course. Yeah. Nobody's an island. Justin Boyum: But I would say the number one reason and most people even if they think that they're mostly clear, and I would be in this boat too, is clarity. It starts there. That's why it's the first step on the journey when I work with somebody and we refer back to it throughout the entire program is that we've got to be able to seek clarity and use it as a habit and continue to develop clarity. Allen Sama: Does that change over time, do you see from people? Justin Boyum: Well, some people start with different goals, of course. So, some people might think that they want to operate in their space in a certain way. And then over time, they mature, and they take advantage, right? The clarity is what they make of it. There's no like set answer, right? So, for instance, so if you told me that you wanted to be a business owner, I wanted to be somebody who really brings enthusiasm, I want to be seen as a leader, great, that's awesome. Well, maybe over time, you realize that you're really much more comfortable being somebody that works more alongside people, right? More of a mentorship capacity rather than that outward leader? Justin Boyum: Well, that's your goals, that's your way that you want to interact in the space. That's not worse than being a leader, right? It's just a different role. It's got to be what you're comfortable with, right? So, a lot of people can have certain personality tests, right? I don't know how I feel about personality test, because you can change that picture. The picture is up to you, and it's what you're comfortable with. So, you asked, "Can it change over time?" Sure. But as long as we're highly clear and we're in it to serve others, we're not trying to cut other people down for us to get ahead, you're going to be okay. You're going to be great. I think most people don't want to disparage other people on the road. Allen Sama: No, no, yeah. Justin Boyum: It's pretty rare that that's the person you're working with. It's probably not going to be in my program. Allen Sama: Can you give me a couple of tips or some questions on how to find that clarity? Justin Boyum: Sure. So, here's what I would suggest to anybody in your following. You can do this, if you're listening to this later. Think about and give yourself a space of a minute or two just to really get centered. Close your eyes and think. I want you to start thinking about three words that describe the best of who you are. These are words that they may be the best of who you are now or who you would like to be. Justin Boyum: If I'm going to ask Allen, I said, "Hey, Allen, tell me about Justin in three words," these are the three words they say and you'd be proud to have someone say that, right? If I go, "Oh, man, I really love to be joyful. I really love to be a leader. I really love to be honest." That's just for an example, right? And then let those three words really drive you and all of your interactions and what you do. So, if what you're doing is not congruent with the three words that you picked, then maybe you shouldn't be doing that. Allen Sama: Okay, interesting. Three words. So, what are your three words? Justin Boyum: Well, mine always tend to change. So, my three words, I don't like sharing them as much, because I don't want people to think [crosstalk 00:37:48]. Allen Sama: Okay, give me one of your clients. You don't have to say the name or anything. Justin Boyum: No, no, I'll share mine. But again, I would love it if you definitely go do this exercise for you, because there's great words. One of mine is bold. I love using bold. And true and leader. They're meaningful to me, because I fancy myself a little bit more of an introvert- Allen Sama: Okay, me too, yeah. Justin Boyum: ... originally. I don't know if that comes across to people or not, but I struggled, like a lot of people, with getting up and speaking in front of people and directing and being seen as that person that people who go to, but that's what I wanted to be and I knew that could be that. So, by embodying that I'm going to be bold here. It gives me that that boost of confidence and being able to be... Again, it gives you that clarity just knowing who you want to be. Justin Boyum: When I first started one of my first businesses, I used networking, like face-to-face networking as one of the ways that I built that business, or going to a room of strangers to go ask them to support my business or whatever would have been something crazy to me when I was younger, right? It's not something I would use to. But before I go in, I go, "Bold, right? I'm bold. I'm a leader. I'm true." Then conversations are just easier, right? Because I'm going to go be who I meant to be. This is the best version of me. Allen Sama: Okay, cool. And then do repeat it to yourself, you put it on the wall? Justin Boyum: So, I would recommend to anybody that I talk, I'll do strategy sessions with someone, gets on the phone, we might do this exercise. I always say, "Hey, look, we've all got a smartphone, we're all using them for our alarms. Go set yourself an alarm for 10:00 AM with those three words." Hey, you look at it and says, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to be bold today." I pick 10:00 AM. It's arbitrary. Some people have different battle rhythms, but 10:00 AM is right for lunchtime. You might be starting to past your peak productivity for the day. Maybe there's another time for you, whatever time you know you normally run out of that energy. Hey, set yourself an alarm that reminds you, put it on the wall, put it somewhere, right? Justin Boyum: Share it with your family. Tell them, "This is who I want to be," right? Even if it's something crazy like, "Hey, before I've never really been enthusiastic," right? That's one of your words, right? "Well, I'm going to start being that way," right? Tell people, "This is who I am." You don't have to, right? It's your words, whatever you're comfortable with. Especially if have a spouse, go tell them, right? Tell them the same exercise. Hey, what do you want to be, right? You get a lot of energy and clarity out of that. Allen Sama: Okay, yeah. I mean, if you tell other people, then if you're not behaving that way, they can actually help you. Or if they tease you about it, then that'll help you as well either. Either way, you get the motivation. Justin Boyum: Not everybody's comfortable sharing with that. I've had people on the phone who were they're a little bit more close to the chest. It takes them some time. Now, they're your words. I mean, ultimately, you get to say, "Hey, this is who I want to be." You chose that. I never judge anybody for the words that they chose, especially if most people are choosing very inspirational words for them. They can change over time, right? Maybe next week, you call me in with a different word, because I've had to tweak in the way that I want to operate. You can change it week to week, year to year, however, you want to do it, or you can stay with them. It depends on what you want it to be for you, right? Because like I said, we can change that picture. Allen Sama: Yeah, I mean, you asked that question. I'm thinking to myself, "I have no clue what my words were." I don't know. Justin Boyum: Maybe we should offline, we can sit there, and we can do that exercise. We can come up with it. It's not as hard as you think. I think most people once they have that space, you give yourself a few minutes to think and then they just rolls off. Just go what's the first thing that comes to mind? That's it. You don't have to overthink it, right? I had one person who had one... I can't remember the three words, but they were all relatively around integrity. So, he was a little bit like, " This seems like the same word. They were not different." I was like, "Hey, these were the ones that are meaningful to you," right? There's a little bit of an angle that you can certainly attach meaning. At the same time, I said, "Hey, these are your words, right? If you want to change, when you can." Allen Sama: Yeah. I know for me, it's not going to be that hard to come up with the words, but it is going to be to keep coming back to them and keep remembering them. Because whenever I have a setback, all of the self-help stuff and all the motivational stuff, all that stuff, I just chuck it out the window. I'm going to go into my little hole. I'm going to feel bad for my job for three days, just leave me alone. Justin Boyum: [crosstalk 00:42:13] personal example, right? That can be easy, right? I go into an event and I'm a coach, right? I want to help people. I want to be able to bring someone into my practice that I can really serve. I go through the process of meeting them at the event. Hey, this is my business card, this is cool. We schedule a call. I go, "Hey, let's book a call, let's talk after this." They go, "No." Well, I could let that affect me or I could go, "Bold, true, leader." Move on to the next person, right? Or address that maybe there's something I've done wrong or whatever. But if I allow myself to be disconnected from that clarity, then what am I doing? I'm not making the next call. I'm not serving the next person I can serve, right? Allen Sama: Oh, I should do that. Justin Boyum: I'm not selling the next house. I'm not making the next trade that's going to allow me to take care of my family. Allen Sama: Right, exactly. Justin Boyum: Or somebody to take care of their family, right? So, yeah, I could be disconnected that way, I can allow those things to help me. But if I'm going to go back to my words and do this, again, as a habit, as a system, as a structure. Put it on the wall if that's where you need it. Have an alarm on your phone, make it the background. Allen Sama: Right. Because not only does it help you get started, but then like you said when there is a setback, when there is a rejection of [inaudible 00:43:26], anything that is a pebble in the way and you trip over it, you can decide to go the negative route or you can decide, "Hey, let me focus on what I want, one of my words." And it brings you almost instantaneously back to what's important. Justin Boyum: All the habits, of course, are important. They're almost required for anybody who's going to be successful. But for me, what was the game changer for me when I started focusing on it was clarity. You can always fall back on clarity, right? Some people need the energy, right? The energy is what drives them. Some people need the productivity. They know that they're making the progress. Some people need to be able to raise that necessity or be more courageous, right? But for me, clarity is one of my favorite topics, because I can fall back on that. Maybe I'm not being productive today, but I can go, "I said I'm going to be a leader today." Allen Sama: Right. You have that cognitive dissidence there as well, because you're telling yourself something and then you don't act like that. Your brain is naturally being like, "Hey, there's something wrong here." You don't feel easy until you fixed it, until you act the way that you said you're going to act. Justin Boyum: Yeah, that's what it's all about. Again, that's the part. Again, that's why I make it basically as the first step into the program. When I'm working with somebody, I'm going to make sure that you're highly clear. So, you're going to come out of my practice depending on what programs you go through, I'm going to make sure you clear. So, we're going to have that after talking to me. Allen Sama: Sweet, sweet, sweet. So, what type of people do you help? Justin Boyum: So, in general, I work with military veterans who are getting out of active duty. That's a really scary time. I was that way back in 2012, 2013. I don't know what I'm going to go do. I only had military experience, right? I was in college. So, I had some college type jobs, but nothing serious. So, I'm coming out with military experience. I don't know how to translate. I know what I'm going to do. I don't know how to interview, right? In the military, especially as an officer, they try to train you not to talk about yourself, right? It's really more mission and people focused. All of a sudden, you're going to go into an interview and talk about how great you are, just a little bit odd. Justin Boyum: That's not knocking the interview process, you had to do it for a reason. But it takes that like, "How can I be very clear?" Right? You could be like me and you think you're clear on something, because maybe you've done some research. Oh, this translates from my experience really well. But you're not clear about what maybe your values are or what that job is going to allow you to go do or what's going to be important to you when you're there. You're like me, and even though I got a great opportunity, I wasn't happy there, right? There was a different set of values and the way they managed people. It just wasn't the right fit. I was miserable. Even though I had a great job for a great company with great people working there, it was just a different mindset. Justin Boyum: So, I love to help people that are going through that phase of transitions. Military, maybe you think about changing jobs. Maybe you think about getting into the trading, right? But you got to be highly clear on what you want to go do. You got to have the system that's going to allow you to be successful, right? That's what I love about my program is because we can talk about a very specific strategy for you to go get what you want, maybe your day-to-day trading, but you're going to have to use the habits that I'm talking about if you actually want to get there. Justin Boyum: I can have map up for you right now on this board how we're going to make a million dollars in the next 12 months. Most people won't have the habits and structure in place to actually go do the things that allow them to do it. So, that's what the power of my program is, it starts with clarity. Allen Sama: Sweet, sweet, sweet. Justin Boyum: So, I work again in veteran space. I mean, truthfully, professionals, business owners, entrepreneurs, anybody that's going to need that level of structure and they're going to support, they're going to need someone there with them that they can share things with. Because sometimes I might want to go do this goal, but my friends... They might think that's weird, right? Justin Boyum: You might be like me, where I was running a trade business. I said, "Hey, I want to go be a coach." That might be seemed weird to some people, right? Because they're comfortable with where you are, but when you're working with a coach, I said like, "Hey, whatever you want to do..." Like I said earlier, "... let's go see if how we can make that happen. Is that realistic? Is that something you want? Is that connected with your mission? What is your mission? Do we need to define that? Great, let's do it." Justin Boyum: That's the power of working with the high performance, because you're going to have that clarity. You're going to have that camaraderie of having somebody that you can be open and honest with that's not going to tell you you're dumb, right? There's nothing as too great. Hey, I've been making $50,000 a year working the line for last 10 years. I want to make a million dollars next year. Okay, great, how we're going to do that? Let's work through it. Allen Sama: Right. Okay. How do people find out about you? Justin Boyum: Well, they can certainly follow me on Facebook or Instagram. Charge Forward is the handle. So, C-H-A-R-G-E Forward. Or you can go to my website, www.thechargeforward.com. So, that's T-H-E chargeforward.com. You're able to follow me there. I have a blog. I put out content. It connects to all my other social media pages. So, you can find all my content there. Certainly, if it's something that I can help you with, I'd be happy to hop on a quick high-performance attraction call. If you've got something that you're struggling with on a goal and you just need some help and support, I'll put you in a totally sales free zone where if I can get you moving in the right direction, I'm happy to do that. You can schedule that call there at the website. Allen Sama: Awesome. Great. All right. Well, Justin, I appreciate your time. I appreciate your service. Thank you so much for all you do. Thanks for helping out our military folks, because yeah, what you're saying is that they go through boot camp. They're normal people first, I guess. They go through boot camp. They get trained in a certain way to think and behave. And then they're dropped back into the real world. It's like a whole different set of rules, and then they almost have to have boot camp to reassimilate into the normal world. Justin Boyum: It'd be like somebody who was raised in Texas, and they dropped them into Paris, France tomorrow. Some people speak English, but it's different, right? Maybe the UK is a better example, because they speak English, but it's different, right? The cues are different. It's not that you can't perform well. It's going to be weird and difficult. It can be hard. Allen Sama: Yeah, exactly. Justin Boyum: Yeah, absolutely. Allen Sama: Appreciate it. Justin Boyum: Thanks for letting me on, by the way. Thank you, Allen, as well for what you do, serving your audience and helping people get and achieve their goals by using your practice and strategies through trading, which is awesome. I love Moneyball. If anybody is using Moneyball as an example, I think that's great. I love that. I'm a numbers guy myself. Allen Sama: Awesome. Cool. All right, Justin. Thank you so much for stopping by. Justin Boyum: All right. Thanks.   LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- I am joined by my good friend, Angela Aja, who is the founder and the CEO of Angela Aja Coaching. She's also a best-selling author of the book Summoned to Fear. She is a certified life coach with well over 30 years of mentoring and coaching experience, training heart-centered leaders to shape impactful lives for themselves and their communities. Now, Angela has been from the pinnacle of success to the depths of despair. After a devastating family setback, Angela has overcome her own adversity, taking advantage of opportunities before her and turned tragedy into triumph, growth, and expansion. Angela's message is clear, that every human being has an opportunity to turn their setbacks into comebacks and soar to new heights. So that is one of the reasons that I wanted to have Angela on, because a lot of our traders, a lot of our community can deal with that same situation, where they were riding high and then there was a setback, maybe they went down to the pits of despair and then now they're crawling back, or maybe they're just getting started and these despair pits are coming into the future. So Angela, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Allen. I'm really excited to be here and speak to your listeners and just really encourage them and inspire them to just live their fullest life. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for coming and sharing your message with us. Now, we mentioned that you had overcome a lot of adversity. One of the reasons I wanted to have you on is because fear is a very overwhelming emotion. I believe that trading has different parts of it. As a mentor or an educator I can give my traders the how to do it, the step by steps, like hey, do this, do this, do this. What I can't do is actually make them do it, you know? Yeah. Sometimes I'd be great if I could just reach over through the screen and just press the button for them and say, "Here, just do the trade." Right, right. There is something holding them back. So why do you think fear stops so many people on their tracks? Well, that's a great question, and I really love to talk about fear, which sounds kind of crazy. Where we are today is a result of what we've been thinking. So if you want to go somewhere or do something new, or have something new, you have to think something different. As a transformational life coach, for me it's all about mindset. So I believe in all of my experience of dealing with people, fear is one of those things that holds people back. I have found that we actually fear fear. Tony Robbins, I think it was Tony Robbins, he said this one statement that really helped me create a lot of major shifts in my own life, and that is he said that fear is nothing more than the thought that you can't handle whatever comes your way. When you boil it down, that's all fear is. Many times fear is just we're presuming our past upon our future. So when you boil it down, fear really is nothing more than one thought, and that is that I can't handle it. Or maybe it's the unknown, that they don't know what is about to come. Yeah, exactly. And that if the unknown happens I won't be able to handle whatever it is that happens. If you think back over your life, think about all the things that you've handled like a boss. Think about all the things. For those that are listening, I want you to think about for a minute all of the things that you have overcome. So you are capable, you can handle. If you just look at your past track record, you can handle whatever comes your way. So really if you begin to come from the new mindset that it doesn't matter what happens to me, I can handle whatever comes my way, then it takes the sting of fear away. I find that a lot of people have a real fear of failure, right? Definitely. I mean, really that's the big thing. When you talk about fear, like what if it fails and I can't handle it? What if it fails and I don't know what to do? What if it fails and I end up in the pit of despair? But I think when we're afraid of that failure what we're really afraid of is success. The reason I say that is because I believe that in most cases we are equating success with a lack of failure, but if you study anyone that has accomplished anything from a baby learning how to walk to the geniuses of history, their journey to success is paved with a road of failures. Here's what I mean by that, is that when I suffered a devastating divorce, and of course one of those things that I did not think I could handle. I was married to a pastor. So I was a pastor's wife and I would speak from the pulpit. I went from speaking from the pulpit to selling windows door-to-door. Here I was, shy, an introvert, I was just ... I didn't have a lot of formal training in terms of education. I had gone to Bible college, so I wasn't super hireable after my divorce. I can imagine. Yeah. Nobody really wanted a job description with three years of children's education. So I had to get creative and I found a job selling windows door-to-door. I was petrified, but this old school salesman took me under his wing and trained me. So he would pull up to a door and he would say, "Now, walk up to the door and go say this." And I would, and sometimes I would come back to the car crying. He would say, "What did you say?" And he'd say, "Now go do it again." What he taught me was that for every, I don't remember what the number was, but let's say for every nine nos there is a yes. So he taught me get out there and go after your nos, don't go after your yeses. Get out there, if you go get your nos your yeses will be there. What that taught me was that somebody saying no to me, something not turning out the way that I expected it to, something that I had maybe in the past deemed as a failure no longer had the sting that it once had, because I realized this is part of the process. Right, you're paying your dues. That's right, that's right. Now, I get that, and I know that in the beginning we tell just about all of our people that when they're starting, they're going to lose money, right? Because they don't know what buttons to push and they don't know exactly what's going to happen and how to react to it and whatnot. So most likely they're going to lose money in the beginning, so they should start small, start with smaller trades, a little bit of money, not too much at risk. In a sales point of view you can get up and say, "Okay, I'm going to knock on 100 doors and even if everybody says no then that's okay because I didn't really lose anything except maybe a day or two of my time." But I know what some of our traders are thinking is I only have X dollars that I can learn with. So if I do this trade and I lose, then my number, it goes down, so I'm losing and I'm having less, and less, and less until eventually everything goes away. So how do you overcome that type of mentality? Because I know that in the beginning it takes a while to learn and you pay your dues, but how do we overcome that feeling or that fear? The fear I know you said it's a thought, and I agree with that, but for some people they internalize that thought so much that it becomes like a feeling. They actually feel inside their stomach or inside their gut or something like they're about to put a trade on and they start shaking because that feeling that they're going to lose, maybe they're already convinced themselves that they're going to lose. I don't know, how would you handle that? Well, I think that we are used to, again, like fearing fear. We think that if we fear that that should stop us or that that holds us back. You know the old saying of feel the fear and do it anyway. Fear does not ... When you change your mindset about what fear really is, then it no longer has to stop you. It can literally be the thing that catapults you into ... Because it's not fear or lack of fear that actually makes you the money, it's the action, it's pressing that button. Right. The other thing is is that what I teach people that I work with is that loss [inaudible 00:10:50] does not have to equal lack. Okay, could you repeat that? Because you cut out a little bit. Yeah. Loss does not have to equal lack. Okay. Loss could equal investment, that you're investing into your future. You're investing into your knowledge, you're investing into your wisdom. You're getting experience. You're getting experience. By learning what not to do. That's it. That's it. So I think that, again, looking at it from a mindset point that we move in the direction of what we focus on. So really it has to do what we're focusing on. So I still fear. I still feel afraid all the time, but it's what I focus on, and what I focus it on is the end result that I'm looking for and that it's the experience that I want to gain from my actions. So then that gives me the courage to take action because I'm not identifying the ... I'm not letting identifying that fear and loss as failure, but I'm identifying it as hey, this is a part of my process. So it's just steps on the path. That's it. So what I'm hearing is that you're saying that it's more of a mindset than anything else and that we should be instead of looking and saying, "Okay, what's the worst that's going to happen?" We should be looking at it hey, why don't we focus on what's good that's going to happen or what is the best that could happen? Focus on that and not worry about the bad stuff. That's it. That's it right there. A lot of times when people come to me they want to have coaching, want to work with me. They're thinking about all the things that are going wrong in their life, and they're thinking about all their problems, and they're thinking about all the things that are stopping them. I like to ask this one question, because one question can change the whole world. One question can change everything. So this one question really changed the game for me. I was thinking about my setback and all of the wrong that had been done to me. I was thinking about all the bad in my situation, and someone said to me, they said, "What's great about that?" and I was like, "What? What are you talking about?" Yeah. What's great about the fact? Okay, I'm divorced, I'm living on the floor. I went from wearing a Rolex with diamonds to selling windows door-to-door, to standing in the food stamp line. What's great about that? Yeah, I don't know. But it caused me to dig deep and it caused me to really think about okay, how can this serve me? How can this become a stepping stone for me? So when it comes to pushing the button and learning trading, I think if you just realize that if you're feeling afraid it's just the mindset that oh my gosh, if I push the button I might lose this. Well, you can handle it. Loss does not equal lack. That loss means you're investing in yourself. So you start thinking about even if you've had a loss, hey, what is great about this? What are the lessons that you learned that you will apply next time that will lead to your actual success? Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there are so many stories that we get. One of the things that I really enjoy is when somebody emails us or calls us and we're talking to somebody about their first trade, the very, very first they put on. They said, "Oh, I did this and it worked exactly like you said it was going to be." And it's like okay, that's great that you made money. I don't really care about that part, but the fact that you took action and that you actually did it, to me that's like breaking the barrier. That's like okay, if you can do that first step, you can break the ice, then yeah, you can just do it over, and over, and over, and over again. I totally hear what you're saying, because even now. I mean, I've been trading for, I don't know, maybe 15 years now full-time. I'll have to check the exact numbers, but it's somewhere around there, and I have a lot of money invested in the stock market, and people ask me, it's like, "What if it goes down tomorrow?" It could go down, that could happen. So we put things in place to protect ourselves, but I know that I can't really control it, but I know that it's a long game. Like you said, it's not just knocking on one door and if you don't make the sale you get shot in the head. It's not like that. Exactly. You get to do it again and again. So I want to play the game where I'm going to be doing this for the next 15, 20, 30 years. So if I'm playing that game, the long game, then I'm not taking as big risks as other people are that get blown up and lose everything. Yeah. If we set it up in that way where we know the risk and we know what the gain is but we focus on the gain more, then even if we do lose once in a while it's not going to totally destroy us. Yeah. Another question that my coach, years ago my very first coach that I had asked me was again, one of those questions that kind of made my mind go like, "What?" Here I was, I had been, again, divorced, and living on the floor with my kids. I had been ... He had made some decisions that didn't include his family and that kind of thing. I was stuck as the victim. Even though I had been victimized, I stayed the victim in my mindset and I wasn't moving forward, because that felt easier for me just to stay the victim. Exactly. She asked me, my coach asked me this one question, and she said, "What was your contribution?" I mean, that question, it made me really mad. What was your contribution? Yes. I'm going to write that down too. So here I was the one that had been victimized in a sense, that I had been done wrong. She asked me, "What was your contribution?" And it made me so angry, but I decided to sit with that question. I realized that my contribution was that I didn't know who I was. I lived my life trying to make everyone else happy and I had completely lost my joy. Because I was brave enough to sit with that question it really opened the door for what I do now and helping people really discover their purpose, why they're here, really shift their mindsets. The reason I bring that question up is because I think that's a great question for your listeners, that if they have lost in the market it would be real easy for them to say, "Well, it was the market's fault." Yeah, exactly. And feel like they're the victim to the market, but if they asked themselves that question, well, what was your contribution? Well, if you've set yourself up, like you said, with protection, layers of protection, then again, that loss does not take you out. So really sitting with that question. If you've lost, what was your contribution? Again, what it does is it pulls those lessons out so that the sting of fear, so that the sting of loss it becomes a gift to you. Yeah. That's big, that's huge right there, how to get over that, because we have so many people who want to, I mean, they sincerely they want to achieve, they want to learn, they want to take the next step, but there's something blocking them. A lot of times it's like well, what's the problem? We've shown you examples that it works, we've shown you other people that it's worked for them, it's been working for me. What is it that's holding you back? And they're always like, "Well, I tried something else in the past and it didn't work." Or, "I tried to learn it and I lost because of the market." Or because of something else, or because of this other course that I took, or the economy was bad, or my spouse wasn't helpful. It's always, like you said, it's always something else. Very few times do I hear that oh, you know what? I just didn't pay attention and that's why I lost money, you know? Right, right. There's very little self-responsibility. It's always something else, something else. So is it that simple, just ask yourself that question and sit with it until you come up with the answer? Well, I mean, yes, it is that simple. I know we make it a lot harder. It comes down to what do you want? As human beings we only have two motivations. We're either going after what we want or we're avoiding what we don't want. Exactly. So if you decide, get really clear about what you want and then go after that, then fear is nothing more, you can recognize fear is nothing more than just an excuse. Because if we make something hard ... Like how many times, I'm sure you hear this a lot, people say, "Well, this is hard." Mm-hmm (affirmative). If you make something hard, then it becomes unobtainable, right? In our minds we say it's hard and that lets us off the hook. So if it's unobtainable then it becomes our excuse. Well, we don't have to do it, we don't have to figure it out, we don't have to go make another trade and try it again because it's hard. Exactly. Either that they say something like, "Oh, I can't predict what the market is going to do or what the stock is going to do." Or, "I don't know how to do X." Whether it's I don't know how to look at the trade, or analyze it, or look at the little lines on the charts that people draw all over the place. It's always I don't know how to do this, so I'm not going to do anything at all. Right, right. Yeah, it is that easy. Focus on what you want. If that's what you want and you want to go for it, then invest in yourself and consider those loses your investment, and feel the fear and do it anyway. Just learn and grow. Like you said earlier, when I was out there knocking on doors I literally came back to the car crying every day my first week. I could have just given up, but because I did not give up I just kept doing it anyway and I would keep making those small little tweaks. I'd come back to the car and he'd say, "What did you say." And he'd say, "Now go back out and say it but don't say that, say this." And I would go do that. I trusted the process and I trusted my coach, and I ended up becoming number one in five states. Wow. Here I was this shy introverted mother of four that had just been divorce. Those thing, fear, and loss, and lack of knowledge, we're used to letting those stop us, but they can also at the same time that they can stop you they can be the thing that fuels you. Yeah, I totally agree with you. So I think in this situation would you say that you succeeded, because anybody else could've done the same thing, right? I mean, if you'll agree with me that- Yes. ... there wasn't anything magical about what you did or what he told you. Right. There are some tricks, but yeah, everybody could learn from him, everybody could go do the same thing. So would you say, and I'm sure this is true in most sales organizations, most of the people don't survive, they fall out, they give up, they quit, they fail at selling. So for you to be number one in five states, would you say it was because of your overwhelming drive of what you wanted or were you afraid of what was going to happen if you did not succeed? I think it started out at first, this was before I understood coaching, so I think at first when I was doing that I think there was a fear of okay, I have four kids to take care of, I have four kids to put through college. What the heck am I going to do? I don't have a good résumé. So I think there was some fear, but I think it did switch, because I remember a point where something rose up inside of me and I decided that I was no longer going to be the victim and I decided that I was going to be a success and that a little failure here and there did not detract from who I was as a person. I decided I am a successful person, so because I'm a successful person I'm going to get out there and take the actions that a successful person would take. So I ended up successful. So I think it did start out that way, but I do remember that moment where there was a shift inside of me and I was like, "You know what? I don't care how many doors I have to knock on. I'm going to go connect with people." I believed in the product, I really did, I loved ... I mean, as funny as it sounds, I loved the windows that we sold and they really did help people. They were triple pane and they cut people's energy bills, and I knew ... What I did is I learned the art of walking up to a house, I learned the art of [inaudible 00:27:08] to the houses that I knew had all the buying signs and they really needed the windows. So I learned my art, and I think that applies to your listeners, is that you do have to learn the art and learn the skill. One of the things that I teach is confidence for women, but confidence, the confidence that I teach is not just walking into a room and feeling good about yourself. My definition of confidence is the way that Amelia Earhart defined it. She defined confidence as the willingness to go after her impossible and the belief in herself that she could make it happen. She was the first woman to cross the transatlantic flying solo, and it had never been done, especially not even by a woman. So she was stepping out and stepping into an arena, there was no path for her. She had to go out and create the path. So it took this bravery, but she decided this is the impossible that I want to create, and I'm just going to go after it and believe in myself that I can do it. That is what she attributes her ability to accomplish such a great feat to, was that right there. So with your listeners, just decide hey, I want to be successful at this, this is what I want and I'm going to put the time in, put the effort in. I'm going to learn the skill, I'm going to learn the art, but I'm also going to believe in myself and I'm going to take the necessary steps to protect myself financially. Obviously I'm thinking, I'm guessing that you're not encouraging people that if this is their last dollar put your last dollar in. No, no. So they have to be smart about it and listen to their coach, but just that belief. A loss is not going to define me and take away who I define myself as successful. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So I do have a followup question on that one, was when you had that epiphany, when you had that switch, that mental switch that you went from victim to I guess victor. Yeah. How did you make that switch? Was it something that just occurred to you, or something happened, or was it something that did you have a coach that was helping you? What was that process like? I think that probably was about the time when I did have a coach, because she really helped me, what she really helped me do was step out of that victimhood and living that victimhood every day. I think before everything happened, before my setback had occurred, I did a lot of reading. I was always studying success and the mindsets of a successful person. So I think there were seeds inside of me that were there. When a seed goes into the ground it's covered up by dirt and sometimes it's covered up by manure, but that manure, the stuff we go through in life is what feeds us and expedites our growth. So I think there were seeds inside of me of success. I grew up in a Christian home, I grew up ... We had success in the ministry right away, so I kind of was in that ... I had the perfect life, so I thought. Really it was that setback, without that setback that became the fertilizer for all of the success, principles that I had put inside of me in my younger years. I think the setback it really did become that fertilizer, and then just sitting in that place of really thinking about what do I want. Here I have basically lost everything. What do I want to do with this? I can even just stay here and kind of stew in this negative spot or I can make something of this. I think that's what I was thinking. Okay, what am I going to do this with? I have an opportunity to reinvent myself. So I decided that's what I wanted, and I started going after that. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I mean, I had a similar story. I don't know, for me when I started investing and trading I lost a lot of money right off the bat. It was at the point where I had lost so much and financially we were kind of desperate. So it was okay, either I need to turn it around right away or I need to go out and get a job. Yeah, yeah. So I had that my back to the wall feeling I had, like you have to succeed no matter what because the alternative was too painful. So since then we've had success and things have been built, but it's interesting, and I ask that question because I don't know if I've actually made that switch yet in my mind. I don't know if I've ... I still, I have confidence in my trade, I know what I'm doing, but if somebody were to say, if someone was introduce me as, "Oh my god, look, here's a super successful trader." I'd be like, "oh, knock it off. That's not me." So I still have issues with that part of it, of seeing myself as the new me that I've wanted to be or that maybe even I am based on the numbers, other people say that all the time, but to me it's like nah, that's not ... Anybody could do that. Yeah. It's interesting. Well, I have to bring it back here. I know this might sound a little funny for your readers, but I have a butterfly necklace on here because I'm known as the butterfly lady, and I did not intend on becoming the butterfly lady, but what happened is is that I realized that I started looking at the journey of my life, and I started realizing that my life, my journey, it mimicked that of a caterpillar going to a butterfly. So I wrote a book called Summoned to Soar: Five Stages of the Rise of a Woman. So in that book I show how every woman, actually every human being has an opportunity to go through five stages to make their greatest comeback. There's something so interesting about the butterfly, and I know most of your listeners are probably guys and they're probably thinking, "What in the world am I going to learn from a butterfly?" But this is really incredible. When the caterpillar goes into the cocoon, most of the times the cocoon hangs upside down. So there's times in our lives when life gets turned upside down, but when life gets turned upside down that means you're properly positioned for a transformation. I don't know if you know this, Allen, but did you know that the caterpillar does not turn into the butterfly? No. That's not what my four-year-old told me. She told me just the other day. She was like, "This happens, and this happens, and this happens, and this happens." Well, listen, let me explain myself. Okay, so the DNA of the butterfly is inside of the caterpillar. When the caterpillar goes into the cocoon, enzymes are released that literally melt her into liquid form, and they actually call it pupa soup. So the encasement, the old encasement has to be melted away so that the DNA of that butterfly can be revealed, reshaped, and reformed. So I believe it's the same with us as human beings, that the DNA of our purpose, the DNA of our greatness is inside of us, but we have to be willing to let go of the man or the woman that was created by fears, failures and disappointments. So this is so incredible, but when the whole time that the caterpillar is in the cocoon she can't excrete, so she can't go to the bathroom. So here she is, she's face-to-face, excuse my language, but she's face-to-face with her own crap. So it's when we take time to sit with ourselves, and look at the old fears, failures, and imperfections that we have allowed to define us as a caterpillar, that's when the transformation can take place. If she goes through the full process, she's this little caterpillar, she's in the cocoon, she becomes liquid form, the DNA of the butterfly starts to go through this transformation and she becomes this beautiful butterfly, and all of a sudden she's like, "Okay, I know it's time to break out." And the only way for her to break out is to kick her way out. Sometimes breakthrough is hard work. So even with your listeners, when they're trying to break through to their next level financially and they're going to use trading as that avenue, this is not supposed to be an easy road. Breakthrough, breaking through your mindsets that have held you captive where you're at, breaking through your ideas of what success is, breaking through all that is hard work, but if you're willing to go through the process then you break free. What happens is is that once that little butterfly, she breaks out of the cocoon, she falls to the ground in exhaustion and she's laying there. As she's laying there then she's got these new things, and she's like, "Hmm, I just feel like I'm supposed to flap them." So she starts flapping, and as she starts to flap her wings all of the excrement that was in the cocoon with her literally gets shot back up into her body and into her wings and hardens. Really. So all of the crap that you've been through is what gives you the strength to fly. So whether it's your traders, whether it's a man or a woman that has gone through a divorce, whether it's ... No matter what it is. What happens is we get used to seeing ourselves as merely a caterpillar, but the DNA of your butterfly is inside of you, the DNA of your purpose is inside of you, and being willing to let go of that old mindset of I'm just a caterpillar, I'm just this, I'm just that. The reason it is imperative for every man and every woman to become a butterfly to soar is because of this one thing, and this is why I wrote the book, Summoned to Soar, is because when the caterpillar, sorry, when the butterfly begins to flap her wings, she can fly, she can go places that she's never gone before, she can do things that she's never done before. Exactly. But something incredible happens. As she is faithful to flap her wings and do what she was created to do, she can catch the tailwind and the tailwind can carry her to places that she can never go on her own. So something magical does happen, something ... That success, when you're ... Think about somebody who they're putting step, it's like going viral. It's like something magical happens where you go from- There's an outside influence that comes in and just takes you. Yes. Yes. So even for your listeners, I just want to encourage them and inspire them. Get in touch with the DNA of your purpose, of that call. Go after what you want. Decide, I am successful, and so I'm just going to do the actions that a successful person would do, and I'm not going to let a loss define me. I'm not going to let fear define me. And stop me, yeah. And stop me. That's it. That's one thing about the butterfly and the cocoon. I know one of our friends had got us one, I guess you can buy them or maybe she got it off the ground, I don't know, but there was a caterpillar and there were some little sticks or leaves in a cup, and she had covered the cup. She gave it to us, and she said, "Look. Here, hold this, keep it, and it's going to turn into a butterfly." Yeah. So we were watching it day after day and the caterpillar is walking around, I guess eating the leaves, and then finally it turned into a cocoon. We're waiting, and we're waiting, and we're waiting, and we're waiting and nothing happened. My wife got a little, like maybe it died. What happened? Maybe we should help it. So she took a little, like a pin, and she poked a little hole in the bottom of the butterfly, the cocoon, and it died. The poor thing died, and then we told our friend and she's like, "No, you have to let it kick its way out by itself because otherwise it won't be strong enough to survive outside of the cocoon if it gets the help. It has to do it by itself." Yeah, so Allen, your listeners, they have to push the button. Yeah. They have to do it. You know what I mean? Exactly. You can't push the button for them. Right. So yeah, it's exactly. It's the kicking that strengthens the butterfly for flight. So pushing that button, it's preparing them for the next level of success. Yep. So okay, one final question for you before I know you got to go. So then how do we get clear about what we want? How do I know okay, I'm caterpillar now, I want to be the butterfly, how do I know what the butterfly looks like? Well, that's a really great question. I think that you can do that a couple different ways. I think you can do it just by ... I think there's a lot of breakthroughs that you can get on your own if you listen to yourself think and you listen to yourself talk. Okay. Then I'm a big proponent of journaling, of really just dream building. You have to have that quiet time where you can really sit and think, what do I really want? Because we're not conditioned to sit and ask ourself, what do we want? We're mostly just conditioned to kind of get on the hamster wheel and stay on the hamster wheel. Go through life, do this [crosstalk 00:43:30]. This is what I'm supposed to do, you know? Yeah. My parents expect this, my kids want this, I got to do this. Yes, but I believe that your dreams and your desires, all of that supports what your purpose is, the message that you're here to speak, the hurt that you're here to heal, all of those things. So really just taking the time to sit, and journal, and ask yourself the right questions. You can hire a life coach, which makes it go faster. I help people really identify who they are, why they're here and what they want to do in 12 weeks. So I help them do that quickly because I have a process so that you don't have to ask yourself, well what questions do I need to ask myself? What do I need to be journaling? So I kind of take you on that journey. Can you give us a couple of those questions now? Yeah. So one of the questions that, again, they're several questions that really changed my life. This one blew the doors off of everything for me. This is a big question, okay? Mm-hmm (affirmative). I got my pen. My life coach asked me, she said, "What do you really, really, really, really, really want?" Six reallies, okay. Because what happens is is that we settle for kind of the first really. The superficial stuff kind of. Yeah. When you start digging down, well, why do I want that? A great exercise that I like to take people through is called the five whys. Yeah. Again, it kind of helps you get to the answer to that question that I just asked. Well, what do you want? Well, why do you want that? But why do you want that? What's important about that and why. Yeah, exactly. What's important. That's it, yeah. So it helps you just to drill down, because I think that a lot of times for most of us we just settle and we don't take the time to really get in touch with what is our heart really longing for. When you know that, then you get tunnel vision. Yeah. It's like a horse with blinders. You're no longer distracted by other people's dramas, you don't have to be a people pleaser, you're no longer a perfectionist, you're no longer a procrastinator, you're focused. You work on your own self and you don't worry about anybody else or what they think about you, or what their expectations are. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you just go. Awesome. So Angela, how do our listeners find out more about you? You have a website or ... I do. I know your book is called Summoned to Soar. Yeah, yeah. So my book is on Amazon, but really everything is at angelaaja.com, www.angelaaja, A-N-G-E-L-A-A-J-A.com. Okay, cool. A link to my book in on there, coaching, everything. Awesome, awesome. You said you had a 12 week program where they can figure out what they want and who they are and all that. Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. So, I mean, if anybody is interested in that there's a place where they can book a call and- And talk to you to see if it would be a good fit. Yep. You do one-on-one as well if they need that? Uh-huh (affirmative), yes. I sure do. Awesome, awesome. Yes. Thank you so much. Great. This was really fun. No, this was wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, I took a whole bunch of notes. All your questions, I got them. Good, good. That was awesome. Great. Thank you so much, Angela. Awesome. Thank you. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... 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People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  --- Passive traders, guess what? My mind has been blown again.  Maybe doesn't take that much to blow my mind. But I just finished re-reading a book called The Future Is Faster Than You Think. I might have even talked about it before. But this book is written by a guy named Peter Diamandis and I guess you could call him a futurist, but he stays on top of and in contact with all the different technologies, the scientists that are coming up with all... Doing all the research about what's going to happen in the future, how everything is going to be disruptive in different industries. So, what companies are doing what, what scientists are doing what, what new advancements are... He stays on top of all of that, and so in this book, he actually compiles and summarizes all the stuff that's going on in all these different industries, like transportation, health, finances, advertising, retail, all these different aspects of life that are going to change in the next few years. And that is the really crazy part, that in the past, it took years and years and years for things to change. But as we've seen lately, things are changing much, much faster and we really have to adapt to these changes. For example, when I was in high school... What was this? 1994 is when I graduated high school. There were no cell phones. I didn't have a cell phone. I had a beeper, if you guys remember beepers. But I had a beeper. And then came the cell phone and then came the smartphone and now people have smartphones even in the poorest of countries. And with a smartphone, you now have more information in your hands than Bill Clinton did when he was president of the United States. That's amazing. That's the power that we have nowadays. And so, one of the things that he was talking about in this book... And I believe if you're interested in the future, like I am... I think cool stuff. You really should pick up the book. And the thing that I wanted to talk about on this episode is the aspects of health and all of the new technologies that are coming out. For example, there is a company called Gelesis. This is a pharmaceutical company, I guess you'd call them, but they're a new startup health company and they have already gotten FDA approval, which means they can sell this new product to anybody they want, for weight loss. It's a weight loss pill and in their trials, right? They did FDA approved trials with thousands of people. They give you this pill. On average, in six months, the people lost 22 pounds. And this is not a drug. It's an all-natural pill. Actually, it's three pills. You take it with water 30 minutes before you eat lunch and then another three pills before you eat dinner every day. You do that. That's all you have to do. You don't have to change your diet. You don't have to exercise. You don't have to do anything else. Nothing. You do nothing except take these three pills 30 minutes before lunch with water, 30 minutes before dinner with water. That's it, and you will lose 20 pounds in six months. So, 20 divided by six, you're losing about three and a half pounds a month without doing anything. This pill has already been proven to work. It's already FDA approved. It's going to be on the market for sale by the end of the year of 2020. That's their plan. And there are no side effects. Well, there might be a few side effects, but there's nothing artificial in this pill. There's no chemicals, there's no drugs, there's no nothing. Everything in it is natural. The side effects... You might be bloated or you might get diarrhea depending on how it interacts with your stomach, all right? Because that's what it is. It goes into your stomach and this is how it works. You ingest the pills, you drink the water. Whatever the stuff is inside of the pill expands in your stomach and it makes you feel full. And because you are full when it's lunch time or dinner time, you don't eat as much. I mean, it's brilliant, it's simple. It's very easy to come up with this idea, but this company finally found a way to make it happen. Now, there might be others that are following them or even ahead of them. I don't know. I only know about this company and FDA approval is a big deal, right? And it's coming out at the end of this year. What else is happening? Wow. Well, we've already heard about people getting face transplants. We've already heard about people or scientists that are able to grow organs. So, if you need a new kidney, you need a new liver, they can grow the organ. Not only that, but there are other scientists who are doing 3D printing of organs. I don't even know how you 3D print organic material, but they have a way. They are printing organic material, printing organs. This is life-changing, crazy, crazy stuff. These things are going to be hitting the market. Right now they're all in testing. They're going to be hitting the market within the next 10 years, okay? There's a book that just came out from a Harvard MD. It's called Lifespan. Now, I haven't read the book, but basically the gist of the book is that with all the current technological advances that we have, man should easily be able to live to 120 years old. Right now, average life span is, what? In our eighties? Right? Depending man, woman, how old you are, whatnot. But... So, we can expect to live in our eighties. Okay. Great. Now they're saying 120 without much new advancements. But all these advancements are coming, right? Another aspect is a friend of mine who sells insurance, she told me that for cash value life insurance policies or at least for whole value or whole life insurance with cash value... Not term insurance, but with whole life insurance, what they used to do is you... And they still do this, but the thing changed. You put money in, right? Every month you pay the premium and the cash value grows supposedly. When you hit 100, they are like, "Oh, wow. You hit 100. Congratulations. You beat the game. Here's your death benefit." So, if it's a million dollar policy, they're going to give you the whole million dollars and they give you whatever cash value you had. So, they give you the entire policy amount. They give you everything and they cancel the policy when you get to 100 years old. Now, that's pretty cool. That's a really good encouragement to live to 100, right? Here's all this money. Go enjoy it. Go live your life. Awesome. Thank you. Woo-hoo. Right? Well, guess what? That number is no longer 100. The insurance companies have now changed that number to 120 because they are seeing what's happening. They're seeing what's going on. More and more people are hitting 100. They moved that number up to 120 and I believe they're going to have to move it again within the next 10 years or so because people are going to start hitting, getting close to that 120. All right? There is another fellow who was talking, and he is a scientist, he has a company. They are dealing with a certain type of stem cells, right? So, the actual cell name is called the precursor cell and it's a one type of stem cells. It helps develop bones in babies and all that stuff before we're actually physically material as people or... I don't know how you say it, but when the embryo is growing, these precursor cells go and develop stuff and then they turn off or they go away. I'm not sure exactly what happens to them, but they're not there anymore. They're not active anymore. So, this person, this scientist and his team have gone in and found a way to make these cells active again. And so, now they're doing tests on dogs and they are taking a 10-year-old dog, giving it these cells. They're re-activating these cells and the dog body changes to become a young pup. Everything. I mean, the body... It doesn't get... It doesn't shrink in size or anything, but the brain function, the activity levels, the metabolism, the cell structure, everything. How the body of the dog works is as if the dog was only one or two years old. Now, this is a 10-year-old dog. They have started trials on people and they have one video that they show in their talks where there's a woman who's suffering from very late stage Alzheimer's and she's at the point where she's almost catatonic, where she can barely move, so if you... She has... Her eyes are open and she's there, but if you move your hand in front of her face, she won't respond or anything like that. They gave her this therapy and she's up and about, walking, talking, totally changed. Alzheimer's. I mean, this could be a cure for Alzheimer's. When? Next five to 10 years. And when he was doing the talk, the guy was doing the lecture and showing the video. He could tell that the people in the audience were not really... They didn't care too much about Alzheimer's. They weren't like, "Oh my God. That's amazing. It's the best thing in the whole world. And he was obviously looking for investors. So, the people in the group, people in the audience, were mostly men, older. And so, he said, "Well, you know, you guys might not be interested in Alzheimer's or curing Alzheimer's as much, but I can tell you that within the next five years, we will be able to regrow hair in your original hair color." And everybody went crazy. They're like, "What? Oh, my God. You can regrow hair?." So, yeah. You can tell some people, where their values lie. Forget about Alzheimer's patients. But if you can put my hair on my head, all right. I'm going to heavily going to invest in this. But, seriously. If you're interested, look this guy up, Peter Diamandis. Pick up this book, The Future Is Faster Than You Think, and you can read about all these new technologies, all these new companies that are coming out. They're changing the way we use energy. He starts off the book talking about self-driving cars and flying cars and hyper loops and rocket cars, rocket ships that fly around the earth, and take you from point A to point B. Then he goes into artificial intelligence and he goes into virtual reality and how things are changing in that realm and it's just mind-blowing stuff. And, I mean, I got myself a pair of virtual reality goggles just to check it out and they were the gimmicky ones. You know, the $30 ones. But it's really cool stuff. Now for my birthday, I told my wife, "Hey, I want the $500 brand." You know? I want the $500 virtual reality goggles because that is a whole new level. And if you've seen... There's a movie called Ready Player One. It's also a book turned into a movie. Basically, it is set in the future and everyone there... People don't like their life, so everybody goes, puts on these virtual reality goggles and they're always in a game and everybody plays the same game and you play the game, you fight, you do racing. You do all kinds of different things in the game and the way that they show the people reacting in the game... So, you put your goggles on. You are now a character in this whole new world. It's not Earth. It's somewhere else. You can do anything. You can jump, you can kill, you can do all kinds of crazy stuff. But if somebody touches you, you have to have special equipment in the real world. You have to have gloves. So, if you have gloves... You have virtual reality goggles. You can actually buy virtual reality gloves in real life today. You can buy a virtual reality suit and you put that on today. And so, when you're in the virtual reality world and you touch something with your hand in the game or in virtual reality, you will feel it on your fingers. I'm not sure... I'm not explaining this correctly. But there is a group of scientists. What they did was they went into one of the pyramids in Egypt. I think it was Cleopatra's tomb or Tut's tomb or... I don't know where they went. They went to one of the tombs and they went in and they took all the images and they took all this... They video-recorded everything and they turned it into a virtual reality-type experience, and now in schools, the kids can put on the goggles and they can go, transported into the pyramid, walk around the halls of the pyramid, actually touch the walls and feel how it feels inside, feel the slime or feel the rock, and if there's something carved in it, they can trace their fingers on the carving and feel. I mean, it's phenomenal, amazing, crazy stuff that's going on right now. Why am I saying this? Well, I'm excited. I just wanted to share it with you. But, the reality is the future, is coming. It's coming fast and we are all going to live a lot longer than we are thinking. We are going to be healthier. We are going to live longer. Those two things, I'm going to pretty much... We can guarantee it. Life span is going to increase with all this stuff coming okay? And with the new technologies and new scientists and new ways of healing, we're going to be able to live healthy lives until that time. But like in anything else, who gets the best results? The rich. Okay? The rich are going to be the first ones that can afford the treatments. The rich are going to be the first ones that can afford the flying car. The rich are the first ones that are going to take advantage of all these new activities and advancements. That's why you need to do better financially. That's one reason, if nothing else, okay? The other reason that you need to be trading options? Retirement is not coming at 65 anymore. Maybe it still does, technically, legally, whatever, retirement at 65. But you're not going to live only 20 years after that. You're going to live another 40 years after that and the money has to last, and if we are living healthily and our minds are still engaged and our minds are still active or maybe even our minds are getting younger than they are at 80, you need to have a way to constantly make money for the rest of your life. That's trading. There's nothing else that can help you, right? Everything else is going to be changing. They're talking about changes to real estate where real estate values are going to completely change. I had a friend of mine, she used to work at Toyota and she was working on a project where they have this box which is a vehicle. But it's a box and it drives by itself and they are working with companies like Nike, Amazon, Visa, MasterCard. All these big companies are working on customizing this box. So, for example, let's say you want to buy some workout clothes. You call Nike or you go to their website, whatever. You press a button on your phone. This box shows up to your house. You walk inside and all the clothes are already there or you can pick what clothes you want on a screen and it will make the clothes for you in the box. It'll print the clothes for you in your size in that box. You no longer will have to go to the store and try things on. Custom-made clothes brought to you, to your house or wherever you want it to come. You step in the box. You do your shopping. You don't even have to check out. You basically just take the items, walk out the door of the box, and then the box goes to somebody else. And when you walk out, it scans the items you have, charges your credit card, charges your bank, whatever, and done deal. Now, imagine people start doing that. What do you think is going to happen to the retail industry? Who's going to open a retail store? Very few. What's going to happen to shopping centers? What's going to happen to strip malls? They're all going to go away. The other thing he was talking about is transportation, changes in transportation. So, we already have electric cars that are gaining momentum, and almost every major brand is now coming out with electric versions of their cars and they're going almost all electric soon. Maybe in the next five, 10 years. But the self-driving car is where everybody wants to get to and so far, Tesla is the fastest... It's the one that's the most there and that's why they're selling so many, because of the self-driving feature, I think. That's the only reason I want one. But the thing is that the self-driving part is not the only thing that's going to come in the next 10 years. Flying cars are coming in the next 10 years. Not only that, but they have rocket ships that they can fine-tune so that they can travel in the Earth's atmosphere and they can take you from... Let's say you get out of your car. You're living somewhere in the middle of the country. Let's say you're living in Iowa, okay? You're living in Boise. No, not Boise. Boise is in Idaho. Wherever. Fine. You're living in Boise, Idaho. Okay? You get out of your house, you need to get to London for a meeting. Okay. You take your self-driving car to the local air park. You go there, you go up to the top, get into a flying car that goes two, three hundred miles an hour. That thing takes you to the shuttle launch bay, which is in the next, probably in the biggest city nearby. That thing puts you on a rocket ship that takes you all the way to London. You get there within 45 minutes. So, from house to London, 45 minutes travel time. What is that going to open up? People are going to be able to live anywhere they want, right? People are not going to want to live in the big cities anymore with all the congestion and traffic and all that stuff, especially now with COVID and everything. People are leaving the big cities because they need... They want freedom. They want more land. They want to get away from people. So, we've already seen that exodus of people leaving the cities. When transportation speeds up and gets to this level, real estate prices are going to go in the toilet. So, if people are thinking, "Well, yeah. I'm just going to buy a whole bunch of rental houses." It'll work for a while. I can't tell you exactly it's not going to work, but there's a good chance that disruption is coming in real estate. There's a good chance that it's coming. Will it come in trading? It probably will. Something will change. But for now, that's the best option that I think we have. I think you should also diversify. Have some real estate houses, have some other things, other investments. That's great. Do it all. But be able to adapt, be able to change and know that you're going to be living longer, you're going to be healthier. There's no, "Oh, I want to do this tomorrow." No. Do it now and it'll pay off for decades, and then hopefully it'll pay off for generations. Okay? Because you can teach your children, you can generate the wealth for them, you can teach them how to generate wealth, you can build up an empire, you can build up a legacy. Whatever you want to do, because you're going to have plenty of time, okay? Even if... We have a friend, he's unfortunately in kidney failure right now. They've taken him off dialysis. He only... I don't know... We don't know how long he has to live, but if he can last another few years, he can be saved. And this is for people that are suffering with MS, people that are suffering from Alzheimer's, people that are suffering from all these diseases that basically rob you and eventually kill you. If they can survive a few more years, another decade, they will be able to be saved or their lives will be extended enough that eventually there might be a cure in another 20 years or 25 years or 30 years. Whenever the cure comes out. But they will be able to be kept alive and their life will be able to be extended. It's not a death sentence in the same way that we understand it now. And so, yes. The world is changing. Science is going nuts. It's going crazy. I was listening to another podcast about a guy who does, works with health start-ups, a lot of companies that are health start-ups. And what he was saying is that in the past, they had a saying for R&D, for research and development, about health. It takes decades to move seconds. So, what that means is basically that it would take decades to get anything new approved, to get anything new adopted by the health and the medical community because you're dealing with lives and they don't want to get sued and they don't want to take chances. So, when you're dealing with a hospital, when you're dealing with the government to get a new process approved, there's a lot of bureaucracy. There's a lot of red tape. There's a lot of things. You got hoops you got to go through. And so, it would take forever, forever, forever to get one small little thing changed. Now that we have COVID, everything is topsy-turvy. And so, now they are moving decades in seconds. And what I mean by that is they are getting things approved in days that would have taken years. They're trying new things. They're using... They're adapting technology that they wouldn't have even bothered to look at before. And so, in the past... There was a hospital chain that he was talking about. This hospital chain was seeing patients. Seven percent of their visits were virtual. Seven percent were virtual visits to the doctor or the followups or whatever. After COVID, 99 percent of their visits were virtual. It takes a big shift in thinking and process and procedures in order to do that, and these hospitals and these medical communities, they're doing that because in essence, they do want to help people and save lives, right? That's their goal. That's the whole purpose of the medical community, and so they're going to do whatever they have to do to get it done and if that means they're going to accept all these new changes because of the way everything is restricted now, then they're going to make that happen. But the point of this podcast... The guy I was listening to was saying that because of this coronavirus and the changes that all these new companies are putting out and all of the medical community is actually accepting, it's going to really move health care light years in the future. We're really leap-frogging in terms of what is possible, what is doable. And so, all of this stuff is all coming together. They've already making all these advancements, but now you have receptivity by the medical community and they're listening and they're looking and they're saying, "Hey, what else can we do? What else is cool? What else can we implement?" We are in a very, very exciting time, very exciting. Pick up that book. It'll blow your mind. It blew mine. This is the second time I read it. And this is another thing. This book is about a year old, I think. It came out a year ago and it takes about a year or two to actually write a book and publish it and get it out in the market, right? So, this information in this book is two, three years old. It's not even up to date. It's two or three years old. That means we're two or three years closer to the end result. And when I'm talking about flying cars and whatnot, I'm not talking about some small, unnamed company. We have companies like Uber that are putting billions of dollars into this. This is not small time stuff. All of these technologies, all of these advancements, billions of dollars are flowing into these areas and that's why all these technologies are coming faster than you think. So, remember, you are going to be living longer than you think. You are going to be healthier than you think. And so, you need to be richer than you think you need to be. And the thing is, you don't even have to have the money in the bank. You don't need to have $10 million. You need a way to be generating income, and income is more important than what you have in the bank, right? Your net worth or your nest egg? Not as important as how much money you can be generating on a month to month basis. So, let this be a wakeup call. If you have not started saving, if you have not started trading, it's not too late, even if you're in your fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. We still have people in their eighties emailing us, saying, "Hey. I want to get started." Awesome. That is great. Start small. Buy a couple shares. Do a couple options. That's just... You're going to have to do it because you're going to be living a lot longer. And so, that is exciting, but in financial terms, it can be scary because if you're not in a good finacnial place now, you have the time to fix it, but you got to take action. You got to start. So, start today. Start moving. If you want to, if you don't know where to start, get my free book, Passive Trading. It's still free. Go to passivetrading.com/freebook and just get the book. Start reading. Look what's possible. Start implementing, start playing with it, learn more about it and make a plan and start getting to what you need to be. All right? So, again, the name of the book was The Future Is Faster Than You Think. Pick it up, read it, learn, have your mind blown. My book, Passive Trading... Again, that's passivetrading.com/freebook or if you want you can go to Amazon, get it from there, the e-book... Or, not the e-book. The... Well, the e-book is also on Amazon. You can get it from there, the Kindle version. The audiobook is also about to hit shelves. We just uploaded it or got everything done yesterday, and so it will take two weeks, I believe, to get them approved and on all the bookstores. So, it's going to be in Amazon, Audible. It's going to be on iTunes. It's going to be on Barnes and Noble, whatever. The audiobook is coming. Give it a couple of weeks if you're a listener. Obviously, you're listening to the podcast, so you're a listener. If you want to get that, you can that as well. But still, start doing it. Get better, right? And if you want to get better, reach out to us. We'll show you how we will help you, how we can, what we can do for you. And just be excited. Things are going to shift really, really, really fast. So, remember, take care and trade with the odds in your favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- How often do you stop and think about how lucky you are? If you're like me, probably not enough. I mean, this thought came to me the other day. I'm going to the office, it's around 11:00 AM. And when you're trading passively, it means that you don't have to wake up early, early in the morning. You can wake up whenever you want and check your trades and move on. So it doesn't take a lot of time trading. So, I'm going to the office at 11:00 AM and it is sweltering. I mean Houston, its crazy heat, just like the desert, it's summertime, it's close to a hundred degrees outside and I see this 11 year old boy, 10, 10 or 11 years old. And he's in his truck. There's a pickup truck standing by one of the houses, one of my neighbor's houses. And he's sitting inside the truck and playing on his little video games. And I see a man and a woman and they're sitting on the grass and they're eating lunch. So I assume they're his parents. And I also assume that they're day laborers, maybe they're cutting the trees or doing some rehab inside or installations or something like that. And you normally see that type of thing, especially in the suburbs. You see people who come out and they do the work. The thing that struck me was that this boy, 10, 11 years old, his parents are going to be out here for several hours. And he's with them in the heat. Why? Well, I mean, the mom was there, so probably nobody else is there at home to take care of him. They can't afford daycare or it's too expensive or it's better that he just stays with them. But what does he do all day? He's a little bit too young to help out really, he might be able to do a little things, but not really much. And he's just wasting his time and sweating and getting heatstroke, but the parents are doing the best they can. I'm sure the parents love the child, that's why they're keeping him with them. I'm sure they're trying to teach him. I'm sure they want the best for this child. But I compare that to my nine year old. And at the same day, while this child is spending all day out in the heat sweltering, my nine year old in the morning, he went to a tutoring class and he just finished third grade. And in tutoring class, he's doing fifth grade work. Math, science, reading, all that kind of stuff, because to get ahead. And then in the afternoon, he's going to go to an art class. And then in the evening, he wanted to take a coding class. So they have this online game called Roblox, if you've ever heard of it. And he wanted to learn how to code and make the games, program the games in that particular game. So what's the difference? Why is one child out in the heat suffering while the other child is in different classes, learning different things, getting new experiences? Yeah, I guess you could say the first thing that pops in your mind would be money. One child comes from a poor family, one child comes from a well-to-do family. But I think it's more than that. It's not just the money. And if you take a look at it, I mean, which child has a better future? I hate to say it, but which child has more choices in life and in everything? Now, of course my child could and mess it up and the other child could do great, that's definitely true. But which one will have an easier time of it, and the likelihood of achieving and having a better quality of life? I think it comes down to not money. Of course money is there, but why? Why, what, how did the money come into place? What's the difference between this kid's father and me, even if you take the money out. Let's say you take both of us and you take all the money away or you give us an even amount of money. I am pretty sure that within a short period of time, I'm going to be able to recapture what I could. I'm going to be able to go up the ladder while the other fellow, what he knows is day labor. He's got his work, he's got his hands and that's how he makes a living. He probably works harder every single day of his life than I have ever worked in my life. I am not a day laborer. I'm not good with my hands. I don't know anything. I barely hammer a nail because I've never done, I never had to. I've always used my mind. But why was I able to use my mind while he had to use his hands, and he couldn't use his mind? Because of education. Knowing the rules of the game and by game, I mean life, helps you play the game better, helps you succeed at the game, helps you play it smarter. And I think that's the main difference. It wasn't the other fellow might have some lucky break or unlucky breaks, I might've had some lucky breaks, get it, cool. But the focus on education that my parents had, the focus on making sure that I get into good schools, that I read, that I excel, I do the best I can. That other fellow didn't have that, right? Knowing the rules of the game allows you to save time, to access different resources, to be able to use the resources that you have access to. If you're in a new country and you don't know the language, you can have a lottery ticket, but you won't know how to read it. It also allows you to speak up and have confidence and say something when the rules of the game are not adhered to. So if someone's taking advantage of you, you know how to fight back, right? And people who are uneducated get taken advantage of all the time. Instead of living in fear and accepting that, "Oh, things are just the way they are. That's the way it is. I can't do anything about it." You can actually do things about it. You can make things happen. Now, just take credit, the whole credit score and your whole credit report, for an example. Somebody who knows how credit works can improve their score. They can use credit cards responsibly. They can get cheaper rates on a mortgage and their insurance. They can manipulate airline miles and card points to get free travel and free trips like I do. Compare that to somebody who doesn't understand how credit works and they mess it up because they don't understand the value, and then they have trouble all along their life, even renting an apartment, they have trouble. So they can't rent one of the better apartments, even if they can afford it. They just won't give it to you because you have bad credit, so what do you have to do? You have to go to a worse part of town to get a crummy apartment. And if you rented there, well, guess what, your child goes to a school district that's not as good as the one in the good part of town. And so the cycle continues because your child doesn't get the same education that he should get. Now I don't want to get into what's right, and what's wrong, and all that stuff. This is the way life is. That's the way the world works, right? That's why I continue to be shocked when people who have a chance to get education, say no. People who want to trade, people who want to learn how to increase their finances, refuse to pay for the training, for the education, to learn how to do that, for the shortcut. They think that maybe they can just get it by on YouTube videos. "Yeah, I'm going to learn everything on YouTube." "Okay." The problem with that is, they don't know what they don't know. You could watch YouTube all day till you're blue in the face, till your eyes pop out. But it doesn't mean you're going to be a great trader because you don't know what you don't know. And even the person on the other end of the YouTube video whose making the YouTube video might not know what they don't know. The real gems, the truths, the gold, is not shared on YouTube videos or any other free information. It's not. Something that is so valuable to me, I'm not going to just give it out because people don't value it. And if there is truly a secret, if there is a secret system or a secret plan, if I go and share with the world, tell everybody about it, "Here, do this, do this." Eventually it's going to stop working. So why would I do that? I know I can share it with a few people. I can't share with the whole world, right? We had one fellow call in the other day. He applied to be part of our oil options program. And he went on and on about how desperate he is for a system that works and how he's been trying for so long and all the things he wants to do and do good stuff with making the money and help the world, all that stuff. He's confident that our system works and he's going to do everything in his power to execute and to do whatever we tell him, how we teach it. But then we told him the investment in the program and his response was like, "Oh, I would never pay that amount." We actually have it on recording. He was funny. We record all the calls. "Oh, I would never pay that on my own." Now keep in mind that it's not like we were asking for a super, super high amount, okay? With a decent sized account, you can make back in a month or two, what we're asking, and then trade that way for the rest of your life. So it's not like we're asking for a million dollars. But the whole idea of paying for coaching repelled this guy. It was like a block in his brain. It's like, "No, no, no, I can't do that. That's not possible." Some people have that for murdering. "I could never murder anybody." Same thing, "Oh, I could never pay for a coaching." It's against my morals. It's against my values. It's against the way I live." Okay. That's why trading, most of it is mindset. If you're not willing to invest in yourself, your investments will suffer. The easiest and fastest way to success in trading, and just about anything, is to find somebody who's already doing well, learn from them, go to the source, see who's doing it right now, that thing that you want to do and learn from that person. Copying them is not enough. If you can't get to the person, you can try copying them, but you're not going to learn everything. It's not going to be the same thing, because you don't know the nuances. You don't know what they've tested and what has worked and what didn't work. You can try to copy them, but trust me, it's not the same thing. You don't know what you don't know, unless you get the education. So if you've been blessed with a college education, I mean, thank your parents or whoever paid for it and be grateful that you had the chance to go and that it allowed you to have a better quality of life. And maybe you didn't go to college, but you still struggled hard. And you made a success out of yourself, but you did get educated some way somehow, maybe you read on your own. Maybe you did it, but you took the time to put in the effort and you learned. But most likely, if you want the shortcut, you go to the teacher, you learn from them, right? That's the way it works. Because who knows where you would be without it. If you weren't educated, where would you be right now? I hate to think about it because I couldn't even make as much money as that day laborer guy because I don't know how to do anything with my hands, seriously. And that is the difference between the trader who is struggling, trying to figure out their way in the trading world and the day laborer. And the trader who understands that he needs to get educated properly so that his trading can improve to get him to the level where he can have everything he wants in his life. There's a big difference, it's a total mental shift. If you show me a successful trader, I will show you a person who either paid their dues and traded for years without real success, or they had a mentor and they took the shortcut, and usually, it's both. You need the mentor and you still need to put in the work, okay? Because when you do, it's worth it because the world is at your feet. Anything you want is yours if you do this right. If you educate yourself, put in the work, there's nothing you can't do. And what is the alternative? You already know the answer to that question. The alternative is whatever you have now. If you don't succeed at trading, okay. For some of you that's okay. For that guy who called on the phone, maybe his current life is okay. And I could go on and on about the many benefits of paying for the shortcut, right? Paying for the education. But it comes down to this. How badly do you really want it? If you don't want it bad enough, take your time, dilly dally, watch YouTube videos. No problem. You might learn something once a week or something, eventually you might learn something. Hopefully the video you're watching is actually the truth and it's up to date and it's not outdated. And that methods, whatever they're teaching or showing you still works. And they show you everything, because that's what they do on these videos, they don't show you everything. They want you to pay. They want you to pay up for the real stuff. But if your desire keeps you up at night, if you know that you were born to live a life of plenty, do the smart thing and get educated, find a mentor, pay for access to him and soak it all up. That is truly the best shortcut you can take in trading. And it's not cheating. Some people say, "Oh, that's cheating." No, it's not cheating. Paying to get ahead of the line is not cheating. When I go to Disney world, I don't want to wait in line, I'm going to pay for that fast pass. I don't want to wait two hours for every single ride. I want to enjoy myself. I want to have as much fun. I want to get what I want as soon as possible. And I'm willing to pay to do that. It's learning the rules of the game so you can apply them to your benefit and that you do by paying for the education. So that's it for this episode. Remember to trade with the odds in your favor. Until next time. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  --- Wouldn't you want to be successful, right? Of course, right? Who wants to be a loser trader? Everybody wants to be a successful trader. But the thing is you might already be successful or do you even know what success means? Now to me, when somebody asks me, "Hey, Allen, are you a successful trader?" And I would say, "Yes and no." I mean, I'm doing okay, but I'm not where I want to be yet, right? And then that yet part is the problem. That is what's keeping me from saying, "Yes, I am successful. I am happy as a trader." Because I'm not at the level or I have not hit the goals that I've wanted to do or hit or set for myself. And actually, this revelation came to me as part of a coaching program. It came from my mentor. So, I have different people that I learned different things from, and I currently am in a coaching program. It's a very expensive coaching program where the person in charge of it, she teaches us about business and sales and how to do better with Option Genius and how we can improve the sales and make an impact for more people. And she learned this from her mentor, so I'm learning from her. She's learning from someone else. That person is learning from even another person up the food chain. So, it's amazing how even people that we look at and say, "Hey, yeah, this person is successful. I want to learn from them," but they are constantly learning too. The most successful people I know are always investing in themselves, just like we are investing in the stock market. We're investing in options, but we need to also be investing in ourselves by learning more, by being in a community with other people that have the same goals or similar activities and similar visions that we do. So, I'm in this coaching program, and she's already taught us a lot. It's group coaching, so we get together once every so often on Zoom, a couple times a year in person, well, whenever we can, whenever she arranges it. And she talks about different things. One of the calls, the last... It wasn't the last call. It was the call before that. She was talking about mindset. And she was talking about how she learned lesson from her mentor, who learned it from a book. The book is, I believe it's not available anymore, but you can get the audio book. It's by a guy named Dan Sullivan. Pure Genius is the name of the program. You might be able to get the audio book from Nightingale Conant if you want to pick it up. But the idea there was that when people set goals or when people think about productivity or when they think about themselves and how successful they are and how they're doing, they always look to the future. They always look to the horizon. That's the example he gives. And so, if you're walking along or driving along on the road, it's a straight road. You're driving, driving, driving. You see the horizon. And no matter how far you go, no matter how long you go, you never reach the horizon. So if the horizon is your goal, you're never going to get there. Does that make sense? I mean, yeah, the Earth is round, and so it's constantly turning, but the same thing happens to us. When we set goals, when we set activities for ourselves, the goal or the result, the future final result always seems to end up changing. And this is human nature. So for example, a few years ago, I was in a business owners mastermind group. And there were about 12 of us, I believe, in the group. And in the meeting, in one of the meetings, we did an activity. And we went around, and everybody had to say what their number was. Basically, a number is how much money do you need to have in order to maybe sell your business and retire, right? So, how much money do you want to have to be able to say, "Yeah, you know what? I'm financially secure. I'm safe. I'm happy. I'm going to retire. I'm going to go do whatever the heck I want now. And I don't have to run my business anymore"? So, what is the end goal? And there were different numbers thrown around, 10 million, 12 million, 15, 5, whatever. The number wasn't important. But I did happen to write some of them down. And we were in this group. I was in this group for eight years, and there were several others that were with me when we were there. Some people would come and go, but most of the group was intact. And so the next year, we did the same activity where you had to say your number. Now, a lot of them had done really well that year, right? And so, their perspective had changed. And so when we went around and everybody was writing their numbers or saying their numbers, I was writing them down again. And I happened to go back and find the page when I wrote the ones from the year before. So, I see what they had said before, and then I'm writing down what they said this year. And everyone's number had gone up. Some of them, there was one particular person, he said, "I want to get to 5 million. That's when I'm going to sell my business. My business is doing 5 million a year. I'm going to sell it. I'm going to cash out. I'm going to take the money. And I'm going to retire." That was what he said. And he had already told us that his business is already doing $5 million, so then he changed it. He goes, "No, no, now I want to do 10 million. So if my business is doing 10 million a year, then that's when I'm going to sell it. And that's what I'm going to retire." So, he changed it. He changed the goal. He changed the vision. He is now moving towards the horizon, which he's never going to get to because if he gets to 10 million, then he might go to 15. He might go to 20. He's going to keep increasing it. And that's what we do. I mean, when you first started trading, maybe your goal was hey, I want to make a thousand dollars a month. That's a great goal, very attainable. You could probably do that within the first couple of months, right? I want to make a thousand dollars a month. That's a great goal. After you do that, then what happens? Oh, the goal changes. Okay, now I need to make $3,000 a month. Okay. Then I need to make five. Then I need to make 10. Then I need to make a hundred thousand dollars. Then I need to make a million dollars. Then I need to make a million every year, every year for the rest of my life. You see, the goal just keeps going further and further and further. That's not a bad thing. You got to improve. You got to strive. If you're not growing, if you're not motivating yourself, then you're going to die and wither away and lose interest. And it's going to all go to pot anyway. But my point is, a lot of people look at their success based on if they've hit their long-term goals. And so if you say, "Hey, I'm not going to be successful as a trader unless I make a million dollars a year," well, then you will never be successful because you just have to do it again and again and again and again and again until you die, right, because you never put an end date. There are other people who say, "You know what? I want to make this much. And that's it. That's my goal. I'm going to make that much." Well, if they get there, that's great. They celebrate. And then they're like, "Okay, now what?" Then they have to form a new goal, so they keep striving, and they keep doing that. So according to this guy Dan Sullivan in the Pure Genius program, what he's saying is that what people do is they never hit their goal or they do hit the goal and then they make it larger. But they never hit the horizon, right? So, what you want to do instead to be successful is you want to compare, what he calls, your actual two to your actual one. So, actual one is where you were, before when you started. Actual two is where you are now, right? So, what we're doing is we're not comparing ourselves now to our goal, which is in the future or the horizon. We're comparing where we are now to where we were before. So if your goal right now, or if you just hit your goal of making a thousand dollars a month, you're not going to feel bad and say, "You know what? I got to make 3,000. Oh, my God, I only made a thousand this month. I need to make three." No, you're going to say, "Wait a minute, two months ago, I wasn't making this thousand dollars a month. I hadn't heard about passive trading yet." Maybe, you're brand new. Maybe, you're brand new to the podcast. So, you're just listening, and you're like, "Oh, I started, and in a couple months, I'm making a thousand bucks. Great." You compare where you are now to where you were before. And if you do that, you're going to be ecstatic. You'll be like, "Yeah, really, I am making a thousand dollars a month. That's amazing. That's awesome, right?" You're going to be happy. You're going to be excited. You're going to be wanting celebrate. But if you compare today to the future, "Oh, man, I still got to make that 3,000. Man, I'm only making a thousand a month. I got to make 3,000. Jeez," you're going to be full of stress, anxiety, and unhappiness. So if you want to be successful, what you got to do is change your perspective, as long as you're being profitable, okay? That goes without saying. If you're passive trading, you're probably going to be profitable, okay? If you're not, then reach out to me. We'll figure out why. But if you're doing passive trading, you're probably profitable. The only matter is, the only question is, how profitable are you and how consistently you are profitable, okay? So, that's your goal. Now, what people say is the secret to be successful is to feel amazing all the time. The way to feel amazing all the time is to compare yourself now from where you were before. And to me, that was like, "Whoa, that is so true." Because in Option Genius, I keep saying, "Okay, I want to help more people. I want to help more people. I want to help more people." And we get success stories coming in, but it's like, man, we need to do more. We need to do more. You read the newspapers. It's like, oh, so many baby boomers are having to work until they're seventy years old, and they don't have any money for savings. And all these people are in trouble right now during the coronavirus. They might not get their unemployment checks anymore, and they're going to be kicked out of their houses, and all this stuff is going on. It's like, oh, my God, I can help these people. They just have to know about passive trading. Why can't we help more people? Why can't we do it fast enough? And so with that stress, it drives me nuts. I can't sleep. I'm grinding my teeth at night, and that's what's keeping me up. Not the stock market, stock market's doing great. I've done better this year than so many years before, even in the midst of this coronavirus. But the thing that's keeping me up is that the horizon is so far away that I don't know if I'll ever get there because I don't even have a number in mind, how many people I want to help. I want to help 10,000 people. Okay, that's a big number. How many have you helped so far? Not even close. We helped a lot of people, but I don't know for sure, right? I know a few people that have told me their story, so we have all those people that, yes. Okay, I took this guy. I helped this guy go from where he was before to now financial independence. Okay, so that's one. And we've got a whole bunch of people like him, but we don't have 10,000. We've helped a lot more than that, but they haven't actually written in or called in and said, "Hey, you know what? Now, I'm financially independent." Okay, great. Because I know a whole bunch are, but they haven't told us. But when I look at where we are now compared to where we were before, compared to a year ago, two years ago, or 10 years ago when I started Option Genius, I think it started 11 years ago, but if I started from the beginning, looking at what was happening in the beginning, I feel great. Because when I started Option Genius, it was really as a way to keep myself busy. It was going to be one membership site where I was just going to be sharing trades with a few people. I didn't expect it to blow up. I just wanted to keep busy. So, I was doing some marketing, Google ads, and putting up a website, doing some trades, iron condors, this, that, the other thing, teaching. People were asking questions, so I'd make a few videos answering their questions and help them along. I never expected it to grow to what it is now. This podcast is over 250,000 downloads. Thank you for listening. That's amazing. I still can't believe it. That many people, you're listening to me that much. It's like, holy cow, right? Yeah. It's amazing. We just launched a passive trading book, and we're already sold over a thousand copies. We haven't even done any advertising, and we've already sold over a thousand copies. I can't wait what's going to happen once we start advertising. So, the mission is going to continue, and so I need to look at where I've been compared to now. When I started, even when I started trading, the anxiety, the stress, the depression of not making money trading compared to now where I have too much money in a sense. My wife was telling me, "Hey, you know what? The money's piling up in the bank account. What are we going to do with it?" And she's like, "Why don't you trade it?" And I'm like, "Yeah, we kind of have a lot of money in the stock market already." And that's not something you would actually expect to hear from a trader, right? We already got a lot of money in the stock market. So I mean, that's a mental limit that I need to work on myself, but I never even thought I would get to this point. So, what I'm saying here is in terms of to be a successful trader, chances are, if you're doing passive trading, you already are successful to some degree, meaning that you're already putting on trades. You know some strategies. They're working. Now, you just need to fine tune it, right? But to be successful in your head is a whole different story. To be happy with your success is a mental game. And so to win at the mental game, in anything, in trading or in parenting or in a relationship or whatever it is, look at where you are now, actual two, compare it to actual one. Maybe, compare it to a month ago, a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. Compare it to where you were, see the growth, see the progress, the momentum that you've made. See the things, the challenges you have overcome, and you will be happy. You'll be successful in your own mind, and that will take you to the future. One of the things that we started doing this year for my kids is every year on their birthdays, my wife and I, we make them a video. And so, we just started this one. So, we did it with the eight-year-old, and we did it with the four-year-old. And we made him a video and it's basically just me and my wife talking and saying, "Happy birthday. We're so proud of you. We love you," all this stuff. And then we list off the things that the kid did that year. So for our eight-year-old, I don't remember exactly, but some of the things were he learned how to snorkel. He went parasailing for the first time. He learned to ride his bike. What else did he do? He finished, what was it, second grade, right? So, we listed off his accomplishments and then we gave him the video. And right now, he's eight years old. Video wasn't a big deal. But as he grows older, we're going to keep those videos. And then when he's maybe 18, 20, 30, 40 years old, he can actually, maybe if he wants to, he can watch those videos and see his own progression to go from year to year to year to year all the accomplishments that he's made in his whole lifetime. And I think that might be a really, really cool gift worth more than any toy or video game that we could buy for him. And so that's something that we're starting. I just want to share that. Might be cool to do. If not, it's okay. But I know that if my parents had documented what things I had done when I was little or growing up or what they were proud of me about, and maybe even documented their life lessons, things that they learned in their own lifetime, and if I had that as a library or as a book or a set of videos, I would cherish it like no other thing. It'd be more valuable to me than anything else. So, that's the kind of things that we're trying to do for our kids. That's a whole nother topic. We can get into that later. But right now, if you want to be successful, don't think about the horizon. Don't think about the future. Work towards it. You always have to keep striving, try to keep improving. Otherwise, you're going to get bored and wither away. So, we want to keep getting better, but in order to be happy, we need to celebrate. And we just celebrate the milestones and the wins that we've already accomplished. So, look at where you are now, compare it to wherever you've been, and see the difference, and feel happy, and celebrate because we're only here for a short amount of time. And when it comes to trading, it's only money, right? So, enjoy yourself. Enjoy your life. Be happy. Be proud of yourself. Be happy with who you are. And always trade with the odds in your favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  --- Greetings Passive Ttraders. Welcome to another edition of The Option Genius podcast. In today's edition or episode, I wanted to talk to you about watch lists and the importance of having a watch list. Now, the importance, even though I do preach about having a watch list and sticking to your watch list and trading the items on your watch list. There are times when I invariably will not listen to my own advice and then go ahead and start trading companies and instruments that I have no idea about, never heard of before. And so I was reminded of this recently, when I was doing a bonus for the Passive Trader book. For those of you who don't know, the Passive Trading book is out and it is available, you can get on Amazon for, I think it's like $20 or $25, or you can go to our website, which is passivetrading.com/freebook. And you can get the printed version actually for free. We've already paid for it. We have a limited supply of copies. All we ask is that you pay for the shipping and handling. If you do that, we'll send you out a book for free. But when we were coming out with the book and this whole little offer, we wanted to go a little bit further and created several products, or I guess they're called products. But they are things that can help you get faster results in your passive trading. So if you don't know anything about passive trading, if you've never traded before or if you want just more information, get the book. If you want to go faster, maybe you already know a little bit about it. Maybe you already know about how to trade, but you want better results. That's where these other extras come into play. And so one of the things that we created is a crash course. And so once you buy the book, the next page that it takes you to is an offer. It's an offer page and it's a video of me and it tells you about the crash course. And basically the crash course is after I already written the book we went through and I took notes on the entire book and I turned it into a video format where I went deeper into the elements that I thought were the most important. So now everything in the book is important and we've already taken out... It was a lot longer before. It was maybe double or triple the size before. And we had to cut it down to make it manageable because I didn't want to have like a 500 page book. But there were some aspects that I wanted to go in deeper and I could do it better in a visual format. So that's why we made a video course. It's a crash course. The average person to read a book of this size of passive trading would take about 10 hours. That's the average person to read it. And now this is a more detailed book. So there are numbers and there's things that you have to understand. You might have to read it back a couple of times to really get the gist of it. And so it probably take even longer than 10 hours. So what I wanted to do is a crash course just focused on the most important things. Boom, get it done with in like an hour or so, a couple of hours. I'm not sure how long the video is. I don't know. I think we broke it down into several. So I don't know exactly what the length of the video is, but it's really, really good. And I'm really happy. I'm really proud of it. So that is something you might want to pick up. But in addition to the crash course, what we offer as part of that package is videos of actual trades. So now in the book, I do cover several trades that I've made in the past. So you can see how each trade goes, by strategy, by strategy and see how they actually work out. But that's on paper, right? Visually you can do a lot better. So what I did was I picked, two trades that I've done in the past for each of the three strategies. So six trades total. And I went into backtesting software and visually I did a screen capture of my screen. And I went through how I put the trade on, what it looks like on the screen. What does the graph look like, how it works. And day by day recorded what happened. Now this was with the backtesting software, you can go back in time. So let's say there was a trade that I did three months ago. I can go back three months ago, show you the graph of the stock, the chart of the stock and say, look, this is what the stock was doing. This is what I saw the day that I put the trade on. And then this is what happened the next day. And this is what happened the next day. And then the next day this happened, so I did this. So day by day, you can actually go back and see and say, hey what is Allen looking at? How is he placing this trade? How is he managing this trade? And so I did it for all the three strategies that we talk about in the book. There are six trades in total, and I thought that... If you've never traded before, if you don't understand or if you want to get some behind the scenes kind of information and knowledge, you got to watch those videos. Because you can see me day by day going through the trades. So if you don't understand how these trades work, you want a better idea, watch the trades. And it's a visual interpretation. It's visually, day by day. Even when you're doing live trading, you can't get that because nobody has the time to sit there and go day by day by day. Even for people of our option genius membership, right? They get the trades and that's about it. We don't show them day by day how it's going through. So this is really, really important in that sense. So if that's important to you pick that up, it's on the page right after the book. So you buy the book and then the next page, you get this offer. Now, why am I telling you all this? Is it because I just want to sell it to? Well I want you to get it because I think it's going to help you. But while I was doing those trades, while I was looking for several of these trades, I came across one and I didn't want to find like the easiest trades. I wanted to find where there were some issues sometimes, like okay the trade went against me, how did I fix it? What did I do? And so I wanted to give a real sense of what these trades are actually like. And so I found one trade that I started about a year ago. It was in August of 2019. And I just exited this trade about a week ago or two weeks ago, whenever expiration was. This trade was on a stock that was not on my watch list. The company was Royal Gold, R G L D. Never heard of this company before, don't even know what they do. I still don't know what they do. I was in the trade. I own the stock for this company for close to a year. And I still don't know what they do. They might be a miner. They might be a jewelry wholesaler or they might be a retailer. I have no clue. I don't know what they do, but it has something to do with gold. Now how did I get into this stock? And why am I being so clueless about it? Well, like I said, it's not on my watch list. And so that is part of the problem. About a year ago, a friend of mine told me that there's a pattern in gold. And depending on when you're listening to this, the pattern just might help you to make some money. The pattern is that gold rallies into the end of the year. And so the idea was that it's about August, 2019. This is when he told me and he's like, "hey you know, I'm doing this trade. It's a covered call in the mining on this company, Royal Gold." And he told me what it was. I looked at it, I analyzed it. And I said, "Hey, this is good. I like this." The chart looks good. The stock is going up. And if gold rallies to the end of the year, then there's a very good chance that this trade is going to make some money. But I don't know this company. And I don't think they pay a dividend. So I want to put on the trade, but I don't want to be in the trade for a long time. I don't want to own the stock for a long time. So that's why it was set up as a in the money covered call. And in the money covered call is where the stock is trading at a certain price. Like I was saying, it's a hundred, you buy the shares at a hundred, and then you sell lower than the price. So you sell your call option lower than the price, which was I think it was selling at like a 4 or 5% below where the stock was. So that is the trade that I did. And I don't have in front of me. But the trade was going to make somewhere around 11%. Or I believe that's what it was. It had the ability to make 11% in about a month's time, just the way it was set up. And it had a very, very high probability of profit. Not only that, but I looked at the chart, the stock was going up. Gold is supposed to continue to go up. So that means the chart... This company Royal Gold should also continue to go up. And so if that happens, that's great. That's what I want because I want the stock that I bought to be called away. And I want that money to just be left. And I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to mess with it. It's a simple, easy trade. You don't have to manage it. You don't have to [inaudible 00:09:41] it. You don't have to do anything. You put the trade on, you wait till expiration day and you see, hey what happened with this trade? Most likely the stock is going to keep going up and I'm going to be assigned in my exercise. And my call option is going to force me to sell my stock, which I wanted to do anyway. And I was going to keep the gain. That was the plan. Now, as I already told you, I was in the trade for about a year. So it didn't exactly go according to plan. Instead of the stock continuing go up. The stock went down and then it kept going down. And so my option expired, which was good because I made some money. But now I'm sitting on a loss on the stock, which I don't even want. So now the idea is, okay what do I do now? Do I keep it? Or do I get out and take a loss? Well, I don't like taking a loss, who likes taking a loss. I don't like taking a loss. And who knows gold might also appreciate again. It might keep going up. Maybe this is a short time drop or something, who knows. And so I sold more calls, hoping that the stock would go up and I would be called away, that didn't happen. Sold more calls, expired, sold more calls, expired, sold more calls. And I go through month by month, day by day in the trade in the video. So if you want to pick that up, you can go through and see exactly how it happened and which calls I sold and why I picked those calls, all that. But in the end, it took me about a year to get out of this trade. And after a year I made about 8%. I think it was an 8% gain on this trade. So what should have been a one month trade where I could make 11% turned into a whole year problem, where I had to keep selling calls in order to make 8% for the year. Now 8% in a year is nothing to laugh at. That's a really good return. And that's what the stock market averages, 8% percent a year. So I did that and I took a trade where the stock went down. The stock was down and I still made 8%. So that's one thing to take away. Like, oh wow, how do you make money on a stock that's going down? Well, this is the way to do it. The other thing I want to point out, which is probably more important is that I never should have been in the trade in the first place. Now yes, we're going to place trades and we're going to miss and we're going to mess up, we're going to lose money on trades. That's normal. And then you have to know how to fix it. Fine. I get that. But I had no clue what was going on with this company. Didn't do any research into it. Don't know the company. I still have not looked into it. I still don't know what they do. And so that's not very smart. And that's exactly why I keep telling you to have a watch list. When you have a watch list... A watch list for those you don't know is a list of companies that you monitor, that you watch. And those are the ones that you trade. Now if you don't know how to make a watch list, we cover it in detail in passive trading, in the book. And then even in the passive trading formula, the course, we spent a lot of time on that in the course. And there are over a dozen different criteria to use, to pick the best stocks, underlying ETFs, indexes, all that to put on your watch list. And everybody's watch list is going to be different, unique, because you like trading some things. I like trading different things. We'll make different watch lists. No problem. That's not a big deal. The thing is when you don't stick to the watch list, you make mistakes like this one. And even though at the end of the year, I came out ahead, it was a lot of extra effort that I didn't really need to make. If I had stuck to my watch list, I wouldn't have had that problem. If I had wanted to play gold. And that was the plan. Gold was going up. I should have just played gold and gold is on my watch list. So I watch gold. I watch the chart of gold. I see how it's doing. I know how it behaves. This company didn't behave the same as gold. Gold kept going up, but this company went down and I couldn't figure out why. So the point again, I'm trying to make here is create your watch list. Stick to the watch list. There was another time and I tell this story many times where I traded a stock that wasn't on my watch list. And at that time it was Las Vegas Sands. And I did some cover calls on that one too. And the stock dropped all the way down to $2. And I had no clue why the stock was dropping because I didn't do my research because it wasn't on my watch list. I didn't know that the company was about to go out of business. They were going to declare bankruptcy. That was why the stock went all the way down to $2. Now, luckily for me the stock did not declare bankruptcy and then they recovered and I made all my money back and a lot more. But that's just another way that I lucky. There's no other way to say it. I should have lost all my money on that trade because I didn't do my homework and I didn't stick to my watch list. So even as a professional trader, I keep having to learn the same lessons over and over and over again. And that's normal. That's not a big deal. It happens, but I want you to learn from my mistakes. And so I don't want you to feel bad if you make mistakes. I don't want you to feel bad if you make the same mistake over and over again. But we need to get better at it. We need to keep improving. And that's the only way to do it by just getting reminded of it and saying, hey this for me was a great reminder. Like, Oh my God, geez I can't believe I did this again. But I did. And I learned how to fix it. And I did. Luckily I was able to do it. So now I have another reminder of, hey I need to focus on the watch list. Focus on the watch list. Focus on the watch list. I had a couple other trades that came up recently that somebody shared in our group, our Facebook group for members of the Passive Trading Formula. And I wanted to take them, but they were on stocks that I didn't really watch. And so I was like, oh no I can't. Okay, no I'm not going to do it. And then I went and found similar trades, similar strategy to stocks that I already own or stuff that are on my watch list. So I was happy. So I still made money. It's not like you can't make money by only sticking to your watch list, but you're going to make more money because you're sticking to things that you know. So that is in a sense, the gist of this episode. Basically I could have broken down and said, "Hey yeah, just got to, you got to stick to your watch list. But it makes a bigger impact when you hear the story behind it I think. As people, we love stories. We love hearing stories. And when you tell a story, it not only does it stick in your brain and you remember it more, but it shows the importance. Now, luckily I didn't lose any money on this. But if I did, it would have been a very expensive story. And then I would have been like, hey I lost X dollars doing this. I don't want you to lose X dollars. Don't do the same thing. So with that said, thank you for joining me for another edition. Again, the book is Passive Trading. It's out now, limited quantities are available for free. Go check it out. passivetrading.com/freebook. And if you have any questions, you can always email me help@optiongenius.com. If you need anything, we're always here for you. Join us in our free Facebook group, which is called the Alliance, Option Traders Alliance. You can get that at optiongenius.com/alliance. I believe that is the URL. If not just email us and we will get you the name and the URL to that. So you can join us in there, get the book, learn passive trading, start making money. And even on a stock that goes down, I still made 8%. So learn how to do that. Make all your troubles go away. Take care and trade with the odds in your favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Ho, ho, ho, passive traders. It's Christmas in July, or whenever you are listening to this. Why? Because I have a gift for you. After over two years ... Two and a half, three years? I don't know how long it took, but it took a long time, well over two years. I finished my Passive Trading book. It has been published. It has been printed. It's on sale at Amazon. You can go pick it up right now for $20. Or I do have some copies that I want you to have for free. I want to give them to you. I want everybody to have this book. I'm doing my part by giving them away, a limited number that I have that we got as part of the first run. All you have to do is go to passivetrading.com/freebook and you have all the details there. It is a printed book. We do have to ship it to you, so it will take a couple of days to get to you. It is passivetrading.com\freebook. Now, the book is free. I will need you to cover the shipping and handling costs, if you don't mind that. And you'll get the free book in your mail very soon. People have been asking about the audio book or the ebook version. Those are also available there for a little bit extra. But if you get the free book, you can get those as well. If you're ready to get started trading options, or investing the right way, or making some extra money on the side, you got to get this book. I mean, I call it Passive Trading: How to Make Consistent Money From the Stock Market in Just a Few Hours a Day for a reason, because that's what it is. And it delivers. It's been on Amazon for a couple weeks now. We already have well over a dozen positive five star reviews. Everybody else that's read it has loved it. We're getting some video testimonials in that we're adding to the website, too. So, I just can't wait. I'm really excited. I think this is going to really make a big deal. So again, passivetrading.com/freebook. I don't know how long the books are going to last. And if you want one, please go get one. Pick it up right now. Just pay for shipping. We'll send it out to you. Another announcement is that this show has been rated as one of the top trading podcasts! So we are super excited at that as well. Top Trading Podcast Trading scars. That's the type of this episode. What do you mean, Alan, by trading scars? What is a trading scar? Ooh, sounds dangerous. Well, when it comes to trading, we all lose money. There's nothing we can do about that. It happens on a regular basis, right? It's one of the things that happens. Like when you're playing football, you're going to get hurt. When you're trading, you're going to lose money. You're going to have a losing trade. Okay. Got it. Check. But then, when it happens a lot, or when it happens unexpectedly, or when the loss is especially large, it can leave a scar. It can hurt. It can go deep. That cut can go very deep, and it's really hard to get rid of. It's hard to get over. I mean, it's not a physical scar, right? It's a mental scar. It's something that affects our psyche. And for some people, that affects them all the way down to their core. That's a scar, though, that nobody else can see. You're walking down the street, nobody knows you've lost money in the stock market. You could see it and you can feel it, but nobody else can. And sure, there will be some people around you when you get your scar that will know that you got your scar, your family, your spouse, your kids, whatever, your friends if you tell them. They're going to see it. They're going to know you got it. But then, they're going to move on. You are going to carry that scar for a long time, and hopefully the scar will fade away. For some people, it doesn't. Losing a lot of money can be very painful. And that's what causes the scar, because we put a really, really big attachment to money. And we put a really, really big attachment to winning, and to being successful, and not failing. But normally, failing at something is a good thing. It's great sometimes. It might not feel like it at the time when you fail, but that is how we learn. When I'm teaching my kids, my eight-year-old, he gets really mad every time he gets something wrong. He just like, "I can't do it, Daddy. I can't do it." It's like, "Yes, you can. You got the answer wrong. It's okay. That's why we're learning. We're learning that what we did didn't work, so now we have to try a different way. We can't just give up. We've got to keep going. We got to move forward." So as you progress on your trading journey, you're going to build up these scars. Doesn't mean it's not going to hurt, but it's part of the game. You play the game, you're going to get hurt, and they're going to be scars as a history, as a memory, as a feeling that, hey, this happened. Don't forget. Now, the saddest thing is when a scar impacts a trader so deeply that they give up. Or even worse, they lose confidence in themselves. They change. Their personality changes. The way they feel about themselves, the way they think about themselves, the way they see themselves changes. And when I was learning how to trade, I met a fellow, a fellow trader, who was light years ahead of me. I mean, this guy was awesome. He was brilliant. I mean, he knew everything. He knew all the jargon. He knew all the trades. He was doing all these exotic strategies, and I couldn't even figure them out what he was doing. I had no clue what he was doing. He would explain stuff, and I'd be like, What?" It was like a two-year-old talking to a college student. That's what I was. Some of the things that he taught me I still don't understand. He was that brilliant. But, then he got cocky. He got arrogant. He didn't take precautions, and he screwed up. And It wasn't just a little, tiny screw up. It wasn't like, "Oh, yeah, he had a bad losing year. He lost when he should've won." No. He blew up big time, and he lost it all. Total account blow out. Zero. Gone. Lost all of his money. But then, more importantly than that, he lost his confidence. And because of that, every attempt that he made to build his account back up failed. He just couldn't get that winning touch again. Didn't matter what he knew, didn't matter how much experience he had, he couldn't get the winning touch back. He couldn't get back on his feet. That caused him to be depressed. He looked at himself as a trader. That was his identity. But, he was no longer a successful trader. Now he was just an average, or below average, or loser trader because he wasn't making any money. So, he went into a cycle of self-destruction. He started doing crazy things. He started using and abusing. Eventually, he ended up in rehab. Thankfully, he got out, and he's better now. But, that scar hurt deep. Recently, he reached out to me, and we got to talk. He's a great guy. He's trying to get back into trading now, and he is looking for somebody to stake him. Basically, what that means is he's looking for someone to give him the money to trade so that he can split the profits with them. It's kind of like a hedge fund, but the person who puts up the money gets more of the profits. Now, as a rule, I don't do that. But when I was talking to him, I realized that I was talking to somebody different than who I knew before. He wasn't the same person. He used to be full of energy, and charisma, and super charming. Now he's just boring, blah, no energy, no confidence. If he was the same as before, most likely he probably would have talked me into giving him some money. That's how powerful he was before. Even if I didn't want to, he'd probably talk me into it. But, his scars were still there, and they were limiting his confidence. They were limiting what he was asking for. He never even asked me. That's how scared he was. Before, he had no problems being brash and cocky. But now, he was bringing up ... He's like, "Oh, hey, I'm looking for somebody that can stake me. Do you know anybody? I'm doing really well? I got some records and dah, dah, dah. I got this new strategy I've come up with that's working really well. Blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "Oh, good luck to you." He never even asked me to stake him once, even though I knew that is exactly why he called me. But, he didn't have the confidence to ask for the sale to go for it. But, that's my point. He was never able to overcome the scar. The thing is that only he could see it. I had forgotten about it. I had forgotten that he blew up. I remember that he was in rehab. That's the thing I remembered. But because the scar was there, and he knew about it, and he thought it was there, he acted differently. Maybe he thought that I still remembered what happened or maybe he thought that I cared. To be honest, what bothered me more was that he spiraled out of control. That was the concern to me when I was thinking about, "Hey, should I stake this guy or not?" Even though he hasn't asked me, I was thinking about it because I knew how good he was in the past. But, my concern was not that he blew up. I didn't even remember that. My concern was that I remember that he spiraled out of control. And to me, that was a bigger issue of not giving him money. I felt bad about it, that he's spiraled out of control, but not that he lost money. Because hey, everybody screws up. Everybody loses money, Some people more than others, some people bigger than others, right? Go big or go home. He went big, and he had to go home. So, I guess he did pay. He did both. But, we all get the chance to get back in. And that's what I love about trading. You always have the chance to get back in. You lose a bunch of money, you learn from it. See what you did wrong. Save up more money. Get back in the ring. It's not rocket science. You can figure it out. Just got to get back in the ring. That's the wonderful thing about trading. The only limitations are the ones that we set for ourselves. The only thing holding us back is ourselves and in our brain. Physically, it doesn't matter. There's nothing physically stopping you from trading. There is no discrimination in trading. There are no limitations. Doesn't matter who you are, what race, what nationality, what gender, what political party, where you live. None of that matters, how much you make, where you went to school, or even if you went to school. Nobody cares. If you have any learning disabilities or handicaps, no. You can still do this. Trading is just trading. It's open to everybody. And you can screw up as much as you want, too. You can blow up your account a hundred times, and you can still get back in the ring. They're not going to stop you. In fact, they're going to encourage you because they want to take your money. I was thinking about this episode. I realized that I have scars that I have not overcome either. It's not easy. Now, personally, I refuse to trade for anybody else. I don't want the headache, at least that's what I tell myself. People in the past, friend ... Just recently, somebody came up to me, a partner in another business. He goes, "Hey, why don't we just take the income out of this business? We got some money sitting in that business." He said, "Why don't we just take it out, give it to you, and you trade it?" And I said, "No, I don't trade for other people. Sorry. I don't want the headache." Is it really about the headache? I mean, it's just one more account. I have plenty accounts. We can even probably have it mirror one of my other accounts. So whatever I do in one account automatically happens in the other one. I wouldn't have to do anything. It wouldn't be a headache at all. I think the real reason I say no is that scar. I can lose money for myself. If I lose money, I'm going to be okay. I can sleep. I can deal with it. But if I lose money for somebody else, if I lose somebody else's money, I won't be able to sleep at night. That's the wrong way to think about it. If I think like that, then for sure I'm going to lose their money. If I go in in advance thinking, "Oh my God, I'm going to lose him money. How am I going to lose? What am I going to do? Oh, no. I'm going to lose." I'm going to go in thinking about the worst outcome. That's what's going to happen. If I did not have a scar, I probably would be a lot more boastful telling everybody that I could trade for them. And who knows, I would probably have my own fund making a lot more money than I am now by trading for other people. So if that's the route I wanted to take, I could have. But right now, that route is not open for me because mentally I am not able to do that, and I think it's because of my scar. It's because of when I lost money when I was starting out. I had a big, big letdown when I first started. Now, I've never traded money for anybody else, so I don't have that particular scar. But when I was trading for myself, I lost a big amount, and I knew exactly how it felt. I don't think I've ever recovered from that particular scar. So although at this day in my life, at this stage, I don't want to trade for other people. I don't need to. I don't need the extra return, the cash. I still need to work on dealing with the scar, though. That's besides the point. Even though the thing is there, the ability I can trade for other people, but I don't want to. I don't need to anymore. Earlier, a few years ago, yeah, the money would have been really nice. Doing the same trades I'm already doing for myself, doing it for other people, the income from that, the percentage of the profits from that would have been really nice because you can ... If you have a $50,000 account, you can only make so much money. Even if you double it, you're only making 50,000. But if you've got somebody with a million dollar account that you're trading, and you double that million dollars to 2 million, and you get 20% of that, that's 200,000 compared to the 50 that I made for myself. And I could do both at the same time. So yeah, if you're trading for other people, you can make a lot more money a lot faster. But, I couldn't. I never got my mind around it. Does that make sense? Because of the scar. And it's funny. Because lately, I have been seeing people post on Facebook about how they have trades that have made 100, 200, 5% gains. That's great for them. 500%, that's amazing. I'm happy for them. But, then they start giving advice, and they start posting about how wonderful they are. The thing is, those people, they don't have any scars yet, but they're coming. Believe me, the scars are coming. So if you're sitting there and this is your first crack at trading and you're making a 100, 200% on the trade, hey, wonderful for you, but be careful you don't give it back, because you're going to give it back. And the scar, you're going to get your scar. It's like a badge of honor. How many scars do you have? Every time we have a huge run up in the markets, we always have these types of fools. I say fool in a endearing way. I'm not trying to put you down if this is happening to you. I'm just telling you, you don't know what you don't know. But, that's what they are. They're still fools, and they're going to get schooled by the markets. Now in 1999, before the .com crash, 1999, everything, all the stalks were running away. Tech, Nasdaq, QQQ, every day, 10, 15, 20% higher. There were a lot of fools because everybody was making money in tech stocks. Everybody was making money in tech stocks. Doesn't matter what you know, what you don't know. You can make money. Just buy it. It going to go up. There was a guy I remember. We used to see him a lot. He was my father's friend. He kept telling my dad, every time he would see him, tell, "Hey, man, you're not invested yet? Man, you got to buy these stalks, man. I just bought AOL." That was his favorite one, AOL. "Oh, man, I just made this much money on AOL. Oh, I just made this much money." Every time we would see him, "Man, why haven't you bought yet? Why haven't you bought yet?" It was great to see him so excited, and happy, and making money. And at that time, we didn't have two nickels to rub together, so it's not like we were going to be investing. But, it sure felt like, man, if we could even borrow the money and put some money into these stocks, man, we could make a lot of money just like this guy. Then, there was the crash. Then, I have never heard that man speak of stocks ever again. I see him. At that time, we used to live in Miami. Now we live in Houston. His family have moved to Houston as well, and we see him from time to time. Never mentioned stocks ever, ever again. His scar's just too deep. In 2017, when Bitcoin got to $20,000 each, there were fools tripping all over themselves trying to prove which one of them was the bigger fool. You probably remember this. Every party you would go to, whether it was a wedding, a birthday party, a get-together, a picnic, whatever, a barbecue, whatever it was, all the guys were standing by themselves talking about Bitcoin and the women are on the other side talking about something else. It was crazy. There was one night, one day, we went from a kid's birthday party to a picnic thing to a dinner at night. And at all three parties, the only thing all the guys were talking about was a Bitcoin. That's it? Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. How many do you own? How many do you own? What'd you do? Oh, I got this coin. Oh, I bought this coin. That's all it was. Greater fools. There was a fellow who they did a news report on. He had a wife with three kids, three young children all under the age of 10. These guys were so fooled up into Bitcoin they sold everything they owned. They sold their house. They sold their cars. They sold all their possessions. They took all of their savings, everything they owned. They bought Bitcoin, and they were living in a tent. Literally. They had a laptop, and they were doing an interview on TV from the laptop, and they were being interviewed on the laptop. They lived in a tent on a beach somewhere. I don't know. It was a national park or I don't know where they were. But, they literally lived in the tent. They sold everything to buy Bitcoin. Now, Bitcoin, who knows what's going to happen with it. But I would say, yes, that fellow was a fool and his wife was a fool. And because of them, the kids are suffering. I don't know whatever happened to them, but I can bet you that that guy has a scar bigger than his body. I hope not. I hope he realized his error, got over it, and got back to work and became normal, and realized that, hey, I still need to keep working. I need to have a roof over my head and food for my kids to eat. I can't just put everything I have in Bitcoin. Hopefully he won't make that mistake again. But, what these fools, not only him but all the other fools, what they don't understand is that everything runs in cycles. Good times, they're here for a while. Then, bad times come, and they're here for a while. Then, good times come back. You just have to know that the cycle will change. And it's like that in everything. I've talked about it earlier another podcast where I like to call it waves. The waves, you get a high. You get a low tide. Then, you get a high tide, and you get a low tide. It's just waves. The waves keep coming. This too shall pass. If you're dealing with something bad right now in your life, this too will pass. If you're dealing with ... If you're on top of the world right now, well, be careful because bad times are coming. My wife, uncle. She's got an uncle. A couple of years ago, he got into trading. He didn't want to tell me about it for some reason. Okay. No worries. He would talk to my wife, though. They chatted on the phone every day. He would be calling her. He'd be telling her what he was doing, the trades he made, how much money he made, all that stuff because she was interested. I mean, he's her favorite uncle, and she loved to talk about it. I had taught her enough about trading so she understood. He didn't have anybody else to talk trading with, so he would call her up. One day, the calls just stopped. No reason. No rhyme. None. Just call just stopped, and she didn't even notice. Much later, we found out that he lost the entire amount. He blew up. Big fights in the family, husband and wife, killing each other, screaming each other. I mean, when you lose money, it's not just your money. It's also the family money. And if you have a spouse and there's a fight, that could be a big scar right there. The more emotion you put on something, the deeper the scar. So, losing money is one thing. How you feel about it, how other people make you feel about it, how you make other people feel about it, that increases the intensity of the scar. But just last month, when we got together with this uncle again, he mentioned he's back trading. He's up $40,000 so far in 2020. So in the first half of the year, he's already up $40,000. Now, he doesn't have a lot of money to play with, so I'm assuming he's up at least 100% or more. And now his son who's just out of college, he's trading, too. He told me he's bought a lot of airlines, and cruise stocks, and all of these go-go bet names, gambler, speculator names. And I think I've seen this movie before. Hopefully uncle learned his lesson last time and he doesn't make the same mistakes, but I have a feeling that history's going to repeat itself. So if you have a losing trade, good. Get used to it. More are coming. Learn from them. Learn how to deal with the scars so they don't faze you. And as the kid say, scars are sexy. Chicks dig scars, dude. It means you do stuff. It means you take chances, that you live. You're alive. So, don't let the scar ruin things for you. Realize that you have the scar. Find out what you did wrong, focus on what you did right while avoiding your mistakes. Eventually, the scars will become a memory and fade away, at least that's what I hope for you. Trade with the odds in my favor, folks. Take care. Get Your Free Copy of Passive Trading. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Hello, passive traders. This is Allen coming to you with another episode of the Option Genius Podcast. Today, I am a proud papa. Not because of something my kids did, but something I did for them. See, what I've already done is, I hope to be, something that will set them up for a very cushy retirement, or a very happy life. Let me tell you what that is. Now, I have three children, nine-year-old boy, another eight-year-old boy, and then a four-year-old daughter. And I don't want to happen to them what happened to me. See when I graduated high school, things financially were not really good for our family. And I was the only child, so going to college was kind of a no-brainer, you were just going to go. And my kids, they're going to go. They don't have choice, they're going. With all the high competition for the job market and everything, you just need to go and you need to learn and get out there and be on your own. And so, when it was time for me to go to college, I applied for several schools. I got into some private schools, but they did not offer me the financial aid package that I needed to go there because basically I needed them to pay for everything. The one school that did though was Florida State. And Florida State gave me a financial aid package where, I believe at the time I do not remember exactly, but I believe it was costing somewhere around $8,000 a year to go there, that included room and board, for two semesters. And they were giving me $9,000 as part of the package. Now, part of that, a couple thousand, that was loan under my name, but still they were actually giving me more money than I needed to go there. So I was going to have everything paid for, and I was going to have a little bit of cash in my hand, in the bank, so that I could spend it on candy or trips or to the beach or whatever. So, that was my only option. Now I'm going to Florida State. Wasn't my first choice and I did not enjoy it there. Nothing against the school, it just, for me emotionally, mentally, I was just not in the right frame of mind to enjoy it and take advantage of it, which I do regret to this day. But, I wasn't there very long because, at the end of the first year I had to drop out and come back home. My dad had just started a new business that he had no knowledge of how to run because it was all computerized, and so he'd basically told me I needed to stay home and work with him in the business, which is what I did. Okay. No worries. I'm not bitter about it, that much. But the point was that we did not have the money for me to afford the schools that I wanted to really go to. And if I had gone to one of the schools that I actually got into, things would have been way different in my life. Now, I'm not complaining because I love my life, so everything I guess happened for the best. But for my children, I would like them to be able to go to the best school that they get into, whichever school they want to go to. Whether it be around the block or across the country. I don't want finances or money or lack of money to be the reason why they don't go to the best school and get the best education that is possible. And so, I don't know what school they're going to go to, but my oldest he asked me one day, he goes, "Hey dad, what's the best school in the country? What's the best college in the country?" I'm like, "Well, probably Harvard." He goes, "Okay, then I want to go to Harvard." And that was it. Since then, anybody asks him, "Hey, where are you going to go to college?" He goes, "Harvard." He's like, it's no big deal. He doesn't know how competitive it is. "Hey, I'm going to Harvard." I love that confidence in him. I told him, "It's going to be hard." He goes, "Yeah, no problem." That's a nine-year-old. Awesome. I love it. So as dad, as the finance guy in the family, my wife doesn't really worry about the finances, I do, so I need to figure out how we're going to pay for Harvard. Which when he gets there, it's probably going to be, I don't know, $300,000 a year? And plus now, I have three of them. So, you know it's going to be close to a million dollars that I'm going to be paying for college. So how am I going to do that? Geez, that's a lot of money.  I started looking into college savings plans. What are the different options out there? You got the 529, you got the Coverdell, you got some other stuff. Doing my research, and I came to the conclusion that, I think that the best thing that I could do for them is to open up Roth IRAs. Now that might be sounding a little weird, right? A Roth IRA for a kid? How do you do that? They have to have income? Right. They have to. They do have to have income. They have to have a job. So that was an obstacle that we had to overcome. Okay, what job can we give them? Well, lucky for me, my wife has another business, which is a daycare. And on the daycare, we have to have pictures of happy children on the website, in the marketing materials, the brochures, the pamphlets, that things we hand out. And so, why not instead of paying other kids for their pictures or stock pictures or whatever, why not we pay our own children? Take their pictures professionally, and have that in our marketing materials? So that is what we did. So, we had professional pictures taken. We do it every year, and we have those pictures as part of our marketing plan. And so the kids get paid for this. Now, currently the tax law says that if your child is working for you or if your child was working anywhere really, they can get paid up to $12,000 a year without having to pay any income tax. Now, going to give you a disclaimer here, check with your accountant on this. Talk to your accountant, and talk to your tax professional, whatever, make sure this is correct. This is what I been told. And so you can do $12,000 a year without paying any income taxes. And, if you're earning money, you can put $6,000 a year into an IRA, whether it's a Roth or a regular IRA. Now for them, obviously I chose the Roth IRA because they're not paying any taxes on the income anyway. And so the money is paid to them tax-free. It goes into the Roth IRA, and there's no tax there. And then later on, when it actually comes out, after they retire or whatever age, 65, they take the money out of, it should come out of their tax-free as well. So you kind of get like a triple whammy here. So I really love this idea. I think it's one of my better ideas I've ever had. And so one of the ways that you can actually pay for college is that you can withdraw the money that you put in the IRA for college. In fact, if you look at the rules of how the Roth IRA works, any money that you put in, any deposit that you put in, you can withdraw that money at any time. So let's say you put $5,000 into it. You can take that $5,000 back. The gains, if that $5,000 goes to $6,000, you cannot take that extra $1,000 out. If you do, you have to be taxes and you have to pay fees. So that you don't want to, because you don't want to pay the fees and taxes until you can at whatever the age is, I believe it's 65, when you could start taking money out of your Roth IRA. Or 59 and a half or whatever the number is. You find a way to get your child paid for work that they're actually doing. And in my case, they're models. If you have your own business, they could work in your business doing accounting, bookkeeping, maintenance, anything. And that money that they get paid, you don't have to pay income tax on it, and it goes straight into the Roth IRA. And then if you need to, and I'm hoping that I will not need to do this, because I'm also investing in 529s for the children, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to use the 529s and whatever money I have at that time to pay for it so we don't have to touch the IRA. But I'm investing in the IRA first. And then once I do that for all three of them, then I put money in 529s every year for two of the children. So, I put about $5,000 each, for each child. So currently each child has $20,000 in their IRA. I've been doing it for four years. The accounts haven't really gone up very much in the last four years. They're going up, they went down, maybe I'm picking the wrong stocks. I don't know. But for whatever reason, they're roughly based on where they started. And even this year, we had a 35% bear market. It's still about the same. Now, one thing I briefly mentioned earlier, you can take money out of an IRA that you deposited. So when it comes times to college, we're going to use the 529 funds first. Use up all that money, because that 529 can only be used for educational expenses. And that's why I only have two of them. So, the older kid, he's got his account. And the middle kid, the eight-year-old, he has his account. For the baby, I'm not putting in yet, just in case. I don't want to have too much money in the 529. Because if the three of them don't use it up, then we have to take it out and pay fees on that and all that stuff. So I don't want to bother with that. So I'm going to use the 529 money up first. Then my own money. And then if that's not there for whatever reason, then we'll tap into the IRAs and take money out of there. My hope is, we never have to, and this money just sits there and it grows and grows and grows until age 65. Over the weekend, I got to thinking, I said, "You know, $20,000, that's a lot of money. I wonder how much it can going to be?" So I went to one of my favorite sites, investor.gov, and they have this wonderful, easy-to-use compound interest calculator, investment calculator, whatever you want to call it. And so, I wanted to see what their results would be. And I plugged up the numbers and I said, "All right. For my oldest, he's nine years old, he's got 50, what, 56 years left, until he's 65." So I typed it in, beginning balance $20,000. Monthly contribution, zero. If I don't put in another penny into his account, he's got $20,000 now. If he gets nothing, and since it's invested in the stock market, I think it's going to get about 8% average return for the year. If we don't invest any more money, if he only gets 8%, not more or less, but averages 8%, when he turns 65, he is going to have an account worth about $1.5 million. Without doing anything. The money's in there. It's been put away. It's just going to compound the way the stock market has been compounding for the last couple hundred years, and he should be worth $1.5 million at age 65. And that blew me away. I was like, "Holy cow. That's awesome. My kid's a millionaire. He's nine years old. He's a millionaire. That's going to be, oh, I'm so happy." I'm so proud of for myself that I've been able to do this. So [inaudible] what about the four-year-old? She's going to have even more time to compound. So I added her numbers, and she's going to have over $2.1 million when she turns 65. $2.1 million. Oh my God, that's incredible. Never in my wildest dreams, did I think I would be able to do this for my kids. And by that time, by the time they're 65, is another 60 years from now for her. 61 years from now, life expectancy is not going to be around 80-85 where it is now. It's probably going to be like 120-130 years. That's life expectancy at that time. So, she's just going to be getting to her mid-life crisis. She's got half her life ahead of her, and she's got over $2.1 million in the bank just sitting there that she can use. I hope these three kids, I hope they don't blow it on some fancy, flying sports car or something. Their fancy, flying Lamborghinis or whatever they're going to have at that time. That'd be insane if you waste it. But I'm so excited. I'm so happy. And if I keep adding to the account as I plan to, the results are going to be much, much better. Who knows? For another few years, still add money in. Maybe it's $40,000 that I put in there. They could have close to 5, 8, $10 million. Jeez. And if I trade options for them, which I'm not doing now. Right now, I'm just putting it in certain stocks and ETFs. But if I trade options with them, the results are going to be even much better. Much, much better. But my plan is to use the accounts to teach them how to choose their own stocks and how to trade options on their own. So they're going to have their own net worth. They're going to not ever have that feeling of being poor. They're going to have money. Now, I'm not sure of ... I'm going to have to structure it in a way that they don't get access to it right away. I'm going to have to talk to my attorney about that. Because I don't want them to become 18 years old and be like, "Oh, I got all this money in my IRA. I could just take it out and go blow it." Go get married to some girl and live it up in Vegas or something. I don't know. Hopefully that never happens, but we'll have to figure out a way that they don't access it like that. But the plan is to teach them how to use this money so that they can trade for themselves, and then that way they never have to work for money. They can go to college, whichever college they want to go to. They can study whatever field that they want to go to. And they can get whatever job that makes them happy and not have to worry about having to pick a job for the money. Because there's too many kids out there right now, they don't know what to do. The markets and everything are, in the future, in AI and computers and everything. Robotics is just making everybody go nuts. Nobody knows what's going on. Nobody knows what the future is going to be. And so people are scared and they're full of anxiety, especially college kids. And so I would like to give this skill to my children so that whatever future comes, they know they can go in and they have a skill where they can constantly generate income without having to work for it and without having to go to school for it. So that's the thing that I'm planning on teaching them. But for right now, I'm proud papa. I am happy. I'm excited that my kids are going to have this much money. Originally I was thinking that I was going to get life insurance in large amounts. If anything happens to me right now, I want my kids to have at least a million dollars. So I was thinking, "All right, I'm going to go get a $3 million life insurance added to whatever I have already." And be like, "Okay, it'll go to my wife. But then my wife will know that each kid gets a million bucks, because that's the gift that I want to give them. But then I realized, "Whoa, I've already given them the gift. I've already given them over a million dollars. Each of them." And so, that's something that I'm really excited about, really happy. If you have a young child, you can do the same thing. Maybe you can't do it in a Roth IRA. That's fine. Start with the 529 plan if you have to. Or fill up your own Roth IRA first, and then if you have to, you can give that Roth IRA as, when you pass away, that money can go to them. There are different ways to do it. Talk to your accountant about it, or talk to a tax professional about how to doing it. But time is of the essence. The sooner you start, the more the money compounds. The sooner you learn to trade, the more money you have to do this. And so, I just wanted to share that success story with you. One of the things that they wanted, I told them I was going to do this podcast about them, and they always get excited when I talk about them in the podcast. But I told him I was going to say this stuff, and they told me to make sure that I tell you guys how I picked a stock. So I invest in different ETFs and stocks for them. But now that they're a little bit older, the eight-year-old and the nine-year-old this year, they got to choose what stocks that they wanted. So the nine-year-old, he picked Facebook. And the eight-year-old, he picked Google, because he's really big into YouTube. He loves YouTube. The older one, he's more logical. And so they don't use Facebook yet, but he thinks that Facebook is growing. And so, hears a lot all over the news and everywhere. So he's like, "Facebook is good and I want to buy Facebook." And the nine-year-old, he actually looked at the stock charts. He's actually looking at stock charts. When I watch the financial news on TV sometimes at home, he'll be sitting there watching with me and he'll look at the tickers on the bottom and he'll be like, "Oh, this stock went up and this went down. This went up. This went down." He logged into my Thinkorswim and he looked at different stock charts. And he was the one that picked Facebook because of the chart. And for my four-year-old, I bought some Disney because she is, right now, she's an Elsa fanatic. She's a Frozen fanatic. All day long, every day, she just singing and singing and singing and is driving me nuts. But she is crazy about Frozen, and so Disney is a big thing. So I bought her some Disney, but I also have added some ETFs. Some index ETFs like SPY and IWM to balance it out and we'll see how it goes. But, this is what I'm doing. I just wanted to share it with you and say, "Hey, if this is something you can do, do it." Talk to your accountant. Talk to your tax person. If you have a financial planner, ask them if this makes sense. For most people that are planning for college, it does. You have to be able to have the money put aside in the Roth IRA. The kids have to earn it. But if you could figure out a way to earn it, maybe you know somebody that has a company. Maybe you own a company. Or maybe you even start a part-time company, just so you can do this. It doesn't take a lot of money to start a company. It's not very hard. So I think the rewards of having tax-free money put into a Roth IRA so it grows for 60 years or whatever tax-free, and then you take it out tax-free, you never have to pay taxes on that money or the growth of it, I think is definitely worth it. I think it's one of the biggest loopholes that, for some reason, it's not talked about. Some people know about it. I know definitely the rich people know about it. And so hopefully you can take advantage of it as well. All right, folks. So take care. Trade with the odds in your favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Passive traders, I hope you are well wherever you are. As I record this, corona is still with us. Not the beer, the disease, the virus. And the economy is opening up again almost everywhere. It's open in some form or fashion in the United States, and the stock market is jumping up and down both without any rhyme or reason in many cases. But the Fed is behind us, and with that, I believe with the Fed pumping as much money into the economy, the stocks are only going to rally, and so people are really trying to take advantage. I had a friend who is a friend of the family. He just graduated from college about a year ago. He was working full time and he got laid off. And so I had helped him and walked him through the whole unemployment process of how to apply for it and whatnot. He started getting his checks and his checks were in the vicinity of about $700 or $800 a week. This was more than he was making from his job because he was working on a commission basis as a salesperson. And so now he's got more money coming in than he's ever had before. And when I checked in with him, his comment was, "Yeah, I can't wait to put this money in my Robinhood account." That threw me for a loop. I said, "Wait a minute. You have no income. You have all these expenses. What do you mean you're going to take all your money from unemployment and put it in your Robinhood account? You're going to gamble it? I don't understand." I was like, "No, man. You just graduated from college. Your mom paid for everything. Your mom is working seven days a week. You need to go take this money and give it to her." And that kind of, he was like, "Oh, yeah, right. You're right. You're right." I don't know if he did or not, but that kind of told me what the thought process is of some of these youngsters. I was talking to another relative. He came over and he said, "Yeah, I'm in the stock market now." This one is a little bit older. He was about 26-years-old or so. And he's like, "Yeah, I'm trading. I'm in the stock market." I was like, "Oh, really." "Yeah. I bought some airlines and I bought some cruise lines." And yeah, that's wonderful. But you got to know when you're going to get out. You just can't buy it and hold it forever. These things are probably going to go back down. Anyway, I'm bringing all this up because these youngsters don't really understand how the markets work. And for some reason, with all the advent of these cheap, free brokers, like Robinhood and Webull, and they're really appealing to the younger kids, and they have more of a gambling mentality. My attention was drawn to an article where on June 13th, a fellow named Bill Brewster who works at Sylmar Capital, basically he's in the financial space, he's an analyst, he posted that his cousin had just committed suicide. And the reason for him committing suicide was that he started trading in his Robinhood account. Somehow his account showed him that he was owing about $700,000 in losses because he was trading on margin. So Bill is asking, how does a 20 year old with no income get access to that kind of leverage? And it's incredible. It's true. So if you are a parent and if your child is of this age, in their early twenties, maybe you should talk to them about it because a lot of kids are looking at this as a quick way to get rich. It's all over the internet. It's all over the Facebook groups, Instagram, all these places. And this seems to be like the new gold rush. Everything is going up. The cruise lines are going up 8%, 10% a day. You got to get in, you got to get in and you got to get in with options. You got to be buying options on this thing and use margin to do so, so it boosts your return even higher. These people don't know any clue of what they're talking about, what they're doing, and it's just ending really badly for some already. And it's going to end bad for many more in the future. So if you're a youngster in your twenties, then you need to realize that this is not the way to do it. If you want to do it, go ahead. If you want to gamble, go ahead with money that you have, do not use margin. And even if you're an adult, yeah, if you're twenties, you're already an adult, but if you're in your forties or fifties or sixties, and you're trying to gamble on these stocks, please don't do it with margin. Do it only with money that you can afford to lose because every time there is a financial disaster, there are always people who commit their lives and they commit suicide and it's a horrible story. It's not worth it. It's not worth committing suicide. I had a friend who committed suicide. He was my brother-in-law. He shot my sister, killed himself, shot the kids. And to this day, we don't know why. We could have helped if he had reached out and asked for help. We think it was financial related issues. They had other emotional issues and all that stuff too, but I think the thing that ticked him off and the thing that set everything in motion was his finances, and he could have reached out. And even in that case, it was leveraged. They had borrowed too much money. And so borrowing money never leads to good things unless you know what you're doing. And most cases, if you're looking to borrow a lot of money, then you don't know what you're doing, especially within the stock market. So margin is a good thing as option traders, as option sellers, we need a margin account so that we can sell our spreads, but you don't want to use that margin to be borrowing stocks and borrowing against options. Things are going ups and down right now. The stock market is very volatile. It's very crazy. It can go up, it can go down any day now. There's nobody that knows how to predict a future in the stock market. Nobody can and the people who say they can are lying. And that's it, that's plain and simple. So let this podcast issue episode, and let this young child who unfortunately lost his life to this, be a warning that we don't need to be trading with margin, number one. We don't need to be taking wild bets, number two. And we don't need to be taking our own lives. Our life is worth a lot more than even 700,000 that child apparently had run up in debt to Robinhood. Now, Robinhood did not, they were asked about it. They know about the situation, but they did not share any details of the trading account or how he got so much debt or margin. But they were where of the situation. They did release a statement that they were saddened to hear the news, and they reached out to the family to share their condolences. Let this be a lesson that you need to act prudently when it comes to your finances and suicide is never the answer. So if you're hearing this and you are in some kind of situation, you need help, reach out to somebody who can help you. If you have nobody reach out to me, I'll do my best, whatever I can do. But there is always another option. It's never too late. Everything, there's a book by this woman, Marie Forleo. It's an excellent book. Everything is Figureoutable, that's the name of the book. It's actually a great book. Pick that up if you have to, you get some help, talk to somebody. And worst comes to worse, you owe them money, big deal. There are other things, there are worse things in his life. So please, please don't take your life, get some help. All right? And I don't even know if I should say it on this episode, but trade with the odds in your favor. Be careful out there. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- A PASSIVE TRADER IS A NEW BREED OF INVESTOR. SMARTER, CONFIDENT, RELAXED, AND FREE. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE WINNERS. THEY KEEP THE ODDS ON THEIR SIDE, TAKE CALCULATED RISKS, AND MAKE CONSISTENT PROFITS OVER AND OVER. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE FLEXIBLE.  THEY KNOW HOW TO ADJUST WHEN THE MARKET DOES AND STILL BE PROFITABLE. THEY PLAY THEIR OWN GAME AND USE WALL STREET’S SECRETS TO THEIR BENEFIT. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE INDEPENDENT AND CAN THINK FOR THEMSELVES. THEY KNOW THAT NO ONE CARES ABOUT THEIR MONEY MORE THAN THEY DO, SO THEY MANAGE IT THEMSELVES, AND BETTER THAN THE EXPERTS. THEY DO NOT RELY ON FINANCIAL PLANNERS, MUTUAL FUNDS, OR ROBOTS TO CHARGE INSANE AMOUNTS OF FESS WHILE PROVIDING BELOW AVERAGE YIELDS. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE PATIENT. THEY SIT BACK AND LET THE GAINS COME TO THEM BY KEEPING THINGS SIMPLE. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE DETERMINED. THEY KNOW THEIR “WHY” AND IT PUSHES THEM TO STAY FOCUSED AND NEVER GIVE UP. IF YOU ASKED A MONEY MANAGER THEY’D TELL YOU THAT PASSIVE TRADING IS IMPOSSIBLE – THE LITTLE GUY IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BEAT WALL STREET. YET IT IS HAPPENING EVERY DAY. PASSIVE TRADERS KNOW THAT LIFE IS A GIFT AND SHOULD BE LIVED TO THE FULLEST. MONEY IS NOT THE END GOAL. SO PASSIVE TRADERS MAKE THEIR MONEY WORK FOR THEM, GENERATING AN INCOME 24 HOURS A DAY, 365 DAYS A YEAR, SO THAT THEY CAN SPEND THEIR TIME DOING WHATEVER MAKES THEM HAPPY. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE IN CONTROL OF THEIR DESTINY, THEIR FINANCES, THEIR EMOTIONS, AND IN TURN, THEIR LIVES. PASSIVE TRADERS… DEFINE THEIR OWN DESTINY MARCH TO THEIR OWN BEAT MAKE THE WORLD BETTER LIVE THEIR IDEAL LIFE PASSIVE TRADERS ARE MOTIVATED KNOWING THAT THE ODDS ARE IN THEIR FAVOR.   I AM A PASSIVE TRADER!   Link to Podcast Episode 50: https://optiongenius.com/blog/what-is-passive-trading/   Passive Trading: How To Generate Consistent Monthly Income From The Stock Market In Just Minutes A Day -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Today, I wanted to talk about creating a quarantine playbook. Obviously this corona thing has changed things. Everywhere you look, people have been affected, and we've been doing podcast episodes about this for a few weeks. It's on top of everybody's mind. It's what everybody's thinking about. It's affected, everybody. And luckily now we've gotten to the point where everything is ... A lot of things are reopening. Some are already open, some are getting ready to open or they're opening slowly. I'm in Texas, and they opened a couple of weeks ago. I think gyms are open this week. Restaurants are at 50% capacity. Doctors are open. They're taking patients and everything. So, things are trying to get back to normal, but there are still a lot of people who think that things will never get back to normal. We really don't know what's going to happen. Nobody knows. Everybody's trying to predict. Hopefully there's a vaccine or not or what, but it has really thrown everybody for a loop. We had a mandated recession, right? Bear market, 35% drop because of this virus. You already know this. You're probably watching the news. You've been listening to me, trading this market. And it's been difficult because it's something that has never been done before. We've never seen it before. Right? But the numbers are going down right now. Depending on what state you are, fatalities are going down. I know in Texas, we're in Texas, the numbers are actually going up. Numbers of how many people sick with the virus are actually going up because now they're testing more people, but they're still opening it up. Hopefully the deaths will continue to go down. People who are sick or the virus will continue to go down. But the experts say that when everything opens up again completely, the virus can come back. If it doesn't come back now, in a month from now or two months from now, it can come back when flu season starts, at the end of the year. September, October, whenever it starts getting a little cooler, flu season is going to come, and they're saying that corona is going to come with it. So are we going to have to start shutting down in a couple of weeks if cases go back up? That's what some of the governors have said. Even in Texas, pure Republican, they are saying that if the numbers get out of hand, they're going to start shutting down again. If it comes back with a vengeance in September, maybe they have to shut down again over then. So we need to be prepared. Even if this virus is eradicated, maybe a vaccine comes out tomorrow and we don't have to worry about corona ever. Well, that's not true, because it's going to take a while to get everybody vaccinated. And there's still going to be those people who do not want to be vaccinated and refuse to be vaccinated. So we'll still see about that. But this is one virus which can easily mutate. There can be other viruses, other pandemics, and as the world is getting closer and travel is getting faster, it's just going to increase. So if there's a virus, if there's an illness, there's still Ebola out there, SARS is still out there, Zika is still out there, H1N1 is still out there. All these diseases are still out there. They have no cures for them. They can easily transfer to us in the United States, or maybe there's a virus that starts here and goes over there, what goes across the pond? Who knows? As investors, as traders, we need to be prepared. Even as individuals, we need to be prepared if a quarantine happens again. So I want to do a little mind experiment with you. Knowing what you know now, if you could go back in time or if you could send a letter to yourself or a video or whatever to yourself, 30 days before the quarantine hit, what would you tell yourself? Make a playbook. Now, this podcast is about finances and investments. So I'm going to stay and say, Hey, yeah, let's make an investment playbook, a trading playbook for quarantine. Now you could obviously add other things to it. I mean, what would you have done differently? Stocked up more on toilet paper? I don't know. A lot of people would have in advance. Buy more beef jerky, maybe? I don't know, but when it comes to finances, we had a steep bear market. Market has dropped like 30% in two weeks. And then we had a rally off the bottom. And now we're kind of in no man's land. We're at 50% retracement from the bottom and the top, and now nobody knows what's going to happen in the market. But there are certain stocks that are doing really well. Certain stocks are hitting all time highs. Certain stocks are at all time lows, and they're probably going out of business. They're going bankrupt. So when the quarantine hits again, whether it's corona, COVID-19, or something else, if you take some time and create a playbook of what to do, you will be prepared for when this happens again. It might be in two or three weeks, it might be close to the end of the year, it might be next year, it might be another virus. I don't know. The only way we learn is by looking at history and then learning from it. That's how we learn from our mistakes. And this is not necessarily a mistake, but we're learning from history. First time, we didn't know what to do. If it happens again and we don't know how to take advantage of it, well, that's on us. That's our fault. You know, they say, "You fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me," because I should have known it was coming. And we know that most likely it is coming. So, prepare yourself. If you need more cash, if you need to take out a loan, you have that money ready, whatever you need to do, have a playbook. What are some of the things that could be on your playbook? Well, get ready to short, because the market is going to drop. But not everything's going to drop. What are you going to invest in? When are you going to invest? If you have no money sitting on the sideline, then you won't be able to take advantage. If you're a hundred percent invested, then when it drops, you're going to have a big loss, and then when it recovers, you won't have enough money to put back in. So that's why, when we're doing passive trading, we're selling options, but we're keeping money on the side. So if there is a drop in the market and our favorite stocks lose, then we can go ahead and start buying them. What strategies are you going to be using? In a bear market something like an [iron condor 00:06:34] was not going to work. The market volatility shoots up sky high, butterflies, calendars, all these non-directional trades will not work because there's just too much volatility. So this is something you need to think about in advance, something you need to be aware of. Now we've already been through it to some degree. We can say it's not over yet, but we've been through the worst in this cycle. If there's another cycle, you should know what to do and be prepared. That's what I want you to do. That's what I want to focus on in this episode. That's what I'm talking about is having you sit down and take a look at what really happened. What hurt you and how can you protect yourself? There are some of you who are looking and thinking about it, and they're like, "Man, I lost my job." There are a lot of people, 40 million people, who lost their job. Hopefully a bunch of them will get their jobs back, but a lot of them will not get their jobs back. Well, if we have another virus in six months, another quarantine, you're going to lose your job again if you don't do anything about it. So if you're not investing, if you're not passive trading, if you're not doing anything with options, then you need to learn now so that you can do it when you're stuck at home. Because right now, yes, the government is printing as much money as they can. Yes, they're sending everybody checks. They might send everybody more checks, but they can't keep doing that forever. Eventually they're going to stop and you need to take care of yourself. What if you had a nice cushy job, but now you have to work from home, and working from home also means that your kids are home, and so you're not getting anything done? Or maybe you're a freelancer and you get paid by the hour, but you can't get stuff done because you got to take care of your kid. Well, maybe you need another source of income. So when I'm talking to people, traders, I'm hearing two different stories. The one story that I'm hearing is that, "Man, I don't know what's going on. Everything is so crazy. I don't know what to do. I don't want to trade right now because it's so up in the air. I don't know if I should buy stocks. They might go back down. I don't know if I should sell everything, because it might keep going up. I don't know what to do." On the other side, I'm hearing that "Man, I need to take full responsibility and I need to take control. I gave away my power. I need to grab my power back. I need to be in control of my life. And I'm going to do that by trading. I'm going to learn how to trade and I'm going to learn how to take control of my finances. I'm going to get my house in order, because I was on risky sand, I was on quicksand. And I didn't know it, but now because of the virus, I'm sinking, and I need to fix it." Those people are taking action, and they are joining courses, and they are asking questions, and they are listening to podcasts, and they are learning, and they're practicing, and they're doing it so that when things do normalize, they can jump in full steam and say, "Yep, here we go. I'm going to practice what I learned and I'm going to get better, so that the next time this happens, it doesn't blindside me." That's the last thing I want, for you to be blindsided, because we know that this thing is not gone. It might be coming back. We don't know when, but it's here. And there are some experts who were saying it's going to be here for years. Some people are saying it's going to be her at least till the end of this year. Some people are seeing is going to be here till at least the end of 2021. Nobody knows for sure. But the only thing everybody agrees on is it's not gone, because there are still new cases every day. And this is just one of the viruses that are out there. In the beginning of the pandemic, if you went to the store, and I saw videos of people going to the store and looking at cans of Lysol and disinfectant, and on the back of those cans, it says that it helps with coronavirus. It actually says that on the can, if you look on a disinfecting can, it says on the back that it helps with coronavirus. And people are like, "Ah, see, this is all fake, because these cans were made before the virus hit. These cans were on the shelves. They were selling these cans before the virus hit. It's all fake. It's all a big ploy to sell more disinfecting and all this stuff." The truth is that this virus that we're dealing with right now is just one virus in the whole coronavirus family. It's not called coronavirus. This one is called COVID-19, but there are many other viruses in the world that all fall under the category of being a coronavirus. So calling this as a coronavirus is incorrectly labeling it. That's not the name of it, coronavirus. There are many of the viruses that fall under that category. And so that's why these Lysol cans had it on there that, hey, this works for coronavirus, because there's not just one. So now there's not just one, we're just dealing with one is causing so many problems. What if another one hits, or two hit at the same time? This is a wake up call. Not only that, but they say that this virus is hitting more and it's hurting more people because of the way the environment is. I don't know how much I should go into that one, but it is true that these natural disasters that we're having more and more common are now hurting people who are actually sick. So, that's a whole different story. But what I want to talk about is the playbook. Go back in time. Take a look at what happened. What are the things that you would have done to protect yourself? What are the things you would have done to capitalize on this? Because there are people, I was talking to somebody just the other day, he said it's a friend of his, and he has a factory in China where they make those little wristbands. You've probably seen them. They're rubber. They give them out as freebies, but they come in different colors and they're on your wrist. The Livestrong used to have them in yellow. They all come in different colors for branding and whatnot. So this fellow has a factory in China that makes these things. Well, when this whole thing hit, they switched the factory from making these wristbands into making masks and some other personal protection equipment. And supposedly what this guy told me was that their factory made $15 million by switching over and selling this stuff. So there are people out there that did take advantage. There are people that got rich, very, very rich. There are still people that are taking advantage. And if you did not take advantage, then you need to be prepared for the next time. I've been talking about in our Facebook group about some of the stuff that I was doing, and I made a list of some of the companies that I wanted to buy as they were dropping. So when the bear market was going on, I started making a list and this was probably, I already have a list of companies that I want to own, but because of the difference in what happened here, not all companies fell or dropped at the same rate. Restaurants really got hit. You know this. Airlines got hit. Cruise lines got hit. A lot of other companies got hit. And I had to make a completely new list of stocks that I wanted to buy, not for the long term, but just for a short bounce, because I thought the bear market was overdone. So when they stopped dropping, that's when I started buying. Now, I found some good companies that I think I am going to keep for a long time, but just about every company that I bought, every stock that I bought, is up. They're up at least 20 to 30%, all of them. Some of them have more than doubled in less than a month. So, I took a gamble. A lot of these companies, they could have gone bankrupt, which is true, but I put a little bit of money in each one, diversified my bets, and now I'm back to being more positive. So even though the stock market has not recovered, my accounts are back to where they were before the bear market. So yes, there is always a way to take advantage. Because I remember in the financial crisis, I freaked out and I sold. I sold a lot of stocks, as they were going down, they were going up. I was trying to trade it back and forth. And I lost my shirt. I lost a lot of money. This time, hindsight, experience, call it whatever you want, I didn't sell anything. Instead, I had money sitting on the sideline and I started buying. And I started buying stuff that I wouldn't buy normally. I bought some insurance companies. I bought Shopify. That one was not a stock that I even had on my radar, but it showed up on when I was looking around. And now that stock is doing super great. So, have a playbook of what to do if this happens again. This is not the only playbook that you might want to put together. You can make a playbook for anything in the economy, because in the economy, we have cycles and things happen over and over again. They might not happen to ever quarter or every year, but every four or five years, it can happen again. So if you can make your playbooks in advance, maybe you can have a playbook when inflation hits, you can have a playbook for when oil is super high and super expensive, or when it's super low and super cheap, or when interest rates are high or when interest rates are low, when there's a presidential election. You can have playbooks for all these different avenues so that when this event occurs, you pull out your playbook, you look at what happened in the past, you look at what worked and then you go to work. And he's actually really that simple. You can actually do this because you've just been through it. So, that's it for this episode, guys. Remember, trade with the odds in your favor and be safe. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- I am willing to bet that you did not know that retirement as we know it today is a pretty new concept. And by pretty new I mean about 60 years old? And if you are like me, you probably never even thought about it. See in the past, most people lived on farms or in little villages and you worked the land or did your craft. Basically you kept working until you died. That started to change in Germany in 1883. That is when the Chancellor Otto von Bismark first came up with a plan to give a government supplied income to those who were disabled from work by age and invalidity. And after much political fighting they passed a law to create a retirement system for citizens over the age of 65. Life expectancy was way lower than 65 at the time. In the US it was not until 1935 that FDR created the Social Security Act that gave benefits to workers over the age of 65. Life expectancy was around 58 at the time. So again, very few were expected to collect from social security. But by 1960, life expectancy jumped up to almost 70 years. That is when the first lucky ones were able to actually live long enough to stop working and collect retirement benefits. That is when leisure became a pursuit. That’s when retirement communities became a thing and gold became available to the masses. So it has only been a few short decades that Americans have looked forward to a rewarding life of fun after a life spent working. Currently the SS administration estimates that there are about 47 million retired people in the country. But how are those people doing? Not too well. The #1 fear of those over 50 years of age is running out of money in retirement while at the same time, More than half of all American families have less than $4,000 set aside for retirement. Thanks to advances in science and healthcare, life expectancy continues to advance. I myself am planning to live to at least 100. But that is a problem that is getting worse. Most retirees expect Social security to be there. But the average retiree only get about $14,000 a year from SS. That’s living below the poverty line. The SS fund is in series trouble and unless the government fixes it soon, the administration might have to cut payments to beneficiaries. Those that expect to keep working past 65 and often unable to do so.   Why? 3 main reasons. Poor health. This is the primary reason for workers retiring early. No jobs. Age discrimination is a thing. And companies would prefer to hire younger, cheaper employees than older ones. Family issues. You might end up having to care for a loved one, like a spouse, child or grandchild.   But again it wasn’t always this way. Families used to take care of their own. But thanks to the industrial revolution that went away. To keep workers happy, companies started pension plans. The idea was that you work for one company, stay loyal, and they will take care of you in your old age. It worked great, until companies decided that they would rather not do that anymore. So new laws and regulations were passed. Retirement plans like IRA and 401ks were created. And the age of Wall Street was born. Now it’s not the family’s job to take care of the elderly. It’s not the company’s job and the government is not up to the challenge. So we are told to rely on Wall Street and our friendly financial planner. Except that he isn’t so friendly like we discussed in episode 71. So what do we do? Is there anyone we can trust? In a word, yes. You trust yourself. You take responsibility and you invest the time to educate yourself. You manage your own money and use Wall Street’s tools to do so. But don’t get suckered by their marketing and psychological tricks. I am so happy to be able to take the Passive Trading philosophy and methodology and put it in book form to take it to the masses. The Great American Retirement Experiment has failed us. Time to put the odds in our favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- A new rule by the SEC comes out next month. It’s called the Regulation Best Interest Rules and it is supposed to help reduce confusion about professionals who help manage peoples’ finances. The rule goes into effect in June. Currently anyone can call themselves an advisor. Under the new rule only fiduciaries can do so. A fiduciary is someone who is required by law to act in a client’s best interests. Currently most advisors work in their own best interest and stick their clients with products that are best for the advisor and the company he works for. Meaning the products with the highest fees and commissions. So if you are using a company to help you with your assets, whether it is a large bank or part of a stock broker, than you are NOT using a fiduciary. Companies like Ameriprise and Edward jones are not fiduciaries. Their agents are looking out for themselves first, second, and third. And you are probably getting screwed. In my upcoming book, I included a chapter about just how planners and advisors have been screwing over their clients, but I didn’t have room to go into all the details so I decided to include a free bonus with the book that goes much deeper and what I uncovered which doing research was shocking. As far as this new rule goes, the one thing it changes is who gets to call themselves an advisor. Big deal. The ones that are not fiduciaries will simple change what they call themselves. Many already get certified as financial planners. Or they call themselves financial consultants, or chartered wealth advisors, or retirement consultants, or wealth managers. It is just semantics. A play on words to trick the public and this rule will do nothing to help with the confusion. And if that wasn’t enough, there are many companies that are registered as fiduciaries and as brokers. And so all the people that work at the companies can call themselves advisors regardless of if they are looking out in the best interest of the client or not. According to the SEC, there are 359 of these dually registered brokerage firms which hold more than 90 million accounts. That is a lot of people getting screwed. So how do you protect yourself? Easy. Learn to manage your own investments. Use index funds and low cost providers like Vanguard and TRowe Price. Or just use index ETFs like SPY and IWM and QQQ. But more than that, learn to sell options on the positions you have and you will never need to be dependent on an advisor or wealth consultant ever again. Passive Trading is the path to freedom. As I have said on many occasions, no one care about your money more than you do. You work hard for it. Don’t just turn it over to someone who is only looking out for themselves. There is a reason most financial planners are broke…if what they preached worked wouldn’t they all be retired? You know the answer and Passive Trading is the path…are you ready to proceed? Check out the free training at passivetrading.com And always trade with the odds In your favor! https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2019/34-86031.pdf -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- My fellow passive traders, I hope you are doing well. This coronavirus really has everyone on edge, and it's been about a couple months since this thing really took hold in the U.S., and we've been sitting at home for a while now. The arguments, the protests and the discussions are getting very heated about whether we should stay at home or whether we should start opening up the economy again. Either way, it's not up to me, so let me just talk about the stock market, something that I know a little bit about. This market is not like your typical market, of course you know that. Volatility's through the roof, but we don't even know if we're in a recession, if this is going to lead to a depression, this has never happened before. We keep hearing that, over and over again, from the financial media, from the government, "Something like this has never happened before, never happened before." Yeah, but we still have to trade it. We still have to survive through it, right? We can't just sit on our hands the whole time. I have been getting back into the market for a little bit, I wasn't doing anything, I was just watching and waiting and learning and seeing what was happening. But eventually, you got to get back in. But right now, I'm seeing other folks try to get in the wrong way, and that's what I want to do this episode, specifically. I do not believe that this is a market to be trading options on indexes. Normally, that's what we prefer, we want to trade the S&P 500, we want to trade the Dow Jones and NASDAQ because those are safer. There's less risk when you have an average, when you have multiple companies, so in case some companies do well, other ones will do bad, so you don't get blindsided by one. But in this situation, the average is down. Most companies are not doing well, most companies, business is down, revenue is down, a lot of companies are on the verge of bankruptcy, but not all. There are companies that are doing well, there are companies that their stocks are making all-time highs, and there's a lot more that are making 52-week highs, meaning new yearly highs. So those are the ones that we should be looking at, those are the ones that should be trading, not companies ... I mean, you can buy stocks in a company that might be going out of business. I have done that in the past, and I might talk about that in a future episode, but I have taken, well, let me just say it here: I've taken about $20,000, and I picked 20 companies that really got hit by the virus really, really badly, and I put $1,000 in each one, buying their stock. Now, do I expect all of them to survive and make money. No, I think a bunch of them are going to go out of business. But some of them should recover, most of them. I hope they'll recover and do well. So I'm not looking on this particular instance to make 100%, I'm looking to make four, five, 6,000%, because these are very risks stocks. What I mean by that are companies that might go out of business tomorrow, but there are other companies that might not go out of business, but they're going to need a bailout. And who knows what that's going to look like? We're talking about the cruise lines, we're talking about the travel agents or the airlines themselves. These companies are hurting right now because they're all shut down, the hotels. But then there are still other companies that are doing really well, and those are the ones I'm trading options on. I'm not buying options on the loser companies, I'm buying their stocks, because I don't know how long it's going to take for them to turn around, if they turn around. I don't want to have an expiration date. I put $1,000 in each of these companies, I could easily have bought options for $1,000. But then those options would have, and they would have an expiration. I don't want that, because I don't know how long these companies are going to need to turn around. Some of them are financials, they're banks. It might be three, four, five years. That's why I would rather own the stocks. But I'm not trading options on these suckers, and I'm not trading options on the indexes right now, because the indexes are made up mostly of companies that are not doing well. So we have these crazy news days where the market's down 2%, then the next day the market's up 3%. Then it's down 5%. Then it's up 3%. You can easily get whip-sawed in this market, in such a high volatility market that our normal non-directional trades, like Iron Condors and Butterflies are not working either. So what do you do? Well, this is not the time for diversification, it's the time for focus. So what I would like you to do is to check your watch list, find the companies that are doing well, find the companies that are making new highs, and stick to those only. Really tone down your list and say, you know what, I can't do all of them, I can't trade all of these. Even if it was great in the past, I can't trade it right now. One of my favorites is Starbucks: I don't think they're going out of business, it's a good company, but they're not making new highs, they're not doing, who knows how long it's going to take for them to ramp back up and get back to normal? So I'm not doing spreads on Starbucks. If you don't have enough names on your watch list, companies that are doing well on your watch list, if you can't find any, the place to find them right now are on the 52-week high charts. Basically, these are a listing that comes out every day of the companies that are making new yearly highs, 52-week highs. So if you're on thinkorswim, you can go over to the marketplace, market watch tab, and then search for new yearly highs. If you're on Yahoo! Finance or Barchart, you can do the same thing. FINVIZ, they have it. All these free sites, they have the list every day, and you go through them. Most of them are going to be garbage, you're not going to be able to trade them. Some of them might not even have options. Some of them may be so small, you don't want to. But you might find some gems in there that you didn't know about. Like Papa John's pizza, Wingstop, Amazon, Shopify, Domino's Pizza, and even Johnson & Johnson. Clorox has been doing amazingly well. Johnson & Johnson is on my buy list, I've been wanting to buy the stock, it didn't go down, otherwise I couldn't buy it, but Johnson & Johnson is one that I've been selling puts on because I want to buy it. I'm hoping it goes down so I can buy some shares. But I've been selling naked puts on this stock and it's doing great. So I want you to stay with strength. Right now, the big takeaway from this episode is, let's stay away from the indexes for now, let's focus on the stocks that are doing well and trade those. This is not the time to be diversified, because all stocks are not doing well. Find the ones that are, and then when things return to normal, then yeah, you can go back to the indexes. For right now, let's stay away from the indexes and focus on the stocks that are doing well that are strong, that have good balance sheets, that have good cash, have decent revenues, and that are not going out of business, okay? One final thing is that, stay away from companies that have exorbitantly high premium, meaning that you're doing a covered call on a stock, and it's paying you 8% or 12% for a month. There's something wrong with that picture, there's something wrong with that stock. There's a good chance it's going to tank, there's a good chance it could go out of business. So if you're doing trades and the premium is way, way high ... now normally, if you're doing, let's say, covered calls, and you make 2%, now you can make more. You can make 3%, 4%. But if you're making 8%, 12%, three or four times what you should normally be making, you're taking too much risk. So don't get greedy, and stay away from those type of stocks. Stay away from that type of risk, because yeah, you might make it on some of them, but you get one loser and it's going to wipe out everything. And you're going to cry. So keep yourself from crying, keep yourself from taking that big loss, right? Stay away from the options that are overly priced in premium, because these companies could collapse tomorrow. One of the traders in our passive trading group mentioned that he's selling options on Macy's. That scared the heck out of me, because they're not doing well. They might go out of business tomorrow if they can't raise enough money, if they can't borrow enough money to survive. And that would be sad, it's a great company, it's been around for a while, I love shopping there. But if they go out of business, he's going to cry. And luckily, I was able to tell him, like, "Hey, man, you need to get out of this one." But there are others out there, too, that people are trading, like Bed Bath & Beyond. Recently, there were so many people, with oil dropping, who were trading the USO. And they learned the hard way that the USO is not the same thing as oil, it's just a different, the USO is not something you want to own as an individual investor over the long term, anyway. But selling options on it, people got crushed. So things that are going to zero, stay away from, things that are giving you too much premium, stay away from. Indexes, stay away from right now, focus on strength, focus on what's working, focus on what's staying in business. All right, folks? Take care, talk to you next time. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- This is going to sound a little harsh, but you cannot afford to be poor. Makes a lot of sense, no, I don't know. You cannot afford to be poor. Maybe it's a little bit controversial and I don't mean to offend you but I want to wake you up. This is what this episode is about. Wake up. If you are not wealthy, if you are not rich, it is time to get your butt in gear and by rich I don't mean you have a huge house and you drive a Ferrari. I don't care what you drive, I don't care where you live but I'm talking about being able to survive financially, especially if your income or your main source of income or your job is taken away for a couple of months at a time. Now as I record this, we are still in the midst of this corona pandemic. Over 45,000 Americans have died, they've lost their lives and over 30 million people are unemployed. They think it might get up to 50 million or 60 million by the time this thing is all said and done. Craziest numbers in history, ever. People have been forced to stay home for a couple months now and things are getting bad economically, financially and it's starting at the bottom and it's trickling up, right? It's starting with the guy who was living paycheck to paycheck but now he doesn't have a paycheck. It's starting with the person who is working at a Dollar General for minimum wage and is now classified as an essential worker so the store can stay open but then gets sick and can't work anymore then goes home. It's for the person whose daycare has closed because of the pandemic. And so, she cannot go to work anymore because she has to stay home and take care of her kids or school is canceled, school is canceled everywhere. So what are these parents doing? They can't work, right? Whether you're a minimum wage worker or whether you're a highly paid professional, everybody's in the same boat. People can't pay rent and the government says that they can't be evicted, right? And the courts are closed, so you couldn't even try to evict them if you wanted to but that's causing people to miss on their mortgage payments. Now mortgages are not being paid, so foreclosures are definitely going to go up. These big banks are not collecting their mortgages and they're stuck, so they're going to start defaulting on their loans. That means insurance companies are going to have issues because insurance companies are the ones that buy the loans from the mortgage companies. The government is going to have to bail those people out and it's just moving up and up and up the chain. Savings are being depleted. People are sitting at home if they have any savings, it's going down, most people don't even have it. Less than half the people in this country have less than $1,000 in their bank account. It's ridiculous. It's crazy, it's scary. I mean, heaven forbid you get sick. Heaven forbid you have to go to the doctor or the emergency room right now for the virus or anything else. Meanwhile, the government is printing more money than ever before. They had people come on the TV and be like, "Oh, don't worry, we're just going to print money. That's our mandate. We're just going to print and print and print and print. We're not going to let anybody fail." I was like, "Holy cow, how can they have that type of mentality? How can they say that? That they're just going to keep printing and printing and printing more money. More than ever before in history." But in the meantime, the Small Business Loan Program that they were talking about in Congress, oh, yeah, we're going to save all the small businesses and keep people from getting laid off. No, you didn't do anything. That money ran out in two weeks. People are still getting laid off left and right, everywhere I look. The impact is being felt everywhere. I mean my personal trainer, last time I saw him, he had tears in his eyes the last time I talked to him because the gym was closed where he works, people are canceling. He has no income, people are afraid to have him come to their house because he doesn't have any of the equipment anyway. He doesn't know what he's going to do. Contrast that to the wealthy, to the rich. They are enjoying this quarantine. They're spending time at home with their families. Sure, they're going to suffer as well financially. Well, obviously, right? Stock market is down, oil is down, business is down, revenues are down everywhere but the rich have a strong enough foundation that they know they will survive this and the rich are not going around thinking, "Oh my God, what am I going to do? Oh my God, what am I going to do?" The rich are thinking, "Hm, how can I take advantage of this situation? What can I do right now to make more money when this is done? What stocks should I invest in right now that's going to turn around? What can I do to make myself stronger in the future? There are a lot of businesses going out of business, maybe I could buy one of them. Maybe I can loan them money. The government's not loaning any money, maybe I can loan them money," right? If this pandemic is freaking you out and you feel that you have to get back to work then I need you to make a change in your life. Please stop continuing on the road that you were on before all this happened. Fix it. Have savings, have investments, have multiple fingers so that you are not dependent on just one source of income. Let this be a wake up call for you, okay? Now I hope this virus goes away soon and things get back to normal but as soon as it does, don't go back to the same thing, don't go back to the same grind. Use this time to do something else, to make yourself more educated or stronger or better skilled. Find another way to do what you need to do and no matter when you are listening to this, okay? It doesn't matter if the virus is done and you're listening to this like two, three years in the future, it doesn't matter. If you were to be stuck at home or without your main income for two months, what would happen to you? Best question, could you survive with no income for two months? If no, then you're poor. Harsh but true. Living paycheck to paycheck is poor in my book, no matter how large the paycheck, right? If you're making $10,000 a month and you're spending $10,000 a month, you're still poor, so please make a change. And even before the virus, okay, this is super, super important because almost every week I get at least one email from somebody who was working a very good corporate job, making a lot of money, getting on in years and then laid off and now they're stuck and now they're trying to find a way after they get stuck. After you lose your income is not the time to find a new source of income. You need to line them up before that happens, before the ball drops, before the door slams in your face, okay? Yes, I know. When God closes the door, he opens a window. I get that but you got to know where the window is before the door slams in your face, okay? It's not good enough to let the door slam and then go searching in the dark looking for the window. You got to know where the window is first, so that when it opens you can jump through it. If you need ideas, listen to the other episodes of this podcast or email us and we'll do our best to guide you but please make a change. Let this be a wake up call. Let this be a sign that, hey, you know what? If things are financially tough for you right now, then you need to make a change. You need to do something different and you have the ability to do so. The knowledge is there, the ability is within you. It's up to you to take this first step. Now, luckily I've been working on my Passive Trading book and hoping we'll release it very soon or maybe by the time you hear this it'll already be out. If you don't have or know the first step, that's the first step, read that book. Passive Trading, that's what it's going to be called. If you don't know about it, email us and we'll get you a link to it, okay? But Passive Trading, that's where it starts, that's where it has changed for me. That's why I am not freaked out by this mess. Yes, I know business is down for me as well but I have other sources of income and so, even though all of them are down, we're still fine. We're still surviving. I didn't worry about not getting a $1,200 stimulus check. I didn't even qualify. It's okay, no worries. I didn't go nuts that I didn't get this PPL loan for small businesses. We cut back on our expenses but we're fine. We're still going to survive and when this is done we're going to take off again. So if you plan ahead of time before the problem occurs, you can get through it smoothly. But again, if you're facing financial difficulties right now or if you could not survive, if you lose your income for a couple of months, you need to do something different, you need to make a change. And I hope this serves as a wake up call. I hope that you didn't get sick, I hope that nobody in your family suffered but I hope that this virus or pandemic or whatever is done soon but that it served its purpose in showing you how on thin ice you are. And it showed me that although I'm not on thin ice, I could be a little stronger too. I could have things better off as well and so, I'm redoubling my efforts as well. So don't think that this is a wake up call just for the people who are working a minimum wage job, this is for everybody, this wake up call. So please wake up because the opportunities out there, it's not as hard as you think, all right? If you don't know anything about passive trading or options trading, get educated, start doing it and you'll see what I'm talking about, all right? Hope you're all well, trade with the odds in your favor. Talk to you soon. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- This is a short little episode that can make you a ton of money if you do the work. What I'm talking about I call trading triggers. A trigger is, something happens which results in something else. Basically cause and effect. Right? For example, if I lay down in my bed, I will fall asleep. Cause and effect. If I eat McDonald's every day, I will get fat. Right? Cause and effect. It's pretty normal. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen every time, but it happens most of the time. There are lots of things in economics that are cause and effect related, such as supply and demand. Right? If there's too much supply, prices will go down. Too much demand, prices will go up. That's cause and effect. Trading triggers are events that happen in real life that we can capitalize from, because these events happen over and over again, and the reaction of the markets is usually the same. For example, I'll give you a trigger that I have noticed works almost every time. That is, whenever there is a hurricane, and of course hurricanes happen often, not every day, but they do happen often, the price of wood or lumber will go up. Because if there's a hurricane and there's destruction, they're going to need a lot more lumber than anticipated, so that's going to increase the demand, and the supply stays the same, so that's going to raise the prices of lumber. So many times in the past when I have seen a hurricane that is going to be doing some damage, I've gone into the futures markets and bought either lumber or lumber options, call options, betting that the price of lumber will go up. Hasn't always happened. Maybe there wasn't enough destruction, or it was already anticipated and priced in, but many times I have made a pretty penny. Now, I can't make a living trading this one particular trigger because there aren't that many hurricanes. Thank God there's not that many, destruction in the world. But there are many other triggers that happen over and over again that we can do some research on, identify, and then figure out what is the likeliest situation that's going to happen based on what's happened in the past. Right? Some triggers could be, what happens when the Fed lowers interest rates? That's happened many times in the past. There's a history there. We can do the research and figure out what happens. What stocks do best? What stocks get hurt? How can we make money off of this particular trigger? What happens in a bear market? Right? We don't get them that often, but when we do people know, bear market, it's a good time to buy. That's a great trigger right there. Stocks are down. Buy more shares. Now, that's the opposite of what most people do. Most people are selling into a bear market because they're afraid. But any guru will tell you that you should be buying when there's fear in the streets, right, or blood in the streets. Fear in their eyes, or whatever. I don't know. Whatever the saying is. But when people are scared, that's when you should be buying, because that's when it's cheap. What are the other triggers that you can identify, and maybe there are triggers that you know that nobody else knows. It might be related to your industry. It might be something that you have noticed, or you have experienced in the past. Identify some of these triggers. Do the research. What happens most of the time when this trigger occurs, and figure out a way, based on what happens, figure out a way. How do you make money off of that? I've shared mine with you about the lumber. Feel free to use that, and if you identify some, I would love it if you would share them with me. Right? If you notice something ... This is one of the reasons why I say that you need to have a watch list and you need to focus on the companies on your watch list, and trade, the majority of your trades should be on the companies in your watch list because you're going to develop a sixth sense, and you're going to start seeing triggers based on that company. If they have, for example, earnings announcement and they don't do so well, you're going to know how the stock is supposed to behave because that happens every quarter. Right? You'll see that happening. You'll know how the stock is supposed to behave. If it doesn't behave the way it's supposed to, then maybe the trigger's broken, and you need to get out of that stock, or the stock is broken. That's one of the reasons why I tell you, make sure you have a watch list. It's very important. Please do not be out there trading every single stock in the universe. Okay? But what are the other triggers out there? Find them. Identify them. See what happens. See what the result is, what the effect is when that trigger happens. Some other examples of triggers could be ... We already talked about natural disasters. We already talked about bear markets. We already talked about the Federal Reserve and interest rates. It could be related to seasonality. Some people say there is seasonality in the stock market, so seasonality with oil. Every year in the summertime people are driving more, so gas prices go up. That's one type of trading trigger that you could be trading. That's a very common one that people know about. But that's an example of what you could take advantage of. So if you're in the oil markets, you probably know this, know more details about it than the average person. If you're in the furniture business, maybe you know some trading triggers that are related to furniture that nobody else knows. Maybe you are in the medical business, and you see an uptick in, or you've noticed that there is a shortage of cotton swabs. I don't know what that could mean. I'm not in the medical field, but if that happens, maybe you could do a little research and say, "Okay. Why is that happening? What's the effect?" Maybe that means that people are getting sick. Maybe the shortage of cotton swabs is the effect and the cause is that more people are getting sick, or there is a particular disease that they're getting sick with. Kind of like the COVID-19, the coronavirus. Right? A lot of people getting coronaviruses. What's going to happen? Well, we're going to need more face masks. We're going to need more ventilators. Okay, so who's the company that makes the ventilators? Let's buy their stock. 3M is the company that makes the face masks. Let's buy their stock. Right? Procter & Gamble makes Charmin toilet paper. Let's buy their stock. Coronavirus definitely was a trigger. Based on that, it impacted the economy in several different ways. We've all lived through that. We've all seen it happen. Heaven forbid there is another virus, there is another outbreak of corona, or a different type of corona. You can be ready to capitalize on this. Now, please don't send me hate mail telling me that I'm profiting off of other people's illnesses, and disasters, and all this stuff. These things are going to happen anyway. I'm not praying for them to happen. I don't want them to happen. But if they are happening, as investors and traders, our job is to make money from what happens in the world, good or bad. That's what I'm trying to educate you on. So identify as many of these trading triggers as you can. Have them on a list. Make a list. Keep it by your desk. Whenever you see one trigger going off, what's going to happen? What and how do we profit from it? If you identify some, please, please, please share them with me. My email is help@optiongenius.com. I would love it. I'm trying to put together a massive list. I might even come up with a product or something like that where we'll share them with people. But for now, I'm just trying to come up with some for my own, and if you could share yours, that would be wonderful. All right? So find your triggers, start making some money. Remember, trade with the odds in your favor. https://optiongenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book!   Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Do you ever feel doubt before you put on a trade? A little feeling that, "Oh my God, I don't know if I should do this one. Oh geez, I don't know if this is going to work out. Is this a good idea to do this trade or do it right now? Maybe I should wait, maybe not." We all do. It's normal. It's part of trading because when we're trading, we need to be right, but we can never be 100% certain. There's no a hundred percent guaranteed sure thing trade that we can have no doubt about it and just put it on and be like, "Yes, I'm going to make money on this trade." It doesn't work that way. Anything could happen. That's why trading is so lucrative because you're dealing with the unknown. You're kind of like Elsa in Frozen 2, you're going into the unknown and that's what traders get paid for. And that's what we as investors have to take into account and we have to overcome, because I've seen, especially newer traders, that doubt that fear stops them in their tracks, where they don't put on trades or once they put on a trade, they don't want to touch it. They don't want to adjust it. They don't want to get out and so what could of been a small loss turns into a big loss or what could have been an awesome trade gets skipped because they're just afraid. There was one fellow in particular, his name was Jim, taught him the whole strategy. He knew it backwards and forwards. He could recite it to me better than I could myself. He knew the rules of the strategy. He knew the rules of the trade and he could put a trade on almost better than anybody else, but the doubt of losing money or the fear of losing money would keep him from not staying in the trade. He would always jump out well before he was supposed to, and so he could not make a positive winning trade because he just kept getting out too fast. Anytime he would start losing a little bit of money, he would jump out even though that's not the way selling options works. A lot of times you put on a trade where you sell options and it might be negative for a few days. You might be sitting on a loss, eventually time to gain kicks in and that loss starts to go away and eventually turns out, hopefully in your favor. But even with the odds in our side, even with time on our side, there are no slam dunks. There is no 100%. And so in this episode I wanted to talk about a way that you can overcome this doubt and put yourself in a situation that will be beneficial so that you have a little bit more confidence going into your trade, so you feel not only better about yourself, but a better about the trade as well. So I have to tell you about a cartoon. It's funny, right? We're going to talk about trading, but we're going to learn about trading through a cartoon. There's this cartoon called Bob the Builder. Now Bob cartoon series started back in 1999, and he is a nice fellow. He's a cartoon. He's not a regular cartoon. He's little bit animated, little different type of animation than your average Mickey Mouse or your Cinderella type cartoon. But anyway, Bob runs a construction company and all of his employees are construction equipment. So the backhoe and the bulldozer and the whole makey-thingy machine, they're all his employees or partners or friends or whatever, and they all talk. And in every episode they're given different jobs to do around town and build this or do this or pay that or whatever, and eventually they get into trouble. And so Bob comes to the rescue and he has to motivate his team because now they're all sad that something bad happened and they don't know what to do about it. So Bob comes in and he asks them this one question. he goes, "Guys, can we fix it?" And all of his teammates, they all get excited and they'll smile and say, "Yes, we can fix it. We can do it," and that's how he motivates them. That's how he gets them on his side. That's how he gets them all upbeat and ready to do whatever is needed. And then they find a solution and then they put it into place and it works, and there's always a happy ending in every episode. Now when it comes to motivation, asking a question is a little bit counterintuitive because whenever you talk to or listen to or read any of the self-help, motivational speaker type gurus out there, they don't tell you to ask questions. They tell you to be authoritative. The Tony Robbins or the Jack Canfields, Og Mandinos, Napoleon Hills, all these guys, they all tell you to do the same thing. They tell you to say an affirmation and be positive and tell yourself how good you are and how smart you are and how wonderful you are and how everything's going to work out for the best. Put it out into the universe and it's going to happen and talk as if it's already happened. Not, "I'm going to make $1 million," but, "I've already made $1 million," kind of thing. So which one of these philosophies actually works better? Is it the question where, "Can I fix it?" Or is it the statement where, "I can fix it"? which one works better? Now in order to figure out the answers, we turn to some researchers. There was a group of researchers from the University of Illinois and also the University of Southern Mississippi who wanted to figure this out. So they ran a series of experiments in which they gathered several participants and they had to solve puzzles. Okay? The first experiment, the basic one, they basically broke them up into two different groups and the first group was told to ask themselves whether they would solve the puzzles. Basically, "Hey, ask yourself. Use a question and say, 'Will I solve the puzzle?'" The second group was told to tell themselves that they will solve the puzzles, so very authoritative. Be like, "Yes, I'm going to solve the puzzle." Which group do you think did better? Well, the group that asked themselves if they're going to solve the puzzles, solved 50% more puzzles than the other group. And then they repeated this experiment in multiple ways, they did it with writing. They had the subjects write down, before the experiment, the words will I or the words I will and the group that's wrote will I, again, solved 50% more puzzles. Why is this? Well, researchers, they did more studies and more research and they tried to figure this out. They came up with two reasons. The first reason is that by its very form, when you ask a question, you give yourself an answer. So if we're going to ask ourself a question and say, "Should I put this trade on," or "Am I a good trader?" Instead of saying, "I'm a good trader, I'm a great trader. I'm going to trade, trade, trade." It doesn't help you overcome a lot of fear of if you should be doing that particular trade. It doesn't make sense. When you ask yourself the question, you give yourself an answer automatic. So if the question is, "Should I do this trade?" or "Should I be a trader?" or "Should I be an investor? Should I invest in this?" The answer comes back to, "Yes" or "No." And if it's a, "Yes," then you're going to give yourself a reason or an answer. "Why?" And if it's a, "No," you're probably going to come up with a reason why and if it's a good reason, then you can fix that so that you can go and do the trade. The second reason is that the self-talk, when you're talking to yourself, when you're asking a question and you're telling yourself the answer, it helps you to visualize your end goal, and that goal becomes an intrinsic goal instead of an extrinsic goal. So it's going to be more about, "If I put this trade on, if I do a good trade, then I'll feel better about myself," versus "Oh yeah, I'm a good trader. I'm going to go get me a Ferrari," kind of thing. So those two reasons were what researchers came up with. Now when we're putting on a trade, again, there's no sure thing. Of course experience helps, but if there's a bear market, if there's a high volatility market, if things are going on that have never happened before, then even experienced traders don't know what to do. And we have doubts and say, "Man, should I be really doing this trade? Should I be putting this trade on?" And if you're feeling that doubt, then you can ask yourself a series of questions instead of just trying to pump yourself up. Now I definitely believe that you should pump yourself up if you're feeling doubt, and if you cannot even do a single trade, then you need to ask these questions even more. But if you're feeling that hesitation, "Oh, man, I don't know if I should do this," that means that something's not aligned physically, emotionally, spiritually. Maybe something is not aligned with your trade and you need to get to the bottom of it and ask yourself some questions. One of the questions would be, "Should I even be doing this trade?" It's not a question of, "Can I trade? Can I be a trader?" Yes, you can be a trader. If you don't know that, then I'm telling you right now, yes, you can be a successful trader. There are other people out there that are stupider than you that are doing well at it. Okay? I'm sure that you can do it. "Can I be a trader? Can I be a successful investor at that?" That question, let's just take it off the table. The answer is yes. If you don't believe it, I'm telling you the answer is yes. Okay? Now the next question is, "Should I do a particular trade?" And when you ask yourself that question, then you have to dig in further and you have to justify it and you just say, "Oh, I heard Jim Cramer on his Mad Money show talk about XYZ stock and the CEO came and I really liked the guy's tie so I'm going to buy this company and I think the shares are going to go up." That's not a very good reason, right? "Should I buy that stock?" If that's the reason, because you liked the guy's tie, maybe when you say that to yourself, when you answer that question, "Should I do this trade?" And you tell yourself, "I'm doing it because I like the guy's tie," I think you'll figure it out yourself that, "Okay. That's not a good reason. Maybe I should do a little bit more research or maybe I don't do the trade." But once you ask that question, "Should I do the trade?" it leads you to the next question, "What do I expect the trade to happen? What happens if the best case scenario happens? What happens if the worst case scenario happens? What do I think the stock's going to do and what happens or what do I do to the trade if it works out in my favor? What do I do if the trade doesn't work out?" That way, you're prepared for both eventualities. If it works out, great. You know what to do. You know how to get out and you get to be happy. If it doesn't work out, you're prepared in advance for anything that could happen, especially if it doesn't work out in your favor, but you know in advance, so that eliminates some of the doubt. If you know you have a justification for why you're doing the trade, if you have some reasons, if you know what you're going to do if the trade works out in your favor, if you know what you're going to do if the trade doesn't work in your favor. It goes against you. If you know what you're going to do in advance, it takes away doubt. So if you've been having trouble putting on trades, whenever you listen to this, the market might be topsy-turvy. It may be very volatile. It might be going straight up. It might be going straight down, might be going sideways. I don't know. But in all markets, there are trades that are possible to be made. If you're feeling doubt, that's your self telling you that something is not aligned. And yes, you could be just rah-ing yourself and telling yourself, "Yeah, yeah. I'm going to make $100,000 today," or "I'm going to make $100 today trading. I'm going to be do this, rah rah. I'm the best trader in the world. Woo-hoo," or you can be real and you can ask yourself some questions and use that as a way to pump you up and to motivate you. So can you fix it? Yes, you can because Bob Builder does and that's how he motivates his staff. Now in Bob's case, he's a cartoon. His viewership, his audience, is little children. So whenever he says, "Can we fix it?" All the little kids that are watching, they respond with, "Yes, we can." I don't want us to say, "Can we trade?" because that's not the right question for us. We're not trying to get little kids to give us a positive answer. We're not asking the question for anybody else. We're asking the question for ourselves. "Can we trade?" is not the right question. It should be based on each individual trade. "Should I be doing this trade?" and you have to have a legitimate reason. If you do have a legitimate reason and you know what you're going to do in advance, that will help you cut through the doubt. And actually, if you put on the trade and keep your head in the trade, in the game, while the trade is going on so you don't lose your cool, you don't get caught like a deer in the headlights and not know what to do if the trade goes against you. I hope this was helpful. If you have doubt, listen to this a couple times, go through the process. It definitely helps. Remember trade with the odds in your favor. PassiveTrading.com OptionGenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.   

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book!   Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- The famous Baron Rothschild said that the time to buy is when there is blood in the streets. And Warren Buffet has said the time to invest is when others are fearful, to be greedy when others are fearful. But others are fearful for a reason, so is that actually the best advice? When is a good opportunity, and when is it a disaster that just looks like an opportunity? That's what I cover on this episode. So how do we limit our risk and not do any of the work? That's a totally new way of looking at it, don't you think? I was pretty proud of myself when I came up with that question. How can we have a large upside with a small downside, and none of the work, none of the time? Because in the end, that's the most important and most precious thing we have, right? Time. We have to guard it as best we can. So that question led us to a third solution. We could bring in somebody else as a partner who would be responsible for day to day operations and running the center. My wife would be there in the beginning to turn things around and to train this person, especially since she has done that before, and she knows the business, while she's training this new partner. So that is what we did. We offered another woman and a friend of ours 50% of the business and the center to be the working partner. We would train her and support her until the place was running and doing well, and of course we would support her the whole time, because we're involved, but my wife would own 25% and our original partner would own the other 25%. so we're cutting our percentage down, right? We're taking less of the business, we're going to get less of the profits, but if all goes well, we won't have to do the work. Put up less money as well. Have a person in place that will run it, who has been trained by us. And if all goes well, eventually we make $5,000 a month instead of $10,000, but without having to do the work. Now, to me, that one sounds better. We turned a good opportunity into a wonderful opportunity. Now, let's take a look at this from this new woman's perspective, right? This new partner that we're bringing in, let's call her N. Now, N has never worked in a daycare, but she wants to. She's been looking to buy a daycare or get involved with a daycare for months now. Financially, her family is struggling. Her husband has his own business, but that business is failing. It's going to close soon, so money is tight. Now, N is offered a 50% stake in a business that is currently losing money, right? It's losing anywhere from breaking even some months to losing about $5,000, $6,000 a month. She is required to put up more money than she has right now to take advantage of this situation. She's going to have to borrow that money. Maybe not all of it, but at least some of it. So let's say she needs to come up with $50,000. Okay, that's 50,000 she doesn't have. The business will not make money for a while, and she's not going to get paid until the business can afford to pay her a salary. So she's looking at probably six months with nothing to show for it, but she's building up her own business, an asset. If she can borrow the $50,000, or however much she needs, and if she borrows it, she's probably going to have to make payments on it. So they're going to have to come up with some way to be able to make the payments, still support the household, while she's doing this. But the upside is that she could make than $10,000 a month eventually, which is more than enough to support the family. So yeah, there's risk involved. The place might not turn around. It might not be as rosy as I'm making it out to be. That's a risk. She will also have a strong set of partners who are well-capitalized. If we need more money, we're not going to let her drown, right? We're going to put the money in. They have experience and connections, and who are not only willing to work side by side with her until the place is turned around, but they've done it before. Meaning my wife has turned around a failing daycare before. What should you do? What would you do in this situation? To me, from her point of view, I think the choice is simple. I would take the deal, in a heartbeat. Now, what she does eventually, we haven't gotten an answer yet. We don't know. To me, I think it would be crazy if they say no. They're already in a sinking boat. The boat is sinking. They have no other alternatives. They have no options. They have no lifelines. They have no life preservers. And here you have somebody coming by, throwing you a life jacket. Do you take it or not? I don't know. That's up to them. We'll find out. How do you know when you are presented with an opportunity if you should take it or not? How do you know if it's a good opportunity or if it's just a disaster dressed up like an opportunity, right? And please don't tell me that you don't have opportunities. They're out there. They're everywhere. I mean, buying a new stock is an opportunity. Looking for a new job is an opportunity. Getting a loan for something, that's an opportunity to do something without money, creative, right? Even deciding to buy a new training course. I'm sure you get emails from lots of gurus. "Buy this, buy that, buy this. I have courses. I'm emailing you. Dave, you're on my list. Get on my list if you're not, but if you aren't, if you're on the list, then I'm telling you, hey, I got this course that might work for you. I've got this that might work for you." These are all opportunities that can either be beneficial or harmful, but you have to make that decision. So I have a list of questions that you need to ask. So if you're in the car, or exercising or something while listening to this, you're going to have to go back and actually write these questions down so you can save them and keep them. So next time you have an opportunity, you can go through this exercise and it will help you clarify in your mind and help you decide what to do. So first of all, you got to know, what are your longterm goals? You got to know, without a doubt. If you don't know what you're trying to do in the longterm, you're going to jump at every single opportunity. If you haven't decided yet that you want to be a passive trader, then the next time you see an opportunity for a real estate workshop, you're going to go. If you see a 4X course, you're going to buy it. If you see a new job offer, "Oh, hey, why don't you drive for Uber?" You're going to go run and drive for Uber. The goal should not be, "I just want to make more money." You have to have it more defined than that. Right now for my wife, the goal is more income without the work, and that is what led us to the solution that works best for us, right? If we didn't know what our goal was, we would not have tailored it and changed it so that it works best for us. Now, yeah, we can make less money, but our priority was not the money. It was the time. You understand? So that's number one. Number two, you have to look at the pros and cons. Now, you probably already do this. Common sense. You write these down if you have to. What's all the benefits? What's all the negatives? What could happen? What could go right? Third, then you look at the probabilities. How probable is each outcome? You know, let's look at the worst case scenario. How probable is that? The best case scenario. How probable is that? And then somewhere in the middle. Next, what is the risk involved? Right? Normally, if it's an investment of money, you have to put up the money, and that's the risk. The whole money you put up is at risk. How can you minimize the risk? That's a very important question. You still want to keep the benefit. You still want to have the potential as much as possible, but you want to reduce your risk as much as possible as well. Next, what is the possible reward, and is it worth the risk? What's your risk-reward analysis? Is the reward worth it for the risk? Sometimes that's an easy one. You'll be like, "No, not really." You're going to be giving it up. Okay. If there's a course out there teaching you how to make $100 a day and the course is charging you $1,000, okay, that might be worth it. In 10 days I could get my money back. Yes, but it takes you 12 hours a day to make that $100 bucks. All of a sudden it doesn't make sense. The reward is not worth it, right? You spend 12 hours a day to make $100 bucks, that's not worth the risk, so you would pass on that opportunity, right? Simple concepts. Number six, I want you to get advice from people that have done the same thing that you're thinking about doing successfully. Not just that they've done it before, but they've actually been successful at it. What do they say? What's the advice? If you ask them and say, "Hey, should I do this or not?" What do they tell you? Most people, most successful people are honored when they're asked for advice, and they will actually give you legitimate, truthful advice, okay? Just like it says in the book, The Richest Man of Babylon. If you haven't read this book, it's a classic. You got to have it. The Richest Man in Babylon. It says, "If you are investing in jewels, you don't send a brick layer or a brick maker to buy your jewels. You ask a brick maker when you're investing in bricks and you ask a jeweler when you're investing in jewels." Okay? So you got to get advice from the right people and people who have actually done it well. Next, what does your gut tell you? That's what it comes down to, because you are ultimately responsible, and your gut, well, you know that feeling in your stomach, that can tell you one way or the other if you should do it or not. Because if that gut is telling you, "Don't do it," or, "I'm scared," or, "I can't handle it," and you still make the investment, you're going to end up miserable. Even if it works out well, you're going to end up miserable. A friend of mine, he did a real estate fund recently that I invested in, and I got other people to invest in, and one of the people that came up to me and wanted to invest, and she put the money in, but it was for a one-year term. You had to have your money in there for a year. After six months, she lost confidence, or she freaked out, and she said, "Can I get my money back? I need my money back. I need my money back." And we told her, "No. It's locked up for a year. You can't get your money back." Even though the fund was doing well, we were making money, there wasn't a loss, she was going to get all of her money back, plus she was going to make a nice gain at the end of the year, she still freaked out and she couldn't do it. Now, if she had asked her gut before making the decision, maybe her gut would have been like, "No. We're not very risky people. We don't like taking risks." So she would have sat out of it. That's how important your gut is. Now, last question, can you live with the worst case scenario? Can you? Only you can decide. Now, after asking all these questions, you're going to have a much more clear picture of what you should do. So now let's take all this information. Let's do a real life exercise, okay, so that you know what it is. Currently, and I'm recording this March 31, so 2020, right? Currently the stock market has dropped about 30%. Volatility is sky high. The coronavirus has become a pandemic and we're all staying inside and away from people to limit the virus, to try to control the virus, which is still raging out of control. People are still getting sick, people are still dying, and we've already had 3,000 deaths, and they're saying that there might be 200,000 deaths in the US. Should we invest in the stock market at this point? It's a legitimate question, right? I mean, things have come down 30%. Some stocks that we're trading have done a lot worse than 30%. The travel industry, the food industry, they've all been killed because they've been shut down by this virus. Now, we all know it's temporary, hopefully. I don't know when you're listening to this, but you know better than I do, because you're in the future, but hopefully this thing will shut down. Now, I'm giving this example. Don't be like, "Oh, yeah, I know what happened, and it was either a good idea or bad idea to invest." I don't know, but these types of scenarios will occur over and over throughout history. So this is just one example of how you look at an opportunity, and the opportunity is, "Hey, stocks are down 30%. Do we buy here?" So what do we ask ourselves? Well, number one, what are our longterm goals? If your longterm goal is to build up your stock portfolio and hold onto these stocks so that you could trade options on them for years and years to come, like we talk about it in our Passive Trading Formula course, then maybe we should start buying now. Or if your goal is to become an options trader only, and only trade options, not own any stocks, well then it doesn't matter how low the stocks go, you shouldn't buy them because that's only going to distract you from your goal, right? So for you, this is an opportunity that you should pass on. Number two, what are the pros and cons? Well, obviously you can make money. Right? Pro. We could also lose money, because the stocks could drop even more. The virus has not peaked yet. We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Things could get worse. What if all the businesses and everybody shut down for the whole year of 2020? That will definitely have the stock market go down a lot more. Number three, what are the probabilities? Well, worst case, we lose all our money. That's probably not going to happen. I mean, I don't think the stock market is going to zero. Most of the stocks we buy are not going to go out of business. Well, some of them will. If it's worst case, most of them probably will not. Best case is the virus disappears and the stock market rallies 100% percent. That's probably not going to happen either. What could happen is the market drops another 30% from here. That would be a 60% drop, which in history doesn't happen too often. It's possible. That might be the worst case, actually. 50, if it drops another 30% from here. So if our risk is a 30% drop, how do we minimize that risk? Well, we can wait. Maybe we don't buy stocks now. That's one way. Or maybe we could hedge our position by buying put options. That's another way to do it. Or maybe we can buy some shares now and then we buy a few more every week. So whether the stocks go down or whether they go up, we're just buying a few more every week, every week, every week, because we can't predict the future. We don't know what's going to happen. The possible reward is that we don't buy at the bottom, right? But we still get stocks at a really cheap price compared to where they've been before, and where they're eventually going to go again. 30 years from now, are we going to have a stock market? Yeah. Are stocks going to be higher than they are now? Probably. Right? So if you look at those probabilities, then yeah, it's a good time to buy now and hold, and you guys are fortunate enough that you know how to sell options on your stock so that you can actually generate an income while you're waiting for the stock to go up. So what are the people who have made a killing in the stock market, in this same situation, doing right now? People that took advantage when stocks dropped before in bear markets, what are they doing right now? Well, the ones I've been able to investigate and research, most of them are buying small amounts of stocks that they want to own. Not huge quantities. They're not just going out and betting the farm. They're not borrowing money to buy these, but they're buying small amounts. They're not waiting for the bottom, nor are they just sitting on their hands doing nothing. They're actually in the market right now. The last week or so, we've had a little bit of a rally. The VIX, the volatility index has actually come down a little bit, so some people are a little bit ... The selling has abated. It might happen again, but it seems to have calmed down a little bit. I myself have started buying some shares that I want to own, and I've been selling naked puts way out of the money on stocks that I wouldn't mind owning. These are shots at Coca Cola and Johnson & Johnson, Las Vegas Sands, stocks that have taken a beating, right, and they're much cheaper now than they were before, but in the longterm, by owning them, I think they're going to go back up. They're very strong. They pay good dividends. So I am making 1% to 2% a month income while waiting for these stocks to drop even more, because I'm selling my puts out of the money. So that meaning that I want them to drop even more before I buy them, and I'm getting paid to wait. So next question. What is your gut telling you? Maybe your gut doesn't know in this situation, which is normal. I don't know. My gut's like, "I don't know. Don't ask me. I can't predict the future." And then lastly, can you live with another 30% drop in stocks? So if you buy now, if you take all your money out and you buy now, can you live with a 30% drop? If you can't, then don't do it, or do something else. Don't buy all right now. Now, based on this exercise, if you were thinking about investing in stocks right now, I don't think the answer is to buy 100% everything right now. To minimize the risk, I think the answer would be to maybe start with a little bit, right? Maybe sell some naked puts if you know how. Ready yourself if stocks move lower, but buy more shares as they do. So as they go lower, buy more and continue to buy more. If you don't know how to sell naked puts, this would be a great time to take advantage of our Passive Trading Formula course. You can learn more at passivetrading.com and we'll show you exactly how to do it. In our group, our community, I actually share some of the trades I'm doing, some of the stocks that I've been selling options on, and we have a really good community of other traders who are in the same course who are also sharing their trades. So by yourself, yeah, you can probably do well, but when you have a community that thinks the same way and when they're helping each other out and when they're sharing what they're doing and sharing ideas, it helps everybody. So right now it's a scary time. We're all stuck in our homes. We're walled off from our fellow human beings. So if you haven't, look online, find some groups that think the way you do and not groups that are trying to scare you and tell you how the world's going to end. We don't need more negativity. Let the government handle the business that they're handling. Let them handle the virus and let the health people do that. We just listen to what they're saying. Stay home, stay safe, and prepare for the future. And right now, this is an amazing opportunity for you to take some time and educate yourself about how you can use the stock market to your advantage, okay? So if you want to check it out, it's passivetrading.com we have a free training there that you can watch and learn. I hope this helped. Please stay safe and remember to trade with the odds in your favor. PassiveTrading.com OptionGenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Recently I attended a mastermind meeting with other online marketers. These folks are super smart, super rich, and super savvy. They are the ones that introduced me to crypto arbitrage. Yes, that is a thing. Everyone presents something in the meeting that can help the others. I decided to talk about 3 things that have shaped my life up to this point. I expected them to already know about these secrets, but not one of them knew of all three. In fact, none of them knew about #3. The three I talked about were: 1. The Wave Theory of Life 2. The Five Finger Theory 3. Passive Trading Passive Trading literally blew them away. They were mesmerized. Listen to the episode to hear me describe all three secrets! Link to Episode 4: 5 Finger Strategy https://optiongenius.com/blog/five-finger-strategy/ PassiveTrading.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Passive traders, I hope the markets are treating you nicely. Today I want to do something pretty cool. So I am finishing up the book called Passive Trading. Has been taken me I think over two years, but I'm finally getting close to completion. My editor told me that it's probably better to add a few examples of trades that I've done in the past and some examples of the different strategies that we're talking about. So I was like, "Yeah, that makes sense." So what I did was I decided to go into the past and pick a stock and say, "Okay, this is a stock. What if I did what I'm telling everybody to do? How would it work out without knowing anything about the future or anything like that?" The example was for naked puts, selling naked puts. That's one of the strategies I cover in the book. I talk about it, say how to do it, this and that. And I said, "Well, what would happen if I take my strategy, how to do it, and go and apply it in real life?" So I picked Walmart because Walmart is not a stock that I own. I don't follow it on a regular basis. It is on my watch list because it's a good company and it pays dividend. It might be one that I want to get into, but up till now I don't own it and haven't traded it very much. So I said, "You know what? Let me go into Walmart. Let me try it and see." So 2018, January 2018, Walmart was trading at $98.59. That was really good because in 2017 the stock was up 42%, so had a great year in 2017. What's it going to do in 2018? I don't know. I don't remember. And I haven't traded, so I don't know. So what I decided was I am not going to own the stock. I am only going to sell naked puts on it. If I get assigned on those puts, then I will see what I have to do there. Maybe I will sell the stock and keep selling more puts or maybe I will keep the stock and start selling covered calls. Either way, I'm going to have to do something, but I'm not going to roll. That was the decision. I wasn't going to roll my putts. I was just going to take the stock. So I started on the 2nd of January, okay? First trade I did sold some puts, made 3.6% because the puts expired. Nice. Did another trade in February after that one expired. After the first expired, I did it in February. That one also expired. 3.2% gain. Then I did do one in March. 3.54% gain. Did one in April. 5.54% gain. Geez. This is easy, right? All I'm doing is selling naked puts on Walmart away from the money and I'm getting really nice monthly gains, and I'm not having to watch it. I'm not following. I'm not adjusting. I'm not doing anything. I'm selling the put, waiting till it expires, and then selling another one. That's all I'm doing. Then, May came. Those puts expired. 2.83% gain. June, 1.85% gain. July, 3.9% gain. August, 2.53% gain. September, 2.75% gain. October, 4.89% gain. And November. Oh, November I finally get assigned. So on December 21st, Walmart closed at $87.13, which was 37 cents lower than my sold strike, so I had to buy the stock at $87.50. Now, you might be thinking, "Oh wow, Allen, yeah, anybody can make money selling naked puts in a bear market." Walmart went up 42% the year before. It probably went up close to that in 2018 when you were doing it, right? Well, yes and no. 2018 was a year when Walmart traded from $98.59 at the beginning of the year. That's when I started trading. It went up to $109.55, so it did go up. But then once it got there, it turned around and went down all the way to $82.40, and then it ended the year at $93.15, which means that the stock was actually negative 5.6% for the year. So if you had owned this stock, if you had bought it on January 2nd, first day of trading in 2018, and you held it to the end of the year, you would've lost 5.6%. Now, you would've gotten the dividends, so maybe it's an even, but still that's dead money. You're not making any money on this stock if you are only buying it and holding it for the whole year. But if you had done what I did and you had sold naked puts the whole way, you would've made 34.65%. Let that sink in here. I was selling naked puts on a stock that went up and down and up again and closed down. So this was not a stock that just went up in a straight line. This stock lost money on the year. But because of the naked put strategy, I made 34%, okay? This is without owning any stock. I didn't own the stock until very end of the year, until December 21 when I actually had to buy the shares. Until then, I didn't own any stock, and I didn't really spend much time on it. I just put the trade on, let it expire, and then put on another one every month. Takes literally five minutes or less. Didn't watch the news on Walmart. Didn't care about earnings, or announcements, or what they were doing, or how the stock was doing. Doesn't matter. Didn't care. All I did was sell a naked put every month. Let the one expire, sell more, let it expire, sell more, let it expire, sell more, let it expire, some more on a stock that went up or down. Now, I understand if this was a stock that had just gone straight up, then yeah, you could say, "Oh, yeah. It just went straight up. Of course you've made money." True, but this was not that. This was a stock that went up and down, right? So this was just one example that I did for the book. I just thought this was a really freaking cool example. I did a couple other examples we did on credit spreads on comparing owning the stock, a stock that was really good. I'm just going to tease you here. I'm not going to tell you what it was. But I picked a stock, I went back and I said, "All right, in this year, 2000 ... " I don't know what year it was. Think 2017 or 2018. I said, "Give me one of the best performing stocks." And I got a list of all the ones, and I said, "Okay, this one I think we can do credit spreads on." So I picked it, and I did spreads on it month, after month, after month, after month, after month, and the credit spreads did better than if you had just held the stock. Even though the stock was one of the best performing stocks of the year, you would have done better by selling options than holding the stock. And this Walmart example is the same thing, same conclusion. 34% compared to negative 5%, okay? Less stress, less time, and a lot more money. That is why we sell options. That is why I'm into passive trading. Cool? So if you want to learn more about passive trading, you can go to passivetrading.com. The book itself is ... Like I said, I'm going back and forth with the editor. Hopefully it will be out soon. If you want, you can email us about it or just go to passivetrading.com and see. It might there. But that's it. Yeah. Selling options come put together with owning stocks makes more money. I don't know if I can make it any simpler. And this was a real example. Like, dude, these are the numbers, you know? And in the book, I'm going to have what are the dates, what are the exploration, what are the price, what did I get, was the result. Everything is there. So you can go and check it for yourself. Were these actual trade? Yeah, they were done. This was real numbers, okay? I didn't even think it was going to be this good. To be honest, I didn't know it was going to be this much of a difference, 34% gain versus negative 5% for owning a stock. Holy cow. That blew my mind. That's why I wanted to do an episode on. That's why I'm be like, "You guys got to look at this. This is so cool. This is so amazing. Why aren't you doing this, right? Why aren't you doing this right now?" All right folks. Until next time, trade with the odds in your favor. www.passivetrading.com www.optiongenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- This episode is extremely important for anyone who is saving money for retirement. If you are investing, even if you're not trading, the information that I'm going to cover in this episode is going to scare the daylights out of you, but luckily there are steps that we can take to prevent massive, massive loss and fraud. Passive traders, warning, your account, your trading account is going to be hacked. If not today, then it's going to happen tomorrow. But at one time, your account is going to be hacked and money will be taken from your account unless you take strict, crazy actions to protect yourself. My E-Trade account was hacked for $15,000. That money was taken out of the account with no notice to me, no indication. I didn't know anything was going on. Luckily, I figured it out. When I found out how they did it, my mind was blown how easy it was. Now, let me tell you the whole story. Back in October of 2019 E-Trade limited what I could do with my account. Now, I have one account with E-Trade. I have had it with them ... This account has been open for years and years. Before it was with another broker that got bought out by another broker named Option House. Option House then got bought out by E-Trade and recently E-Trade just announced that they're being bought out by Morgan Stanley. So this account has been open for years and it has well over $100,000 in it. But I don't use it for options trading. I've only bought some long positions in stocks and has just been sitting there. So this is not an account that I checked on a regular basis. But back in October of 2019, they limited what I could do with the account. They sent me an email saying, "Your account is limited." They made me call them to verify who I was. I didn't know why. But when I called them, they finally told me that, "Hey, someone was trying to withdraw funds from this account from different places all over the world, from different countries." So they wanted to make sure that it wasn't me and that it was fraudulent. Now luckily, they had stopped those transactions and those withdrawals, but they wanted to place a limit on the account until I got in touch with them so they could verify. Once they verified it was not me, we changed my password and everything was fine. Account was back up, no restrictions. Now again, this is an account that I only log into maybe once a month, if that. All right. Every other month or so I log in just to see how things are going. Now, in January of 2020, so that was October when they alerted me to the fraud. Three months later in January of 2020, I logged into the account just to see how things were going. By chance, I mean this was luck that I noticed this, on the side of the screen it has a little section, little widget or whatever it's called, and it says recent activity. On that recent activity thing, it showed ACH withdrawal. That's all it said, ACH withdrawal and a date. I'm thinking to myself, "What is that? I didn't withdraw any money. What could this have been? I don't understand. What is this?" So I clicked on it, went to the ACH withdrawal page to see what was going on, where the money was going. It didn't make any sense because I found several other withdrawals as well to different places, Discover card, Kohl's, something called Gemini, a whole bunch of other vendors. I didn't know what this was. Over the past two months, so over November and December, close to $15,000 was siphoned off in small amounts and then larger ones, so a couple hundred dollars, $300, and all round weird numbers. It wasn't $300. It was $315.42. And then there were larger ones. They started off as small amounts and then they got larger and larger. Every couple days there was another withdrawal. So I get on the phone with E-Trade to report this. I spoke to somebody in their customer service who filed a report and I had to tell him to stop all the withdrawals. So he's taking my information, asking me, "You didn't do this and you didn't withdraw your Discover and you didn't withdraw to Kohl's?" I'm like, "No, I don't have a Discover card. I don't have a Kohl's account. I don't know what any of these vendors are. Stop the withdrawals." So he goes, "Okay. I will stop all the withdrawals to these vendors." I'm like, "No, dude. You need to stop all withdrawals, not just to these vendors, to every single vendor out there. I want a complete pause on this account. I don't want any money going in or out of this account any more until you figure out what's going on and until I get my money back." Because for some reason he couldn't figure that out on his own. I don't know. He told me he's going to take over a week to investigate. If there's fraud involved, which of course there is fraud involved, it could take up to 90 days to get my money back. 90 days. Now, the one thing I couldn't figure out is how they got any money out of this account in the first place because just about every penny I had in there was already invested in a stock. There was maybe a couple thousand dollars leftover in cash, but I didn't have no $15,000 that these guys had taken out. I couldn't understand it. So it wasn't like I was out any money, but I'm sure that if I hadn't reported it, then E-Trade would have come after me for that $15,000. A week later, the investigation's going on. I'm going to wait back. Hopefully they have stopped it. Actually I kept logging in every day and I noticed that the ACH withdrawals were still happening. They weren't approved, but whoever this scammer was, this hacker, they were still trying to withdraw money. But now it was getting stopped. It wasn't happening any more. But they kept trying and they kept trying. So a week later I get an email from my other broker, Ameritrade, that one of my accounts there had been hacked. Now this, to me, is more scary because I have several accounts at Ameritrade. So I get on the phone with them. I'm like, "What's going on?" They told me the account. I mean that account doesn't have any money in it. It should have been shut down years ago. I think it has two cents in it, that's why they kept it open. But somebody was trying to hack into that account. Luckily, it didn't have any money and they stopped it. Were the two incidents related? I don't think so. Probably not, because if they can hack into one Ameritrade account, what's to stop them from hacking into all the other ones? This was an account that we didn't even use, so that was interesting. But the E-Trade investigation, okay, this is the crazy part. This is how they stole the money. The E-Trade people discovered that the scammers had gotten a hold of my account number, not my password, not my username. They only had my account number. They only needed my account number and the E-Trade routing number to steal money. Now, the E-Trade routing number, you can go online and Google it and you'll figure it out. That's not hard to do. Now, think about it. If a scammer, the only thing they need is your account number, I mean, how many people do we share our account numbers with? They're on our tax returns. They're on our bank statements maybe. They are on our mortgage applications or credit applications. I mean I never considered that as top secret information. I didn't give it out to anybody, but it's not top secret. But if that's all they need to steal money without even us being notified, this is a serious, serious security flaw in my books. What the hell? This scammers, they didn't even have to log into my account. All they did was they used the account number and the routing number and they set up payments to all of their different accounts. So Discover was an account that they had. Kohl's was an account that they had. All the other stuff were other debit cards or credit cards or whatever, these accounts that they had, they were able to set up ACH withdrawal payments from my account to pay off their accounts. Again, like I said, these withdrawals continued to happen even after I reported the fraud. No money was taken out, but they kept trying. It was like set on autopilot. Guess what happened after that? E-Trade told me that they were powerless to stop it. They could not stop these people from trying to take money out. The only thing they could do was shut down the account, transfer everything I have to a new account with a new account number. Wow. So not only is the scam easy to do, but the company can't even stop it unless they give me a new account. Thankfully, they agreed that it wasn't my fault and I wasn't doing fraud and so the money was returned. Actually, it wasn't even my money because I didn't have any money left over in the account. It was margin money that was taken out. So since I didn't have that much cash in my account, the withdrawals were actually made with margin. Not only if I hadn't reported this, E-Trade would have been charging me interest on top of the fraud. Right now as I record this today, it's past mid-February and I still have no access to this account. They told me they were going to shut down the old account, move everything over to a new account, and then everything will be fine. So yes, they have done that. I can log in to the account, but I can't see anything. I can't see my positions. I can't trade anything. I can't buy anything, can't sell anything, can't do anything. Luckily, I only had long-term stock positions in this account. The markets have been moving higher. So I'm okay. But if I had options in this account or if the market started dropping, I would be powerless to do anything because I can't even see my positions. They won't let me do anything. There's only one person in the company that has the ability to do anything. I've called their customer service several times and said, "I need access to my account." They're like, "Well, your account is in security and only this one person can help you." I've emailed that person, left messages. Sometimes she calls me back or emails me back and says, "We're still working on it. We're still working on it." I have no time or ETA or knowing anything when this is going to be done. When am I going to get my account back? Pretty much it's being held hostage for whatever reason. So I'm basically powerless. That is never a good position to be in. Now, the thing that makes this even worse, and this is why up till now you guys are thinking, "Oh wow. That's really bad, Allen, that happened to you. It's not going to happen to me. I got a really cool password." Well, remember, they didn't need my password. They don't have my password. They never had my password. They never logged into the account. They did it with an ACH and my account number. Let's say that you're hiding your account numbers. Okay, great. You have different passwords. That is great. But let's say somebody does hack into your account. The companies that hold your trading accounts and your investment accounts and your retirement funds, if there is fraud and you lose money from that, somebody takes money out or whatever, they are not required to make you whole. I'm going to say that again. The investment accounts, like your stock broker or your mutual fund company, they are not required by law to give you your money back if you lose money due to fraud. Now, there is a website called Consumers' Checkbook that looked into the largest firms and many of them don't even have a fraud protection policy. While some of them do say that they will cover fraud 100%, you have to live up to their guidelines which, in the case of Merrill Lynch, with Merrill Lynch, means you have to satisfy 85 different requirements, 85 different requirements. You have to be able to check off every single one of those things that you have done those in order for them to live up to their fraud protection policy and make you whole. So no, Molly, your money is not safe. Okay? So what do you do? What can you do about it? Well, I have a list here. I'm going to give you a list. Hopefully you can listen to this. When you are sitting down, you can write these down or look on the show notes. But what you need to do is you need to have a different username and a strong password for each account. That you already know. You probably don't do it, but you already know this. Different user name and a strong password for each account, because this is money. This is important. This is not like we're trying to log into Facebook or something simple. Every single website in the world requires you to have a login now. I mean if you're an OptionGenius member, you have to have a login and a password to log into your Option account. Now, if somebody takes your password and logs into your account, they're not going to be able to mess you up. They can't do anything to you. They can't hurt you in any way. But these accounts, it's like a vault. It's a gold mine. It's just sitting there. The money's sitting there and the hackers know this. The hackers are not going after the banks any more. They're going where the money is easy and the money is easy in mutual fund accounts and investment accounts and IRAs and 401ks. That's where the money's easy. So you have to be very careful. Number two, you need to add something called two-factor authorization to all accounts. This is like a second password. Some sites, what they'll do is they'll text you a code before you can log in. So you type in your name, your password, and then they text you a code to your phone which you enter in and then they get in. That way only if you have your phone can you access your account. Some other companies, they use third-party apps. So they make you download a new app on your phone. There's one called Google Authenticator. E-Trade, they use an app called VIP Access. That is also two-factor authorization. You have to download a special app and then that app will give you a code. If they don't text it to you, they'll make you download an app that'll give you a code that you have to enter in when you log in. That's the only way you can log in. Now, of course you have to use your phone. If you lose your phone, it becomes a big headache because your phone number is tied to the account. There's a whole process about that. But it's better than just leaving it open. Number three, you got to check your accounts at least once a month. Now, this you can do and hopefully you're all doing it once a month. I track my balances on a spreadsheet now as a backup. So every month I go into all my accounts, I've decided, and I'm going to put in my balance, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Any time there's a balance from month to month, if the balance changes a lot, I'm going to investigate. Okay, make sure it wasn't fraud. It's just, yeah, my securities are going up and down. All right. That's fine as long as there's no money going out. Number four, when you get an email from your broker, they'll email you, "Your options are expiring," or, "This is going on. We have a message for you. We need you to log into your account for whatever reason. There's new policies or something or other." Don't click on any links in the email. If your broker sends you an email or a text message or whatever and says, "Hey, we need you to log into your account." Say, "Okay, thank you." Go into your internet browser. Type in the name of your broker, whatever it is, broker.com, etrade.com. Ameritrade.com. Go to their website and log in from there. Do not click a link in an email or a text message or any other communication because scammers and hackers send emails that look like they come from your broker, but they will take you to a fake website that looks like the real website. You're going to try to log in there and they're going to grab your login information. So that's number four. Number five, do not log into your account on public WiFi. Do not use public wireless Internet. So if you're sitting at the airport, if you're at the hotel, don't do it. You can use it for your phone if you want to and check your email or check your whatever messages, Facebook and emails and news or whatever. But do not log in to any accounts that are sensitive. If you have to log into those, use your own cellular data plan if you have to. Number six, obviously, do not share your login information with anybody. Do not share your account number if you don't have to. If you have a mortgage application and they need to know what money you have and what assets you have, write down, okay, I have E-Trade account and two digits of the account number. They don't need to know your account number. Nobody needs to know your account numbers. Even E-Trade doesn't ask you for your account number when you log on. They only ask for part of it. It's like a Social Security number. Do not give out and do not leave it laying around. Shred all of your statements if you get them in the mail. If you don't need them any more, shred them or keep them under lock and key. Keep them safe. Keep the information safe. Number seven, this was a new one to me. Do not give your investment details to sites that help you track sites like Mint or Quicken or Personal Capital. These are basically websites that tell you, "Hey, you can track all of your accounts just on our site. You can track all your bank accounts. You can track all your investment accounts and you can see how you're doing." Well, guess what? If these sites are hacked and they lose your information, your investment, your stockbroker doesn't have to cover the loss because you knowingly gave your login information to a third party and that third party got hacked. So your broker, as far as your broker's concerned, it's their fault. They didn't get hacked and so they don't have to cover the loss. I hope you understand that because a lot of people use these sites, Mint, Quicken, Personal Capital, and there's a whole bunch of other ones. They might make it easy for you to track all your credit cards, all your bank statements, all your investments in one spot. But if they get hacked and your personal information, your login and your password gets stolen and somebody uses that to log into your investment accounts and take money out, your broker is not liable and is not responsible and might not make you whole. Number eight, again, shred all documents if you don't need them. We already said that one. Now unfortunately, things are only going to get worse. If you haven't been hacked yet, you will be hacked because thieves go to where the money is and there is more money sitting in mutual funds, 401ks, HSA plans, and investment account than ever before. It is not as secure as the bank. If you have a checking account or a savings account, it's guaranteed by the government up to a certain amount. If somebody hacks you or the bank goes out of business, your money is protected by the government, not so with your retirement funds. There is no government agency that is going to back you up if there is fraud because it is very expensive to keep these hackers away and to keep refunding customers' money. Only the larger companies, the very big companies, can afford the top-of-the-line security that they need to keep these hackers out. Even then, they still get hacked. E-Trade, big company, right? They just got bought for $31 billion. That's what they were worth. They got hacked easily. So be very, very careful, especially if you use a smaller firm. Check what their fraud prevention is. Some of them say if there's fraud, they'll back you up 100%, like Merrill Lynch. But you have to live up to 85 different requirements, which is insane. The best thing to do is to protect yourself from being hacked in the first place. Like I said, I already gave you eight different things that you can do. Make sure you get that two-factor authorization in place. Make sure you have strong passwords, different different passwords for different accounts. That's the easiest thing you can do. Check your accounts on a regular basis. Make sure there's no money going out, and just be careful. Be mindful of what's going on. I'm going to leave some links in the show notes for more information on this, on what are the things you guys can do to protect yourself. But like I said, if it happens to you, it's a pain in the butt. Because it happened several months ago and I still have no access to my account and I didn't do anything wrong. I don't know how they got my password or my account information. They didn't get my password. I don't know how they got my account information, my account number. Maybe they just guessed it randomly. I don't know. E-Trade couldn't figure that out either. The only thing they could do is give me a new account. Okay. Well, how long before that happens again? I mean I still haven't decided if I'm going to move my funds away from E-Trade because of this. Probably I am. But every other broker is the same thing. They all have similar systems. I wish I could go to Ameritrade, but my Ameritrade was hacked. Luckily, nothing happened there. So yeah, I'm taking a lot more precaution than I was doing before because I mean, imagine you get hacked and your bank says, "Well, hey. We not going to cover you." What? For me, it was $15,000. For other people that could be a lot more or less. It doesn't matter. It's still hard-earned money that we've made. We try. We work hard. We invest. We trade. We do our best. And then the money's just sitting there and it's just gone. They have no idea how to catch these people. They're sitting who knows where. Maybe they're in Russia. Maybe they're in some other country. They're just hacking, hacking, hacking. Nobody can find them. And even if they know where they are or who they are, our government can't do anything. Our government's not going to go after them if they're in some country that's on good terms with the U.S. So there's nothing really we can do about it to stop it, except to protect our accounts a little bit more. I hope that you follow the recommendations laid out in this episode. I hope this episode is a wake-up call. I hope I can grab you by the shoulders and shake you and say, "Look, it happened to me. It can happen to you. It can happen very easily to you." Please be careful please. It's going to happen. It's the same thing with identity theft. It hasn't happened to me, thank God, but it has happened to other people I know. It's a matter of time before somebody hacks into my email or somebody guesses my Social Security and steals a credit card or does something. That's just the nature of the world we live in. The more that we go into electronics and the more we get away from real money, which we don't even use that much any more. Everything is online. Everything is on computers. We're just sitting ducks. That's exactly what your investment account is. It's a sitting duck for hackers and scammers. So put some walls around your duck. Put some safeguards in place. Be as stringent and careful as you can. Hopefully, it doesn't happen to you. I always tell you to trade with the odds in your favor. Well, this time we need to protect yourself. I don't know if we can ever put the odds in our favor in terms of protecting our accounts, but we need to do as much as we can. So with that said, I hope this never happens to you and I hope I get my account back soon. Until then, may the markets be great. Thank you. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/01/14/401-k-retirement-accounts-targeted-online/4453891002/ https://www.checkbook.org/puget-sound-area/identity-theft-protecting-your-investment-and-retirement-accounts/ -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Every single day you get older and older, and this is not something we can stop, but it is something we should be taking advantage of. And that's what I want to talk about in this episode.  It's already 2020. Another decade has come and gone, and it's fun sometimes to sit back and say, "Wow. You know, where'd the last 10 years ago? They go by so fast." Oh, geez. 2010, man. I don't remember everything about 2010. It just seems like the older we get, the less we remember. But 2010, I had to write this down. I had no kids in 2010. Now my oldest is nine, and then we have a seven-year-old and a three-year-old. And I really cannot remember what it was like before them. That's a crazy thing. That was only 10 years ago. But they've changed our life in so many crazy ways that it's unbelievable. 2010 was also the beginning of Option Genius. Option Genius was started in 2009. So it only was about a year old, and I was just getting started with a couple of hundred members, and doing iron condors every day, every month, and just really had no clue. But I mean, we had no clue as to how to grow the business or where it was going to go. At that time, it was just going to be one website, kind of like a lifestyle brand or lifestyle company that I wanted to just use, and earn some extra money, and stay busy. Because I was trading options full-time, making money from it, but wasn't taking very long, and I was getting on my wife's nerves. So she told me very bluntly one day that, hey, you need to go do something otherwise because you're driving me nuts, and that's what she told me. So that was the reason for the birth of Option Genius. And of course, I wanted to help people, so that's awesome too. But really, it was her push that I needed to do something else with my time that led to the creation of Option Genius. Now, at that time, we had one website, one membership. That's all I was going to be. Now we have three memberships. We have two full-scale, very large courses that stand on their own. We have e-books. We have other products that we sell. And I have my Passive Trading book coming out. Still working on that one. Hopefully it'll be out soon. I know I've said that many times, but I'm still working on it. Want to get it just right, but I think maybe I should just get it out before it's going to be another 10 years and I'm still saying the same thing that I'm still working on this book and it's already been two years. Two years that I have been saying that. So I promise to get it out soon. What else? 10 years ago, the U.S. Was just coming out or still in the midst of the great recession. Lending was tight. It was hard to get a mortgage. It was hard to get a loan. It was hard to buy anything on credit. People were scared about what was going to happen to the future. Stock market was kind of ... You know, who knows what it was going to ... Nobody knew. Nobody could tell what was going to happen, and politics was all going nuts. Everybody was fighting, and just a big mess. Now, 10 years later, I take a look at my own self, we have the three kids, changed our lives completely. Financially, we're much stronger. We're much better off in much, much better position than we were 10 years ago. My five fingers are growing. And if you don't know what I'm talking about when I say five fingers, we do have a podcast episode that we did earlier on that covers that. Basically, in a nutshell, it's you got to have five different streams of income that are independent. So if one of your fingers breaks or two of them break at the same time, you still have three that are working and generating income for you while you regrow the other two. My passive trading is doing wonderful. I'm moving more and more towards that. My oil options trading is doing great. I'm very, very happy with those results. Keep learning, keep trying to do new things with that as well. But I keep seeing that the more I try different strategies, the more I try to mix it up or to improve it, it just changes it up. So I got to go back to the basics. Then, the way that we do it is the way that's been working. So even though we tried to improve this ... Okay, can we modify this? Can we change this amount? And we'd do backtesting on it. We find out that the original, the way we're already doing it is what's working the best. So I'm happy about that. My income from investment is growing considerably because the money that I'm getting ... Thank god we have enough to survive. My family, we are not big spenders. That is something that was ... I was very blessed with a wife that knows how to save money and knows how to be prudent with her money. So when she wants to buy something, she can go out and buy it. That's fine. She does. But she's not into name brands. Neither am I. We're trying to get our kids that way. She's not on top of the latest fresh and trends that she has to have a Gucci bag or a Prada bag and everywhere she goes, and she has to have 20 different kinds of bags, and she has to have matching shoes for every outfit and all that stuff. She looks good, but she does it without spending a lot of money. So thank god for me, right? So our expenses are lower than what they would normally be for a family of five. So the money that is saved then goes into other investments. So we've started to invest in other people in terms of people who are starting companies that people that we know or people that have cause that we would like to see. So we're investing in those types of businesses, and the returns have been good from that as well, and that's growing and growing. It's really interesting because the growth or the changes of my mentality over the years is something that I haven't really talked about. But when I started, it was all about I have to make enough money to pay the bills. Pretty much desperation. Now, my wife was at the time was working two jobs, so she was making enough to cover the bills. But being the man of the house, your masculinity is at risk when you're not bringing home the bacon. Now, I know that is changing now and there are a lot of guys who are stay-at-home dads, and that's wonderful. But in my household, my wife didn't want to work. She wanted me to do the job. She wanted me to make the money, and she wanted to not have to work two jobs. So it was on me to, hey, at least pitch in, at least they have the bills. I wasn't paying anything because I was laid off, and I was losing money, in fact, from my trading. So that was my first goal to, hey, start making some money, help around with the household expenses. And then eventually it got to the point where I was able to pay for all the expenses. Then, she quit one job. Then, later on she quit another one. Then we had the funds for her to actually go and start her own business, which is doing very well. So that was a good succession, and she was happy with that. Thank god. So my thinking shifted, right? So it went from first off to being in a mode of desperation, being in a mode of, okay, I need to pay complete attention to this, I'm going to do this nonstop 40 hours or more a week because I need to pay the bills doing this, and so I was on top of my trades. I was learning new strategies. I was backtesting. I was staying on top of the markets religiously. And then eventually, slowly, slowly, slowly, I got the confidence to know what I was doing to get better at my trades, to pick the strategies that worked for me and to really hone in on those strategies and to get better and better and better to the point where then I was comfortable again. I got to the point where, yes, okay, I have a certain amount of money coming in. I am pretty confident that that money's going to continue, and so now I can take my foot off the gas and I can kind of relax a little bit. That's when I got to the point where, okay, I'm chilling. I got money coming in. It comes in, and I spending a little bit of time on them. Still am working and staying on top of the markets but not like I was before because now I have a cushion. Now I have enough of a larger enough trading account where I can be relaxed. And even if I go a month and I lose, I still have the money where I can still generate income from it, and still take out the money, and still be okay. So the stress level, completely different stress level. Completely different mental game at that point. Now it was how could I maximize what I have instead of oh my god, oh my god, if I don't make money I'm going to not eat or whatever, whatever the case is. You don't have to borrow money from my father-in-law to pay the rent or something like that. So that was a complete shift. Mental, emotional, confidence-wise, I was a different person from being a failure at trading to now being actually living the life that I had always dreamed of living. Then, that's when my wife pushed me to start Option Genius. Then I got into ... Basically, I saw myself as a new role. I saw myself as a new person where I was like, "Anybody can do this stuff. Just go ahead and do it. Just learn it like I did." But I found that people needed a lot more handholding, for whatever reason they didn't believe it, or they didn't have the time, or they didn't have the resources to put the time in to learn it. So I think that Option Genius has helped thousands and thousands of people over the years because we've gotten all the emails, we got the testimonials, we have videos of people thanking us, and it's been really a blessing to me. I know I've been trying to help other people through it, but it does provide income and it does provide me with a satisfaction that I'm actually making the world a better place. Because when you're just sitting there selling options, it's great. It's great money. And I feel good that I can make money and I can provide for my family. But I'm not really helping the world very much. I'm not really changing the world. I'm not out there helping little old ladies cross the street or something that would really charge your soul. Yeah, you can take the money and you can go out and help people. You can feed the homeless. You can adopt a child or something. But if you're only in front of the screen and you're just sending out checks, you don't have that same feeling of actually going out and doing it. So by selling options, it's not like you're a public defender. If you're a lawyer, you go to law school and then you actually go and you try to help people that are innocent and you try to get them off. That is you're using your skills to make the world a better place. I didn't feel I was doing that by being a trader. If I didn't sell these options, maybe somebody else would, or maybe it wouldn't even be necessary. But I found something where I can actually go and take income from it. Okay, it didn't help make the world a better place, but it hit and served my needs. So that was great. But now I was getting bored. I got to the point where like this is fun, but now I'm bored. So my wife told me, "Go get a business. Go start your own business. Go help other people," so I did that. So that, it's been a complete blessing. So that was a new phase of my life. So first we had desperation phase. Then we had confident trader by myself phase. Then we had, okay, now we have a company where we're actually have people working for me and we have people that we're helping as members and students, and people asking questions, and me be able to respond and share my knowledge, and not really being a leader in a sense but being more like a teacher or an educator. And that really has helped me feel good about myself in that role. But as time went by, that was great. That was a great aspect. But in terms of my trading, I realized that I don't want to be spending even the time that I am spending on my trades. I mean, you can be doing iron condors. You could be doing butterflies, and calendars, and these type of strategies, and you can dive into the weeklies and you can generate very, very good returns. Whenever we do a butterfly spread, my target is 20% return on that trade. Iron condors, we're looking around 12%. Weeklies, we're looking for 5% a week. That's a lot of money if you can do it over, and over, and over again, which is what we try to do. So that requires a certain amount of time where you're staying on top of it. Now, my ultimate goal in life is not to be a trader, if that makes sense. I'm using trading as a vehicle to get me from point A to point B. But when I get to point B, I might not need the vehicle anymore. I will probably always trade, but I'm not going to be trading for a living anymore. I'm not going to be saying, "Okay, I need $12,000 a month to pay all my expenses. That's how much money at least I need to be making from my trading account." I won't be there. I'll be having my five different, at least five different, streams of income, and I won't have to worry about if I don't trade this month, how am I going to pay the bills. That's where I want to get to. That's where I'm moving towards. So how can I get to that point where I can pay my bills or increase my accounts without having to spend so much time monitoring the markets and looking at what's going on? So that is what I've been working on for the last couple of years. So okay, I know option trading can get me there to the point where maybe I'm just spending three, four hours a month, maybe five hours a month maximum and I'm still earning really, really good returns that's better than anybody else can get or any other investment. But I don't want to be spending 10, 15 hours a week. Does that make sense? So I got to the point where I have money coming in. I want to go out and actually do good with that. I want to get to the point where I'm the one feeding the homeless person, not just writing a check for them. I want to write the check, too, but I want to be able to go out there and actually feed the homeless person, and shake that person's hand, and talk to them, and see if we can help them or whatever. There's just an example. Whatever the issue is. But I want to be the one that can actually go out into the world and make a better place. And if we build a school, I want to be able to go and visit the school and be involved in the process of picking the location and seeing the kids go there. I don't want to be a teacher or anything, but I would like to be able to go and visit it from time to time, even if it's in another country somewhere off in the mountains or something like that. So that is the ultimate what I want to get to. So when I start my foundation, and I've been talking about this for a while, I'm still in the process, my goal is to be able to work on the foundation and be able to help in certain areas that I would like to participate in. So in order to do that, you have to study. You have to research. You have to talk to people. So I believe that I'll be able to get access to certain conferences. Or if you call up the university and you say, "Hey, I want to talk to so-and-so professor about something," if you just say, "I'm Joe Schmoe," they probably won't put you through. But if you say, "Hey, I'm calling from XYZ foundation, they'll be like, "Oh, okay. It's a donor. Get that guy, get the professor on the phone." So that's the whole point. That's why I came up with Passive Trading. That was the whole idea behind it, whereas we want to have something that is stable, reliable source of consistent monthly income. Another aspect that has bothered me for years after the great recession and the financial debacle was that there were a lot of people at that time that were trading iron condors and certain strategies. Then after or during the recession and afterwards, the iron condor, the way everybody was doing it, just didn't work anymore, and so people were lost. People kept doing what they knew without changing. They didn't realize that the market had changed. They saw that, hey, before I used to put on an iron condor and I would only have to adjust it maybe 6 or 7 times out of 12. Now I'm putting on my iron condors and I'm adjusting it 10 times out of 12. They noticed that part, but they didn't realize the reason why and that the market had changed and so they needed to change their strategies along with it. So that bothered me. It's like, "Okay, these people ... " And I was doing the same thing. I had all my money tied up in options, and I was selling options. But the point is if you have a large move in the market, and, let's say, you're using 70% of your account, if you're doing iron condors, or spreads, or whatever it is, if you're only trading in options, if you're only doing options, and there's a large move that catches you off guard and it goes against you, there's a good chance that you can lose 70% of your account or whatever percentage you have in your trades. You could lose all of that. Even if the market comes back, once it's gone, once that trade is over, once it expires, or once you get out, it's gone. That money's gone. It's very hard to recover from. Now, this is unlike stocks, right? Where if you buy a stock at $100 and it drops to $50, yes, you've lost money, but you can still hold onto that stupid thing until it comes all the way back up to a hundred hopefully. Does that make sense? So with the stock, you actually have something that doesn't expire. With the option, we're selling them because they do expire. But my point here is that the stocks can act as a foundation for your option trading portfolio. So if there is a drop in the market and your option trades do lose, you still have your foundation. What I found out was that when the markets dropped, a lot of option sellers would lose all their money and they'd be blow up their accounts because they didn't have a foundation. They didn't have a way to bounce back. They didn't have any rock solid thing on the bottom that was still there that they could build off of. So part of our Passive Trading Formula, and that was part of the thing that I came up with first, say, "Okay, if I'm going to be a trader, I have to be able to withstand all the ups and downs." Because the great recession was they say once in a lifetime. I don't know. I don't know if the stock market is going to drop another 50%, or 60%, or 70%. It could. And if that happens in one day, or one week, or whatever, a lot of my option trades are going to lose money because that's unexpected and is huge. So how would I recover from that if that did happen? That's the biggest thing that a lot of options sellers don't think about. Well, in this particular situation with the great recession, stocks stopped like 50% or more, but then eventually they'd recover, and it took ... Some stocks recovered within three years, five years. Some took 10 years. But they did recover, most of them. And in the meantime while they were recovering, option sellers were able to rent them out and sell covered calls on them and naked puts on them. So the people that had that foundation, number one, they didn't freaked out as much. Yeah, they lost money and it sucked, but they were able to build it back. And number two, which is even more important, they didn't blow up. They didn't lose everything. So as the next 10 years go by for you ... I mean, it'd be a good experience to just sit down and say, "Hey, where was my life 10 years ago? What were my goals back then? What was I thinking back then? And then where am I now?" So take a just like I did earlier in the episode where I sat down and said, "Okay, I didn't have kids, and this and that. This was happening. That's happening. Now where am I now?" And it's like I can't believe how much has changed in 10 years. I'm sure in your life it's probably the same thing. Hopefully it is because there's ... Tony Robbins has said it and other people have said it before him that we as individuals, we overestimate what we can do in one year, like, "Oh, yeah. In one year I want to be a billionaire." But we underestimate how much we can do in 10 years. Because if you take small actions every time over and over, and those small actions, they compound on each other, and they grow, and they grow, and they grow, and the results are crazy. So I would like you to take a few minutes if you haven't done it already ... Maybe you did it for New Year's as an activity or whatnot. But think about where you were 10 years ago. What were your dreams? What were your goals? What were you working towards? What situation were you in? Look at them now. If things have not changed, then we need to take more action. We need to set better goals, more realistic, reliable goals. If you haven't done any goals at all, you don't know where you're going, you're going to be lost. You have to have something. You have to have some direction, right? You have to have some desire of what you want, and then you have to take action to get there. So if you haven't had any changes in the last 10 years, something is very, very wrong in that situation. Maybe you and I need to talk. Maybe I can talk some sense into you. And I would love to help you, okay? If you're like most people and you had some growth, some things have changed ... And I'm not saying all of them are going to be positive. In the last 10 years, my wife and I, our family, has had two very major, major losses that I didn't talk about until now. My wife's best friend and our best friends, really, they both passed in a very violent, traumatic way. It was a murder-suicide. And that still haunts me and my wife because we were so close and we didn't see it. It happened, and it affected us in such a major way that it kind of derailed us for a couple of years. Then just recently, my wife's father having been shot and killed at his job. So you're going to have the good and the bad. That's just part of it. People are going to pass. Businesses are going to fail. People are going to get laid off. Kinds of things are going to happen. Divorces will happen. Life happens. But take a look at where you were 10 years from now. Take a look at where you are now. Then, think about where you want to be in the future 10 years from now. Making goals just one year out, that's great, but you can do a lot more in 10 years than you can in one year. And I don't even think 10 years ago I would not have even imagined the kind of success and the life that we're having now as we 10 years ago. It would've been like, "Yeah, maybe 20 or 30 years from I'll have some kids and I'll be able to do this and live like this." Well, no. That happened in the last 10 years. So the dreams that you have, they can be accomplished in 10 years. I think that trading options, passive trading is an amazing, amazing way to help you to achieve your goals. This is what I want for you, and this is what your assignment would be for this episode. Look back 10 years, look at now, and then look at 10 years in the future. Where do you want to be 10 years from now? And how are you going to get there? Then, what actions are you going to take to get there? Because if you don't do anything different than you're doing now, then life will just meander. You'll just go along that dah, dah, dah. The time is going to pass. The years will pass, and you will be looking at 2030, right? 2030's going to come whether you change anything or not. But if you want things different in your life, if you want certain things in your life, then we have to take the right actions to get there. So that's it. That's the episode. That is the homework assignment. And if you want to take it one step further, I would say email me your goals for the next 10 years. Help@optiongenius.com is the email address, help@optiongenius.com. Send me your goals. I'm not going to share them with anybody. I'm just going to keep them. If I can help you accomplish them, that would be great. If you need any from me, let us know. We're here for you. And who knows, maybe we can even accomplish some of our goals together. Maybe if something of yours aligns with mine, maybe we can do it together. Who knows. But that's it. That's your homework assignment. And may the next 10 years bring you all of your dreams. Remember, trade with the odds in your favor. Take care. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.   -- We're going to talk about something that is downright scary. FEAR Has the fear of losing money stopped you from trading or made you trade in a way that led to losses? If yes, you are not alone. Fear is the one thing that stops humanity from achieving our highest potential. And everybody has fear. Every trader is afraid of losing money on every single trade. On this episode, I share an exercise that I have used in the past to help traders get over their fear of loss. It takes just a few minutes and it can help you overcome your fears and get you back in the game. https://optiongenius.com https://passivetrading.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- What would a good yearly return be for you? What would you be happy with? 10%? 15%? 25%? Our goal at OptionGenius is to make 10% a month. We don't always get there and we sometimes lose money but even if we average 5% a month, that is a great year. Well in 2019, I made 168% and in this episode I want to share how I did it and how you can do it too, and why I think that 2020 will be just as good a year as 2019 if not better. https://optiongenius.com/oiloptions -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- This episode is called, The Tale of Two Traders because, well, this week I was able to talk to two different students that are in our Passive Trading Formula course. And they both had opposite stories and they both had opposite results. And I want to talk to you about their results and how you can avoid the one and get the other one and why there was a difference, even though both of them were very smart, both of them had similar experiences and they were similar demographics, everything was very similar. I mean these two traders, both of them had some experience with options before they jumped into the passive trading formula course. They were both motivated and excited and they watched our training about it and they decided, "Yeah, this is something I want to do." So they took the plunge, they got in. One of them, we call him trader A, he was excited and then he emailed saying, "Hey, I'm having some trouble." And so I got on the phone with him and basically he was... What's the right word? Maybe discouraged or disillusioned, maybe that's the word. Because basically his major complaint was... He hadn't done anything, and his complaint was that the course only had eight modules and a group. And that's not enough to actually teach somebody how to trade or not. You need a lot more information, you need a lot more content than that. You need a lot more. And he rattled off some things that he wanted to know exactly what I was doing and that's what he was promised. And it's true when I explain the course and what's offered in the course, I tell people that this is what I do on a day to day basis. And I guess that wasn't enough for him. The other trader, we call him trader B is in the same course. He's been in the course for about a year now. And so he contacted and I wanted to talk to him and he has, I mean he's ecstatic. He's jumping up and down pretty much. I could hear the excitement in his voice. He has made over $114,000 this past year from what he learned in the course. So trader A, trader B, same course, same information, one guy decided, "Oh, this is nothing is not worth it." The other guy decided that, "Oh, I'm going to use this." and he made over $100,000 or $115,000. That is nothing to scoff at that. That is nothing to be like, "Yeah, well maybe it's tip money." No, it's not tip money. It's a full time income. And he didn't even spend full time doing it, right? He spent a few minutes a day looking at his trades. He did a bunch of trades, but it didn't take that long as a full time job or even a part time job. I mean, I don't understand what other part time job you can get that'll pay you $115,000 a year without any stress. Really, not that much. Trading has some stress, but not really as much as I'm full time job with customers yelling at you and a boss and all that stuff and getting to work on time... No, none of that stuff. You work in your pj's, that's fine with me. I like that. In fact, I'm wearing pajamas right now in the office. Actually, they're not pajamas, but my wife calls them pajamas. They're kind of like sweats but they're like 15 years old. So that's my uniform, that's what I wear to work. And I know some of you are jealous of that because you have to dress up in a suit and tie and shave every morning and all that stuff. And don't hate me because I'm lucky or don't hate me because I found passive trading. You guys have found it too, now you guys can get on board as well. But my point is that you have two people and I asked them the similar questions. I said, "Tell me about yourself. Tell me about your background. Tell me about what you know, how much money are you playing with? How much do you have to invest? What's your knowledge? How long you've been doing this, playing the trading, the markets and options and all that?" And they were very, very, very similar. They lived in the same part of the country, they had the same amount of money to work with. They even worked in similar jobs. I mean it was crazy. One had two kids, one had one kid, but they were both older kids, so they didn't have to worry about them. Very, very similar demographics, very similar people. But the mentality was different. And there are three reasons and there are three things I need you to write down if you have a pen and paper or just remember these three if you're driving or exercising or whatnot. But the first thing that I think made the huge difference between the two of these guys is one of them took action and the other did not. And I think that comes down to it, that's it. If you do not take action, you are not going to get any results. $115,000 a year, great results. What did he do? Well, he went through the course and he did it step by step like I tell them to do in the course. I'd like [inaudible 00:05:39] them to do all the modules and do the homework assignments, put on some trades and then pick a strategy out of the many strategies that we talked about in the course. Pick one of the strategies that works best for your situation right now. And we even tell them how to pick the best one for their situation. And so once he did that, he went through the different courses, he asked questions while he was going through and he said, "You know what, I like this strategy. I'm going to pick it." And he did it and he's followed it the way it's described in the course. He didn't add his own rules, he didn't change anything. He didn't add his own information or his own knowledge. He just went by, he said, "Look, Alan said this is going to work. That's what I'm going to do." So that's what he did. And the results speak for themselves. I don't know what else to say it or how to say it. You have trader A, his complaint was there are only eight modules and a group. Yeah, but I asked him, "How much of the eight modules did you implement?" And he says, "None of it." Well then it doesn't matter if there's eight modules or if there's one module or two modules or a hundred modules. If you don't go through the information, if you don't use the information that's already there, then what's the whole point? Right? The whole idea is to keep it simple. How do you make something passive that doesn't take a lot of time? Well, if you're going to have 50,000 rules to it is not going to be simple and it's not going to be passive. That's why I wanted to break it down as much as possible and say have his few steps so that you really can't screw it up, right? I mean that's the point. We want to live our lives. We don't want to be stuck in front of a computer. And so I didn't get it. I mean the modules themselves, I mean I had another person point this out to me, he goes, "The modules are two or three hours each." So I mean, eight modules times even two hours is 16 hours, that's a lot of time, okay. That's a lot of material right there. I mean, I realize, "Okay, wait, this year we're going to have to go in and we're going to have to cut that up. We're going to have to streamline that stuff because even that is just way too much." We want to make it as simple as easy as possible and say, "Hey, this is why we do it. This is what we do. This is how he follows directions, step-by-step, boom, boom, boom, boom. These are results you're supposed to get." And that's the way it's supposed to be. But unfortunately this fellow, it's like, "Oh no, only eight modules. I want a lot more." Well, no, you don't need a lot more. Number one, you shouldn't get more because that's going to give you even more reason to not do anything, right? I mean, if you want to find an excuse, you're going to find an excuse. Obviously this guy's excuse was not enough information. Now on the other hand, if there was too much information, then you'd find an excuse there. So I'm like, "What is the answer" I asked him "What is the right amount of information that you want?" And he didn't have an answer because he doesn't know. He's just looking for excuses of why he shouldn't do it. So he can chalk it up and say, "Oh no, this system didn't work." Well you didn't try it. You didn't do it. So how do you know? Obviously it works because I got the guy I talked to right after him, making over a hundred grand. So where's the problem? It's working for me, it's working for everybody else, it's working for other students in the class, we have so many other testimonials. So maybe the problem is not the material, make sense? I think so. So that's number one, action, when you don't take action. Number two, you got to have some belief. Obviously trader number one, A did not have the belief for whatever reason, trader B had the belief, but I think that part of the reason that trader B had the belief is that he went through the course. He went through all the modules, he heard me talk, he heard the examples, he saw them, he worked through them, he did the homework. When you do the homework, you actually have to put on a trade and walk it through and see how it does. I mean, you could not believe anything I say about anything, about selling options, or even if there's something called options. You can totally not believe me at all, but when you actually have to sit down in front of your screen, go to your software for your broker, put on a trade while you sell a option, and then watch it day, by day, by day and see what happens, you realize that, "Oh, maybe Alan knows what he's talking about. Maybe this stuff does work." Because the [inaudible 00:09:30] I can't make that stuff up, that happens, it's real. The problem is you don't know how to use it yet. That's why you haven't had the success yet, but the belief comes by integrating yourself into this. The belief comes by listening to these podcasts episodes where I'm talking about it and hopefully I'm pounding you over the head every month or every episode, that hey, "You need to sell options, you need to sell options. This stuff works, this stuff works. We got lots of success stories. We've got lots of examples, just look at our track records." In 2019 one of our other strategies where we sell oil options made this, made a whopping 168% return in a year, in 2019, 168% return just by selling options. Some people say, "Oh yeah, selling options you're making nickels." No, you're not it's 168% for one system, following the passive trading formula course this guy made $115,000, this is not nickles we're talking about. This is some serious money, right? So you have to have action, number one. You have to have belief, but even if you don't have the belief, you can get the belief, right? I can force you to get the belief, if you do the work, if you take the action, if you just do what it steps in the steps, follow one by one. Look at the module, look at the examples, put on a trade, ask questions. That's why we have the group. We have a group so you can ask questions. You can say, "Oh, I'm trying to do this trade." And we've had people do that. They take a screenshot of a trade and say, "I don't understand this." And we point out, "Oh, look this was wrong, this was wrong, this is wrong. You do it this way, it'll work out." And then they look at it, they say, "Oh..." Light bulb goes off. "Yes, I misunderstood it. Thank you." And then they do it right and then they see and then they get ecstatic and they're like, "Whoa, I did this." This has happened to one of our students right now, I forgot his name, he actually posted not too long ago, he was doing credit spreads and he did it wrong and so we helped him out. So he fixed it and then a month later he reports, "Oh Hey, I made my first two positive trades." Awesome, that's the whole thing. That's why we're here. That's what I love to see. I love to see people getting it, having a click, having them be like, "Success. Yes." Because if you can do it once, you can do it twice, you can do it a hundred times, but you got to take that step. You've got to go in first, right? The third thing you need is the desire. This is your why. This is why it has to happen now. Obviously trader A, I asked him, "Why are you trading options?" "Oh, I want to make more money and I want to retire early, and I need to pay off some debts, and it would be nice to have extra money to go on vacations, and this and that." Okay, cool, but obviously the desire was not strong enough for him to take action. It's kind of like the story about burning your boats. I don't even know if this is true story, I've heard that it is true, I heard it isn't true but there was one group that was attacking another group and I think it was the Romans or the Greeks, I don't remember. But they took their boats, they landed on the beach and then at night they burned all the boats and the next morning they were going to go fight. And obviously if you burn all your boats you can't go home. So if you want to live you're going to have to fight really well because you either conquer or you die, you ain't running home. There's no retreat. And sometimes that's the way it has to be in life. And your desire, your why, your reason being, your reason why you want to trade, your reason why it has to work, it has to succeed, that has to be so burning, burning, burning inside you that there's no other options, there's no other alternatives. And if it is, then you will find a way. And I think that whether you believe in this or not, I think the universe contrives to find a way for you once you put it out there, once you think about it, those brainwaves go out into the ether, go out into the universe or whatever and the answers come to you. They're attracted to you. I've seen it in my life a million times. You can call it whatever you want. You can call it the secret. You can call it the law of attraction. You can call it miracles. You can call it faith. You can call it a religion, God, whatever you want to call it. But I've seen it happen over and over and over and over again in my life and many other people's life. You might've seen it too. If you want to test it, then have that burning desire. You got to have it. You got to burn. It has to burn inside. It has to hurt so much that you want this particular thing that you will not make any excuses, you will not falter, right? Trader A did not have that. He couldn't even take the first step, in his mind it was, "This is not going to work." Instead of, "I have what I need, it has worked for other people. Therefore it can work for me because there's nothing wrong with me, right?" And there's nothing wrong with you. If you can understand what we talk about in the training that gets you into the course, then you can understand the course and it doesn't matter how newbie you are to options. Maybe you've never traded options before. This course was made with you in mind, right? It's not for somebody who was already making a living trading options. It's for the person who's getting started or who's not successful at it, and that's who this guy was. He was trying to trade, he knew some of the stuff, but he wasn't successful at it, so that's why we break it down step by step. This is how you do it. This is back to basics. This is how you become successful. Because what he needed was belief. What he needed was some confidence in himself, but he just couldn't get around to it because he hadn't put on consistently winning trades and he wasn't willing do the work, which boggles my mind. You tell me that, "Hey, I want to succeed." You tell me, "Hey, I'll do whatever it takes to succeed. I'm going to put up money to join a course." But then you make excuses and you don't put up the time. Now, I got to admit, I've done that in the past, right? I've taken courses, I've been like, "Oh wow, this is great. I want to do this." And then life gets in the way. In this case, it wasn't a factor of life getting in the way. It was just a factor of this guy did not have the three things that you needed. He didn't even take any action. He didn't have any beliefs, he didn't believe in it. And he had lackluster desire, right? If you don't have a full desire, if you don't have belief, but you have action, you can still succeed. If you take a little bit of action because of your desire and you still don't believe you can still succeed. Or if you have belief and desire but no action, you're not going to succeed. So out of those three, action, belief and desire, you got to have at least action. If you have all three of them, then your super power, you're going to be making money in no time, you're going to succeed no matter what. That's all it boils down to. And so that's the purpose of this particular episode. And if you want to know how the trader B succeeded, well then you can join us in the passive trading formula course. You can go through exactly every module that he went through, every homework assignment that he did, and then we'll be happy to introduce you to him in the course. Because he's in the Facebook group, he's in the group, he's in the community, he's answering questions, he's helping people, right? So it's all about action, belief and desire. And we've talked about these three things before, but it was just insane how closely related these two guys are. How close they are to each other. And you have one taking action and one just not. And the difference is astronomical, right? Because if you can make 100,000 in a year, you can do a lot more than that. And every year you can compound it and grow it and grow it and grow it. And then what? The sky's the limit. But if you don't take any action and you start blaming other people for your lack of action, then you're going to be the same. Actually, you're not going to be the same. You're going to be even more skeptical than when you were started. So if you want something in your life, I tell my kids this, "You want something, you got to go and get it. You can't just sit around and wait for it to come to you. You got to do the work. You got to hustle." My son, he's nine years old... My God, my oldest, he wants to be a great baseball player, on this season he wasn't. This last season, he went up to a new league where the kids are pitching, before he was on the machine, they had a machine that was pitching. Now he went to where the kids are pitching. And using the machine he was a great hitter. He would hit almost every single time. But now with the machine, he couldn't hit at all. The whole season I think he had three hits, which was very discouraging for him because he's used to hitting the ball. He's used to getting on base. And so what do we talk about? We talk about, "Well son, you want to get better, you need to get better, you need to practice, you need to hit and we need to catch, and we need to run, we need to increase your stamina and we want to do the whole thing." And so this morning when I left for work, he was running up and down the stairs at home, doing sit ups, doing pushups, doing some exercises, some strength building exercises that his coach gave him because for next season he wants to kick butt. And that's exactly the kind of mentality that we have to have. So find inside what's your desire is, find your reason, find your why, and then take some action. And while you're taking action, because you're not going to be good right away, you're not going to be an expert at this stuff right away. It took me over, I don't know how long I've been doing this for, I think 15 years now I've been doing this and I still wouldn't say that I'm the best in the whole world. I got to the level where I'm comfortable and I'm financially okay. This is where I want to be. And so yeah, I do get better every year a little bit. I learned new things, I've seen more nuances, but it was the desire that got there, right? And it takes years and it takes time. You don't have to be the best right away. That's why passive training the way we've designed it is you could be wrong a lot and you could be wrong, a lot of your trades, but you're still going to be positive in your profit and loss statement. And so the first step is just to take the first step and to get involved and do it. And put on trades, watch them work out. And that's how you develop belief. If you see a trade and it works, you see another one, and another one, and another one, and it works, and works, and works, [inaudible 00:18:45], one day you're going to be like, "Oh my God, this stuff is actually working. What do you know?" Right? And then you'll have the belief. So I'm not even worried about, if you don't believe me, as long as you do the work, you'll get there. Even if you don't have a desire, if you just want to be a rich fat slob, that's fine. If that's what you want, that's what you want. Okay, I'm not going to judge you, right? Eventually, hopefully you'll come around and you'll want to take that money and help people make the world a better place instead of being selfish. But hey, that's up to you. I can't tell you what to do with your money. So even if you don't have that burning desire and you don't have the belief, as long as you take action, you'll succeed. And so with that, I will let you go and hopefully I have convinced you to take action, if nothing else. You know what you got to do. Pretty much, you already know what you have to do. And if you don't, you can email us and we'll point you in the right direction. Tell us what you want, tell us what you need, tell us where you are in your life, we'll hopefully be able to point you in the right direction. Trading might not be for you, it might be something else. But if it is, and if we think that trading can help you, then we'll let you know. That's the only thing I can do. All right folks, have a wonderful rest of your day and we'll talk soon, take care. https://optiongenius.com https://passivetrading.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book!   Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Selling options on the day of expiration is all the rage right now. In many online forums and groups there are traders who are bragging about how they are making great trades and profits by selling options that have very little time left to expiration. Is this something that you should consider? Isn't it risky to sell so close to expiration? When you sell close to expiration, time decay works very quickly. But most of the value of the option has already been lost. But you can still earn a good percentage especially since you will only be in the trade for a few hours. Check out the episode to see what strategy works best for 0 DTE trades and if the risk/reward is something you should be looking into. For more info on selling options visit https://optiongenius.com To learn how I trade weekly options and make 5% per week: https://weeklytradingsystem.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Which is the better way to live: to plan every detail or to let the Universe look out for us? And which of those makes for a better trader? "If you want to make God laugh, make plans." We cannot control the stock market. We cannot control individual stocks, or their reactions to news. So what can we control as traders? And should we? That is the question we tackle in this episode. How to be able to flow with the market but still protect ourselves from volatility and excessive fluctuations. Books mentioned: The Surrender Experiment Where The Magic Happens Links: https://optiongenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- In this episode we review what impacted the stocks markets in 2019 and what we see coming in 2020. Now keep in mind that these are just my interpretation of things to come. I might be right, I might be wrong. That is not the point. The point is to hone in on trends. If you can spot a trend coming before anyone else, you can make a lot of money. Or even if you spot it in enough time to ride it, you can still make a lot of money. And as they say in trading, the trend is your friend. So the trends will probably continue. So if we can identify these trends, especially if they are long term, if they have been occurring in the past and they're going to continue to occurring. Then those are things that we can actually benefit from in a financial sense. The 2020 Predictions have to do with: Volatility How The Markets React To The Election The Automotive Industry Technology Medicine Why Recycling Will Be Stopped Border Changes https://optiongenius.com/ Link to 2019 Predictions: https://optiongenius.com/podcast/38-2019-predictions/ -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Happy Halloween or happy belated Halloween depending on when you listen to this. For me, actually it is the day after Halloween, and I was lucky enough to take my three kiddos out last night for trick or treating. Normally the wife does it, but she was sick and so it fell to me. Okay, no problem. We had fun. We spent about an hour and a half going around. We've been living in the same house now for about 10 or 11 years. With my oldest turning nine in a couple of weeks, that means that we've probably been trick or treating about seven times I think. We would probably missed a couple of times but we've been about seven times trick or treating since we've been in this house, but we have never tricker treated in our own neighborhood. It sounds kind of weird, right? Normally you would stay where you are, but I don't know. Our subdivision is never very decorated for Halloween. I mean they go all out for other holidays, but Halloween it's just not a lot of decorated or lights or anything. I never thought that we would get much candy. You know? If you know about Halloween, or if you have little ones, or grandkids or whatever, you know that the amount of candy you get determines if the night was a success or not. Right? They don't care if it's cold. They don't care if it is windy like it was last night. All they care about is how many things they get in their little pumpkin. You know? Last year my wife and her friends, they took all the kids to the quote unquote rich neighborhood. You know, the one with the million dollar houses thinking that, okay, if they're rich, they're going to have more candy. They'll be more generous. Yes the kids did get a couple of the King size candy bars from a couple houses. Mostly it was the same. Everybody's giving the same little mini size stuff. Overall, at the end of the night, they ended up with less candy than they expected. They didn't think about it, but it ended up that the reason was that these million dollar houses are so large, and they sit on so much property that it takes forever to walk with these little tiny legs, these five, six year olds to go from one house to the other house. You end up hitting a lot fewer homes. You're not knocking on as many doors when you have such big houses, even though you might get a little bit more candy from each one. Oh boy. Well last night I think it was in the lower forties, no sorry, upper forties in temperature. It was very windy. With my wife being sick, it fell onto me. I mean I didn't want to be out for a long time. I just wanted to get this over with. So we stayed in our own area. We stayed in her own little subdivision, and I was pleasantly surprised. We weren't even done with our own block when my kids, pumpkin started filling up. I mean that's how much people were handing out. Being the resourceful dad that I am, I saw that there was a newspaper on the sidewalk. In our neighborhood we get these free newspapers. Nobody really buys the newspaper anymore, but there's this free newspaper that they come every week and they throw on the ground. I took the papers out, put them back on the ground, and I took the bag, the newspaper bag that it comes in. I started taking the candies, the excess candies from the pumpkin's and filling that up so that their pumpkin's would be empty again. It just kept filling up over and over again, and eventually we had to stop at a neighbor's house. We had to ask him, "Hey, do you have anything we can hold all this candy in?" They gave us those plastic shopping bags that you get when you go to the groceries or whatever to haul all the treasure. We actually filled up one bag with everything, and then it was so full, we had to actually double bag it, even triple bag I think. It was literally 30 to 40 pounds of candy that I was lugging around. My kids are bouncing up and down, and I'm holding my three year old's hand, and I've got the 40 pounds of candy I'm cradling in the other hand because I didn't want the straps to break. That's how we were going from house to house to house. By the time we were done we had enough candy to declare that this Halloween was the best ever. Not because it was with dad and I was more fun. It was just because there was so much candy. My God, it was the most candy in the shortest amount of time from people that we already knew. That might've been part of it. Since we didn't know the kids, they might've given them a little bit extra. Who knows? Why am I sharing this sweet story with you? Well, you know me, I always have a motive, right? We always have to tie it back into trading. We take life and then we bring it back. When it comes to trading, people are always thinking that the candy will be better in another neighborhood, that their own neighborhood is not good enough for some reason and they got to go to another neighborhood where it costs money, or there's an admission fee to get in. Right? Now, countless times over and over again, traders have told me that they're doing well with one approach, but they want more so they're going to switch to something else. I just got an email today. The fellow said, "Hey, you know, I've been using this particular strategy and I'm up about 25%. I've learned from my dad how to do this, and he doesn't know very much, but I'm looking to do something else." My question always is, why? You know? Why stop what is already working? That makes no sense to me. I mean, you can always add to it, right? I mean if you're doing something that works you keep doing it, but you can add to it slowly. Before you do that, make sure that you are extracting every single Kit Kat out of what you're already doing. Test it. Tweak it. Maximize your gains because the big thing here is that you already know it works. Right? It already works. You already know how to do it. I mean, sure other neighborhoods look enticing, but it could be a trap, or maybe even an old folks home where you don't get nothing. Just a bunch of scary people looking at you. Right? I've said this before, you only need one strategy to make a lot of money, and if you've already found something that works, stop buying courses, stop watching videos, and going to seminars. Celebrate that win because that is rare. Celebrate it, and improve the results. Now, if you don't have a strategy that works, you can check out our website at optiongenius.com, and we'll share some of ours with you. Okay? If you already have something that works, and many of you do, just keep tweaking it and improving it. If you need coaching to help you with that, then we can help you with that as well. Okay? I still have a couple slots open for my coaching program where we do one on one coaching with people. If you already have something that might be perfect because you're already making money. You can take some of that money, invest in coaching and maybe double, triple whatever your gains are because there might be something that you don't know, or there's another way to protect yourself. Same program, same strategy, same concept, but now it's done in a more professional way where you're protecting yourself. That would be the way I would suggest to go. I know you get emails every day from all these gurus saying, "Hey, I have this amazing course, and I have this amazing thing that never fails, and it always works. It makes 1000000% every year. Look at this stock, I made a 100%. Look at this stock, I made 20%. Look at this stock, I made 50%." I know they have very good, enticing copy, very good sales letters, and it makes you think that, "Oh my God, this is the Holy Grail. What I'm doing is peanuts compared to what this guy is going to teach me." You never know, most of that stuff is marketing hype, and gimmicks, and it doesn't work. Okay? I mean, that's just the plain, simple truth of it. Unless they can show you, unless they're actually doing it themselves day in, day out, don't fall for it. That's like going to trick or treat at the old folks home. They can't have any candy because they can't eat it, so they don't have any laying around, and they didn't go to the store to buy any candy so you're just wasting your time. Okay? Remember while I go out and eat another Snickers bar, I want you to trade with the odds in your favor. Alrighty? Happy Halloween. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Hey there passive traders, it's me, Alan and today I am coming to you from the sunny beach of Cancun. I believe they call it Playa Mujeres because it's the beach of Mujeres. Out there behind me, somewhere over there is the Isla Mujeres and this resort that we're at is actually on the Beach of Mujeres and so we're here on vacation with the family and I just wanted to shoot this quick video podcast to let you know that I learned something yesterday that I wanted to share with you guys and it's really ... Right behind me in the water, we took our kids snorkeling for the first time, the seven year old and eight year old boys. Sorry about the squinting it's really sunny today, but we took them snorkeling for the first time and I don't know if you've ever been snorkeling, but you get a little mask you put on and you get a little snorkel and you breathe through the snorkel and you look down in the water and you see whatever's in there. Now, there wasn't much to see out here. There was some fish. You go a little bit further over there, there's some seaweed and stuff. There were some pretty cool fish, a couple of big fish actually. They were really excited about that, but when they first started, I had prepped them ahead of time before we came on the trip. I told them, "Hey, we're going to do snorkeling. It's really cool. It's really cool. You put this thing and you can see all the water and all this different world, all that stuff." They were all excited. They were wanting to go. When we got here, it's kind of like trading, right? You hear about it, you picture it in your mind. It's like, "Oh my God, this is so cool. I want to do this. I want to do this. Yeah, I'm going to be awesome at it." Then you get your equipment, you get your mask, your snorkel, you get some instruction. "Yeah, this is what I'm going to do." Then you go do it for the first time and you totally freak out because it's not easy and it's not normal. You're not used to it because you're not breathing with your mouth anymore. I mean, you've got breathing with your nose, you have to breathe with your mouth. Then if you get a little water in the top of your snorkel, then drinking water and then the water is coming in your mask and your eyes are burning from the saltwater. Believe me, we had that same experience. Basically, we walked them through it. It's the same thing with trading. The first thing you have to do is you have to put your mask on, cover your nose, get used to breathing with your mouth. Open mouth breathing, breathe with your mouth. Once you got that done, you put the snorkel on. You got to make sure it's all tight and snug and then you have to breathe with the snorkel. You're just breathing with the snorkel. Once that's done, then you stand in the shallow water, you put your head down and you just look around, focus on your breathing, don't even worry about what you're looking at, just focus on your breathing, making sure all your technical aspects are right, making sure you're following all the rules, making sure step-by-step you're not making any mistakes. Then once you have all that done, then that's when you get into the water and you go deep and you start floating and then you can go a little bit farther. First time is going to freak out. You're going to ... It's going to be like, "Oh, it's not happening. It's not happening the way exactly that I planned in my mind." There's a fish and you'll freak out or there's a piece of thing, something touching my foot. All that stuff happens, especially in trading. It doesn't go exactly as you want, but if you go back and you stick to it, eventually you end up like my boys. I mean, they loved it. They loved it so much, they want to go again today and they want to go ... There's some shipwreck off the coast of the Island. They want to go over there. It blew me away how I couldn't get them out of the water. I couldn't get the snorkel off their faces because they were like, "No, no. More, more, more." There's nothing to see here, but they were so excited and that is how I want trading to be for you. Whatever your issues are right now, if it's not going well, if you don't know what steps to take, if you don't know exactly what instruction you need, it's there where it's available. You just got to take the simple, simple, slow, slow steps, right? Get your stuff, get all your equipment, practice the easy things. Practice putting on paper trades. Getting on the trade, putting it on, getting out, putting it on, getting out. Practice finding trades. How do I find a trade? What do I go through? How do I make it streamlined as possible? Right? Because I don't want you to just put on your stuff and just jump in the deep water right away. That's what most people do. That's why they get burned. I have a lot of people, a lot of students that told me, "Oh no, I don't want to do paper trading. I'm going to put ... I got $20,000 I'm just going to let it ride on one trade." You're freaking crazy because you're going to lose a lot of money that way and they do. Then they come back and they're like, "Yeah, I should've listened to you." Well, that's too late now. You just learned a very, very expensive lesson. Let's not do that. Let's do it snorkel time, right? One at a time, because in snorkeling, you mess it up, what happens? You just stand up. You drink some salt water, no big deal, but what could have happened and what almost happened with my second son is that he almost gave up. He tried it the first time. "Oh man, daddy, I don't like it. This is horrible. I don't want to do this anymore." He threw the mask down and he threw the snorkel down and he just stormed away. That's what we cannot have happened to you because if it does, then you lose out on a passive income stream that has the power to change your life. I mean, take a look around. I'm here on a weekday in Cancun, enjoying with my family and my trades are still working, right? I mean, you can see ... There are not there many people here, right, because this is a private beach for a private resort. There's not going to be a lot of people here. This is not like the cheapest resort on the place as you can imagine. That's what comes with from trading properly and passive trading and the ability for you to be able to take vacations, not have to worry about your trades as much. I mean, I checked on my trades this morning. It's actually the same time frame here in Mexico as it is back home for me. I checked on my trades this morning and they're fine. They're doing great. I'm making money, my options are ... They got [inaudible 00:06:13] going on everyday so I'm not worried. I checked it. It's all done, but I got to take the chance and the day, or at least a few hours, to teach my kids a skill or have an adventure with them that they are probably going to remember for the rest of your lives because I remember the first time I went snorkeling and it was with a school trip. It wasn't with my parents, but they were here with their parents and I think they're going to remember that for the rest of their life, which is pretty cool. I don't know what else to say. I'm trying ... I'm making this video here in Cancun with the beach and everything because I want to inspire you. I want to motivate you. I want you to be like, "Yes, I got to do this right now. I got to get going right now." This is the time. Today is the time. I have a couple of other stories from Cancun. I'll share on them later, but in this one, I just wanted to say, look, every day that goes by is a day that you get closer to retirement or you get closer to that next bill that needs to be paid, right? Today's the day that we need to start so that you can start enjoying stuff, do the things that you want to do, take your families on trips you want to do, adventures. Teach them the stuff that you want to really teach them. Just take it step by step, just like snorkeling, it's doable. You start off in the shallow water. Step one, step two, step three. Break it down as easy as you can. If you don't know the steps, let us know. We'll show you the steps. Okay? With that in mind, you want to take a look. That's the beach. It's beautiful. Blue waters everywhere you can look. It's gorgeous. Take care and happy trading. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- It’s the call we never want to receive, but at some point you do. Maybe multiple times in your life. And when it comes, you know it before you pick up the phone. You know its bad news. Really bad news. And you wish that if you ignore it, things will stay the same. But you know you have to pick it up, and that your life will never be the same again.  We got one of these calls on Sat Aug 31st. My wife and I had gone to dinner. My wife’s mother was watching the kids and was going to sleepover. As soon as we ordered, the call came…it was my mother-in-law. Someone had beaten up my father in law at work and he was taken to the hospital. So we canceled the food and rushed to the hospital. As soon we go there we basically got the silent treatment from the staff. That’s when we knew things were bad. After waiting in the family room a doctor, nurse, and cop showed up. My father in law was not beaten up. It was a robbery and he was shot. And he didn’t make it. Period. End of story. End of life. Death is part of life, and there are many ways to die, but for the survivors, it still hurts. It still causes pain. As the word spread we had to deal with relatives coming, people dropping by to give their condolences, and even the media. Without our friends, we would not have made it. We would not have know how to act or what to do. But thanks to our friends, they just came over, took charge and took care of everything. One family took the kids for one day, another took them for another day. One friend took care of all the food and arrangements from family flying in. Another handled the funeral.  It was amazing. As a severe introvert, I have never been one to keep in touch with people or to easily trust, but these people have my eternal gratitude. Death can bring people closer together and is a reminder that all of our time here is limited. For some reason most of us have to be reminded of this over and over. I am not sharing this with you for sympathy or pity. I am sharing this to remind you that life is short. Sometimes much shorter than we expect. No one even imagined that my fil would be gone. Heck his parents are in their 90s and still kicking. He had genetics on his side. But it didn’t matter. Whatever you want in your life, there is no telling if you will be around tomorrow to make it happen. So stop putting things off. The people that you love, tell them today. The people that you hate, forgive them today and move on. The thing that you have been putting of…start it today. No more excuses – no more… I don’t have time, or money, or education….just take the first step right now, today and move towards your dreams. My dream has been to start a foundation. But I keep putting it off. No more. I reached out to my mentor and we are starting it together. I will let him to all the work of organizing and running it, but I get a say in where the money goes which is all I want anyway. They say that everything happens for the best. When you’re in pain that is really hard to see or believe. But in the end, it doesn’t matter because we have to move on anyway. And live the best life we can. So again, I say, whatever is holding you back…do something about it. Now, today. Every day that you are alive is a day that must be lived. Live it to the fullest. No regrets. I wish for you joy and peace, and may the odds be ever in your favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Allen: Welcome, passive traders, to another episode of The Option Genius Podcast. Today, I want to be talking about trading for a living without trading. Huh? What? Allen, what are you talking about? How do you do trading without trading, but to doing it for a living? That doesn't make any sense. Alan, what you talking about? Well, allow me to explain. Now, you see trading for a living sounds great. Whether you do it professionally and you manage other people's money and you get a percentage of the profits or whatever, or you trade for your own. You trade your own money and you grow it, grow it, grow it over time, and then you have enough money to earn a decent income from it so that you don't have to work. You don't have to do anything else. You're covering your expenses. We have people doing it both ways, and it just sounds interesting and exciting. It's like I trade for a living and it gives you a boost to your confidence as well, I got to tell you that. If you feel bad about yourself, but you're like, yeah, I trade for living. Oh, man. You're on top of the world. That's why they call themselves, these hedge fund guys, they call themselves masters of the universe. Because he is a key man. You got your chest stuck out like, I trade for a living! It's like if you're at a party, people come up to you and say, hey, how are you doing? What do you do? And you're like, I, trade for a living! I go into the markets and I bend them to my will to do my bidding, with just my wits and my brains. I make money from thin air. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, I mean, you probably don't want to do it with the evil laugh at the end. But I mean that's the way most people look at it. Unfortunately, most people have, even traders, have a misconception about trading for a living because they normally think of day traders who by definition have to trade for a living because that's their job. That's what they do. If they don't trade, they don't eat. If they have a trade on, they have to go to the bathroom, they can't. They have to wait until the trade is over. They can either pee their pants or if they leave, then they might lose money on the trades and they can't do that. But most professional traders are not like that. They let their assets or their money work for them. They let the markets come to them and they only trade when they feel they have an advantage. This advantage, it doesn't come every day or multiple times a day. I mean, you take for example, Jesse Livermore. Now he's not famous anymore, but back in the day in the 1920s and '30's, this guy was the major trader. Everybody knew his name. He made millions back then and this is in 1920 dollars. He actually wrote a book about it called Reminiscences. I don't even know how to say this word. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. He used a pseudonym as the author of that book, but there's another book specifically about him called Jesse Livermore, World's Greatest Stock Trader. Now I would urge you, if you're interested in stocks and trading and whatnot, even options, you should get both of these books. I love them. I read them from time to time. He's one of my favorite classic traders and you can actually learn a lot from the way he thought by reading his books and understanding what he was going through when he was thinking about trades, when he was ... when things were happening in the markets, how he would react to them. How we would see them. He was probably one of the first people who ever used technical analysis before they even knew what that was. At that time back then, they didn't even know or they didn't have any understanding that markets would move in certain patterns. And so, he was in his brain without even doing the charting in his brains, he was able to discover these patterns. But, he did not trade every day. He wasn't in the market all the time. His keys to success, one of them at least was to wait. One of his most famous quotes is that the money is made in the waiting. He was called the boy plunger. So what he would do is he would wait. He had his whole big stock portfolio just sitting there waiting. Not in the markets every day. He didn't care what happened every day. But then, he would notice something happening in the market. He would notice that there is something abnormal happening and then when that happened, he would go all in. Now I'm not saying we need to do this. Eventually he did end up going bankrupt. Actually he went bankrupt several times, but the last time he couldn't recover. I don't remember if he actually killed himself or not. I don't remember that part, but he ended up, he never recovered the last time. But, he was able to make millions along the way If he had put it into other investments, he probably would've been okay, but he didn't, so there's also that lesson to be learned. But then we have, what he was waiting for, the proper opportunity. He was waiting for the chance where the odds were in his favor. Now he wasn't selling options. I don't even think they had options back then, so he didn't have the opportunity that we have as option sellers and passive traders to wait and to do trades that have the odds in our favor from the beginning. But his thing was, he was a stock trader and so he would wait until the market showed him or a particular stock showed him that he was going to make a big move in one direction or the other. That's when he would go all in for it. Now, I bring this up today because right now it's August, 2019. When I'm recording this, it's today's the seventh. The markets this month have started off very rough. We're down about 7% on the S&P 500 as I record this. Now, I don't know what's going to happen later on, and it doesn't really matter if you're listening to this much later. You could be listening to this to a year or two years from now. It doesn't really matter. But the fact is that this is going to happen. There are going to be times in the markets where we have big declines or we have big upswings, but mostly the declines happen really, really fast. The bull goes up the stairs, the bear goes out the window. The bear's going to go down a lot faster than the bull makes it up to the top. But in that event, what do you do? Should you be trading in such a market when in one week the market is down 7%, it's down 3%, then it's up 2% then it's down 5% or 4%. Well, if you can make money in a volatile market or you're a pro short seller, then yes, go ahead and trade. That's your element. That's your thing. You go and you do it. But if you're a at home gamer option seller, then probably not. I had this argument with one of my students in our Blank Check Coaching Program in which we sell oil options. That's the whole program there. We sell oil options. He was upset because he was trading for a living. Doing well at it for several months, over a couple of years. But he was upset when the oil market was not cooperating. Now I tried to explain to him, I said, look man, you don't always need to be in the market. Every month the market is not going to cooperate. It doesn't matter how good your strategy is, how good your trading plan is, how good of a trader you are. There are times when you will lose money and there's nothing you could do about it. But the reason that we sell options, we know that over time we are going to continue to win. It's a longterm game. Not just over one month or two months but over 12, 24, 36 months, we know that we're going to come out ahead. So yes, this month, August, 2019 might be a volatile month. It might be a down month and you might have lost a little bit of money. But if you're an option seller, we have the opportunity to get back in right next month and do it again and make money and then make money and make money and we'll go recover our losses. Over the long term we come out ahead. But if you are trading for a living, sometimes you don't have that ability to look at the long term because you've got to pay the mortgage this month. And like the student, he expected to take his expense money out of the market every single month. That's just not realistic. Now you might be sold something otherwise, you might be told oh hey, you could be a day trader or take this course or take this course and we'll teach you how to make money every single time. All your expenses will be paid from the market. No, that's not realistic. I'll tell you the truth, right now the markets are down. I currently only have one trade on in my trading account. I mean, in my retirement accounts, I still have my covered calls and I have some naked puts on that I sold to take advantage of the situation of this downturn. But in my trading account, I have one trade and it's a small trade. That one trade is not going to pay my bills this month, but that's okay because I knew that this type of event can happen. I built in a safeguard and I have a cushion. I know times like this will come when I don't want to be trading. You look at any hedge fund, they are not fully invested all the time. Heck, they're almost never fully invested. Meaning they don't always have 100% of their money at risk in the market invested in something. They don't have to make a killing every single month to survive. They play the long game. It's about a yearly return for them. Even though we sell options and we trade and we talk about trading for a living and our expenses come every month, that doesn't mean that we have to look at our trading on a month by month basis. I mean, of course we do because we want to see how we're doing. But if you look at it on a yearly basis, you'll get a much better picture and a much better idea. If you look at long term 12, 24, 36 months, that's how your account grows. So when people asked me, Allen, how much of my money should I put into this trade or into this strategy? Or how much money do I need to make X every month? I'm not sure what to tell them. It's surprisingly how often I get that question. Alan, I need to make $2,000 a month. How much money do I need? I can't tell you. I mean, we did an episode on that to help you figure out what number. I don't know what it podcast episode it was, but if you go on the list, that's the title of it. How Much Do I Need to Make X? You can listen to that one. I go into that more detail, but every month is different and every person is different. I don't know. I can't give you a number and say, if you want to make $5,000 a month, well you need to have an account with, oh, let's say $50 thousand dollars and you'll make 10% every month. I can't say that because there might be some months when you do, but they're going to be other months when you don't. That would be a lie. There's too many variables. You need to have your trading money and if you trade for a living, you need to have savings, a cushion that you can tap into when you are not trading or the markets are not cooperating, which they do from time to time. The worst thing to do in this situation is to force a trade. Because if you feel like, oh man, I have to do something. I have to do this. I have to do something. I have to take advantage of the situation. Oh the market's dropped 7% I don't think it's going to go up anymore. I think I'm going to go short the market right now. Well, when the market drops two, 3% in a day or more, it can turn around the next day and jump up the same amount or even more. If you force a trade, you stand the chance of getting your face ripped off and that's going to double the compound. I mean, maybe you already lost money because the market went down unexpected. Okay, fine. You lost money. Well, now you're going to double down and say, all right, now I'm going to short the market and the thing's going to rally because that's what markets do. Then you're gonna lose on both sides and then you're going to be even more upset. Then you're definitely going to be on tilt, which means you're not going to be emotionally stable. You're going to be looking at all different kinds of trades and you're always like, aw man, I got to pay the bills this month. I've got to pay the mortgage. Oh my God, what do I do? What do I do? That's not the way to trade. That's not the mental status you need to be trading. That's not the way, the time, the mental frame that you need to be in to trade effectively, to trade properly. It doesn't matter what strategy you're using. So yeah, if you want to trade for a living, you need to know when not to trade and that you don't always have to be trading. That's the whole point of this episode. Don't force trades. Don't always be trading. Like that student I mentioned, if you have to always be trading to earn an income, then that tells me that you don't have enough funds to be trading in the first place for a living. You should go up and save more. That's the bottom line. So while the pundits on the financial media are freaking out right now and nobody knows when the markets are going to stop falling. I am just going to sit on the sideline and wait. I'm going to wait for the VIX to calm down. I'm going to wait for markets to calm down before I dip my toes back in the water. I mean, I had my trades on and this month I'm going to lose money. I already know that. Well not necessarily, the month is still young. But I had my trades on, and the markets turned around and I got out. I took losses and I got out of every single trade except this one. I'm like okay. My losses that I took are manageable. I didn't wait and think, oh, things are going to turn around, things are going to turn on. No, I saw a change in the market and I said I'm getting out. We did that. We did that on all of our services Option Genius, Simon Says, every trade we're out. Now, when the market calms down, we're going to get back in. Then the trades that we put on, hopefully will recover what we lost and hopefully more. Or if not this month, then in the next two, three months we'll recover everything that we got back. That's how you play the long game. Because yeah, you'll lose a little bit of money in a month or two, but you add up all the wins from all the good months and that recovers and it gives you a good yearly yield. So when you look at the longterm picture, 12, 24, 36 you come out ahead. That's what I mean by you come out ahead that way. So again, trading for a living without trading means that if you are having to be forced to trade, if you have to be in the market all the time, there's a very good chance that you're going to lose all your money and that you're not going to be able to trade. Just like Jesse Livermore, he sat around waiting for the perfect opportunity for him. For us, we have good opportunities every month, but that doesn't mean we need to be trading. Doesn't mean we need to be in the markets. If we don't understand what's going on in the market. If the market is too volatile for our taste. If our strategy calls for a slow market and we don't have that, we wait. We only trade when the odds are in our favor. That's what it comes down to. Thank you so much for joining me on another episode. See you next time. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... 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People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Okay. So Wayne, I see that you have a book that you have written about trading in the stock market. And the title of the book is "Beating Wall Street with Common Sense", which is an interesting title by itself, but then it goes on. It says, "How I Achieved a 400 percent Return from My Dorm Room". And so I saw that book, and I was like, "Hey, that's really cool". I bought it. I read the thing, and I looked you up and it turns out that you are actually a writer as well. Wayne: Yep. Allen: Yeah, so, I mean- Wayne: Yeah, I'm a journalist. Allen: The funny thing about the book was that, I think it was the first line of your book, or the first sentence is, "I am not a writer". Wayne: I know, it's ironic, because at the time I wasn't. But the book kind of jump started my whole different change in career for me. So I can't use that line again if I write another book. Allen: So why don't you tell us about that. How'd you get 400 percent and how'd you get into the whole stock market game? Wayne: Well, I talk about this a little bit in my book, which is that growing up I've always been kind of a numbers person. I was a big baseball fan, I was hardcore into baseball statistics, and I always had a fascination with the stock market, but I didn't really know much about it. And then when I went to college, I majored in brain and cognitive science, which is essentially a combination of psychology and neuroscience. So I didn't really take any finance courses or anything like that. And, as we all do in college, you have some boring classes sometimes, and I was actually in graduate level courses in 2008 when anyone that was investing at the time knows, because it was obviously a lot going on in 2008, so I actually started reading up and learning about the stock market for the first time, and decided I wanted to dip my toes in and invest. And, like any new investor, I obviously made a lot of mistakes, I tried to learn from those mistakes, and I was fortunate enough to where I timed a good entry point. I like to think I had some decent insights into some good stocks to buy, and fortunately it really worked out for me. Wayne: And I talk about all this in the book, and one of the things I wanted to do with the book is make sure that I don't hide my mistakes, even my embarrassing ones. Because I think that's important, I think it's... everybody's going to make dumb mistakes when the start out, and you shouldn't be ashamed of that, you should just make sure you understand why you make them and try to learn from that. Wayne: So with the book... writing a book was always on my life bucket list, so I wrote the book, I actually tried to get it published through a publisher, but I had no experience writing as I said in the book, and that was one of the things I consistently heard from publishers was that, we really like the book but we're looking for authors that already have an audience built. So they were like, you should start a blog, you should try to get some freelance work, and maybe the next time you write a book we'll be more open to the idea of publishing it, and so I kind of started writing for Motley Fool, Seeking Alpha, websites like that. I had some success there, and I ultimately kind of ended up changing career paths. Now I write full time for benzinga.com and I contribute for US News and World Report and Investor Place. Allen: Cool. So I definitely want to ask you about the mistakes that you mention. But before we do that, how did you get 400 percent, and over what time frame? Wayne: I think it was over about... well first of all, I can't take full credit for it. Because the first stock I ever bought was in December 2008, so that was a pretty darn good time to start buying stocks. So obviously if you bought just about anything in December 2008 you would have done pretty well over the next few years. I think the time frame... I don't remember exact, I think the book I wrote in 2011, so I think over about three years I generated more than a 400 percent return. Which I think is pretty good, nothing crazy, but I mostly took the approach of trying to identify high quality stocks that got slaughtered during the downturn and that I thought got unjustly punished and I think my largest profits came off of buying big bank stocks. Allen: Yeah, they were beaten down a lot. Most of them were like... Wayne: Yeah, I think I got Bank of America in early 2009 at point during my trades, I think I bought it at two dollars and 75 cents a share or something like that. Allen: So basically, it was really really good timing. Wayne: Yeah. And I like to think that wasn't an accident. Allen: Did you trade options at all? Or was it all stocks? Wayne: Initially I didn't. I think my first big option win came in 2011, and at the time I was just wanting to learn about options, I didn't really have any experience but I was always interested in it, so much like trading stocks a couple years prior I sat down and researched and tried to teach myself about options. My option trading, I always did it purely as speculation. I was buying calls, inputs, which I know is opposite of what you recommend, and also for my experience, the opposite of the way you should approach options unless you're doing it the way I did which was pure speculation, fun, gambling, lottery ticket type stuff. Which is what I was doing at the time. Allen: It says here that you did it when you were in college. So how did you get the money to start? Wayne: I started small, which is another thing that I would recommend for anybody that's starting out. It was just some money that I had put away, and it wasn't a ton of money. I think when I first started I had maybe 2000 dollars or something like that. It wasn't anything big. I really just wanted to learn the ropes and I think it's... that's one of the pieces of advice I'd have for any new investor, is if you're in your 20s and you're thinking about stocks, but you think oh there's plenty of time to do this, I'll learn it whenever, I think it's good to get in when you're young, make your mistakes early, make your mistakes when you can afford to lose a little bit of money, and then, by the time you really have real money to work with, you kind of know the ropes and know what to do and what not to do. Allen: That's well said. How old are you now, by the way? Wayne: I'm 35. Allen: 35. Oh man. You still got a lot of stuff to learn. Wayne: Yeah, I feel like I'm fortunate that I started relatively young. Because again, even if I had lost everything at that point, I think when you're 26 years old, you got plenty of time to recover and you're not throwing away your retirement savings or anything like that. You're not derailing your financial future. So I always tell people, definitely start young. Allen: You won't believe how many stories we hear from people that are in their 50s and 60s, and they come to us and they say, "Hey I just got started and I lost a bunch of money". Now it's not too late, but if you had started earlier or if you had been doing it a little bit safer, you would have been in such a better boat. Wayne: Absolutely. Allen: So Wayne, how have you been doing since then? So that was a few years ago, the market's been in a really nice bull trend. What do you do now, how do you invest now, how's it going? Wayne: I've been doing so so lately. And to be honest, I have not been trading much lately. Once I started working full time doing financial journalism... I found that I had a lot more time on my hands when I was screwing around in school then I do when I'm working eight or nine or sometimes 10 hours a day with three different jobs. I've kind of... most of my money, honestly, is in CDs right now, but I have a couple of speculative investments, Alibaba is my biggest position and a couple oil services stocks that are pretty beaten down that I feel like have been unjustly punished. I really don't, I'm literally... my Merrill Lynch account is probably 90 percent cash or CDs at the moment. Allen: That's really interesting, because you are in this market all the time. You're learning, you're hearing the noise, you're hearing, oh this stock went up and this stock went down instead of doing this instead of doing that, but you're not even inclined a little bit to jump in and say let me make a fortune off of this stuff. Wayne: Well, I feel like it's always a good time to buy and hold an S&P index fund as long as your timeframe is 10, 20, 30 years, something like that, but I honestly don't see anything out there, or very few things, that just smack me in the face and that they're under-priced or look cheap or undervalued. If I did I'd buy, but I honestly don't see much out there. I also think it's kind of just a weird time, after at 10 year old bull market and interest rates are so historically low... there's just a lot of screwy things going on and I'm not inclined, I'm not a professional investor, so I'm not inclined to always have my money all in all the time to have food on the table. So I'm just kind of on the sidelines until I see another opportunity... probably another 2008s not going to come along anytime soon, hopefully not at least, but at least something where I say, "Okay this looks like a no brainer". Allen: Okay. So you're totally value. You're into beaten down stuff like you said, and just wait until it comes back and you'll wait until it comes in. Wayne: I'm mostly value. I talk about in my book, I'm a firm believer in exploiting the psychology of the market. So I'm kind of an investor sentiment, contrarian investor as well. So contrarian investors, when the market's great and everyone is saying stocks are great and everything, that's not the time contrarian's like to buy things. So these days, everything seems like it's on cruise control, I like to buy when there's blood in the streets. And there hasn't been much blood in the streets for nearly a decade. Allen: Interesting. That's a different way of looking at it. Because a lot of people they always feel, yeah I have to be invested, I have to have my money in there, it goes up seven, eight percent a year, 10 percent a year so I need to take advantage of it. But you're saying that you don't need to do that. Wayne: Like I said, if you're trying to trade for a living, then you need to be trying to profit. But if you're trying to do it for retirement or like I do kind of as a hobby more than a profession, yeah, I mean... if I go to the mall and I'm walking around and I see something on sale that I like, I'll buy it. But I'm not the type of person that goes to the mall with 100 dollars and leaves with zero dollars every time, no matter what's there. So, I got the cash, if I see a stock that looks cheap, I will jump in there. But if not, I don't feel the need to always be hunting down things to buy. Allen: Interesting. So, now you mention investor sentiment, and psychology. Can you go into that a little bit? How would somebody find that out or how relevant have you found... obviously you rely on that, but how important is that? Wayne: Well, it's one of the more popular contrarian indicators of how a stock performs. In my experience generally, if you're trying to beat the market then you can't be doing what everybody else is doing, because by definition if you're doing what everybody else is doing you're not going to beat them at that game. So you need to be doing something different, you need to either be seeing something before everybody else sees it, or you need to be seeing it differently than everybody else sees it. Nowadays, with high frequency trading, institutional investors, in my personal experience I feel like it's extremely difficult for an average retail investor like myself, to be faster than the market. It's very, very difficult. Wayne: So I have to, my only window of opportunity, is identifying stocks where I see something differently than everybody else sees it. And it think one of the things that has tended to happen in this digital age is that people are impatient. So I think back in the day people would buy stocks, it would be common for people, even traders, to buy stocks and be willing to hold them for six weeks or six months or nine months or even a year or two, while their thesis plays out. But I think over time, just has society has sort of sped up and the digital age has sort of encouraged instant gratification, I think people don't even a lot of the time, they don't think nine months or 12 months down the road anymore. If something's not going to work today or tomorrow or next week, it's not even on their radar anymore. Wayne: So I think those are time where... I'll use Alibaba as an example. If you look at the growth numbers that Alibaba's putting up, without any knowledge of this trade war that's going on, if you just think about the economic growth rate in China, the fact that they have the billions of people, the fact that the government basically restricts international competitors from coming into the Chinese market, that company's been absolutely tearing it up. And they're into all the high tech fields that Amazon is into the US. And yet, the stock has been stagnant for a while now, and it's because investors can't see past this trade war. Wayne: And personally, I believe the trade war is coming to and end sooner rather than later, because it seems like it's hurting both the US and China, and I think Warren Buffet said this in his shareholder letter or an interview at the annual Berkshire investment meeting or something. But basically, when you have two rational actors, and there's a conclusion that's in the best interest of both of them, they're eventually going to make it there. And I don't know what the terms of the trade deal are going to be, and I don't know if it's coming next month or a year from now or whenever we get the election over with or whatever, but I believe a trade deal is coming at some point. And I'm personally hoping that completely shifts investor sentiment on Alibaba and that people start taking a closer look at those numbers. Allen: Okay. That's a cool way to... do you sell options while you're waiting or no? Wayne: I don't. And I figured you'd ask me about this, and I will say this, if I had more time on my hands slash wasn't so lazy, I definitely would be doing it. It's something where, after working a full week where I'm seven AM to five PM stocks and options and trading all day long, at the end of the work week I don't even want to look at my porfolio, I just want to relax. So yeah, if I lose my job at some point I'll definitely start selling options. Allen: All right. So then, what were some of the mistakes you alluded to earlier, that you think that ordinary, common, everyday individuals are making that they shouldn't. Or that you can protect them from, just letting them know. What do they need to know? Wayne: There's a lot. Maybe I should just answer just in terms of buying options. Because I think, and if you're preaching selling options then I like to think you'll probably be on board with all of this, but when I first started thinking about options and how if you buy options it basically gives you leverage where you can theoretically make really large returns on stocks that aren't super volatile, I thought well geeze this is the golden ticket and I thought that, well, I've had success buying stocks and holding and ultimately my thesis plays out and I've profited off of this. But, the time factor with options, the reason why it's smart to sell options and not buy them, is because you have to get two things right when you buy a stock - you have to get the stock right and you have to get the direction right. When you buy options, you have to get three things right - you have to get the stock right you have to get the direction right, and you have to get the timing right. Wayne: And I think most people are predisposed due to their personalities either to be too early or too late when it comes to timing their investment thesis. I tend to be too early, I tend to think things are going to happen before they actually end up happening. So what I found early on in trading options is like, oh, I'll use Alibaba again as an example, oh, I believe a resolution to this trade war is going to happen. If you had asked me in December when I thought it was going to happen, I would have definitely said I thought it would have happened by now. By June, I definitely would have thought there would have been a trade deal. Wayne: So maybe back in December, I would have thought, oh, there would have been a trade deal by June, I'll buy June call options out of the money on Alibaba and by the time June 15th rolls around I'll be good to go. Well, nothing's really changed about my thesis, I still think that a trade deal is going to be reached and Alibaba stock's going to go higher, but if I had bought those call options back in December I'd be out of luck. They would have been expired, completely worthless. So the shame in that is that your thesis can end up being right, but if you don't get the timing right, you're completely screwed and it doesn't even matter, it's as if your thesis was just completely wrong. Wayne: So I think that's what I would say to anyone looking to consider buying options rather than selling them, is you're basically playing... the stock market goes up over time, historically. So if you're just buying generic stocks you at least have kind of of advantage in the sense that the economy is growing. But if you buy options, call options or put options, you're at a tremendous disadvantage in the sense that you need something to happen just to break even on your trade. You're starting off in the hole because of the time value decay and I think people overestimate, they tend to have too much confidence in their ability to predict timing, and I think a lot of people get burned on options like that. Allen: It's like a ticking time bomb. It's just tick tick tick every day. Wayne: Absolutely. Allen: Cool, the one thing I wanted to mention to everybody watching your book, when I bought it I thought it was going to be basically your story. Which it is, it's your story. But I think that's about half of it. The other half is you actually talking about investing and all the jargon and what goes on in the stock market, basically from A to Z level. And I think that if somebody is new to trading or new to stocks or even options, if they pick it up and they read it they'll learn a lot more than normal. Allen: Because the stuff that you are talking about, I know for me it took me several years of not only just trading but watching CNBC a lot to understand all of the ways, how everything works together and how does this react to this. There's no guide for that, it takes a long time to understand, okay fed's going to cut, what is doveish, what is hawkish, what is doveish, they keep mentioning these words I don't know what that means. But in your book it covers everything, and I was like oh man I wish I had this so much sooner, it would have made so much sense. Wayne: It's, and I thought long and hard about how I wanted to approach the book at the time, because I feel like there is certainly a jargon to Wall Street, and it can be incredible intimidating if you're starting from scratch. And it was even to me. When you start out, it's like learning a new language. When you start out your first day of French class and people are speaking French, you're not going to know the first thing about what they're saying. So I tried to write the book that I would have wanted to read when I first started out. I remembered how intimidated I felt and I remembered how ignorant I was and I... obviously when you're first starting out trying to learn something new, you're going to be ignorant at first, everybody is. And you're going to make mistakes at first. Wayne: And so, I tried to tell my story, like you said I tried to tell my story by also tried to work in things that I learned. And yeah - a lot of your listeners that are advanced enough to be selling options and making profits, maybe they'll learn a thing or two from my book, but maybe they got past that point a long time ago. But, maybe they would like to read about my story. Wayne: But I think the perfect audience for that book is someone who is a bit intimidated to start out and they may not necessarily want to read a book written by someone who has 20 years of experience at a hedge fund. Maybe they just want to read a book about someone who was a random person, an average college student like they are or they were, and started from scratch the way they're starting from scratch, and know that like, yeah, it can work out. It won't be perfect, it'll be bumpy, but it can work out and here's the story that proves it. Allen: Yeah. And then, the other thing that you talk about is common sense. So, that's the title of the book, "Beating Wall Street with Common Sense". And it's, you mention it and it should be common, but it's not as common as you think. And I think that's part of what makes a market, me and you could look at the same thing and I'll be like, "I want to buy!" And you're like, "No, I'm going to sell it". So how do you say common sense? What is common sense in the stock market? Wayne: I think the best way to explain it is... and I've written about this for my job, is I think that unfortunately we are predisposed to... human nature has a lot of inherent biases, psychological biases, and when you're talking about hard earned money, your retirement savings or just a few thousand dollars that took you however many hours to earn, it's very emotional to see your account going up or down every day. And we have deep rooted, biological predispositions to avoid losing things that are valuable to us. So I think one of the most important lessons to learn for a new investor is to control your emotions. Because I guarantee you your emotions will almost always have you making the wrong decision in terms of trading, because you will be most fearful at the time you should be buying, and you will be most greedy at the time you should be selling. Wayne: And so, I think the common sense part to me is, the market may seem random sometimes. But the market is just a collection of individuals and institutions run by individuals, and the decisions they're making, they're basing those decisions on human logic. And so, when a stock is going up or down, on any given day those movements may be random but on a longer time frame there's a reason why a stock is going down or up. It may not be logical, it may not necessarily be correct, but the reason that it's going up or down is because people have certain beliefs about that stock, and they're buying it or selling it in response to that. Wayne: So if you kind of remove yourself from trying to think about why the stocks going up or down and you think more about why would somebody be buying or selling this stock right now, and think about it more from a psychological perspective, then that sort of gets you to where you can think, okay, well when is this person that's selling this stock... why is somebody selling Alibaba right now? Oh they're selling because they're worried about the trade war. Okay, that's why Alibaba stock is going down. Okay, well what can change that will make that person say, oh, well now I want to buy Alibaba stock? Then you think oh, well if the trade war comes to an end then that person may completely change their mind. Wayne: So that's not... you can dig as deep as you want to into financial metrics and numbers, and as a value investor at heart I'm a big fan of value investing metrics. But I think in terms of how the market moves, the market doesn't necessarily move because of a stock's price to earnings ratio. It moves because people have certain feelings or thoughts about a stock, and they're buying or selling it in response. So you really need to, as much as it's good to understand all the metrics, I would advise people to take a step back and think, whether I agree or disagree with what's happening, why is it happening? What are people thinking about this stock and what will change their minds at some point in the future? Allen: That's interesting you say that as a financial journalist, I want to go to that. Because one of my questions I was going to ask you is, as a journalist you have deadlines, and you have to write about certain stories, you have to put out a certain amount of content. And every day, the market might be up five points or might be up 15 point or oil drops one percent or two percent, there's always a headline. There's always an explanation, right? So how do these financial journalists come up with these thesises, of why something happened? Like you just said, we don't really know why it happened it could be some people think this way or some people that way, there's no survey, people are not telling everybody why they're doing things. But how do these journalists come up with these headlines and say, market moved, or this stock moved, or this happened because of this today. Wayne: I would like to think that good journalists, they don't write definitively. They say well, the S&P was up one percent today, and then I'll reach out to traders and be like, what are you hearing what are people saying, why do people believe that the market is up today? Or a lot of times, I'll reach out to economists or analysts and I'll get their opinions, and then when I write my story I won't present it as my opinion of what's happening, I'll present it as this is what traders are saying is happening, this is what economists are saying is happening, this is what analysts are saying is happening. And then, I may or may not draw a conclusion, oftentimes I will, but I don't present it as, all right I'm god's gift to earth, I've come to save the day, this is my journalistic opinion of what's happening. Wayne: I don't think that that's necessarily helpful to people, I think people want to know a collection of sources, or even just one source, if one analyst puts out a note saying this is what happened today, we may do a quick summary of that or whatever. But for Benzinga and US News, they don't so much care about my opinion. For a stock picking site like Motley Fool or Seeking Alpha, I mean they make that clear that that's more opinion, editorial pieces. But in terms of my journalist jobs, they actively don't want me putting my two cents in there. They want sources with expert experience that are going to be the root of all of our stories. Allen: Okay, cool. That makes sense. Because a lot of the times I'll read something, it'll be like market was up six percent today and it's because the fed announced that they're going to do this and this and this. Or China said this and this. And then the next day, it's going to be like oh the market is down five percent or two percent today because China did this and this and this. Wait a minute, you just used that same excuse yesterday for the market going up. So it's really hard as an individual to figure out, okay what is happening really? So the next question is, how does an individual trader or someone at home, how do they use the news? What would you suggest in that? Allen: So, a lot of the times, one of the things that we do is we teach people how to do backtesting, which is a piece of software where you go back in time and you only look at the chart, you only look at the stock. You don't know what's going on in their market, you don't know what the news is, you don't know the headlines or anything like that. So you don't have that noise basically, is what I call it, the noise of what's going on. You're only trading the chart, the stock, the numbers in front of you. And most of the time, people who do that, they actually do better with the backtesting than they do in real life trading, even though they're using the same plan or the same rules. So how would you suggest that we use the news or... and obviously you're not going to tell me never to listen to the news, because that's your job, but how do we take advantage of the news? Wayne: Well, if you're day trading, I think you need to think of the news as... every headline is a catalyst in the short term. If you're investing for the long term which is more of what I do, you used a good word, I think the news is mostly noise. I think it's good if you're a longer term investor to make sure you always keep abreast of what's going on with the stocks you own, because you don't want something coming out of left field. You don't want to just not pay attention for a week and then you come back and all of a sudden a week ago, there was an SEC investigation into your stock and it's down 40 percent. I think you need to always keep up with the news, but someone that, if I was advising someone that's not trading in the short term but more investing for the long term, I would say read the news but don't lose sleep over it. Wayne: If you read a headline that fundamentally changes your investment thesis, then you should think about maybe trading or adjusting your position. But some quarterly earnings report that wasn't very good but you still think the company has a great long term future ahead, that's just noise, honestly. Or the CEO steps down. Well, if the CEO is 88 years old with health problems, that's understandable, that doesn't change anything about your long term investing thesis. If the CEO steps down because he was was arrested by the Department of Justice or something, maybe that's a red flag. Wayne: I think most of the day to day news, this is coming from a journalist, we want to write about stocks that people are reading about, but it may seem like a certain company is in the headlines all the time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that more stuff is going on at that company, it just means people care about that company and that's what people want to read about. So I think the news is important, I don't think it's the end all be all in terms of investing, especially if you're a long term investor. Just think of it as part entertainment and part information and don't stress out too much unless something major changes with the company. Allen: Okay. And then, you mentioned that you do work, or you have done articles in the past for Motley Fool and Seeking Alpha. So I was wondering, you mentioned that you had just gotten out of college and you had started writing for those. What are the requirements for those? Because sometimes people read that and they take it as gospel or they take is as somebody who actually has done dozens and dozens of research, or years of research into something where their thesis is so airtight. Can anybody write for those or, how does that work? Wayne: It's been a while since I've written for either, but honestly back in the day there wasn't too much of a screening process. I think at the time I think you submitted sample writing and the editors just read it and decided whether or not it made sense to them. So I would absolutely take everything you read online that is recommendations to buy or sell stocks or trade in any capacity, I would take it all with a certain degree of skepticism. In fact I wrote a story for US News less than a month ago specifically about cannabis stocks, and about how there's a lot of misinformation out there online specifically about cannabis stocks. So you need to always... when you read something online, always in the back of your head need to understand the credibility of the source. Wayne: And people have their favorite news outlets and ones that they don't like. But regardless of which ones are your favorites, legitimate news outlets are not just going to straight up lie and deceive people, because they'll open themselves up to all kinds of lawsuits and whatnot. But, there are plenty of nefarious websites out there or message boards, or people who are self interested or even paid by the companies, that will straight up lie about what they believe about a company. And it may not even be that they're just straight up lying, it may be that they own shares of a stock and they're completely blind to a different way of looking at things because they're along that stock, so the company can do no wrong and everything's always rosy and obviously that's a very biased opinion. Wayne: So anytime you read someone telling you buy this stock or sell this stock or option or whatever, you always need to remember, who is this person, why are they saying this, what are their qualifications? Because you don't want to be blindly following anybody regardless of their qualifications, but people... certified analysts, people who have backgrounds in finance or backgrounds in journalism or whatever, they at least have some degree of experience. You're right, I wrote that book about my experience in the market, and my first professional writing gig was with Motley Fool. They like to think of it I think as more just like a crowd-sourced... like my articles weren't Motley Fool's opinion of the stock I was writing about, I was just one of hundreds of writers they have writing. So it's more of a platform than I was writing, speaking on behalf of Motley Fool. But yeah, people should be careful out there for sure. Allen: I mean I do remember, even during the dot com bubble, 1999 and 2000, at that point everybody was going gaga over, this time it's different, oh these dot coms are going to change the world. And a lot of the journalists were the ones that were banging on the drums the hardest. Yeah, everybody's got into this, you got to get into Lycos, you got to get into all these other sites, companies that went out of business, pets.com and all this stuff. It seems like those people that were those journalists, they disappeared for a while because nobody wanted to hear their things any more because everybody hated them. But now they're actually back, and I see them on the news and I see them on the different financial channels, and they're still giving advice as if they knew what they were talking about back then so now, why should I trust you now. Allen: Then the other thing is on the TV shows, the guys who come on from the different hedge funds or the money management companies or the banks and whatnot, a lot of them are basically, they're talking their own book. If they're the market maker or they're the company or they're the bank that's taking a certain company public, there's no way they're going to say anything negative about that company on air, or even that whole industry. Just going to be saying good stuff. And that's the thing, when we're watching that as an individual, we don't know where their conflict of interest is, we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. So I really appreciate you saying that. As a journalist it takes guts to come out and say that. Wayne: I'm... journalists... I feel like your title in life, your profession says something about your experience. But it doesn't make you infallible. Whether you're a journalist, a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, everybody's just people. And people make mistakes. And in terms of accountability, I always thought this was crazy because I'm a big baseball fan, if I'm watching a baseball game on TV, if I'm watching the Red Sox and a batter comes up and steps in the batter's box and I don't know who that guy is, the first thing you show when you get in the batter's box is a line across the bottom of the screen showing all his statistics, how he's performed, what's his batting average, what's his on base percentage, how many home runs how many RBIs does he have. I don't understand how these people come on CNBC and all that shows up is their name or where they're from. And maybe they've been on CNBC 200 times, and they've made 200 stock picks, and they've gotten 190 of them wrong. You wouldn't know! Wayne: And it seems to me it would be so super easy to keep up with these analysts and journalists and pundits that are on TV and what stocks they pick and how often they're right, how often they're wrong. Show their name, and show the percentage of times in the past they've been right or wrong. Because I don't know about you, but if somebody's only been right 15 percent of the time they've been on CNBC talking about stocks, I probably am not going to really care what they have to say, honestly. Allen: Well you know the reason they don't do that is most of them are wrong a lot of the time, and nobody would watch it. Wayne: I know, that's true. If they were good at picking stocks they wouldn't be on CNBC. Allen: There are certain people like... I used to watch the show Fast Money. I still do, still record it and watch it from time to time, and they've had a couple guys on there that were regulars, that every time they say something it's like man, you have no clue what you're talking about, and I would go and say let me try and see if I can do the opposite of what that guy just said. Because he's such a... Wayne: That's a real thing. Allen: And yeah. A lot of people do that. Jim Cramer comes to mind, a lot of people are like I'm going to take the opposite side of him. Wayne: People give Cramer a hard time. Allen: It's tough for him to be him. But I do credit him in a sense, that there's a lot of time when the market is moving in big moves, and I really can't figure out why, I don't know what's going on. And the news doesn't help, the headlines don't help, but on his show, he actually gets into the meat of it sometimes because he's been in that world. So he'll be explaining it, "This happened and this happened so the hedge funds are thinking this and this, or that's why they're moving a lot of stock". Or "This happened overseas that was not reported and that's why such and such is happening", or something like that. And in the past he has helped me out in that sense, to make sense of what was going on. Wayne: I'm actually a big fan of Jim Cramer, I know his stocking picking track record is questionable. But what I think he's great at is I think he's great at educating people, I think he's great at entertaining people. I read a couple of his books when I was first learning about the market. I don't remember which ones, but I thought they were incredibly helpful. I think in another life he may have been a great teacher, because I think he has a talent for breaking things down simplistically. And again, he's been wrong plenty of times, we all have. So I get the criticism. But I think his show is good, I think his audience, there's a lot of inexperienced investors and traders in his audience and I think he helps educate them. And I'm all for education in any respect. Allen: I think part of it is his, he's set up for failure in a sense with his show. They want quick answers, if someone calls you up and says, "Okay Citi Bank, what do I do?" And if your only choices are buy or sell, you're probably going to be wrong. You can't go into a long term explanation and say, "Well they have this and this going on, so don't buy right, now wait for this to happen then you can buy, or sell if this happens", he doesn't get that chance to do that. Wayne: And I feel like I would not want to make 25 stock picks a day and be expected to get all 25 correct every day. That's pretty crazy, so I agree he's got a tough gig. But I daresay he gets paid very handsomely for it, so I can only have so much sympathy for him. Allen: So Wayne, what do you have going on right now for you? What's exciting you, what's happening in the future? Wayne: I am actually really enjoying life. That's probably lame to say. But I'm really happy with where I'm at right now. I've been telling myself at some point I want to write another book in the future, because I think it's been eight or nine years since I wrote my first one. But like I said I've got a full slate, I'm a staff writer for benzinga.com, those guys there are all really great to work with, I'm a regular contributor for US News and World Report, which again, my editor's awesome, the team there is awesome, and I've been contributing to Investor Place, and once again no complaints. They all treat me well and when I started out to write that book, it was hobby. Investing was a hobby for me, the stock market was a hobby. And I had no plans on being a professional journalist or writer or anything else. So I feel lucky every day that I'm one of the few people that was somehow able to finagle my way into having my hobby be my career at least for as long as it lasts. So, I'm just trying to enjoy myself and yeah, I'm having a blast. I have a blast every day. I wake up and get to write about the market. Allen: Do you go to the office, or you work from home? Wayne: I work from home, one of the many things I love about my situation. I live in Tampa Florida, and I can some afternoons if I'm not on a deadline, I sneak out and write by the swimming pool in the beautiful weather. So in terms of what I got going on, I don't really have any major plans in terms of projects or anything I'm working on, I'm just enjoying life. Allen: That's sweet. So if our listeners want to get a hold of you or ask you some questions, where can they reach you? Wayne: Well I have a blog, it's tradingcommonsense.com. And you can contact me through the blog, I try to be pretty good about getting back to people if you're patient for a day or two. My book is on Amazon, "Beating Wall Street with Common Sense". If you read it an it helps you or you were entertained or both, I'd love it if you drop me a review. I think it's only like two dollars or something, the book at this point. I just really want to get the message out there and yeah. I'm on US News and World Report, Benzinga, and Investor Place. Allen: Awesome. Then your website is tradingcommonsense.com? Wayne: Yep. Allen: Awesome, I appreciate you taking the time and it was informative to get behind the scenes with a real journalist and see how you guys think and how we should actually use that information. As well as common sense. So thank you so much. Wayne: I appreciate you having me on, it was good talking to you. Allen: Thank you Wayne. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- To celebrate episode 50 I thought I would do something special. As you may know, I am writing a book to introduce the masses to the art of Passive Trading. And while the book is still being finished, I thought I would give you a sneak peek. So here is Chapter 1 of the book. But keep in mind this is in rough draft form. It still has to be edited. I am sharing it because, well, I am too excited not to. This episode answers the question, "What Is Passive Trading?". Can't wait for the book? Check out our Passive Trading Formula Free Webinar! (click here) --  LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- How do you go from being a struggling trader to making a killing with options? That's what I'm talking to Dan Hayden about. You see, Dan Hayden is one of our students in our new course that we have released, it's called the Passive Trading Formula. He's been in the course for a few months, and he wrote to me, and was very enthusiastic and was very happy with his results. When I read them, I really could not believe my eyes. I was shocked and I was like, "Man, I got to interview this guy. I got to figure out exactly what he did, how he did it, and I have to share that information with you guys." This episode is an interview with Dan Hayden and how he is learning. He was already an experienced trader. He knew a lot of strategies and everything, but it was just something in the course that helped him to take it to the next level. Then we're going to help him take it even more to the next level.  If you are struggling, even if you've known a lot of strategies, even if you've done courses or whatever, but there is something still missing, I think this episode is something for you to listen to. Hopefully you'll get something out of it. Let's go ahead, let's cue the music and get with it. For more info on the program mentioned in this episode check out our Passive Trading Training HERE.   Dan, why don't we get started and let me know a little bit about you. Who is Dan? Why do you trade options? Dan Hayden:      Yeah, so my name is Dan. I'm in Upstate New York. I started trading options a long, long time ago just because I wanted to earn along with the normal earnings of the stock market and I wanted to complement my trading. Way back when, I don't know how, I think it was from my family, my grandfather, I was drawn to the stock market because it seemed like that's one of the ways in order to build wealth. Not to say that I had a lot of wealth, but it's another tool in your bag to complement your normal investing that you're doing with normal stocks. Allen Sama:        Do you work full-time? Dan Hayden:      That's when you and I got in touch with each other, because I was actually laid off. I had a awesome job, I was laid off, and I was at the point where I had to decide, "Shoot, do I just retire now? Do I go back into the workforce?" I had an awesome job and loved what I did, but I did travel a lot and it took a lot out of me. Therefore, it hampered my ability to just trade options because I was so busy. When I contacted you, you had a promotion going for your new program. Right now, I am consulting. I do some work on the side and I am trying to, with your services, and system, and help, and as well as people on your site trying to get back into it, trade, develop a strategy so that I can comfortably earn a couple of thousand dollars each month is my goal. Allen Sama:        Yeah, I mean your story is very similar to a lot of the stories that we hear. People have been working really good jobs, they're making a decent amount of money, their family gets accustomed to a certain lifestyle. Then because of the economy, or the company, or something happens, and that job and that income is not there anymore, then the question is, "What do I do now?. [inaudible 00:04:01] go back into the workforce?" If I do, a lot of times it's hard to make the same income as you were making before in the same job. Dan Hayden:      That's exactly right. Allen Sama:        That supplement income has to come in [inaudible 00:04:14]. Then a lot of people come and say, "Okay, I have money that I have saved up over the years. How do I make the most of it?" I'm really excited that you're taking action. Dan Hayden:      As we spoke, you and your program has given me the confidence to realize that. All of these services, and I get way too many in my emails, and they're provocative, they stimulate your interest and you're like, "Oh, wow. Maybe I should join this. Maybe I should do this."  It was great because as I jumped in, it made me realize that I am blocking all of these other emails that come to my inbox, and I don't want to be clouded by they have the best new widget, and they have the best this and the best that. Because you've shown to me, and I have questioned you that these other places are making something very, very easy complicated. Your scanning, your reviewing of the three moving averages, and showing the trend makes it very, very simple to select the trades that are applicable. Allen Sama:        There are people who are traders and then there are people who are expert marketers. Sometimes I envy them, some of the other companies. They're like, "Man they make hundreds of millions of dollars a year selling their services. I wish I could do that." Dan Hayden:      Yeah. It's all what you want too. If you're a really good trader ... I always said, if you're a really good and you have something that's really, really a great program, why do you have to charge people right away? Let them get into it and then bill them. If you're so good at trading, why would you even offer this because you can just stay at home, do your trading and make your money there. Why do you have to offer these services?  That's where the suspicion comes in. I just had one in about a year, a year and a half go subscribe to them. That's when the market turned. I realized that they're not doing anything different than I was doing in selecting the verticals to trade. Their losses were like my losses on my own. It's like, "I can I lose my money on my own without having to plunk down $750 or $1,000, or whatever." When you and I, when I applied to your program, it was perfect timing because I was down. I was hitting the chops because you never expect you to be laid off. Never in my life had I been laid off before. I'm like, "I had invested and been wise with my money all my life." I was at the point where I could say, "Well maybe I can just stay home and enjoy my family, and relax a little bit and start getting back into trading options."  It was perfect timing because you lifted me up and got me back into trading. It's been fun. You have a very practical approach to selecting stocks to trade on. I also like your methodology of thinking. It's almost like a cycle. You could sell puts on really good stocks that you want to own and collect dividends, because I have another fund that I do that with. You own those stock and then you can trade covered calls on those. You can bring in, if you are executed and you do now own Verizon with a 5% or whatever it is dividend, and then you start selling covered calls on those so you have more income coming in. Then you're also doing your vertical spreads so you have additional income coming in. Technically there's three ways to create an income stream and it just made a lot of sense to me. Allen Sama:        For our listeners, I just want to let you know that Dan is part of our Passive Trading Formula program, our course. That's what he keeps mentioning, the program. That's the one that he's in. Basically the idea behind that is I got to a point where in my own trading, where I didn't want to spend os much time watching the markets and watching my trades. You can do that in the beginning if you're just starting out with a little bit of money, you have to be a little bit more aggressive, so you have to take more risks. But eventually you get to the point where you're a little bit older or you [inaudible 00:08:47] a little bit more money, and you say, "I just want to do this in a passive way." The myth is that if you're not as actively engaged, you won't make as much money. Dan has proven that, what would you say, Dan? In the first four months of 2019 or the first five months, your paper trading account was up about 90,000? Dan Hayden:      Yeah, but I do have to take a little bit of that back because some of that I was called out on and it impacted my results. But I think overall it was $45,000. Clearly ... Allen Sama:        In about five months? Dan Hayden:      Correct. Yes. Allen Sama:        On what type of account? Which size? Dan Hayden:      I did a paper trade account and I automatically, I think I put in $250,000 into it. Allen Sama:        All right, that's a really sweet gain. How long do you think you spend every day on your trades? Dan Hayden:      It's actually changed because from the beginning of the year, I think we got started in January, I had all the time in the world. Then I just got called for a contracting position, so I am working as a consultant with a company right now. I've pulled out a little bit more. I traded a lot for January, February, March, April. May has been a little bit less. I just have to figure out what my time scan is going to be so that I have the appropriate amount of time to be trading. Allen Sama:        Do you think that the trades that we're doing require a lot of time for you? Dan Hayden:      No. I think in and this is something that I want to learn more of and I asked on our call last week is that I want to be able to set automatic stops, which I know you're not a big of, but I want to get into a method of basically setting stops right when I set up the trade so that if I do have to fly somewhere, I don't have to be with a computer.  Time wise, not at all. I started with my watchlist, you'll see two watchlists on the left, I started with mine and then I put yours in as well. I like yours better. Now I'm also just scanning through companies that I know there's no premium to paid on them. I don't even go to them, I just go to the next one. It almost seems like I'm trading the same stocks over and over again. [inaudible 00:11:32] less and less time. Allen Sama:        Yeah, that happens. You develop some favorites and you like the way they're acting, you like the news that's coming out. Some of them might be on your list. You might trade them over and over again for two, three years. Eventually stuff will change, the stock will change, it'll change is behavior. Maybe a new competitor will pop up, or new CEO or whatever. Then it'll drop from your list. You're be like, "I don't want to trade that one any more. It's not acting the same way." That's why we focus on that watchlist and say, "These are the same companies I want to watch every month." Then you get a second feel, like a sixth sense that it's not acting properly. Let's not trade it this month. Let's just relax and watch it, and then we'll maybe look at it again next month. Dan Hayden:      Absolutely. I hope more and more people start getting active in your site with interactions because I've learned of companies that I've never even heard of before that have very good premiums. It's been interesting picking up a stock here or a stock there that you can start to track as well. Allen Sama:        That's why one of the reasons we have everybody put the homework inside the group itself, because that helps other people. Anytime somebody puts in a homework assignment and says, "Okay, these are the trades I've found that I really like." Other people could look at those and be like, "Whoa, that's a really good trade. I think I'm going to do that one." Dan Hayden:      Exactly. [inaudible 00:13:03]. Allen Sama:        There was a couple that I found from somebody that put them in and I'm like, "Oh, wow. I didn't even know this one particular stock was paying that much right now." I was like, "Wow." Dan Hayden:      Exactly. Some with very rich premiums. That's what we're all looking for. I like it when people, when they communicate. I think people shouldn't be ashamed or nervous about asking questions because everybody is starting out at different levels so that when experienced people can support the young people, or the new people just starting out, it makes for great interaction and a great learning experience in your group. Allen Sama:        What strategies have you decided to focus on? Dan Hayden:      I have been doing some naked puts, some selling. Then I started with covered calls only because I have a couple of stocks that I have a lot of shares in and I said, "Okay, I want to build up some income," but I haven't focused on that too much. Most of it has been vertical spreads and selling puts.  If you're on right now, I guess I'm a simple guy, I got to make it really easy for myself. What I'll show everybody is basically I'll go through here on the left-hand side, and I'll start with my watchlist and the charts. You'll see here that I have the three simple moving averages, the 20, 50 and 200. You can see that I ... You want to go with the market. If the market's up ... Allen Sama:        On the screen you're showing your Thinkorswim paper trading account, right? Dan Hayden:      Correct. Yes. Allen Sama:        Yeah, okay. Dan Hayden:      Like I said, I think I started with 250 and right now net liquidating would be 484. Clearly it's been pretty nice. I wish this was really money, but this has been really fun. As you've told me is to develop the confidence to basically start cash trading at the right time, because you did, you were very pointed to me, how long did it take me to learn my trade? Because I wanted to go right in, "Okay, hey. I've been pretty successful. Can I go right into cash now?" You said, "Give it some time, get more comfortable." It's true. Hey listen, we're going to lose some money, but if we win more than we lose, we're going to be way better off. I'll just scroll through and see which ones are either above the 20, 50 and 200, or below the 20, 50, 200. For example, ADM I'll say no because it's right in the middle and it's just not one to be traded. AGN looks like it's down, so that's something where you could actually do a call. This is Allergan and I think Allergan pays a good premium. What I do is I come right over to ... For people who are watching this, what I'll do is I set up basically almost three screens going at once. You can do this, and I know Allen, you did this on one of your calls, but you can do this by detaching this layout right there. I detached two layouts. All this is to do is just to make it simple and quick, so that I can scroll through, select ones. Then you see down here on the bottom left and if I'm scrolling all over the place, I apologize, but I have on my scratch pad basically the numbers that I want for my verticals in order to know that I'm at the 10% level. Right away, as easy as it sounds I always like, "Okay, I got to look. Is this 10%? Is this 10%?" As Allergen showed, it's down. I would look and say, "Okay, let me look at some calls." I'd go to a delta of typically we're working around the 10%, so I looked between seven and 14. Maybe got to the 14, which is 140. I go over to this page and look at the 140, it's /135. Okay and it says it's not available. I don't know why it wouldn't be, but maybe it's just uploading. Not available. Let's go to the next one. I would scroll down all of these. This one looks good too because it's above the three moving averages. However, it looks like it's dipping down a little bit for AIG. Got Applied Materials.  This is how I would scroll, as you've educated me in looking for those that are either above or the below moving averages. Altria is a good one. I'm trying to think of some of the goods ones that I like. I can go here. Broadcom, AVGO, that's one that I have traded almost every month and is a pretty good one, so let's go to it. Allen Sama:        In terms of the credit spreads or the layup spreads, do you follow the rules as laid out in the course or have you modified them? Dan Hayden:      No, I pretty much follow your rules. I probably have gotten a little sloppy this month because for example, I was gone this week traveling and I wasn't on top of it as much as possible. I'll travel with my iPad and leave my computer at home, and my computer basically is the best one. iPads I have trouble basically executing the trade with Thinkorswim. Allen Sama:        Oh, it's not the same thing? I know I do it on my phone, so I use their app on my phone. I've never done it on an iPad before. Dan Hayden:      Yeah. I can't get used to the phone app either, but either one, I'm more comfortable with the MacBook. I'm just going to bring up Broadcom to see where we are at right now. Right now it's right in the middle of these three, so I would stay away from a trade right now. Allen Sama:        About how many trades do you put on at a time? Dan Hayden:      It all depends. It all depends on what's telling me to trade. Right now I have, there's a put. The puts are on Altria and AT&T, two high dividend players. If I own them, I'm good. If just take the premium in, I'm good and then I'll do it again next month. But right now I have NVDIA, Intuitive Surgical, Campbell, Arcadia, Pacific and Broadcom.  You can see here, profit and loss. These are things about setting up automatic sells when they hit a certain point. Allen Sama:        Let's say you got about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Nine trades on. Dan Hayden:      Yup. One, two, three, four, nine. Allen Sama:        In addition to your covered calls. Dan Hayden:      Covered calls, I've stopped doing those. I used to do the covered calls on these stocks right here, but I was ... The covered calls to me, I'll get into those later. With Alexion, I have 1,000 shares of that. That's the one I really wanted to stay focused in on. But I've put that on the side burner. I'm just doing the puts in the vertical spreads. Allen Sama:        The thing is, with the different strategies, you can take and see what the market is giving you, and you can manipulate. If you're in a bull market, naked puts, they do awesome, put spreads do awesome. Covered calls, if you're not in the stock, if you don't own the stock and you just want to get out every time, then they work really well. In a sideways market, I love covered calls. Dan Hayden:      Which right now, would you consider us being in a sideway market? We're up one day, down the next, up one day. I would think ... Allen Sama:        We're still in a pretty good bull market in a sense where we're a 1% or 2% away from the all-time highs. I would say we're still bullish, especially if the fed does cut rates again. We have all this other news going on, all the noise that goes on in the market. But for the last, I don't know how many years, the bull market has been there because the fed had rates so low. I think that if they start cutting rates again, that's just going to signal to the market again that [inaudible 00:21:15] just take it up higher even more.  In my opinion, yeah, it's a pretty good bull market. Yeah, you can still make money with non-directional trades, but overall I think we're ... I like this type of market where it's going higher, but it's doing it slowing. We're not like shooting, shooting up higher. Not too much volatility for our premium to be good. We can make our 10% on our spreads and not have to worry about too much movement. Dan Hayden:      That might be help too, is to say, in a bull market, a slow rising bull market, it's best to trade the puts, covered calls. What would be the best vehicles in select markets, that might be helpful too. For me, whatever spits out as I scroll though, and I try to scroll through on Monday morning to determine what I'm purchasing for that next ... What don't we try 25 to 35 days as the best timeframe? Or a little bit longer. For example, Allen, SPX right now, it's above the three moving averages. Technically this looks like it could be a trade. This is the vertical. Allen Sama:        I've noticed that [inaudible 00:22:36] here, when you're looking for trades you're looking at the monthly ones. But on some of your trades that you already have on, you've done the weeklys. Dan Hayden:      Yeah. I try to do it, I think you said the sweet spot is 30 to 40 days out, so I'll try to go 30 to 40 days out. I think those were set last week. That's typically why. Right here, I would look at this 35. If I'm wrong, you let me know. With SPX above the three moving averages, I look at the 35 and look over here on the puts. I would look at is the delta around ... What do you like? You like deltas around 20? Allen Sama:        It depends on how many days. I would like to get it as low as possible, but if I'm going in there about 30 days or less, then the delta increases probably about 20. If I'm at 35, I might try to get a 15. But really, we're trying to make 10%, so I'd like to get as far away from the money but still be able to have a potential 10%. The delta in that case, I use it more as a guideline, not as a hard and fast rule that this is the delta I'm going [inaudible 00:23:45]. Dan Hayden:      Just to give anybody ideas, I have it set up so you have the singles on one page, so I can automatically go to what I was looking at, which was the SPX. I'll go down and I'll look for between a 10 anda 20 delta that brings in good returns. I would go down here, let's say, to a 15 delta, 35 days out. It's somewhere around 27.20. Then on this next page, I already have the verticals pulled up, so I can automatically look and say for the 15 deltas, 27.70, I can almost right away go to 27.20, so 27.20. I am doing 27.20, 27.25, which would be right here. I wish I could show you exactly what the bid-ask spread was, but it could be because of the bandwidth, but I'd be looking at this area. You've got plenty of open interest. It's the SPX, so you can expect that.  I would be looking in this area between a 10 delta and a 15 delta. Then I'd automatically go over to my, this is up here, so I automatically go over to my scratch pad to make sure that whatever I am trading, I'm making 10% on that money. Allen Sama:        That's why I think you need the computer instead of the iPad, because you have so many screens open. Dan Hayden:      That's probably it. But as you get going, I'll minimize these screens for the verticals, and I'll minimize the screen for the singles so that I'm actually overlaying each one. Right away I can go from one to the other, to the other and say, "Yup, that's a trade." If not, then I go right back over here, click this and go to the next stock.  If you have a big screen and you're at a desk, this is easy to do. Allen Sama:        Yeah, [inaudible 00:25:47]. Dan Hayden:      But I'm lazy so I carry around a laptop and don't want to hook it into an office. I typically sit on my front porch, and make the trades and make my notes. Allen Sama:        That sounds pretty sweet, man. Making money on the porch. Dan Hayden:      I overlook one of the Finger Lakes, so you got to take advantage of that too. Allen Sama:        Okay, so you told me that your goal was to make about a couple thousand dollars a month. Dan Hayden:      Correct. Allen Sama:        Do you think you've been doing this for what about six, five months now? Dan Hayden:      Correct, yes. Allen Sama:        Do you think you have the confidence to start going real money? Dan Hayden:      I do. I do. I have confidence and I have confidence in the selection criteria. I asked you, I said, "This is way too simple. This doesn't make sense." You can get pushed up and above, but you use your rules to get in and get out. You can minimize the losses because in this crazy market, anything can happen. Macroeconomically anything can happen that can impact these markets quickly. We can get pulled around. I've seen in. Where I get in, it makes sense. [inaudible 00:27:04] trading below or above the three moving averages, and then all of a sudden the market goes crazy and does something opposite. I've seen it right at the beginning of this year. That's the only thing that I have to build more confidence on, and I'm working with the Thinkorswim platform is that when I do make the trades, I am going to start setting stop orders so that if it hits a particular level of a loss, I'm out. If it hits a particular level of a gain, for example, at five cents, 10 cents, I'm just out. I move out, Thinkorswim has a pretty good commission rate so it's not costing me a lot to get out. At five cents I think it's free, and then I move on to the next trade.  Yeah, the confidence is there. Do I get nervous that I don't want to lose money? Absolutely. But you got to expect that if you have good rules, any money that you do lose should and could be minimized. That's the one thing that I have to integrate into my trading because hey listen, I had the time to be at the computer every single day for an hour, and check on my trades. But as recently, I really haven't because I've been flying around and meeting up with these companies. That's why I want to get good with setting up automatic stops. Allen Sama:        It's about an hour that you said, you spend about an hour looking at your trades when you can? Dan Hayden:      Yeah. It doesn't have to be every day, but probably an hour throughout the week. Especially if there's some newsworthy events happening, you want to be on there definitely during that day. But it's probably an hour a couple of times a week. That's only, that's like managing seven trades or so, something like that. It's not a lot of trades, not a lot of time, but typical to when you pick up this laptop or computer, I get carried away and I start looking for some other good dividend playing stocks [inaudible 00:29:08], because I love the scans.  Here's one that I did looking for dividends, high dividend plays and what I could maybe sell puts on. I'll do certain other things while I am looking at the trades that I have already open to try to create other opportunity. Allen Sama:        [inaudible 00:29:30] you just love this stuff. You're just into it. Dan Hayden:      I do. I do love it. Allen Sama:        If you didn't get sidetracked, it would be so easy. Just log in, check it out and I'm out. Dan Hayden:      Absolutely. People go on Facebook and all this stuff. It's great to keep up with that at stuff, but I enjoy looking at the stocks, the stock market and just trying to pull a little bit from the market into my accounts. Allen Sama:        Yup, yup, yup. Okay, you've been ... All right, what else? I had a couple questions for you in my mind. They just slipped. Dan Hayden:      See because you're probably looking at your screens right now. Allen Sama:        No, I'm looking at yours. I'm at home. I didn't even make it to the office today, so I'm just looking at the laptop. All I see is your stuff.   Wait it's funny though, you don't usually Analyze tab. I use that one almost exclusively. Dan Hayden:      Yeah. Before I got with your service, I used to use it all the time because I used to do these butterflies, and things that I picked up from all of these services that were trying to get your money. So I did use this a lot to analyze broken wing butterflies, and we used to do iron condors with butterflies in the middle to bring the iron condor up higher. I'm not the smartest guy at this, but I was learning more and more about this as I started to throw on another trade, either to save things or to increase my profit. Maybe it's something I should be using more. Do you use it just to see about your profitability, and when it does break even and start losing? Allen Sama:        I like putting the lines on the chart, but you know how it says they are add simulated trades? Dan Hayden:      Yup. Allen Sama:        I'll just look at that one and that pops up the option chain as well. I'll go down to a specific delta. You know how you were looking at should I do this one, or should I do this spread, or should I do this spread? Dan Hayden:      Yup. Allen Sama:        Then I'll just pop it up, I'll just pick one, do it as a vertical and then it'll have the numbers down at the bottom. So it'll be like, "Okay, so the 100, 105, he's giving me 50 cents and then the 105, 110 is giving me 25 cents." I can have two or three perspective trades on the screen. Then I'll just leave it there. Sometimes I'll do a trade and there is certain stocks, like I know IBM. It doesn't have a lot of premium, but it's a very slow moving stock. I like to trade it, but you have to get in really early. Sometimes you have to get in 40 days or 45 days to be able to get decent premium amount. Dan Hayden:      [inaudible 00:32:04] decent premium? Allen Sama:        Yeah, in order to get a decent return.  I'll go and I'll check it, and sometimes I'll leave it there. Or some other stock that maybe on the chart looks really good, but it's gone up too much or gone down too much. Right now, I'll put in a trade. I'm like, "Oh man, I really want to do this trade but it's only giving me 9%. Oh, gee. Okay." I'll just leave it there in the analyze tab, and then maybe two or three days later or a week from now, I'll come back and I'll look at it again when I'm going through my list, and I'll be like, "Oh okay, this one now, it's giving me 10 and a half percent. Okay, I can do it," because it pulled back or it moved around a little bit. It just stays there. Then if it doesn't work out, then you could just exit out and delete it, so it's not a big deal. Dan Hayden:      Now is that in our trading videos? Do you have a session on that? Allen Sama:        No, I don't think so. That's just something I picked up myself. Dan Hayden:      Yeah, that'd be cool to go in your brain and see how you use that function with the add simulator trades, because when I went into analyze, I would always go to the risk profile. It's interesting how you use the add simulator trade. Allen Sama:        I like the risk profile too, just to tell me what is exactly the probability and then I like to put it on the chart. I like to put my break-even line on the chart and just see it. I know your fooling yourself because you think, "Oh, that's so far away. That's never going to make it." You're fooling yourself, but I just like the way that looked. Dan Hayden:      No, that would be cool for one of your programs just to say something that, "This is how I approach this in monitoring whether I should get into a trade or not get into a trade." Allen Sama:        Yeah, so we can do that. We'll do that. Let's do that on the next coaching call. I'll go in ahead and go through the screen and we'll do several of those. One thing I also wanted to mention, you got your scratch pad. That's really cool. But for me, to keep it simple, if I'm doing a five point spread, I'm looking for 50 cents. If I'm doing a two and a half point spread, I'm looking for 25 cents. Dan Hayden:      Exactly. That's typicalLy how it [inaudible 00:34:14], $1 spread, you're looking at a buck. Allen Sama:        That's a little bit more than 10%, it's like 11% if you get exactly that. You can say, "Okay, I can go down a penny or two. I'm okay with that." Dan Hayden:      Yup. You got some flexibility. Yeah.  You know what else I noticed too, Allen, is when I go to set up a trade and it's a good trade, but it just misses the mark for example if it's a dollar spread and it comes in at 0.08 cents, a lot of times I'll put in 0.09 and leave for the day, and it hits. Throughout the day, something happens. Maybe the stock changes a little, the prices changes a little bit, but I'm like, "I'm close enough where I'm basically at 10%, but I'm going to set the 10% and walk away." I've had more and more stocks, it fills while you're never there with a good premium. Allen Sama:        That's a good tip. Dan Hayden:      Yeah, that's something else that I've done a couple of times.  Hey, this is the time that you experiment a little bit. You don't want to nick your percentages, but you also don't want to miss out on a good trade because there's some weeks where it's tough to find a good trade. Even the consistent one's just not offering a premium for some reason. Allen Sama:        Yeah. It goes through different ups and cycles. When you have earnings, it's harder to find a good trade. Sometimes you have to go to ETFs or something. But what you just mentioned, putting in a trade like, "I really love it and it's really close. Let me try it." It's not going to hurt you. You put that on and sometimes because of the way the option premiums are priced, maybe a large order comes in, or the stock moves and down a little bit, and the premium just move more than they should sometimes and you get filled on those. Dan Hayden:      Yeah, that's been interesting. You made it really practical, how to approach it. Also, I will say that there's one gentleman who put on the site Excel spreadsheets, which I downloaded and they're awesome. He has a really great profitability chart, so you can put the numbers in and it'll calculate it out automatically. I can't remember the name of the gentleman that did it, but really nice addition in your site. Allen Sama:        If somebody was thinking about joining the course, the Passive Trading course, what would you say to them? Dan Hayden:      I would say people can hear what they want to hear, but there's so much pollution out there from these other services. You teach a person to fish so he can feed for a lifetime, and that's what I wanted. I don't want somebody to basically take the steering wheel and drive the car. I want you to teach me how to drive the car so that I don't have to rely on other people. I would absolutely recommend it. There's as much risk as you want in it, but you control your own destiny. That's the best place to be in because I don't want to send my $1,000 to this service and they're the ones picking out the trades, when in all reality you simplified it to such a fashion that you can join this service, but then you can learn it and move on if you want.  Hopefully they stay with you and they believe in you because I believe in you right now. You've simplified something that quite honestly as you first join, can be way overwhelming. But you made it simple, you've allowed for three different ways to have extra streams of income, and you teach us to do it. That's the best thing that you can ask for. Yes, I would definitely recommend people to join. Allen Sama:        That's funny too because you said you've studied iron condors, you've studied broken wing butterflies, which is a pretty advanced trade. But you're like, "I want to go back to this stuff that actually keeps working. I'm not going to go so advanced. I want to try to make it simple so that it doesn't take a lot of time, and you don't ave to monitor it so much and is just a lot less stressful," I think. Dan Hayden:      It absolutely is because the more things you stop placing on, the more you do have to watch the monitor, and the more you have to react and do other things to fix that broken wing butterfly. The only reason, Allen, I got into broken wing butterflies is because I paid a service to basically teach me how to do broken wing butterflies. It's probably a really good service, but quite frankly, it's way too complicated. It's not necessary. A vertical spread, if you get good at it, it can be boring, over and over, and over again. But if it's boring and your account is growing, that's a good thing. Allen Sama:        Yeah. That's how we designed it. We want it to be boring, we want it to be passive so that we can actually go and ... Dan Hayden:      Enjoy life. Allen Sama:        ... spend time doing what we want to do. Yeah. There are people that want to be on the screen all day checking their stock, and checking their trades and what not. There's definitely a place for that.  In the beginning, I tried it that way. To me, the more complicated it got, the more I realized that maybe I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but there is so many extra things that I can miss. I'm like, "I'm just a normal person. This is getting too complicated for me. Let's just tone it down. Let's take something that works, I know it works." What I love with you is you've put in the time, you've put on the trades. How many trades have you put on since you started paper trading? Just ballpark. 100? 200? 500? Dan Hayden:      No. It's not that many. It's probably a little over 100. Allen Sama:        Okay, so 100 over five months. So 20 a month, that's decent. You were practicing, you're gaining confidence, you're learning how you like to set it up with the three screens, and how to monitor it, and set up your charts and all that stuff. That takes a little bit of time, but now I think that you're at the point where, "Hey, I turned 250 into 484." Dan Hayden:      Right. Right Allen Sama:        That's [inaudible 00:40:29] double. That's really good. In five months, holy cow. Now it's time for you to now slowly, slowly transition, I think, into the real money. Maybe you pick one ... Or maybe you start with a small amount of your capital, whatever amount. You start with a little bit. Maybe let's do three spreads and two covered calls a month, or two puts and three spreads, or something like that. Dan Hayden:      Exactly. Allen Sama:        Let it out. Dan Hayden:      With a lot less contracts. Allen Sama:        Oh yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah, [inaudible 00:41:04]. Dan Hayden:      Here I'll do 10 contracts every single time. There, real money, I'll probably do between one and five contracts. Allen Sama:        Whatever the amount you have to work with, [inaudible 00:41:18]. If you have 10,000 to work with, okay, I'll do $1,000 in each one or something like that. Dan Hayden:      Each one, exactly. Proper money management. Yeah, [inaudible 00:41:28]. Allen Sama:        The contracts doesn't really matter, but the fact that you've almost doubled it in five months means if you were working with a $10,000 account, you would have done the same trades. You would have been almost the same thing. The numbers, you just add zeros at the end for more money. That's what I love too that you can start out small, do the same exact trade. You don't need $8,000 to do a trade. [inaudible 00:41:48] trade, just add zeros to it. Dan Hayden:      Yup. I have a Roth account and I keep saying, "I want to grow that Roth account." I think what I've decided is that with the Roth account, I'm going to sell puts. Then if it's executed and I own those shares, I'll sell covered calls really close to the money. Basically just keep transferring the stock. Take big premium by selling very close to the money. If it hits, okay, I'm back into cash. Now I'll sell that put again really close to the money, take a good premium. If it hits, I own the stock and now I'll sell covered calls. I just want to grow that Roth IRA money so that there's a significant amount there that's all tax free.  I've segmented it there, and then start with my cash account in selling verticals. Verticals is what ... That's the primary breadwinner I should say. Then I have an account that has a company with a significant amount of shares, and I'm just going to sell covered calls on that one. It's like three different accounts with three different principles. Allen Sama:        The company that you just spoke about, I believe you told us what it was earlier. Why are you in that one? I'm just curious. Dan Hayden:      I worked for them, so I accumulated shares over the years. Allen Sama:        Okay, that makes sense. Are you allowed to sell those if you had to? Dan Hayden:      Yeah, because I don't work for them any longer. Allen Sama:        I see. Okay, cool. Dan Hayden:      Part of me thinks about selling them, part to them thinks about just taking an income each months. It's a volatile stock, that's the problem. It can be tough trading, but if you take chunks and you sell covered calls at different levels, like one close to the money where I might lose this, but okay, so I just cashed in on 250 shares, I sell a little bit further out so that I still own those shares, and then 250 I sell a little higher. I don't bring as much premium in, but I know I'm keeping the shares. Allen Sama:        That's the thing if you work for a company, you have a little bit of a inside track to see how the company is doing. Are they hiring more people? Are they letting people off? If they're letting a lot of people off, okay there's something going on. If they're hiring more people, if they're expanding, if they're spending more money on marketing. You hear all that news that as a trader ourselves, we might not be privy to all of that unless we really dig into the information. Dan Hayden:      Correct. Allen Sama:        To be able to trade a stock that you own because you work there, I think that's a big leg up. Dan Hayden:      Yeah. Allen Sama:        Even now I'm sure you still have friends and people that work there that you know. You can stay on top of that information. Dan Hayden:      Yeah, in some instances. But then again, it goes to show that the market will do what the market wants to do because I've been around where we've had awesome quarters and we got hit by the market. We lose. Nothing's a sure thing. I remember those days where we'd have a blowout quarter and we were down 10 points. It made no sense at all. Yeah, it's good to be affiliated with it, but it's also they can throw you curve balls and make it very frustrating too. [inaudible 00:45:17] go in thinking about vertical spreads straight up and then whatever else you start accumulating through your puts, sell covered calls on, have a method to start creating your stream of income in three different ways. The way you trained us, I think is a beautiful way to begin growing your stock accounts and making money passively. Allen Sama:        Yeah, and thank you for saying that. One of my goals is the stocks that I buy, I want to get them for free. I want to get so much money back from them that I didn't pay for them. I got my money back. Then you're playing with the house money, and whatever happens happens. I'm okay because I got my money back. Dan Hayden:      Yeah, that's exactly it. That's why I think young people should be doing this as quickly as possible because they have the ability to do that, and doing it over and over again, taking in the premium which reduces the cost of the stock. Then you're saying, "Hey, it doesn't really matter because I bought this at this, I've taken this much in, and basically I own the stock for free." Allen Sama:        Then it doesn't matter if it goes down, it goes up. You're getting a dividend, you're like, "Okay, I'm happy." Dan Hayden:      Exactly. Yeah. Yup, absolutely. You still have the shares, so do whatever you want with the shares. Allen Sama:        What would you say is the biggest thing that led to your success? Dan Hayden:      Well success is ... Allen Sama:        Well I know you're being humble but seriously, but seriously, to double [inaudible 00:46:43], to double your money in five months, I've never done that. You're doing something different, you're doing something special. What do you think caused it? Dan Hayden:      For me, it was just finding out ... I needed a method to ... I just wanted a recipe. Give me something that is easy, that I can select stocks that makes sense, and then doing it.  It was basically providing the methodology, which I have because of these three simple moving averages, and then executing. That's it. It's not rocket science. This is paper traded, so you might get a little bit over ambitious with one trade over the other because it's not your money, but just to me, the most important thing was developing that method, having confidence in knowing if it's above or below that three moving averages, and the stock's trading up, and so is the marketplace trading up, it's a good sign that this is going to be a good stock to trade. Now let's look at what the returns can be, let's look at the verticals, let's look at the individuals to find the right delta. Having that method to basically weed out what you should be trading. Allen Sama:        Yeah, a lot of people, when they first hear about it they're like, "It can't be this easy." Then you said the same thing. Dan Hayden:      I did. Yup, I wrote to you and I said, "There's got to be something else I have to throw in."  You see my screen, this is from the old days where I'd be looking at volatility, standard deviations, [inaudible 00:48:19]. I tried to come up with the best technical analysis and seeing if the stock anticipated to go up, down, what. You don't need this. This was the olden days where I had all this stuff at the bottom and I've just never turned it off. You could take out all that noise, and basically just look at the charts and have confidence in what you do. You're going to have curveballs thrown at you every so often, but be ready for those curve balls, and get out with minimum losses and you'll come out way ahead. Allen Sama:        I think that's where asset allocation comes into play, especially with the different strategies. If you're only doing spreads and you're only doing put spreads because the market's going up, but then it drops, you're behind an 8-ball, you're in trouble. But if you're doing a little bit in the puts, a little bit in the calls, a little bit in the spreads, a little bit in something else, then you can weather the storm. It's not one trade will be doing good, the other trade will be not so good. The way we talk about it is, every month has the potential possibility of being a very good month. If you have a good month, and a good month, and a good month, and a good month, but then you have a bad month, which is going to happen, if you do it right then the good months will overcome the bad months. Dan Hayden:      Absolutely. Yup, yup. Allen Sama:        In the long-run, if you look at it a year, two years, three years down the road, you'll be like, "Okay, I'm up a lot. This really [inaudible 00:49:50]." Dan Hayden:      Exactly. [inaudible 00:49:51]. Allen Sama:        Some people look at it and say, "I tried it for a month and I lost money on two of my six trades, so this sucks." I was like, "Well, that's the way it works." Dan Hayden:      Exactly. Even the professionals lose. You just have to know how to minimize those losses, and that's the biggest thing. That's something that I have to do. You can see some of these losses that I have to be more proactive in setting up my losses when I set up my trades. The minute that trade hits, I got to go in and say, "Okay, I got to get out when it's profit of this or a loss of that." That's all in your ... I don't have my notes with me, but it's all in your notes for these losses.  I brought up this screen here that shows my puts. I have Altria, and I'm okay. I'm okay if own this. My fear when I put a put on, like you just talked about earlier, is suppose something happens macroeconomically between they decide not to lower rates, Iran does something, China does something and it drops heavy like Altria goes below that 47.50 put. Well now I just bought it at 47.50, but it's at 45. That's a hurt. The only thing you can do to get away from that because you're fully exposed when you do this, is just to start selling calls close to the money to say, "I either get out of the Altria and take a minimal loss, or I'm good because I believe it's going to be coming back, and plus I'm making my dividends."                                 We talked about fear, how as a trader, you're fearful of losing money. Well I'm fearful of having to buy Altria if the market drops hard, or AT&T, the market drops hards, and I'm buying it higher than the market's actually at. That's a fear that I have. But if you stay on the sidelines, you don't do it, you don't get your dividends, you don't get the opportunity to buy these stocks at a discounted rate. Allen Sama:        That's why we do the paper trading too, because actually do it for a few months and you'll get a better idea of how many times did I have to buy the stock? I did it five times, I never even came close. Maybe this fear is a little bit unwarranted. So maybe if I do it with real money, and I do it for a year, two years, three years, maybe I'll get the stock once or twice.                                 That's why with the paper trading, I'll advise everybody like, "Get in trouble. Put some trades on that you wouldn't to get in trouble with it, and so that you can see, how do I navigate my way out of trouble?" Dan Hayden:      How does it respond, exactly. Yup, yup. Allen Sama:        With Altria and AT&T, okay, maybe I'll sell at the money put. Dan Hayden:      Yup, just to see what happens. Allen Sama:        Just to see, okay, I have to buy the put at this price. What do I do now? Oh, I bought this stock. Okay, how do I get out of that? Dan Hayden:      The worst time to trade is when you're in fear, you have something going against you and you're nervous. That's the worst time to place that reactive trade. Allen Sama:        Exactly, exactly. A lot of this stuff is we're dealing with stocks as well, so if you own the stock, there's a great chance the thing will rally in the next 10 years. Anyway, if you're only trading options then you lose, and the month expires, then that's it. That loss is yours, you got to eat it. You got to make it up next month, the next month. But with the stock, you can always come back.                                 Is there anything else you want to share? Dan Hayden:      No, I greatly appreciate what you're doing in helping others. I really have learned a lot from you. I do, I do I have the confidence again in getting into option trading and having a good plan for doing that option trading. So thank you. Allen Sama:        Great, great. Yeah, I'm excited to see how you take it and how far you go from here because you got the foundations down, you got some basics, and now it's time to start doing it. Dan Hayden:      Yeah, well it's funny too because now that I'm working with this company in doing consulting with them, I have income coming in so it's like, "Okay, well I don't have to bring in income with the option trading as much." That psyche comes into play where, "Okay, when I wasn't working I said Okay, I got to make sure that start bringing in X number of dollars a month." That's why I'm not, I shouldn't say as serious because I do look at the charts and all that stuff. I track it probably a couple times a week, but in January, February, March, when I wasn't working for any other company, I was looking at it, looking at opportunities every day, and I was very, very religious about it.                                 It is that psyche, but all I can recommend to everybody is even if you have a full-time job just flat out, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour if you can just to monitor the trades that you have on, but also to look at new opportunities elsewhere. But get dedicated almost like I have a system now by scanning, by reviewing the chart, by reviewing the delta and by reviewing the return. I have a method, and that way have a method each night, each day to give yourself a couple of minutes to look at the trades and to scan so that it becomes second nature. That's the best thing to do. Allen Sama:        Yeah, definitely. Like you said with the mindset, when you don't have any income coming in and you have to make your nut, maybe $5,000, $10,000 a month, that's when the stress really this you from the trading. It's like, "Oh my God, this trade has to work. It has to work." That's when you mess up.                                 When you have even a little bit of income coming in and you're not totally dependent on your trades, then it allows you to actually trade better. Dan Hayden:      That's exactly right. Allen Sama:        That's very helpful especially when people are getting started.                                 I've seen some people where they jump the gun too fast and they, "I want to be a full-time trader," and they jump to fast into it, and they're like, "I have to make money every month." We had one student who did that and the stress just got to him. He placed trades that he shouldn't have and then he lost. On a mental standpoint it just sends you for a tailspin. Dan Hayden:      Did he need that money or was this supplementing his income? Allen Sama:        No, he had quit his job to trade full-time. He over traded I believe, and then he lost some money. Now you have to cut back on your lifestyle when that happens. It's not something that ... He has the skills. He'll be back, I'm sure he'll be back. But it hurts in your mind. You feel really down about it.                                 That's why I love it that you're starting and you're saying, "Hey, my goal is to make $2,000 a month." Well okay, if I can make 3%, 5% a month doing something pretty safe, $2,000 a month, I don't need to have a big ton of money. I can put little bit of money, make my goal, and then once you get to that goal it's $2,000 and you say, "Okay, no my goal is 3,000. Now my goal is 4,000."                                 Then eventually you can actually go and say, "All right. I don't need the consulting anymore. I'll just do this." If you love it, you go do the consulting too. It's up to you, your choice. Dan Hayden:      This isn't something where your going to make a ton of money tomorrow. It's not the day trading, it's not that heavy, it's not that risky type of a trade. This is something where you get good at it and you bringing in a little bit each month. Then like you just said, you bring a little bit each month, you get good at what you're doing, and then you get the confidence to say, "Okay, I'm going to now trade two contracts. I'm going to trade three contracts."                                 Because if you quit your job and you're getting stressed out because you're losing money, then you must be risking too much because you shouldn't be risking too much. You should have proper money management. This is my own opinion, but you shouldn't have that stress, just like you shouldn't be like, "Hey, I am so good at this because I've had all these ... "                                 I don't consider myself good, I consider myself that I've got a new training system so I consider myself a little bit more confident. But I'm not good in any means. But you shouldn't take chances. This isn't gambling. This is proper investing and trying to create a passive income. That's all it is, is a passive income. Allen Sama:        As you venture more into the real money world, you know that I'm always here. You can email me, we could do the coaching calls, or the Facebook group, or the community, whatever. You know that there is some support there as well. Dan Hayden:      Absolutely. Yeah, no. You've gotten back to me, you've slapped me on the hand a couple times. Even going onto your site, I wish there was a little bit more interaction between the members because that's where I learned and I picked up that Excel spreadsheet from your one member. I love reading it because it's like, "Okay, I want to learn more. I always want to keep learning."                                 But yeah, I felt, "Hey, I've got these trades. I've really done pretty well. Should I start doing cash trades now?" You said, "How long did it take you to learn your skill? Your lifelong skill?" We said, "30 years." You say, "Well, it's going to take you a little bit longer to get comfortable with it with the practice trading." Allen Sama:        Yeah, [inaudible 00:59:35]. Dan Hayden:      Yeah, yeah. The support's there, and you do get right back to it relatively quickly. I think it's on our side now where we have to start interacting a little bit more, coming up with, "Hey, this was successful to me, this is what I was looking for, this is what I got, this didn't work out for me, what should I have done differently?" Things like that. Allen Sama:        We're working on that. Right now, the course itself, we've only marketed it to our own list, so we haven't really gone to the public with it. We haven't let a lot of people in. We only open it up once a month for a few people, a handful of people, and then we shut it down again because I'm working with people, and we're working it out. But once we do expand it a little bit more, I'm working on a couple projects coming up that we'll definitely open up the course and we'll have a lot more people in. Once we do, then that interaction will grow.                                 Currently I'm working ... Right now my major project is I'm working on a book called Passive Trading. Once we get that book into people's hands, they'll see like, "Hey. Wow, this is awesome. I never knew I could do this." [inaudible 01:00:36] in there from students who are doing really, really well. I think that will help as well. Dan Hayden:      That's awesome. Allen Sama:        When we get more people in the group then yeah, it'll definitely pick up. But I appreciate you posting in there and doing stuff. Even on the call, I appreciate you coming on a call, and sharing all your knowledge and experience. Dan Hayden:      Like I said, knowledge and success, it's ... These net liquidating trades, and overall profit or loss, I can't figure them all out because there's other trades that came into play with it as well. I'm probably 10 grand a month or something like that in the profit. That's pretty good since I started. Allen Sama:        Yeah. You started five months ago, so yeah, that's pretty good. Dan Hayden:      It's exceeded what my initial goals were. If I can now taper it down a little bit with my cash because I'm not going to be as aggressive and all that stuff, especially to start out with, but yeah, it's been a lot of fun to learn and that's the best thing about it is that I'm not having somebody else have to tell me what to do. I'm learning it and I'm appreciative of that. Thank you. Allen Sama:        Yeah, man. You could do this for the rest of your life as long as we get older and we slow down a little bit, and our arms don't ... When your back hurts and this hurts, and that hurts, working a job or doing all that traveling might not be an option. But sitting on your porch, like you said, with your laptop, yeah, you'll be able to do that for a while. Dan Hayden:      Absolutely. If I can get good at this and then teach my kids how to do it ... Allen Sama:        Oh, game changer. Dan Hayden:      A game changer is right. Allen Sama:        That's one of the things I want to do as well. Dan Hayden:      [inaudible 01:02:14] because you're taking something that's complicating, making it simple, and teaching others to do that. That's great. Good for you. Allen Sama:        Because this stuff has been around for a long time. But with the advent of the internet, and the brokers, and now everything's at our fingers. Anybody can do this from anywhere around the world, so it's really opened it up for us as individual investors. I think for our kids, it's just going to get even better.                                 We're limited to a little bit of the U.S. stock system. I think when our kids are older or whatever, they'll be trading around the world, they'll be trading on the moon. It's going to be crazy. Dan Hayden:      It's true. No, it's true. Anything's possible. It's amazing because if you're ... The times that I've gotten into trouble is the times that I haven't got out of trades because, "Oh, it's going to turn around. It certainly can't keep going." It's going down two or three days in a row. You think it's going to turn around, but if you play by the rules, you have your rules, that's where you don't get into trouble and you're out.                                 You said, "Hey, I'll take this little hit. I've made a little loss, but I'll make it back." Or, "I made it on the front side." Almost like your puts. You've owned these stocks and you've gotten so much premium that you own it for free. How much damage can be done?                                 There's no need to take risks, to take chances. If you follow the rules, when to get in, when to get out, it's all good. You're going to have minimal losses and maximum gains. Allen Sama:        Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yup. You just play it month by month, year after year. The returns, they take care of themselves pretty much. Dan Hayden:      Yup, and you get so bored that you just say, "Well, here's Monday again. I got to go make some money." Allen Sama:        Well that's the biggest thing. That's one of the biggest risks is that you get bored and then you don't pay attention. I've noticed that when I first started out. I'll put on my trades and I'd be like, "Uh, nothing's happening. All right." Then, "Oh, nothing's happening." Then I'll just forget to check them, and then, "Oh, something did happen and I didn't ... Ah, don't worry about it. It'll be fine." That's when you get in trouble, when you get too bored. Dan Hayden:      That's where I am right now because as I'm traveling with this other consulting, you're bored because, "Well, I've made this much money. If they go wrong, I'll just set up new trades because it's paper money." But I got to get more disciplined in my paper exiting so that ... To me, that's the last part of my training right now, is just setting up the trades as I enter the trades to get out. Allen Sama:        Well you have Thinkorswim, so they have something called OCO orders. Dan Hayden:      Correct, one cancels the other. Allen Sama:        Yeah, most brokers have something like that. If you call them up and I'm sure they'll walk you through how to set it up or they might even have the videos on their website. Dan Hayden:      They do have videos. Yeah, they do have videos. Allen Sama:        They show you how to do that. If that's what you're looking for, there is a way to do it.                                 Or if you want, you can just have them alert you on your phone. Dan Hayden:      Yes, you talked about that last week, which is awesome. You can have them text or ... Allen Sama:        There's ways to run it if you want to find it that way. Then it's totally automatic. Put the trade on and then just put the orders in, "Okay, I'm done. I don't have to do anything at all." Dan Hayden:      Yeah. Yeah. I lost, but I only lost a couple hundred dollars. Yeah I gained and I made $500, whatever it is. Yeah, that to me, that's relaxation because you don't have to, in that heat of the moment when, "Oh my gosh, it really turned against me. Now I'm down $300. What do I do?" That's the wrong time to be making a decision. Yeah, if the decisions can be already made for me, all the better. -------------- For more information on the program Dan is part of and how you can join go to PassiveTrading.com And also visit us at OptionGenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- In this episode we talk with a newer options trader who wants to make trading options his full time gig. So let's dive into his questions: **For more information on the program discussed in this episode, The Iron Condor Mastery, Click HERE** Craig Davis: So in terms of becoming options trader, being a specialist, what's the top three, top five things I should be looking to do, be, read, think about, think about, and words I'm supposed to have, things like that? Allen: Okay. The top five or three things that you need to know to be a full-time trader. Obviously, you need to learn. There are many different ways to learn, right? There are many different coaches out there, there are different books out there. You can go, I know in the US we have the public libraries, and you can get any introduction to trading book, and they'll have lots of different strategies in there, they'll teach you everything. But I think it comes down to, so let's say... Okay, so if I was going to be a trader, so I'm starting over, I'm working my job, I think in the beginning I would try to be more realistic and say, you know, "I need to set my goal, whatever my goal is." I need to, whatever my monthly expenses are, it's 5000 pound a month, or 10,000, whatever your expenses are. So, that's the central goal. And then I think you have to get into the psychology aspect of it first. Craig Davis: Yeah, okay. Allen: Where you have to figure out, okay, why? Why is this so important to me? What's going to happen if I don't achieve this goal? Craig Davis: Okay, yeah. Allen: Because I think you really need to dig down and make a list of all the negative things, and all of the horrible things that will happen. You know, I'm going to be working until I'm 70 years old, my kids are not going to be able to go to the right college and university, and all these different things, to make it like a mandatory thing in your life, that you have to achieve this goal no matter what happens. The reason I say that is because a lot of people, they have, "Yeah, yeah, I want to make more money, I want to make more money." But then, while they're on the road, the road has bumps. And so sometimes they go over a bump and say, "Oh, that was too bumpy. I'm going to get off of this road. I don't want to do this anymore." Or they pause, or they stop. They pull over to the side, and they say, "Oh, I'll get back to that after my kid graduates from school, or I'll get back to that after this happens. Let me do this project at work first." They lose track, and then they never come back. Craig Davis: Okay, okay. Allen: So, that's a big problem. So, the mental aspect is there. And then the second thing, I think once we have that, then really, you know, you need to look over your entire lifestyle and say, "Okay, I obviously... You need money to trade." There's no other ways about that. So, we need to have, and build up our account as much as possible, so that we have some money to trade. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: That way you're reducing your expenses as much as possible, paying down your debt, so you're not paying extra fees, and interest, and all that stuff. And then, putting that money away and saving it. Once you have that done, let's say you have the mental aspect done, you have some money to trade, then I think you do some research and you say, "Okay, there are all these different strategies, which one do I think gives me the best chance for success?" And for every single person, it's different. There are people who tell me that, "I think what you're doing, where you're selling options, that's way too boring for me. I want to be a day trader, and I want to get rich in three days." Then, you try that path, right? Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: There are people that are very aggressive, there are people that are very conservative, and they say, "Oh, I don't want to take very much risk." Well, okay, then put your money in the index fund, or put your money in a bond fund, and just buy bonds, and make, whatever, two, three percent the bond is paying you, and you live off of that. There are some people that, I know one guy in Canada, he has a company where he teaches people how to do dividend investing. Craig Davis: Oh, okay. Allen: By the right shares, and they'll give you four or five percent a year in dividends. Craig Davis: Okay, fair enough. Allen: So if that's your thing, that's your thing, that's all you do, and that's all you do. You don't need to worry about it. I found that, for me, I found something that I don't want to only make four or five percent. I want to make, per year, at least 20 percent. And then, I want to do it in a way that made sense to me. For me, I'm a bit of a lazy person, honestly. I don't want to put a lot of time [crosstalk 00:04:31]- Craig Davis: I think you're being over modest. Allen: No, really. If you talk to my wife, she would definitely agree with me. Craig Davis: Well, so you do some work somewhere, so there's some work there somewhere. Allen: We do a little bit of work here and there in the office. But in terms of the trading, it's not that much. In the beginning, I wanted to find out what I wanted to do, so I did a lot of trades in the beginning. I did a lot of what's called the virtual trading, where you get a free account, and you just do all the different strategies, all the different trades, see which one works for you. I did a lot of back testing. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: There's software out there that lets you basically go back in time, and you put on a strategy, and then you just go through day by day by day how the strategy worked. If you need to adjust the trade, you can, if you need to change your strategy, you can. So, that was very, very beneficial, because that took a lot of time... If you do virtual trading, like paper trading, or you use real money and you do... Let's say I want to do a butterfly spread. You come up with your own criteria and you say, "I want to try this new strategy that I've created. I'm going to do this, and this, and this, and this." To actually do it in real time would take you 30, 35 days, and you only get to do one of them. Craig Davis: Right. Allen: If you do the back testing, you go back to, let's say, 2000, January 1st, 2000, and you put on your trade. Within like three hours, you can do 10 hours, or 10 years worth of trades. Craig Davis: Right [crosstalk 00:06:07]. Allen: So it's a big, big chance where you don't spend that much time on it. And you get the learning much faster. Craig Davis: Right, I see. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Allen: In the beginning I would find, I would say, "Okay, I'm going to find..." I wanted to find one strategy. Just one trade I could just do it, I don't have to do anything else, I don't have to worry about anything else. This is the only thing I wanted. I just wanted to find one thing that would work. I tried different things. I tried butterflies on McDonald's, butterflies on Walmart, I tried iron condors on certain stocks, iron condors on indexes, credit spreads, double diagonals, cover calls. I tried several different strategies. They all have their benefits, and they all have their negatives. Craig Davis: Okay, yeah. Allen: I do think that you can take any one strategy and just work with it, and learn it, and do really, really well with it. So if you find one strategy speaks to you, then focus on that one. Do your virtual trading, and if you can afford a back testing software, get the software, and just within a weekend, you'll have done dozens of trades. You'll have a leg up on everybody else that's doing this. I think that's a secret that people don't really use as much. Craig Davis: Have you got like two or three back testing softwares that are for doing research? Allen: So, the one I use most is called Option Net Explorer. Craig Davis: Okay, Option Net Explorer, yeah. Allen: I think that one costs... I don't know how much it costs now. Let me see. They have a 30 day trial, so you can try it for 30 days. After that, I think it's... Actually, the 30 day trial is 10 pounds. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: And then for a year, it's 500 pounds. Craig Davis: Wow. Allen: You're in the UK, right? Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: So yeah, so it's 500 pounds. So it's a little pricey, you know, maybe you don't need it for a month, or you don't need it for the whole year, but [crosstalk 00:08:16]... Yeah, so it's 10 pounds for the month, so you try it out. And if you like and you want to keep doing it, you can do, they have a three month plan and then they have a 12 month plan. Craig Davis: Yeah, I'll look at that three month. Okay, three-month and 12 months, okay. Allen: I mean, you look at everything and you say, "Okay, these are the different things that I want to test. Before you open the account, or before you do the trial, come up with your rules. Like, "Okay, I'm going to do this strategy, and this is my rule, this is what I'm going to put the trade on, this is how I know I'm going to be in trouble." You know, so you have a basic whole trading plan. And then you go and you test that, and you try it. You say, "Okay, this didn't work. Okay, how can I fix it? What can I do differently?" Then you go back and you try it again, and try it again, and try it again until you come up with something that works for you. We have different trading plans that are [crosstalk 00:09:07]. Craig Davis: I'm looking to specialize in the Iron Condor one. Allen: Okay. Craig Davis: Because I've seen some things, and trades in the range, and all these adjustments and all that seems like it's a good plan. And then I seen on your program, you have the lazy day trading, or something like that. That incorporates some Iron Condor. So, maybe I am heading towards the iron Condor thing to focus on and try and specialize in. Allen: Yeah. So we do, we have that course. It teaches everything of a tizzy about the Condor, how it works, how do you do it. It gives the different trading plans that you can use based on if you want to be aggressive or more conservative, whatnot. So, if that's something that you want to focus on, then just go 100 percent and do that, and see how it goes. Do the trial, and test all the different trading plans, see if you can find some other trading plans online. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: I know the ones that we've put into the course, we've tested them, we've done them with real money, so we know that they work. So the question is really, "Okay, so here's the plan. Allen says it works. Now let me go back in time and let me try it, and let me see how I do." Craig Davis: I like that bit, yeah. Allen: And let's see. You know, let's see if Allen is full of it, or let's see if he's really telling the truth. Craig Davis: Now, that's fair enough. I like it. Yeah. Allen: Because it also, like I said, it's different for everybody. So, the trading plan, we've gotten testimonials from people and said, "Hey, I tried this and it worked great," and then we've had other people that said, "I tried it and it failed, and I didn't work." So, what's the difference? The plan is the same, the market is the same. Craig Davis: People. Allen: It's the people that are, they're doing something different or whatnot. We had one student, he was in one of our other courses. It was, you know, you put on the trade and you wait until the trade, if it goes against you, you have to let it go to a certain Delta. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: So we do that with condors as well. You put the trade on at a certain Delta, and when it gets to a certain Delta, that's when you know that, okay, it's time to change or adjust the trade. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: Well, this fellow didn't want to wait until that Delta. He was looking at the money and he said, "Oh, I was down 200 dollars, so I got out of the trade, and it didn't work." Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: I said, "But, that's not how it works. That's not the plan." Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: You can go down four 500 dollars, and then eventually it will come back up, and then you'll win. So, you have to be able to ride the waves. For him, that particular plan, or maybe trading in general was not, it didn't fit for him, because of his style. If you cannot see yourself and say, "Okay, I'm going to put the trade on..." When we're selling options, especially with iron condors too, in the beginning of the trade you might be down 100 dollars, 200 dollars or something, before it turns around and then it starts making money again. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: But if you don't have the patience, or you don't have the ability to just sit and wait, then this is not the trade for you. Craig Davis: That's true, that's true. Yeah, from what I can see and from what you're saying, it seems like you have to have that confidence to stick to the plan, and just follow the rules according to the plan. So yeah, I think that's- Allen: You have to have confidence in the plan. So, that's why you do the back testing. You just do it as many times as you can, you track all your results, and you look at it and you say, "Okay, you know what? Over the last 10 years I made money eight of the years or six of the years, I lost money for of the years. In my head, am I behind? Is that acceptable to me? Craig Davis: Yeah, yeah. Allen: You know? I had a friend of mine, he found this strategy for the iron Condor, somebody showed it to him, that says, "This is how you put the trade on, and then you never touch it." Craig Davis: Oh, naughty. Yeah. Allen: That's it, you don't do anything else. You put the trade on, and then you just let it do its thing, and the numbers should work out, and you should make money. So, it's either you're going to win on that trade, or you're going to lose the maximum. Craig Davis: Yeah, that's not a good trade then. That's not a good plan. Allen: Right. I mean, before we make a judgment, we have to test it. So my friend, he's very smart, so he said, "Okay," and he got it. He got the same software, this option software. Now this guy, he's wealthy, he's already wealthy. He went and he found somebody, and told them, "Hey, I need you to learn how to use this software, and I'm going to pay you to run this test." Craig Davis: Nice one. A real life scientist, yeah. Allen: Yeah. So, he hired this person, and the guy did all the testing for like the past 20 years or something. The results were that if you had traded this way every single year for 20 years, you would've just about broken even. Craig Davis: Oh my gosh, that's not good. Allen: Yeah. There were some years where it did very, very well, and then there were some years where he lost a bunch of money. But overall, over 20 years you would've broken even. So he's like, "Yeah, this doesn't work," and I'm like, "Well, I'm glad you know before you wasted the next 20 years to try to bring it out." Craig Davis: [inaudible 00:14:35]. Allen: So for iron condors, I do believe you have to adjust it. That just gives you a better chance to win. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: But another thing you have to be aware of is, you don't always want to be in the market. Craig Davis: Okay. That's an interesting concept. Because you're always like, when you see on some of the things where they say, "Oh, yeah, you've always got to be [inaudible 00:14:59]." So it's interesting when you say be in the market and out the market. What do you mean by that? That's a good mindset, I suppose for someone that starting out? Allen: In the stocks, when you're investing in stocks, they have gone back in time and they've looked at this, and they've said that most of the games that are made in the stock market are made in a few days every year. Craig Davis: No way. Allen: Maybe like 20 days every year. That's when the majority of the gains happen. Craig Davis: No way, so what's happening for the rest of the time? Allen: 70 percent of the time, stocks go sideways. Craig Davis: Sideways, okay. Allen: Yeah, that's why iron condors work. They go up, and they go down, and they go up, and they go down. That's why they tell you that you always have to be in the market if you're a stockholder, because you don't know when those days are going to happen. Craig Davis: Yes, yes. Allen: It could be in the beginning of the year, it could be in the middle, could be the end. You might miss out on a rally... Like for example, this year, 2019, if you were in from January to now, you would be up whatever it is, 16, 18 percent. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: If you missed these first few months, and you get in right now, well it looks like the market's going down, so you might lose money the rest of the year. Craig Davis: Yeah, yeah. Allen: That's why if you're a stock trader, most of the time you have to have your money in the market, because you can't time it. You don't know when it's going to go up and when it's going to go down. Craig Davis: No, no. Allen: Most of us. Most of us cannot. Craig Davis: Most of us, yes. And unless you've got that magic crystal ball where you can say, "Oh, yeah..." Allen: Yeah. But when you trade the iron Condor, or other option strategies, you want to look at what's the VIX. The VIX is the volatility of the overall market. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: Now, the more volatile it is, the more volatility there is, the more the option prices are worth. You get more money when you sell them. But, that also means that the stocks are moving up and down much faster. Craig Davis: Right, okay. Allen: So you have to be on your toes. You have to be watching every day when it's very volatile, and you have to be ready to adjust, you have to be ready to play with it, and you have to be... To trade when it's very volatile, you have to be the best of the best. Craig Davis: Right, okay. Allen: When volatility is very low, the stocks aren't really doing anything, you can put on the trade and just wait, and then it expires, and you're done, right? Anybody can do that. And so in the beginning when you're starting out, I tell people like, "Hey, if it's too volatile for you, if you are getting nervous because there was a two percent move, or a three percent move in a day, then that's a signal that this is above your skill level, and you need to just get out." Craig Davis: Okay, yeah. Allen: Because if we are trading iron condors, we can make 10, 12, 15 percent per month. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: Do we need to do it every single month? No. Craig Davis: No, okay. Right. Allen: If you have two or three good months, and you're up, let's say... Let's say it's the end of March and you're up 30 percent for the year, that's a pretty good year. You could take the rest of the year off, and say, "Hey, I made 30 percent." Most people don't do that, because they're so greedy. They're like, "Yeah, I want to get more. Let's go for 70 percent. Let's go for 100 percent." Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: Eventually one of those months you're going to lose. And the thing is, you really cannot tell, in the beginning, you cannot tell which months are going to be simple and which months are going to be very volatile. But the thing is, when you're done with a trade, you can re-examine and say, "What's going on in the market right now? Do I want to get in right now, or do I want to wait? Is there some news event on the horizon, or something that would cause the market a lot of uncertainty and a lot of concern? Then I'll just wait until that thing is over with, and I'll see how the market is reacting to it, and then I'll put my trade up." So, that's what I mean by you don't have to be in it all the time. Craig Davis: Right. Allen: You can pick and choose. [crosstalk 00:19:05]... Sorry, go ahead. Craig Davis: Is there a way in your training, or is there some way to be able to help you make that decision? Because I might see the... The VIX might be something given this is in the market, but [inaudible 00:19:22] say with confidence to say that, oh, the market's a bit volatile at the moment, I might stay out of it? Allen: So, it takes a little bit of experience to be able to really pinpoint it. But I'll give you the short version. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: What I do whenever I'm putting on a trade, especially my iron condors, and I do them every month on SPX, and I do them on Rut, those are the two big ones that I like... You can do them, if you have less money you can do them on SPY, and IWM, or any of these ETFs. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: I like to do them on the big ones, because it takes less contracts, and it has different advantages. But, I look at, when I'm putting on the trade, I have an analysis sheet and I say, "Okay, what is the VIX trading at right now? Do I see any kind of support and resistance on the chart? How did I do last month, how did I do the month before?" And then I'll also look at the standard deviations. So, standard deviation is basically a percentage movement. It's a statistical number, statistics, so it will tell you that the SPX moved in a bigger amount than it normally does. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: So even if the volatility is still the same, today they had a really big move for some reason. So normally, you know, 70, 80 percent of the time, the SPX will be within one standard deviation. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: If it moves more than one standard deviation, then that's a cause of like, "Hmm, let me pay attention to this." Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: If it's moving more, if it's moving two standard deviations, then that's a flag. And say, "Okay, there are big moves happening here, I need to pay attention to this, or maybe I need to get out of the market, or maybe I need to stay out." Craig Davis: Right, yeah. Allen: If there is a day when there is more than a one standard deviation move, I don't get in, I don't put a trade on that day. Craig Davis: Right, okay. Allen: I want to get in when it's a calm day. So that is the shortcut there, that you need to monitor the standard deviations on a daily basis, and see how they are doing for whatever instrument you are trading. If it's not SPX, if it's a stock, [crosstalk 00:21:35] you can find the standard deviation for everything. Look at it and see, "Okay, I was trading it last month, and it wasn't really moving very much. But now, it's moving one standard deviation every day for the last three days. Okay, something is going on." Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: So that's like a flag, it's a bell. "Ding, ding, ding." [inaudible 00:21:58]. Craig Davis: Yes, okay. Allen: You need to research this more and decide, "Hey, what is the cost, and do I want to get in or not?" Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: There's different ways. Sometimes I look at it and I'll say... When I'm putting the trade on I look at it, "Okay, over the past two weeks, how many times has it moved more than one standard deviation?" Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: If you get two or three, that's normal. You have to understand what is normal for whatever instrument you're trading. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: But for SPX, two or three times is normal. If you get seven or eight, that's very high, because it's only for two weeks. Over the last 10 days, it moved a lot more than one standard deviation seven times, that's very high. So that means that, without even looking at the news, you know that there is something happening in the market. Craig Davis: Right, okay. Yeah. No, I like the sound of that. That's a good... There's one thing to a trading plan, but this analysis sheets sounds like another good thing as well. And definitely looking at standard deviations, and the movements and the market's an instrument. That sounds like a good, what's it called, skill, or discipline to have. So thank you. Allen: It's something that can help you, you know? Just keeping an eye on it. It's not a hard and fast rule that you don't do it, or you have to... I don't initiate a trade when there's more than one standard deviation. Do you have to do it that way? No, that's just my personal preference. But, this is something that you can, it's like another tool that you can use. Craig Davis: Okay, yeah. Lots of tools in the toolbox sounds good to me, lots of skills, yeah. I like the sound of that. So that's something I need to have in my vocabulary more than the standard deviations, the percentage movements? Allen: Well I mean, if you don't do the standard deviation, you can look at the percentage movements, but then you'll have to remember. It's harder to remember. If you... I don't know what broker you're using. Craig Davis: I'll be using Interactive Brokers. Allen: Okay. So, I'm not familiar with their set up, but if you call them, or you find online that there must be a way that you can actually, on your chart you can see the standard deviations. Craig Davis: Yeah, let me write that down. [inaudible 00:24:26] brokers where on charts I find the standard deviation. Yeah, okay. Allen: You might have to write it down, or they might have it visually on your screen, however. But whatever works for you, it's a good measure to keep track of. Craig Davis: Yeah. Thank you. No, we'll do that. Standard deviations, [inaudible 00:24:55] analysis sheet. Is the first one on there now? [inaudible 00:25:02] I need to get a trading plan, makes me stick to the trading plan, my analysis sheet. So you've now got another sheet now that says analysis on it [inaudible 00:25:10], and check standard deviation. Allen: You also want to make sure that you're not trading during earnings, if it's a [inaudible 00:25:20]. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: And, if you're doing iron condors, you want to know in advance, at least have an idea of what you are going to be doing as an adjustment if the trade goes against you. Craig Davis: Okay. That sounds like an interesting technique. How would I... Because you've got a couple of programs, is that mindset and that skill set within there, like that adjustment thing that you were just saying, like is that [crosstalk 00:25:51]? Allen: In the course, and the iron Condor course, that's covered in detail. Craig Davis: Oh, okay. So then- Allen: Yeah, so we actually have videos where I went through some, I think it was three really, really horrible iron condors, like the market just went crazy. I go through it on that software, that back testing software I told you about. Craig Davis: Right, okay. Allen: I go through it on there, and I go day by day and I'm saying, "Okay, market just dropped 50 points. Okay, this is what I'm thinking. Do I do this, or do I do this, or what happens if I do this? Okay, which one am I going to do? I'm going to do this, because of XYZ reason. Okay, now let's see if it worked. Let's go day number three, day number four, go forward, go forward." So basically I'm telling you what I'm thinking as I'm going through the trade. Craig Davis: Okay. I like it. That's a good, that's the best way I think. Allen: So now are you going to be, you're in the UK, are you going to be trading the US stuff, or English stuff? Craig Davis: US. I'll be looking to do US, yeah. Allen: Okay, so the market- Craig Davis: But I think my main focus is going to be the US stuff I think. Like the SPX, like I just said, SPX, or SPY and all that. I want to try and do something may be on the SLV possibly, if I can do something. Allen: Okay. Craig Davis: As I say, I've I've got to look at your program, look at the resources that I've got, and then just [inaudible 00:27:16]. But yeah, the ETF SPY might be the one that I start with as well. But yeah, that's where I'll be starting, on the American stocks, and the American instruments. Allen: Right now, gold is very steady, I think. I haven't checked it. I think it's been steady. I haven't checked SLV though. Let's see how that's doing. So yeah, these are ones that do not have earnings, so they are good to do that, they're good for iron condors. Craig Davis: Okay. Sounds like a good one to do some back testing and research on that. Okay, yeah. Allen: Definitely. Yes, definitely. Hold on a second. Hold on, I'm going to share my screen. Craig Davis: Oh, okay. Do I have to press anything? Oh, no, it's fine. Allen: I don't think so. You can see? Craig Davis: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Allen: All right, so here is SLV, and you know, it's pretty much up at 16, and died down at 13 something right now. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: So basically if we're doing an iron Condor... And you can use... In the course we normally go for about 45 days. But we can go 28 days. This one doesn't have a lot of volume, SLV though. Craig Davis: Right. Allen: So, might not be the best one. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: Let's try it. Craig Davis: Do you have a minimum volume in the instrument that you go for? What's your guide range? Allen: I just want to see some action. Craig Davis: Oh, okay. Allen: If I'm doing five contracts, and like this one, this one has 200 contracts every day, 100 contracts. That's fine, because I'm a small part of that. Craig Davis: Right, okay. Allen: But the other one, SLV, this one was only showing, like right here, there's only 230. So, these are the only two options I have. So, I don't have a lot of choice in which to trade, so it was like, ", yeah, I don't want to do that one." You know, compared to SPY, you take a look at that one and you're going to say, "Oh, you have a lot of these to choose from." Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: People are trading all of them. So, you have enough liquidity to get out if you need to as well. Craig Davis: Yeah, yeah. Liquidity, that's definitely a good keyword. Allen: So if you are doing this one today, depending on how much money you want to put into each trade, you can go to the 292 maybe. Let's say we do 200 each, so two points. This is what our trade would look like. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: This trade gives us a 66 percent probability of winning, it's right in here in the middle, and then I can put these on the chart. So basically, this redline and this redline are the top and the bottom of our trade. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: So it seems like it'll do all right. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: This is a yearly chart. In this trade, what can you make? You can make 55 cents, and it's 200, so let me see if I... You can make 100, you can lose 300. So you know, whatever that is. You have a 66 percent chance of doing that. So what is that, like 33 percent gain? One divided by three? Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: You could make... I mean, so you can be more conservative than this if you wanted to. Craig Davis: Yeah, okay. Allen: You can bring these all the way out to here, and go maybe 75 or 80 percent probability. That way, your tent will be larger. Craig Davis: Right, okay. Allen: So, less of a percentage return, but more chance of being safe. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: Now the thing is, like right now, I don't know if you've been following the news or not, but the US and China, they're having their little trade war. Craig Davis: Trade wars, yeah. Allen: So that has been sending the market up and down almost every day for the last week or so. Craig Davis: Right, I see. Allen: If there's a tweet from Trump, then it goes up, otherwise it goes down. So in this environment I would say, no "Well you know, VIX is up a little bit, let's look at standard deviation, and these are the standard deviations. So in the past two weeks, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, one, two, three, four days where it moved more than one standard deviation." So that's a little bit on the high side. Craig Davis: High side, okay. Yeah. Allen: I would love it if it's like this, where it's all just gray, and no, they may be have one, but that's about it. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: This is telling me things are getting heated up. Craig Davis: Right, okay. Allen: Just looking at it visually. You see this, you see a lot of gray, a couple bars, a couple bars, couple bars, then all of a sudden you start seeing more reds and yellow. Yellow for here is a danger, because it's more than two standard deviation. Craig Davis: Right. Allen: And then, you're see more color, it's getting a little heated, so you have to be careful. That's all that tells you. Craig Davis: Yeah, that's cool. Okay. So you say something about news, what kind of news are you following, or if there is one I should start looking at, one or two? Allen: I try not to. Craig Davis: Oh, okay. Allen: I try not to watch the news. [crosstalk 00:32:48]. Craig Davis: Okay, good. Allen: Yeah. I've done... When I do my back testing, you don't hear any news. You're just looking at the chart, you're looking at the trade and you're going day by day. You don't know what's going on in the world. Craig Davis: No. Allen: You will do better in your back testing than in real life, for sure. Craig Davis: Yeah, that's true. Allen: Just because the news has an effect on us. Craig Davis: Yeah, true. Allen: When you're in the trade for 30 days sometimes you get scared, sometimes you hear something. So, if you're only watching the trade, you're not watching the news, you'll actually do better. Craig Davis: Right, okay. No worries. Allen: But sometimes there's stuff like this, when it starts dropping all of a sudden, then you have to pay attention. "What's going on? Why is it always that it's going steady for so long, and then all of a sudden it starts dropping?" And then you have all, look at this, you see this? Red, red, no red, red, red, red, red, yellow. This is like, "Hello, wake up, we have something going on here." Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: So that's when you watch the news and you see what's going on. Craig Davis: What's going on, right. When the red flags are there, then watch the news, okay. Allen: Yeah. So I mean, I watch some shows that tell you like technical analysis, what other people are thinking. They'll say, "Oh, this is the line of resistance, and this is the support level, and this is this," okay, I'll take a look at that. But on a day to day basis, the nude is total baloney. They have no clue why the market is moving. Really, on a day to day basis, they don't have any clue. They have to make up something. Craig Davis: Yeah. Yeah, just to keep the viewers happy, I suppose, yeah. Allen: Yeah, I mean, they have to have airtime, right? They're on 24 hours a day, they have to talk about something. Craig Davis: Okay. Yeah, yeah, no worries. No, that's really insightful there, thank you. Yeah, so red flags, warning, check the news, standard deviations. [inaudible 00:34:51] if it's yellow, yeah, stuff is happening. Allen: I mean, Interactive Brokers might not show it like this. Craig Davis: No, that's fine. If they've got it somewhere, I'll just have to just get my eyes used to the way that they present the data, but yeah, I'm happy to do that. Allen: So essentially you have about 2000 to trade with, is that what you wrote? Craig Davis: Yes. Allen: Okay. And your expenses, your goal is about 3500 a month, and you want to get there in about three years. Craig Davis: Yes. Or sooner, or sooner. Allen: Or sooner. Craig Davis: I put that down there because, like as I say, I just put the figures down there, in terms of like what's achievable and what's possible. Allen: So let's say, here, let's do some quick math. So, 3500 times 12, 42,000 pounds a year, and you have 2000 to work with. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: That's 42,000 divided by, let's say, 25 percent a year. If you're making a 25 percent yearly return, you would need an account of 168,000. Craig Davis: Nice one. Allen: And you're at two. Craig Davis: Yeah, so that's no chance. [crosstalk 00:36:04]. Allen: How long will it take you to go from 2 to 168? There's a small chance, but you'll have... I don't want you to take excess risk is what I'm saying. Craig Davis: No, no, no, no, I'm in it for the long term. I'm going to start small, grow small, learn. Allen: And right now you have two, but that's what we talked about earlier, you're saving whatever you can. [crosstalk 00:36:24]... Craig Davis: Yeah, you'll add into it, yeah. Allen: Yeah. One of the things I tell some people is that, when you're doing your back testing at your paper trading, even if you're not real money trading, keep a result of all the records. Craig Davis: Yes. Allen: Keep a track record of how you're doing. Because you never know when you're going to run into somebody who has money, or an uncle, or someone who's... Because you know, when you go to a party or you meet someone, you say, "Oh, hey, what are you doing now? What are you up to?" And you, "Oh, I'm trading options." "Oh really?" "Yes." "How are you doing?" "Oh, I'm doing fantastic." "Really? Oh, okay, I have some money that I need to invest. Can you do it for me?" You will be surprised at how many people there are that have money, that they don't know what to do with. So these people, they might come and tell you, "Okay, I have 20,000 pounds, please do something." And you do it for them if you want to, and then you keep, "Okay, I'll take half the profit." "Okay." Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: But keep in mind though that that also brings another level of stress. Craig Davis: Yes. I could imagine, yeah. Allen: Losing your money is one thing, losing somebody else's money is a whole different thing. Craig Davis: That's true. Yeah, man, you have to be careful. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, man. Just go and lose their money that easy. There's a UK term, they call it like a... I don't know how you'd say it in American slang, but in the UK it's like, "Don't pee it down the toilet," or something like that. Allen: Yeah. Craig Davis: Yeah, so I understand [inaudible 00:38:05]. Allen: Yeah, we call that, what do we say? We say we pissed it away. Craig Davis: Yeah, that same thing, yeah. So yeah, we say the same thing. Allen: Cool. Craig Davis: So yeah, definitely. That sounds like a way forward. That's excellent. Allen: So what else, what other questions? Craig Davis: So, with respect to... I'm just trying to think, I think I've gone through the sort of, like you definitely have the mindset [inaudible 00:38:36]. With respect to adjusting, so you've calculated how much to put on a trade for an iron Condor. I'm just going by the term, like the rollover adjusting, is there a way to calculate, or you can't tell how far it could go against you, is there a way to make it like a rough ballpark figure on how much to put aside if you needed to do an adjustment? Or is that all on your course on how to make the decision should you adjust, or should you do this, or take money off the table? Allen: In reality, you can adjust forever. You can adjust month after month. You can keep it rolling forward, "Okay, so I didn't do good this month, I'm just going to roll it into next month," and then roll it into next month, and you can just keep going. I don't think that's a good idea, because it never ends. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: If I lose money on a month, then I just want to end it, and then start over fresh. Craig Davis: Yes. Allen: I don't want that baggage of coming, "Okay, I'm down 300 dollars from last month, I got to make it up." No, I want to start fresh, and whatever I can make, and then get it back eventually. If I was to put... I usually keep about half of what I put in originally. Craig Davis: Oh, okay. Allen: So, if I put in 1000 on a trade, I might keep another 500 on the side. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: Or maybe another thousand, and worst-case scenario, to adjust. Craig Davis: Okay. Why not, why not? Okay, I like that. Yeah. I like that. It makes sense. So 100 to 50 percent, why not? Why not? I like that. I like that. So trade, and that's what you [inaudible 00:40:22]. Okay, why not? Yeah, I like the sound that that's okay. Let's see, what other questions could I ask you? I sure have put some on my email, but- Allen: It says here that you took some courses already? Craig Davis: Yeah, so I took some courses. I know this might seem like a strange one. There's a guy called Robert Kiasaki. I went to one of his training things and I thought, "Right, I'm going to fly in..." So pretty much, he's the one that put me on the path to try and look into do these things. I've been trying to do real estate things, and business things, and the stocks and shares thing. So I've done a couple of things, but that was just like the theory. I never got into a paper trading account. So last year I went, because in my full-time job I work in healthcare, I work in a pharmacy. So I got this contract, I was at the hospital pharmacy, where you've got more some more and things. I worked with this guy, I worked with him before, and he says, "Oh, come and work with me on this iron, and it's paying me [inaudible 00:41:21] a bit more money." So I thought, "Oh, based on the hours that I've got, this is okay." But what I didn't factor in, and maybe it's a life lesson, is like the downside. If you can imagine, I experienced the most downsides where, this is my assumption, I never asked, so I suppose I wasn't wrong. So for example, the person contracted [inaudible 00:41:46] for his business, he was saying, "There's too many staff, we're not going to employ staff." So I go, "What do you mean by that?" I had to find out the hard way that if all the jobs don't get done, I have to stay behind. Allen: [crosstalk 00:41:57] Yeah. Craig Davis: So before I was supposed to do 45 hours a week [inaudible 00:42:02], I think I must've pushed about 75, 80 hours a week. I was there late nights on weekends, I was there on my days off. Allen: Right. Craig Davis: I was there trying to... So, my plan was to go there, get my paper trading account up and running, start doing some stuff, so that's where I had the idea to get onto the [inaudible 00:42:22]. But then it stopped. So let's say, so April, May, say June 2018, I stopped doing stuff. So in the process now, I have to send an email back to Interactive Brokers, because my account cleared [inaudible 00:42:37] on SLV. I was selling some put options, because I thought, "Oh, I've learned about put options, let me sell some put options, and if it goes up, I keep the premium, if it's slow I keep the premium, if it goes down, then I don't get the stock anyway, but I got it for discount." So I started doing all that and then, boom, the reality of that kicked in. Then, I says, "Oh, I need some annual leave." He goes, "Oh, I can't find cover for your annual leave." I go, "What are you talking about?" So before I just assumed, I never discussed it. Well, it's not that I didn't discuss it, but I thought like, well... So for now, I'm just working with teams now where if I can get an agreement where possible, I'll go for that. Because before, I just overlooked it. Allen: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Craig Davis: I overlooked, like with my other team, like they were saying, "Oh, you got to do this [inaudible 00:43:30]." "You guys are killjoys." He was telling me, "Sorry, we can't give you cover for your leave," so I says, "What are you talking about?" So, I didn't have the words and the vocabulary, because I never thought I'd have to present an argument to ask for... Or, [inaudible 00:43:47] present an argument to request for annual leave. Allen: Yeah. Craig Davis: Never. I thought, "Okay..." So with respect to the courses, I started off with Robert Kiasaki, did some real estate ones, and there's a guy called Andy [Tamura 00:44:04], he had some ones. Then recently, I went on to Udemy, and that's where my... Because on Andy Tamura, he did one of these things and then I stopped. [inaudible 00:44:16] the profile, and when I seen the profile, "Oh, someone on Udemy," and I seen this thing it says like, "How to make money on weekly options," and it was talking about iron condors. Allen: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Craig Davis: So I researched and said, "Oh my gosh, he was talking about that." And then they say, "Oh, you've got to get educated," so I went on some podcasts and then I came across yours. I was listening to the way that you were speaking for your people and I thought, "Yeah, yeah." Because they say sometimes if a person, you can listen to what they're saying, but you have to make the decision on what they're presenting and what they're saying. Allen: Right. Craig Davis: What gave me the confidence to say, "Oh, yeah, this guy seems okay..." Because when you where then talking to the student guy, you... Because there's some people, like I said, that can sugarcoat it. But you actually said to him, "No, you need to get someone that's going to make you accountable, like a trading partner, that's got a list of rules." [inaudible 00:45:09], "Okay, you didn't get the trade, what are you going to do about it?" Allen: Right. Craig Davis: And that kind of thing. I thought, "Yeah, I like that." Because that's what you need, is everyone, "Oh, yeah, it will be fine [crosstalk 00:45:19]." You want someone to know, really to... Yeah. So I thought, "Okay, yeah, you seem like a serious guy. You want people to benefit." Allen: I learned from experience. That was my wife. That was my wife standing there telling me, "What are you going to do to fix this?" Craig Davis: The best trading partner, yeah. Yeah, but that's a good incentive as well. Allen: Yeah, every day she would come up the stairs when I was at home. Every day she would come up the stairs and stand there until I talked to her. Craig Davis: Yeah, "What have you done? What are you doing?" So yeah, so there you go. Behind every strong man there's a strong woman, I could imagine. Allen: Oh, yes. Craig Davis: Like I said, so for me, that's what got me onto the parcels. And there's programs. I seen yours, I listened to that podcast, and I looked into some of your things and I thought, "Okay, I want to be an expert, so I'm going to have to put the money in. Because why not pay, say, 297 dollars if it's going to say..." I'm telling you before I was not an ambassador. I don't know why I wasn't listening before. It's like I just have the theoretical, I had to practically... [inaudible 00:46:41] like the insurance, if it can save you money, I don't mind spending 297 dollars going in the forum, and it's going to save me 3000 dollars or something like that down the road. I haven't got a problem with that anymore. Before I might've been, "Oh, I'm going to risk it." No sense. Because it could be worse. Because as I said, there is no... Allen: You mentioned a couple things. You said the weekly iron condors. I would not do that. Craig Davis: Well, so don't do the weekly ones, [inaudible 00:47:18]. Allen: Those are for experts, and those are for people who like to gamble. If you don't have the money to risk, I would not do that at all. I would stay with the monthly. Craig Davis: Yes. Allen: The weeklys, you cannot adjust them. I'm sorry. I don't care what other people say. They just move so fast, that you cannot adjust. Craig Davis: Right. Allen: And the money that you make is so little, that you're only trying to make five, six percent. But that thing could, you know, you sell it for 20 cents today, tomorrow it could be a dollar, what now? Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: You can't do anything. I learned the hard way that those are very dangerous, and they... Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: And the [crosstalk 00:48:01] Kiasaki, he gets paid a lot of money from that Andy Tamura guy, to just be the head. You know? Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: He will just use your name, and your picture, and your video, and... I mean, I love his books, I love his books, and they make a lot of sense, but yeah, so be careful of those. [crosstalk 00:48:30]. Craig Davis: He doesn't recommend the weekly options [crosstalk 00:48:34] for him. He didn't recommend that. I did see it on the Udemy, where it says, "How to make money selling options doing this weekly..." Allen: Oh, I see, I see. Craig Davis: So for me, I was looking at it as a learning exercise, where what is the difference between doing this weekly iron Condor to the monthly? Because they do say do it for 45 days, and do this. Allen: Right. Craig Davis: So, I was just looking into the process, but yours seems like you've got the accelerated version, where you've got the whole package there, you're going from start to finish, and this and that. Allen: Yeah, I mean, and if you have any questions or anything, you just email me, I'll help you out. Craig Davis: Yeah, definitely, definitely. Allen: If you need anything, just let us know. Craig Davis: Yes, yes. Allen: But really, take the plan, do the back testing, if you can afford it. Craig Davis: I will. Allen: I haven't checked, there might be something out there that's cheaper. Craig Davis: I can have a look. So if I literally Google, is it called like back testing software? Is it like that, or is it- Allen: Yeah, so just option back testing software. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: You might find something. I know this company that I use, on the screen, the Think or Swim, they have something for back testing. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: It's included, it's free. It's not very good... I think it's right here, Think Back. So, it's not the best, but it's free. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: You can go back in time, so let's say you want to go back a few years, go back to this day. So it'll tell you, "Okay, SPY on that day was 131." And I think this is a chart for it. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: It gives you all the prices. So, you can put on a trade and then just go through it and see. Just go day by day. Like, "Okay, this is the 7th, today's the 8th, today's the 9th, how's my trade doing?" It's not as good as the other one, but then again, it's free. Craig Davis: Okay. I can have a look at it. I have seen the Think and Swim. I don't think they're taking account for the UK anymore. Allen: Oh, I didn't know that. Craig Davis: [crosstalk 00:50:42] Interactive Brokers. Allen: I see, okay. That's horrible. Tasty Trade... Or, no, Tasty Works is another one. Craig Davis: Okay, let me try that, Tasty Works, yeah. Allen: They're a newer broker, and I know they opened for Australian accounts, so they might be probably open to you guys too. Craig Davis: UK, okay. Allen: And they are, you know, they focus on options. Craig Davis: Oh, excellent. Allen: They have a lot of educational stuff as well. Some of their stuff I agree with, some not. Craig Davis: No worries. Allen: Okay, so the guys who, they're the same guys who made Think or Swim. Craig Davis: Oh, okay. Oh, that's good. Allen: In the past, they were floor traders on the exchanges. Then they made Think or Swim, and you know, they started doing videos, and teaching people. They were the ones that told everybody to do the iron Condor without adjusting. Craig Davis: Really? Allen: That's how they got popular, yeah. And then they sold this company to Ameritrade for millions and millions of dollars. Craig Davis: Okay. Allen: And then after they have the buyout period, where they cannot do anything for a lockup, they cannot do anything for a certain amount of time. Then once that period expired, then they went and they opened another brokerage. Craig Davis: Oh, okay. Allen: They're still out there, making videos and whatnot. So, they have a lot of content that people like. But they might, let me see if they open accounts in the UK. I think they do. Craig Davis: Okay, I'll have a look. But like as I say, with this Andy Tamura guy, you mention weekly, but he says safety, so that's where I got the safety element. But yeah, he definitely was saying, "Grow small, take your time. [inaudible 00:52:43] paper trades." Allen: Right. Craig Davis: But no, I don't think he wouldn't have said anything about [inaudible 00:52:49] saying about, "How do you have a losing strategy?" And rather than taking the maximum offer, he was the one that [inaudible 00:52:58]. So that gave me the idea. That's what I was leaning to. Because he said, "How do you turn a losing trade, so you don't get the max loss, and you're sort of not [inaudible 00:53:07] after having the max loss?" Allen: Yeah, so that's basically talking about adjusting. Craig Davis: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, man, Think or Swim [inaudible 00:53:25] said to do that, wow, they would've believed it. Allen: Yeah. Craig Davis: Well, like as I say, if it were, it depends on what context. Yeah, if they break even after 10 years and that. Allen: I was shocked, I didn't know that. I hadn't done it, my friend did it, and I was like, "Wow, really?" Craig Davis: Wow. If something sounds too good to be true, it most probably is or something, they might say. But no, I'll look for that. I'll look for the Tasty Works. If I can start an account, then I can look at that. Allen: Yeah. The only reason I tell you that is because their software might be better than Interactive Brokers. Craig Davis: Ah, okay. Allen: It doesn't matter which one you use, but their software, because they are focusing on option traders, so their software might be better. And they're newer, so they'll respond to you. I know Interactive Brokers, they don't really respond very well. Their customer service is not the best. Craig Davis: Right, that's all I need to know. You've got a problem, you can't get a hold of anybody. Allen: Yeah, I opened an account with them, and I couldn't even figure out how to use it, seriously. And so I emailed them, and I didn't get any response. Then I canceled the account, and then they contacted me. They were like, "Why'd you cancel?" I was like, "Well now you contact me." Craig Davis: No, that's not the best way. Allen: I think they are the cheapest, but you know, you really have to know what you're doing. Craig Davis: Yeah. [inaudible 00:55:08]. Allen: Yeah. So you have your game plan? Craig Davis: Yes, I have definitely... Oh, man, Allen, you're a top man, you're a superstar. I've definitely got a game plan. You gave me so much food for thought, hints and tips. I've been writing down some things. I know you're said you're recording, but let me just write it down while the inspiration's there. Yeah, I'm definitely more [inaudible 00:55:30] focus on these and back testing of the plan, which I never thought about, which makes sense, just to get confidence. Not confidence, but at least I can, what's it called, develop the skill of putting on the trade, and making sure I'm doing it properly. So yeah, yeah, I like the sound of it. And plus, yeah, I can view like how many trades over how many years in like a few minutes, so I like that. That's good. Then I could just say, I just have to get used to the [inaudible 00:56:00] where I'm coming forward, the volatility in that. So yeah, man, definitely got a game plan to go forward with. Looking forward to be working with you, and being part of this [inaudible 00:56:14] team. It's going to take me a few days until I digest everything, and get into it. But, I'll definitely be staying in contact, and if there's anything else that [crosstalk 00:56:27]. Allen: It's interesting, it's fun, but when you're doing it, it's very boring. Craig Davis: I'm glad you're telling me that, that's okay. They say the good plans are the [inaudible 00:56:40] ones. So it sounds like I've got a bit of a... Allen: Yeah. Like, yesterday the market was down, so it was exciting. It was like, "Oh my God, what do I do? I got to do this, I got to do this." Today, market is flat, and I've got nothing to do today. Most days you don't do anything. You just sit there and wait. Craig Davis: Waiting for something. Allen: Yeah. Craig Davis: Man, I didn't do an adjustment or something, or I didn't do this, didn't do that. Allen: Yeah. Craig Davis: I like it, I like it. So, that's where the boring part comes. Allen: Yeah. That is also something that you're going to have to learn with experience. You might adjust sometimes too soon, sometimes too late. It's a fine line. Like, we'll give you rules that say, "Okay, if this happens, you adjust." Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: But there's always the thing that, you know, "Oh, if I didn't adjust, it would've worked out great. If I had waited another day or two, it would've worked out great." So, that always is there. When you have a firm set rule, it doesn't always work out in the best way. That rule will work most of the time, not every time. And so as you get experience, you'll realize that, "Okay, I know my rule says to adjust, but I am going to wait one more day, because I see something something on the chart, or I think this is going to happen," or something. Craig Davis: Yeah. Allen: That's why we don't give Vista computers. This is why we do it ourselves. Otherwise, we could just make a computer program, and let it run, and hopefully it works. Craig Davis: Yeah. No, that's fine. No, I like it. Yeah, man. Allen, definitely [inaudible 00:58:28], it sounds like you've done a great journey. You're a great teacher, and you want to encourage people. I'm glad you've got your course, and the website, the podcasts. Yeah, man, I'm glad that you've even got this thing, where if you want to speak with you, to donate some money. So even that for me, that's a learning for me as well. But yeah, man, this is definitely much appreciated. Definitely. Plan everything for everything. Allen: Great. I hope I was helpful, and like I said, going forward, you need anything, just email us. We're here. Craig Davis: Yes, definitely, man. I'll email you guys. Yeah, man, definitely much appreciated for the help and support. Definitely much appreciated. Thank you. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.   

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- I was a weird kid growing up. I know that's a really hard, weird way to start this episode. But, yeah. I was a weird kid growing up. I was obsessed with money. It's weird. Sometimes it's the thing that we don't have that we strive for, strive for, strive for. I think that was part of it. I'm not going to go into my whole story of when I was little and that we didn't have any money or anything. But I think that was the major motivation for it. But when I was little and anybody asked me, "Hey, Allen. What do you want to be when you grow up?" The answer was, "I want to be a billionaire." That's actually what I told people. It wasn't a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, an astronaut, any of that stuff. I wanted to be a billionaire for real, because I thought that if I had a lot of money, then I would have freedom. But then, as I grew older, I got into my teens, I started reading books, like, "Okay. How do I get rich? How do I get rich? What do I got to do?" One of the earliest books I read was, "How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market" by Nicholas Darvis, and that book really introduced me to the stock market. I'd never heard of it before, but I was like, "Wow. This guy, this was a long time ago, and he was traveling around the world, and he was making money from the stock market. Wow. I want to do that." So I read that book. I read "Think and Grow Rich". I read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". I read "How to be Rich" by J. Paul Getty. I kept reading books and books and books. I realized that you don't have to be a billionaire. Being a billionaire is probably a lot of hard work. I toned down my goal, and then my new goal is that I wanted to retire early. I didn't really care about the retirement part. But the idea was to have enough money coming in without me having to work for it in order to pay all my expense. I got that a lot. I think I got most of that idea from "Rich Dad, Poor Dad", where it was like, "Are you successful? How do you know that you're going to be successful? Or if you cannot work? Let's say you get hurt, and you cannot work for three months, six months. What's going to happen to you?" Because I think that definition of being rich really hit me, really stuck with me that, you cannot work, and you have enough money coming in that will pay all your bills, and you're going to be okay, and you can live the life that you're used to without having to work. That was like, "Oh, man. This is awesome. This is my goal." Since then, that has been the goal. In fact, my wife and I were just talking about this the other night, that thanks to options, we both could stop working today, if we wanted to. She has her own business that she owns with a partner. She goes there a couple days a week. She could stop going. She don't have to go anymore. I could shut down or sell Option Nunez, and that would be it. Wouldn't have an office to go to anymore. Just stay home, handle the kids, drop them off, pick them up, do the normal momma, daddy day thing, and we wouldn't have to work. We do have other investments that are doing well. But the money that comes in from the trading covers our expenses. That goal of being able to retire early has been met. On a side note, that led to a little bit of a mid-life crisis for me where I was like, "What's up? What's next?" Kind of thing, but that's a different story. We have other investments that are doing well, as well. Those are making money and coming in. We also have investments that are doing poorly. Just this year, I've lost already about $80000 in bad investments, $25000 each in two different cryptocurrency investments, and $30000 on a real estate deal that we just closed this week. I was lucky to get out of that, even with a loss of $30000. But because my monthly expense are covered, I'm not mad about the losses. I wasn't. Yeah, they suck. That's a lot of freaking money, right? But they didn't send me into a panic like, "Oh, my God. Oh, my God. How could I be so stupid?" I didn't get into that because I'm okay financially. I knew that I was rolling the dice, especially with the crypto ones. Those are like, "Okay. You put in $25000 in. If it does well, it's going to turn into $250000. If not, you're going to lose it all," and that's what happened, pretty much. There's still a chance we can get some money back, but most likely those are going to be gone. I knew the risk on the real estate one, as well. That one was unexpected. I didn't think I was going to lose money, but we did. That's okay. Maybe we'll make it up on the next one if we do another one. I'm not saying all this to brag, but I want to prove to you that, if you work at it, if you learn, if you practice trading seriously, that you, too, can get there. You can start with nothing and get there. At my lowest point, I was down over $100000 in debt. Credit cards and loans and personal loans and student loans and all that stuff. I crawled out of it. You can get there. You can do it. You can do the same thing if you set your mind to it, especially if you don't have three kids like I do, three little kids all under the age of 10. Those little boogers are expensive. Geez. When you look at it, I'm not special. I'm not a genius. I don't have any gifts that you don't have. I dropped out of college, and it eventually took me about 10 years to finally get my Bachelor's Degree. It took a long, long time. If I can do this, seriously, I know you can. The title of this episode is "FIRE", which is Financially Independent Retire Early. That is a new movement. It's not really new, but it's a movement that has become popular lately, and you can read articles about it, and people are writing books about it, and blogs and there are even podcasts about it and everything. It's basically retire early, become financially independent. They call it FIRE. Cool. Okay. This is especially big amongst millennials, because I guess they don't want to work for the man, and they don't want to work till they're 65 years old. But it's really cute, though, how millennials think that they create things that have been around for generations. It's like the desire to retire early. It's like, "Yeah, this FIRE thing. It's cute that you gave a name to it, but you guys didn't create this. People have been wanting to do this since the start of time, really." Anyway, according to the tenants of FIRE, you have to do three things. You have to earn as much money as you can at work. You do have to work. You have to earn as much money as you can. And, you have to get a side hustle. A side hustle, just another name that they gave to a second job. Whether you're working online, for yourself, as a freelancer or you actually have a second job, or you do something else like trading options, you have to have a side hustle to make as much money as you can. The second thing you have to do is you have to save as much money as you can. And they do this by basically living as paupers. That's what they tell you to do. Live like a poor person, like a homeless person. You don't need a car. You can ride the bus to work and take a bike, because that's healthy for you. Eat less food. Don't eat so much. Don't go out to the movies. Watch Netflix at home, all these kinds of things, where you're trying to save as much money as you can. And then, with that money that you save, you invest it in something like index funds. You put it away, let other people manage it, and that's the cycle. Earn as much as you can, save as much as you can, invest it. Now, if you follow that formula, it works. There are people in their 30s that have enough money saved that they can live off the interest off of their investments. Their investments or whatever they invested in is making money, and they can live off of that interest, which is awesome. They don't have to work. Most of them don't have kids. Even if they did, they still have to live frugally, of course. Because even in your 30s, even if you're making $100000 a year as a job, you're still not going to be able to save that much that you're going to be earning a lot of income, or a lot of interest from your savings, from your investments, to live middle to upper class. These folks, they have retired. They're not working, but they are living low to middle class, somewhere around there. That's cool if you like that sort of thing. I don't. I think you can have your cake and eat it, too. I want you to retire early and still be rich. That is doable, if you take control of your money. Now, I agree with the "make as much money as you can" part. I agree with that part. I agree with the "save as much as you can" part. Now, I don't think you should live like a pauper. I think you should enjoy your life, even now, while you're working, and you're saving. I love driving. I love my car. I'm never going to give that up to save a couple hundred bucks in gas and insurance a month. But if that's something that you want to do and that will get you to your goal faster, then do it. But your side hustle should be to learn to grow the savings you have as much as possible, instead of losing control of your money inside of a mutual fund. Does that make sense? Your side hustle, you have to make as much money as you can. You go to your job, you get your income, you save your money. What do you do with that money? Well, you can give it to somebody, index fund, mutual fund, and let them do it for you, and hopefully the market goes up or maybe it will go down and then pay fees for all that information and whatever. Or, you spend your time, and you learn how to do it for yourself, because there are people out there that will charge you to manage your money that are not going to do anything that you cannot do for yourself. You can actually do it much, much better. That's what we're all about. That's what we're trying to teach you. That's the point of this podcast, to help you to learn how to do that. Take advantage of your own future, instead of giving it to somebody else, and then you can fire yourself much faster, years and years sooner. I did some calculations to prove my point, here. Over time, the stock market has averaged about eight percent a year, eight percent yearly return. That's pretty good. But when you sell options like we do, we have the ability to make 10% a month. A month, not a year. Stock market, 8% a year, options 10% a month. Hmm. Which one is bigger? I don't know. You could sell options one month out of the year, make 10%, and then take the rest of the year off if you wanted to. But these trades and these option selling I'm talking about is very high probability trades that can make you at least 10% a month. Ten percent, that's my goal. That's what I try to make every month. But I know traders that do a lot better than that every month. It's definitely possible. Now, look. I know right now that might seem like a bit of a stretch to you, maybe if you're not making 10%, or you don't understand the strategies. Ten percent is a lot. That's 120% a year. That is fabulous. If you asked me, "Oh, nobody every does that, Alan." Uh, yeah. I do. I've done it before. It's not impossible. But let's be a lot more conservative. Even though 10% is possible, let's just aim for 5% a month. That's 60% a year. Still, very, very impressive. There are guys on Wall Street that will chop off their right arm if they could make 60% in a year. That's really good. If you start with a $10000 account ... Let's say you start off with $10000 in your trading account and you're making 5% a month, in 5 years, you would have over $186000. Five years from now, $10000 to 186000. That's really, really good. What could that kind of money do for you? What would your life look like? Would you have a new car? Or maybe a new bike for you FIRE people? A new house? a new plane? I know, okay, okay. Maybe 5% seems a little high right now for you, maybe because you're new to options and maybe you've tried to make it work before, and it didn't work for some reason. All right. Let's say you screw it up, and you don't make 5%. You only make 3% a month. Let's cut down our expectations. Do you think you could do that? If 5% is possible, and the odds are in your favor, do you think you could make 36% a year? That's in addition to whatever you're making on your stocks right now. You take that, and you add it to the 36%. That would be really good, right? Would you be happy with just 36% a year? That's really good. I'd be happy with that, because in 5 years, if you have a $10000 account, your account goes from $10000 to $59000 in 5 years. That's almost six times what you started with. We're still talking about life changing money. It would be awesome, right? But I get it. Okay. Maybe 3% is a little high. How about if you totally, totally screw it up and you don't even get 3% a month. What if you only get 2% a month? That is 60% less than our goal amount. But that's still 24% a year. How would your account do, then? Making 2% a month? That would triple your account in five years. Your $10000 account in 5 years goes to $30000. And then, in another 5 years, from $30000, it goes to $98000, because it compounds. Every year, it's just going to compound and compound and compound. Remember, we're only starting with a $10000 account, here. $98000 in 10 years, that's fire your boss money, right there. That is actually 2% a month is more than what Warren Buffet has made. He's averaged 22% over his life. If you can do 24%, it's possible you can do better than Warren Buffet. Now, he started with millions of dollars that other people gave him. I'm not going to compare that and say you can be the second richest man in the world, or whatever. I'm not going to say that. But you can do better, have better returns, than he does. These are all hypotheticals. Now, let's look at a real example. Let's figure this out. For most people, a really good average income would be about $100000 a year. Is that fair to say, you think? Would you be okay with that, if we used $100000 as an example? Let's say we want to make that. We want to make $100000 a year income. That is $8334 a month, $100000 divided by 12 months. I'm going to leave taxes out of this, otherwise it's just going to get too complicated. But first, what we need to do is we need to figure out how much money our account would have to be worth, because we're trying to make $8334 a month. How much money would we need if we were making 2% a month, to be able to make that? That number is $416700. If you have an account that size, $416700, and you make 2% a month, you would be making $8334 a month. You would be making $100000 a year. We need an account of that size, $416000. But we don't have that right now. Most of us don't. You don't have it. Okay. I get it. No problem. Right now, let's say we only have $50000 in our account. I think that's more normal. I think most of us have at least that, or maybe more, maybe a little bit less. It's okay. But let's just say we have $50000, and you can make 2% a month. If you have $50000, and you make 2% a month, question. How long do you think it will take you to get your account to be able to give us an income of $100000 a year? You start with $50000, you make 2% a month. How long will it take to get to $416000? You think it will take 20 years? You think it will take 30 years, 40 years, maybe? Well, I did the math on investor.gov. It's a website. They got all these nice financial calculators that you can play with. It would take just nine years. Imagine that. If you're 50 years old right now, you could be making $100000 a year in income before you hit 60. When you actually do retire, you'll still be getting your Social Security, your pension and whatever else that you have in your investments. Sounds like a really sweet retirement to me. Am I right? If you have $50000 right now, and you only make 2% a month without any stock appreciation, in 9 years you would have a 6 figure income from just the income from your option trades. Oh, and on top of that, you'd be working about a couple hours a week. I think that's the kicker. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. We're going to be working hard? Uh, no. Now, for some of you, you might not have the $50000 right now, and that's okay. This is an example. You could start with a lot less. We have traders in our community that are starting with less than $5000. When you have a smaller account, it just takes longer, but you can still do it. Trades are the same, strategies are the same. Everything is the same. But the important thing is that you need to start now. Can you imagine it? No more credit card debt. No more worries about college costs. No more worries about not having enough money for emergencies. That's pretty cool, right? I think so. It is. It's an amazing way to live. You could lose $80000 a year and not even be mad about it. My wife got mad, to be honest. She did. I told her it was going to be a slam dunk. I was like, "Yeah, yeah. It's going to work. It's going to work," and then we lost the money and she got mad. I didn't get mad, but she did. All right. But what if you are super, super new to investing, and you're just awful at trading. You're the worst. And you don't even get 2% a month. What if you only get 1% a month? That's 12% a year. How many of you guys would be happy with 12% a year. I would. I think so. That would mean that your $10000 account, in 5 years, increases to $18000, and that's without any stock appreciation. That's just the income from your option trades. Even if you're only making 12% a year, 1% a month, it's still significant money. It's still better than what you can do in the stock market, because you put your money in the stock market ... Stock market is getting 8% average, sometimes 7. Some people say seven, some people say eight. I just went eight. But if you calculate all the fees, all the commissions you pay, you're going to be looking somewhere around 4%, 4 and a half percent is what most people get out of the stock market. If you can make 12% on your own, and you compound that money month, after month, after month, after month, because when you look at the stock market and when you put your money in an index fund or a mutual fund or whatever, that money doesn't compound every month. It compounds every year. When we're doing our option trades, these are monthly trades, sometimes less than a month. If you have $1000 in your account, or let's say $10000, to keep it simple. Let's say $10000, and you make 10% in a month, well now you have $11000. The next month, you're not playing with $10000 anymore. You're now playing with $11000. It compounds every single month, and that's why it can grow so fast, much faster than in the stock market if you put it in an index fund. Does that make sense? Good. Because that's what I want for you. If you want to retire early, if you want to be financially independent, you don't want to live like a pauper, like a poor person, like a homeless person, then the best thing for you to do is follow the plan that I just laid out. Number one, try to make as much money from your job as you can. Number two, you've got to have options as your side hustle. You've got to be selling options. You've got to be trading options, selling them, not buying them. Number three, save as much money as you can. If you don't need to go to that five star restaurant, don't. If you don't need to go to the movies, get Netflix. It's fine. You'll watch the same movies later on. Once in a while, you want to splurge, do it. Enjoy your life. Don't live like a pauper, but don't live above your means, either. Save as much money as you can. Spend your time that you have, your free time, your side hustle time, learning how to trade, selling options, practicing, practicing, practicing, getting better, asking questions, getting education. Find other traders that you can talk to and ask questions from, learn from, model what works, because I've done it. Others have done it. We have hundreds of people in our community that have done it and are doing it right now. We've interviewed people on the podcast that are doing it right now. It's not something that I'm making up. There are people who are doing it. There is a model. There is something that you could follow, a path that you could follow. Just follow it. Put your nose down, do it. The biggest problem I see, a lot of people when they start trading options, they're like, "Oh, man. I want to trade options. I want to make a lot of money. But I don't want to do it this way. I don't want to do it that way. I want to do it my own way. What about if I do this? What about if I do ..." And they don't follow the plan. They don't follow the path. They don't follow what's already been laid out. I said it a hundred times, keep it simple. Keep it simple. Just do what works. Follow the plan that's already been laid out that people have already been doing it. There's that poem, right? Follow the path that no one has gone on or ... Man, I don't know what it is. But in this situation, you don't want to go on the path that nobody's gone on. You don't want to make your own path. There is already a path on the road. You just want to follow the path, follow the road that's already been laid out for you. And then, when you're rich, when you're monthly income, your passive income that you're not working for or you're just trading for, that income is greater than your expenses, yes. Then you can take risks. Then you can go and take a cryptocurrency flyer, or you can go invest in a real estate fixer flip like I did and lose your shirt. All right? And then you won't worry about it, because next month, the mortgage is still going to get paid. The light bill is still going to get paid. Your Tesla bill is still going to get paid, all right? That's the way it works. Follow the path. And remember, trade with the odds in your favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? 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People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- What is the best way to learn how to trade? Is there one best way to learn trading? That is what I cover in this episode... Hey, hey, hey, genius nation. How are my passive traders doing today? How are you feeling? What's going on? You know what I love? I love when you guys reach out to me and when we can communicate back and forth. So whenever one of you or if you have an issue or if you had something that you want to say to me, I would love it, and I do love it. It's one of the highlights of my day when I get a comment. If somebody, maybe they post something, they email us, or they post something on our blog as a comment or one of our Facebook groups, our free Facebook group, if they're a member in there. If you're a member, go ahead, let me know how you're doing today. Let me know what questions you have. Let me know how we can help you, myself, or my team or anything. But I do understand that sometimes you might have a situation where you don't want to make it a little bit public. Blog post, comments, and Facebook groups, and when you write a review for the podcast, those are all pretty public, and people can see that. And I understand that if you have a longer issue or if you have a longer comment, then you can always email us. I love getting emails. We get several emails every day and the ones that my team can answer, if you're asking a question like, "Hey, what's the best broker to use," then my team will handle that. But if it's a more detailed question, if it's a personal issue or a trading issue, then I have those reserved for me, and I take some time every day to answer those. And that's really part of how I feel that I am able to give back. So even if you're not a member of one of our services or one of our courses or whatnot, if you do have something, please reach out to us. We'll do our best to help you out as much as we can. That's getting us to our goal of helping 10,000 individual investors achieve financial freedom. So if we can do that without you giving us any money, then that's fine too. As long as it gets you to where you want to go and makes the world a better place, I guess. And so today's podcast, I had a lesson that I wanted to impart upon you, and I'm going to cover that. But we got an email recently that was very lengthy, and it was confusing. It had me scratching my head for a little bit. It was a aggravating. It was really annoying in a way. I don't know. I mean, it gave me so many different emotions as I was reading his email that it totally confused the heck out of me. But when I went through it a couple of times, I read it two, three times, and I realized that the person that wrote this email really, really needs the lesson that I'm about to impart. And so I thought that he would be really awesome if I could share with you just a few lines from this email. It was very lengthy. I'm not going to read the whole thing but just a few lines to get you into the framework to understand what that guy was thinking and what that guy was feeling when he wrote this. I did respond to him, and I gave him suggestions on what he can do because that's what he was looking for. But in this podcast, I want to go through that lesson to see how it applies to this. Okay. So now I get this email. We get emails every day, but I got this one email, and it was very lengthy, and I was like, "Okay, this is going to be a good one," because he wrote, it was several paragraphs. And I'm going to read some of the things that he wrote. He started off by saying that, with pleasantries, "Hey, how are you doing? I've been following you," blah, blah blah. And then he goes on, and I'm going to read some of the lines. So he starts out by saying that, "I've heard options are manipulated. This is not an easy market, and hedging positions is important." Now this is one line of one paragraph. Okay, so I'm going to bounce around. I'm not reading the whole thing. I'm just taking single, single points to get you to understand what I think is going through his mind. He wrote really long. So that was the first point that when I was reading through it, I was like, "Okay, I want you guys to hear this." And then then he says that, "I think most traders fail because they are the Jack of all trades, and they switch from stocks to futures to options to currencies without developing the skills in one." And at this point I'm like, "Okay, this guy, he's preaching to the choir." He knows what we're talking about because we're always talking about get that one strategy, and if you're going to be jumping around, you're not going to ever be good at anything. If they got, dive deep, gets good at something, be consistent, be profitable before you add something else. So I thought, this guy, he's been listening. He gets it. He understands it. So let's keep going into the email. Then he says that, "I'm thinking about taking an options course." I said, "All right. That's cool." He goes, "I belong to an alert service now, and I'm happy with it." Okay, that's awesome. And then he says that, "I have a full-time job, 60 hours a week, and I cannot dedicate to trade full time right now. But that's my goal." I say, "All right, man. You are like so many of our clients, of our members, and our customers. That that is the goal, right? Maybe you can trade a little bit. Maybe you can trade during lunch. We can show you how to do that." But that's what his goal is, and I commend him for it. So then he says, "I understand where you are coming from with money spent on education. As I have spent," this is him talking, "As I have spent $25,000 so far and not placed a single trade just yet. I am preparing to set up an LLC as I am at the point where I will start swing trading stocks soon." Now at this point, I was getting confused. I say, "Well, wait a minute. Well, hold on a second here. You work 60 hours a week. You don't have time to trade full-time or even really, 60 hours a week. You have a alert service that you're paying for every month, but you have not done a single trade ever. You've already spent $25,000 on education, but you have not done a single trade. You're paying for a service that gives you trades, and you're happy with it. How can you be happy with it if you're not making any money from it? I don't understand." I'm confused at this point. I'm very confused. And then he goes further. He goes, "I am preparing to set up an LLC." You're preparing to spend money to set a corporation to trade in, but you have never traded a single share before. How do you even know it's going to work? Why are you going through all this extra hassle and wasting time? And then he says, "I'm at the point where I will start swing trading stock soon." Okay, you going to swing trade. All right, good. You made a decision. You're going to do something, awesome, great. I commend you for that, but then why are you telling me in the previous paragraph that you were thinking about taking an options course and that you belonged to an options trading service? This makes no sense to me. I don't understand. Help me. Please somebody explain what's going on here. Then he continues. He's going on. He goes, "Two of my mentors day trade futures and swing trade stops." Okay. The next line, the very next sentence it says, "I would love to be coached and mentor to learn options." Again I'm like, "Wait a minute. Whoa. You have two mentors that do futures and swing trading stocks. They're two different things, right? Kind of similar but still two different things, and now you want a coach to trade options. You want to be mentored in trading options." Okay, I mean, coach, you want to get a coach. Coaching is not cheap, right? To have a tab, somebody actually work with you one on one as a coach, as a mentor, that's not cheap. But you want to spend the money do that even though you've never done a trade yet. And then he continues. He goes, "I will be in webinars all day Thursday as I am attending the something something summit." Okay. It's just pitch, okay? It's people pitching product after product after product after product. So a guy comes on, tells you how good his trading is and that you should buy his product. Next comes on and talks about how good his trading is, and you should buy his course. Next guy comes in and says, "Oh, I'm making tons of money. You should buy my course." That's what a summit is. You get guru after guru after guru coming on, giving you really no information and then just pitching product after product after product. So he's going to be spending all day, all day Thursday, listening to these gurus pitch their products while he works 60 hours a week, right? So he's working 60 hours a week. I guess he took the day off for this. I don't know. And then he says that, "I've attended the summit two years," so he's gone to this thing for the past two years. This will be year number three. Supposedly he's getting something out of it because he's spending all this time on it. But again, then he's never placed a single trade. I have no clue what's going on. Then the next line, it goes, "I enjoyed your presentation last week. It will probably take me four months perfecting your strategy." He enjoyed the presentation that we did. We did a training, and he was on. That's why he was writing in because he wanted to talk to me. So then he goes on and says, "This is my phone number. Please call me. I'm available after dinner time. Please call me at night after dinner time." And it's, okay, well, first of all, dude, I don't know what to say to you, right? There's so many different things in your email. You start off by saying, you think our options are manipulated, and it's not an easy market to trade. Okay. And then the bottom, you're telling me that you can probably, it's going to take you only four months to perfect the strategy that I was talking about. So the strategy that I showed on the training, which is already not perfected. Nothing is perfect, but I showed the way I trade, my particular strategy, and he wants to take four months to perfect it, meaning I guess improve it or make it better than what I'm doing. But then here's a guy who has never done a trade before in his life, and he thinks he can perfect something that I've been doing for the last several years. So that's where I was. That ticked me off to be honest. But do you see? I mean, I don't know. Maybe you can see yourself in this, where this guy is completely, completely bonkers. He's confused, and I don't blame him. His heart is in the right place. His brain may be not be in the right place, but he has his goal set that he wants to retire, and he's working hard. I mean, I got to give him credit for that. It's not easy working 60 hours a week and trying to learn how to trade and make yourself better. But what I do fault is, how do you spend money month after month on something? How do you spend $25,000 without even trying a trade? And okay, fine, maybe you got suckered into it. Maybe somebody did such a great sales pitch that you just got suckered into some product. Okay, I get that. It's happened to all of us. You go to a seminar or whatnot, and you think it's going to be great, free information, and at the end it's like, "Okay, here, sign up for $5,000 program." Okay, we do it because they make you such an awesome, amazing offer that you think you can't fail. But then we learn, oh, that it's not the truth, but okay, even, oh, that's fine too. You spend $25,000. Okay, fine. But the fact that bothers me is that he's still spending time going to sales pitches. Why are you spending time going to sales pitches when you have all this training or whatever that you already have that you're not using. Number one, you're not using any of it. You haven't done a single trade. And then you're going to the next step of making a corporation to trade in. I mean that is, if you are already a professional trader, if you are already making a very, very good amount of money, then you should go and look at and say, "Yeah, what, I'm going to start open a company," and we've talked about that in a previous podcast. So if that's something where you're at, then you can listen to that podcast. But if you have never done a trade before, you don't need to worry about anything about setting up a company to trade in. You need to worry about A, putting a trade on, and B, not screwing it up because you're going to screw it up, especially in the beginning and to tell me that it's going to take you four months to perfect something that I'm already doing every day, where are you coming from? You have all this confidence. You've never done a damn thing yet. Jeez. So, I mean, hopefully you're not in this situation where if you are, then it's very simple how to get out of this situation. Number one, stop wasting your time going to pitches, okay? Stop reading emails where all they do is try to get you to buy something else. If you have to, unsubscribe from that list, okay? Because a lot of these companies, that teach you how to trade, right, that's all they do. They sell you a very cheap product. Maybe it's seven bucks or 20 bucks or 50 bucks or 100 bucks or whatever. And then every day you get bombarded with emails about how you should buy one of their other products, and they have 10,000 other products, and they're all great, and they're all making millions of dollars, and they're all, you could triple your money in two weeks in all of them. But it's all BS, right? So get off of these email lists. Get off all of that. Pick one thing, right? Pick one thing that you can do, that you want to do it. This guy tells me he wants to do swing trading. Okay, fine. Go do swing trading. Get away from options. Get away from futures. Get away from currencies. If you want to swing trade stocks, go swing trade stocks, right? Why are you on a options trading training? Why are you going to this summit? All of them are not talking about swing trading. They're going to be talking about all kinds of stuff, and then you're going to get sidetracked again, right? When you are learning, when you are trying to do something new, when you are trying to improve your situation, the tendency that we all have is to learn everything we can about it. Okay. And this is the lesson part. When we learn, and for some reason, we look at trading because we don't know any better when we're starting out. We look at trading as trading, one big umbrella. So stocks, buy and hold, is the same thing as swing trading is the same thing as futures as currencies as options, cryptocurrencies even. All these things get lumped in together in our brain as trading. Say if your goal is, "I want to become a trader," or "I want to make 5,000 bucks a month from trading," right? That's your goal. We think that if we read a book on stock options, we're getting to our goal. If we read a book on swing trading, we're getting to our goal. If we're taking a course on technical analysis, we're getting closer to our goal. If we're learning about buying a course on futures, we're getting to our goal. The truth is we're not because each of those is a separate path. Each of those is a separate road that is taking you further and further away from your goal. Basically, you're just going around in circles. Does that make sense? I've said this before many, many times. We need to pick one strategy even when it comes to passive trading. There's dozens of strategies that you can use to sell options, but we don't focus on dozens of strategies. If you're starting out, you focus on one. You get good at that, and you study that, and you practice that, and then when you're consistent and profitable, then you add strategy number two if you need to. And then maybe you go to strategy number three. You really don't need more than three strategies to be honest. You can make a very, very, very nice living and trade really well and have a awesome, amazing return every year with just two strategies. And then there are those people that I know that do amazingly well, trade for a living, with just one strategy, just one. That's all they do. They master it. They pick one. They go at it, and they master it. That's all they do. So if you want to succeed at this, that is the path. The path is not to open a company before you ever done a trade. The path is not to spend $25,000 and never do a trade. The path is not to have an advisory service give you trades, and you never do them. The path is not to say, "Oh, I have mentors and this and this, but now I'm going to go learn something totally different." No, those are not the path. Those are distractions. Those are side, whatever they're called. They are not taking you to your goal. You want to get to your goal? You need to simplify it. You need to make it cut down as much as possible. Get rid of all the noise, and then you focus on step by step. Okay, this is very important. You pick a strategy. You learn about that strategy, and then you implement it. You go out. You get a paper trading account, and you go out and you get a backtesting software. You go out, and you just do the trade. You don't even have to know everything about the trade. You don't have to know everything about how it works. You don't have to know every single adjustment. You don't have to know anything really except how to put on the trade and a basic idea of how the trade works. Once you have that, you go, and you put on a trade. Make it a very small trade if you're losing real money, okay? If you're using paper money, go and do it. That's what you should be doing. But if you're using real money, you go out, and you put it in a very small trade, so that if it does lose money, it's not the end of the world, okay? And then you see how the trade reacts. And then you get to another point in your progression, and then you'll get stuck. You'll say, "Oh, okay. I put the trade on. Now what do I do?" Okay, well then you learn, and you go investigate. And you say, "What do I do now? Oh, I just have to wait. Well, okay, all right. I'm going to wait. All right. Oh, hey, my trade's making money. What do I do now?" Okay, well now you can go, and you can learn the next step. You can learn the step of what do I do when my trade is making money, right? And then you have different options. "Do I let it expire? Do I get out at a certain percentage point, or do I have a stop loss? What do I do?" Right? And then, "Oh, what about if my trade is losing money? What do I do now? Oh, my God." Okay, well at that point you learn what to do about that. You say, "Okay, I need to adjust my trade. All right. How do I do that?" Well, go find an adjustment and see how it works, and if that does not work, then you go, and you find a second adjustment. You don't need to learn 20 different adjustment strategies before you even put on a trade, okay? What I'm saying here is to take it step by step. One thing, learn about it, learn about that step, then go to the next step, and then learn about that step, and then go to the next step and learn about that step. This will get you to your goals so much amazingly faster than all of the other people who just sit around and just get educated, get educated, get educated, get educated, and never take a single action, okay? If you want to get ahead, if you are an action taker, if you want to make this work, you have to put on the trade. That's the biggest hurdle. I don't know why people think that just, I'm just going to learn about it and learn about it and learn about it and learn about it and learn about it, and I'm actually doing something. You're not. You're wasting your time. If all you're doing is learning, you're wasting your time if you are not implementing what you're told to do. So for example, this guy, if he wants to do swing trading, get out there and put on a freaking trade, okay? If the trade does well, then you figure out, what do I do now? If the trade does badly, it starts losing money, then you figure out, what do I do now? Okay? While you are learning, this is the fastest, fastest, fastest way to succeed in anything, right? I mean, if you are trying to bake a cake, you don't need to know all the nutritional properties of every single ingredient. You don't. You need to know step by step what do I do. Okay, you take the onions. Oh no, not onions. You're trying to bake a cake. You take the flour. All right. What do I do with flour? Okay, go on Youtube. Find a video on how to, whatever they do. They knead flour I think, so here, knead the flour into dough. I guess, I don't know. I mean, I've never baked a cake before. I'm sorry. I don't know what the steps are, but you take something, and you do something with the flour, okay? Okay, now I'm done with the flour. Now what do I do? Okay, I think you got to bake the flour or something, so, okay, how do I do that? Learn how to bake it, put it in the oven, put it on certain degree. Okay, fine. I'm done with that. Now what do I do? Okay, now I got to put the icing on it. How do I do that? Okay. Find out how you do the icing. Okay. You go, and you make the icing, or you go, and you buy the icing. Okay. Now I'm going to decorate the cake. Okay, cool, step by step by step. If you sit there and you go, and you read a book about how to bake a cake, right? You just spent, I don't know how many days in reading a book about how to make a cake, but you still don't have a cake. If you do it the way I just told you earlier, hey, you might have the worst cake ever, but guess what? You are now a baker. You baked a cake, okay? So now you take and you say, "Hey, I baked a cake," and somebody's going to come and say, "Well, you baked a horrible cake." "Well, yeah, I know, but I baked a cake, right? So that's good. I have one cake under my belt." And then if that other person knows how to bake a cake, they'll help you. They'll point at, "Okay, you did this wrong. You did this wrong," and then you can go, and you can fix it. But you are not afraid anymore. You're not afraid of baking a cake. And when it comes to trading, you're not afraid of putting on a trade. I mean, maybe that submit button, you put in the order, but that submit button, maybe that's the scariest thing in the world right now because you're afraid of losing money. The only way to get over that fear is to hit the button, to actually do it. And if that's the case, then find the trade that has the least risk, that has the least amount of money, that even if it goes horribly wrong, and you lose 100%, it's not going to kill you because that experience that you get from doing that is going to be immeasurable. That confidence that you get, that "Yes, I did it. I finally did it. I finally put on the trade," immeasurable. So depending wherever you are, whatever path on the option continuum you are, maybe if you're option level two, five, six, whatever, doesn't matter where you are on your phase of learning options, forget all the noise. Do it step by step. Do take an action and then figure out, "Okay, now I'm at a roadblock. Now I need to know, what do I do at this point?" And then you figure that out and then you take the next step and then, "Okay, I'm at another roadblock." Then you take the next step. Then you take the next step. And not only that, but when you ask for help, it is so much easier for somebody like me to be able to help you out, right? Because you've already done something, and you have a specific question. "Okay, I wanted to do a credit spread. I put on the credit spread. Now this is my situation. What do I do?" Okay, that is so much easier to answer than this fellow's email because he was all over the place. I don't even know what he's asking me. He's swing trading, but then he's starting his LLC, but then he can't work, or he works too much, and then he's going to all these different trainings. I mean, even if he takes my course, do you think he's actually going to listen to anything I ever tell him, or is he just going to go to the next course next week, buy something else, and learn about that, and then go learn something else? I can't help you if you don't implement. Nobody can. And if you're so vague, and please don't tell me to call you after dinner time, right? I mean, I have a life. I have kids, have family. I'm not going to call you after dinner time. If you want to sign up for our coaching, then you can sign up for coaching or one on one coaching. That's fine, but it's going to be done at a time that I can do it, right? So, I mean, I really appreciate it, this guy reaching out, and I tried to help him as best as I could, but there's only so much you can do for people that are rudderless. You're in the ocean. You don't know what direction you're going in, and you don't know how to get there. But if you pick a direction, right, and then you want to learn something, the fastest way to do it is step by step. Do not try to learn every single thing you can do without taking any action. Once you get a few trades under your belt, once you get a few successes under your belt and a few losses as well, then you will have a much better idea of, "Hey, what do I need to focus on? What do I need to learn? Where are my blocks?" And then you can go and totally jump in and master that one particular strategy. Don't try to master all, every... Even when it comes to options trading, there is nobody that is an options master, that knows everything about options, that knows about every single strategy and is consistently profitable with every single strategy because it's all very difficult, very complicated to learn everything. That's why you need to niche down. You need to keep it as simple as possible. Learn step by step because you are not a guru. You are not a trainer or a trader or a mentor to a million other people, right? You are responsible for your own trading account, and in that sense, all you have to do is make more money, have more money at the end of this month than last month. As long as your account balance is growing, you're in a good spot. And that's the goal. More money at the end of every month, profitable trading, consistently, consistently profitable. That's all you have to worry about. Some people telling me that, "Oh yeah, I want to learn the most complicated strategies." You don't need to. It's not about showing off, right? If you make money every month with the most basic strategy, the bank doesn't care, right? Nobody else cares. Your wife is not going to think any lower of you because you did it, you're making money with covered calls instead of ratio spreads or box spreads. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. As long as you have a profitable trading account, that's all that matters. Your broker doesn't care even. Your broker knows what you're doing in your account, but they don't even care, right? As long as you are consistently profitable, you are a good account for them. You're doing more trades. You're making them more money. You're going to stick around. That's the kind of person that they want. They don't want somebody who's going to open account and trade and blow up and leave in a couple of months. They want the trader that's going to be there for a long, long time to give him commissions month after month after month. Those are the types of people that they like to have accounts, and those are the type of people I like to work with that can focus on one thing, learn, grow, grow, grow, and then add other things as well. That's what makes it fun. When you're making money, it's fun. When you're just learning, you have that false sense of I'm actually doing something. I'm actually moving forward. I'm learning, so that when I do finally started to trade, all this knowledge is going to just rush out and make me profitable. Like he says at the bottom, it's going to take him four months to be profitable. No, I don't think so. Not with all the other stuff that he shared. I mean, I don't even know if he has a trading account set up yet. So, take it small, step by step. That's the lesson for this podcast, okay? Step by step, take it small. Don't need to immerse yourself in all the noise. Don't need to learn everything. Implement, please put on a trade, and then see where it goes. And then when you get stuck then research what you need to do next and then implement more. And then you get stuck, and then you research more, and then you learn a little bit more, then you learn a little bit more, then you learn little bit more. The trade is over, and then you're either successful or not, but you've had done a trade. You're experienced, right? And then we have to add more and more and more experience. Do more and more and more trades, so that you learn more and more, and you learn faster. The more trades you put on, the faster you're going to learn because the more things that could happen. And the more you'll have to figure out, "Okay, what do I do next?" So that is what I wanted to impart with you today. Take it to consideration, right? And put something on please. I know it feels good to learn stuff. I know it feels good to listen to even podcasts, right? I know you're listening to this, but this is all a waste of time if you cannot go and put on a trade. If you don't that, then there's no reason for this, okay? So please pick a strategy that you like. Put on a trade. If it's on paper, fine, great, I don't care. That's even better because you're not losing anything. Just put the dang thing on. See how it does, and then see where the roadblocks are. Learn the next step and move forward and then move forward and continuously moving, moving, moving forward. Because then when you're actually doing stuff, and you listen to podcasts, or you get more education, or you read a book, or you take a course or whatever, then you will be able to take that and apply it to what you're already doing, and it'll ROI immediately. Does that make sense? I hope it does. Remember, trade with the odds in your favor. www.optiongenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... 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People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Hello my fellow option traders. Welcome to the 45th episode of The Option Genius Podcast. 45 episodes. Man. When I first started this thing I was thinking like how many episodes am I going to have, I mean how much can I talk. It seems I guess I can talk a lot. Well in this episode we have a very very special lesson that I do want to impart and share with you. Understand this and you can save yourself a lot of money from losses in particular. And unfortunately most new traders learned this lesson the hard way. I mean they learn it after they lose a lot of money and some of them don't ever get it including the fellow that I'm going to talk to you about. Sometimes they just don't figure it out. So what is the lesson? Well I'm not going to tell you. Well I will but not right now. See before I need to tell you the lesson I need to share with you a story. Because while the lesson is great you're not going to remember it. It's like when was the last time you read a fiction book, you probably remember the story, and if it has a lesson you remember the lesson. But if you go read a nonfiction book you might remember it, you might not. You might just gloss over so many things and so I think that in terms of entertainment wise and for helping you to remember this lesson I should tell it to you in a story. And in fact I do have a story and it's a true story. So that makes it even more fun. Hopefully that will help you remember it because it does for me. I mean I remember movies that I've watched years ago, I still remember the stories. So here we go. You see my wife has a cousin that she loves a lot and he loves her too. He's a few years older than her and they do, him and his family they live nearby so we do see them from time to time. Now when I first got started in trading my wife helped me a lot and I would I would learn the stuff and then I would share with her what I was learning and then I would share with her the trades that I was doing. And actually now that I think about it she was helping me get better at my trading. In fact as a side note I might never have become a consistently profitable trader without her help. And that's seriously the truth. But that is another story that we'll get into later on. But for the sake of this story I just want to let that my wife knows the basic of options and how they work and she actually enjoys trying to predict where a stock will go. So she has a pretty good knack for chart reading, actually much better than I am. And so when we were getting started I would show her the trades that I was doing and then I would be back testing certain trades and the trades that she would put on for the back testing almost always did better than mine which was crazy. But so my wife understands the basics of options and trading in general. That is why she got really excited when one day her cousin came up to her and told her that he had started trading in his spare time of course. Now curiously though he did not ask me for help or tell me about his trading. He didn't do it because at this time when he came forward and told her this I was actually doing very well trading and he knew that I teach others. He knows this. He knows about Option Genius and all that. But he only told her for whatever reason. I don't know. People have their issues. People have their reasons. I don't know. And I didn't really pry or ask them but they started chatting about how he determines what a stock is going to do. He started telling her what trades he was making. A couple of the trades that he has made and he was all excited about it. And basically what he was doing is called swing trading. So he wasn't using options. He was just buying the stocks outright but that means that he would buy and sell stocks based on the charts and what he thought they were going to do. And then he would hold them for a few days. Now he explained to her that he liked to bet against the current move. So he's basically like a contrarian or if a stock is moving higher he would want to short the stock or if a stock was moving lower he would want to buy it thinking that the move had to end and the stock would go back in the opposite direction. Now that's also called mean reversion. So if something is going, a stock is moving in one direction eventually it's going to stop moving in that direction and turn around and go back down and stocks go up and down so mean reversion is real in the markets, it just depends on how much of it there is in the stocks that you're playing. Now my wife also totally buys into this theory. Now me I am the opposite. I do believe mean reversion is there, it is there, of course that's how stocks work. That's why selling options worked so well. But I have more confidence in trends. So if I see a trend, if I see a stock is moving in one direction, either it's going up or going down or it's going sideways, I feel that the trend will continue. There's this notion of the path of least resistance. The trend will continue. I mean that's there's this this notion of the path of least resistance. Now I don't want to make this an episode about mean reversion versus trend following, we can do that later. But to me it's the sense where if a stock is moving in one direction there's a good chance it's just going to keep moving in that direction. So why would you fight that? Why would you go against that? It's kind of like a train. You don't get in front of a train. You let the train go by. Then you cross the street. So my wife and I we've had this argument many many times especially when we were doing the testing together and the trading together we would always have this argument. "Hey, you need to sell on the other side." "No I want to sell this side." So we would have this argument. But now she had somebody who thought the same way as her. So that was something really exciting to her. And she was excited for him because he was excited about it and it gave him a spark. He would light up when he started talking about it. And after that first time that they talked they would call each other every week or every couple of weeks or so and he would call her to tell her about a great trade that he made. She would call him to get an update and encourage him. And this went on for a few months really. And then one day she comes to me and she says, "I haven't heard from him in a while." And I was like, "Really? He hasn't called you. You haven't called him. How long has it been?" She's like, "Well it's probably been maybe a couple months." She got busy, my wife got busy with the kids and whatnot and she forgot to call him and he didn't call her and she just realized that he hadn't called. Now to me that's like a warning flag, like beep beep beep beep, warning, warning, that something is going on, something bad is happening 'cause when somebody is crazy about something and they can't stop talking about it and then all of a sudden they stop. All of a sudden he's like radio silence. Especially when it's about trading or money to me that can only mean one of a couple of things. So either the person got really busy in something else. Maybe the person got caught up at work or they had an issue or family problem, something happened that messed up their routine and so they got away from the trading or whatever it is. Which in most cases is not really likely because if you're so excited about it you're still going to find a way to do it. But the other way, the other possibility is that the person actually did very poorly and they lost a boatload of money and is embarrassed about what happened and so they stopped talking about it. Now I know because that has happened to me and it has happened to people with the stock market throughout time. I still remember in the dot com bubble. I was younger then but I remember people in the community, people at work, people everywhere, they'd be talking, "Oh yeah I bought AOL and it went up" and, "Oh I bought this one and it went up." And the people that were very heavy into the stock market. I remember there's one gentleman in particular. Every time he would see my dad he would start talking about the stock market and how much money he was making and he would encourage every single person that he talked to, "Hey you got to get into the stock market. You got to get in the stock market." We just had the same thing with Bitcoin if you remember. Every party you would go to, every single gathering there would be somebody talking about Bitcoin. Somebody talking, "Oh Bitcoin is great. I'm making so much money, I'm making so much money, I'm making so much money." Then all of a sudden it stops. And there's a big loss. And then you don't hear about that anymore. After the dot com bubble that gentleman never talked about the stock market again. He didn't really talk to anybody. After the Bitcoin crash that we had people stopped talking about Bitcoin. "Hey what happened to your Bitcoin?" "Oh yeah yeah, I sold it." "Oh yeah. It'll go back up again." That's the end of the conversation. So that's basically what happens. It's really two things. You either get busy or you have a loss and you're too embarrassed to talk about it. Now I didn't know which one it was in this situation. And I explained this to my wife and she's like, "Hmm, I guess maybe I won't bring it up if that's the case." And I'm like, "Yeah that's probably the best thing." Because in this case he never really told us how much. We didn't really approach the subject but after a few get togethers it kind of started coming out that something happened. And in the beginning he denied it. He denied that there was anything wrong. But eventually we found out that it was a lot of money. I mean enough to cause him and the family a lot of stress, to cause marital tension and actually a change in their lifestyle. So I mean it was pretty dramatic, pretty bad. So basically his wife put an end to his trading which is probably for the better. But,  there's a big but here. And if this ever happened to you, if you've ever been into trading and you've lost money you know that it's not as simple as, "OK I'll stop." This is trading. Once you get bitten by the bug man you cannot stop. Even if you lose a ton of money you've got to give it another go. It's addictive. You've got to give it another. You can't just take that from market and just take that loss and be done with it. No you've got to get that back. I don't know, maybe it's testosterone. I don't know what it is. It's your machismo, whatever the problem is. But we as traders we got to go get that money back. So recently they came over for another get together and I just needed to go to the store to pick up something, we didn't have it at the house. So I went to the store, picked up something and his son came with me to give me company. So that was cool. And as we're talking he mentions that his dad has just quit his job. Now this conversation is probably two or three years after the whole trading debacle. So he tells me that his dad just quit his job and I'm like, "What?". I was shocked. Like what is going on. "What do you mean he quit his job? Why did he quit his job? Did he get another job?" "No he didn't get another job. He actually wants to trade full time." And I was like, "Oh so he goes from working full time to quitting to trading full time. So was he trading part time before this?" He goes, "Oh no he wasn't trading part time but he just felt he had to do it." It's like uh oh. You can see where this is going. So I'm like, "OK that's cool. I hope he does well. If he needs anything, you can tell him . Are you helping him?" Because his son had learned a little bit about trading. I'm like, "You helping him? You doing it with him? If he needs anything, let me know." He goes, "Oh well yeah. No he already quit." I'm like, "What do you mean he quit? He quit the job?" "No no no. He quit trading." I'm like, "Wait, you just told me he quit his job." "Yeah. He quit his job last week and then he traded for a week and now he's looking for another job because he quit trading." I was like what, this makes no sense at all. What is going on in his brain? I mean what did he do? He lost so much money in a week. What was his plan? Just what the heck. And that's the problem. He didn't have a plan. He just decided one day to quit his job and started trading again. Whatever he felt like. No plan, no system, nothing. And the kid tells me that now he's really beating himself up and mom is really pissed at him. Of course she's pissed at him. She told him to stop the trading. Somehow, I mean he must have told her that he's quitting his job or maybe he didn't. I don't know what's going on in their household. But you have a guy who lost a lot of money. His wife told him no more trading. All of a sudden he quits his job. And they needed both incomes. So he quits his job, goes full time trading, loses I don't know how much money, if he lost. I don't know what he did or maybe he realized he couldn't do it, don't know what he's doing. And now he's looking for another job again. But I was like, "Man he had such an awesome job, he's not going to be able to find such a good job again." Like, "Yeah but he was getting tired of it and he wanted to try something new." Okay. That's fine. Unfortunately I've heard this story many many times. Traders being full of confidence, heading into the markets with very limited trading knowledge. Thinking that all they have to do is click a few buttons and then they're going to make millions. Until they get hit in the face with reality. Because if you don't have a plan, you will not succeed. If you do not have rules, you will not succeed. You cannot simply watch a YouTube video or like a one hour webinar and think you know enough to be consistently profitable. It just doesn't work that way. You need a real trading plan that is tested in real market conditions with real money. You need a real strategy that works and not only works for just a couple people but has worked for a lot of people, has a track record. And you need proper money management to limit your losses and to provide you with stability. So let me ... please don't go all gung ho, guns blazing, end up with a slap in the face, cause this ain't no video game where you could just hit the reset button and start over. Once the money is gone, bye bye, it's gone, it ain't coming back. That's why experience is crucial and if you do not have experience in trading you either need to get it through actual trading or paper trading or back testing or you need to pay somebody with experience to teach you the proper way to do it. Now trading education can be cheap or it can be expensive depending on how you look at it. The price is the price. How you look at it, how you think about it is what determines if it's cheap or expensive. I mean in dollar terms it might sound expensive but over the years how much can it make you and how much money can it save you in losses. That's what you need to really look at. I mean if you buy a course and you learn one thing that makes you better that's worth it. If it causes you to make one less mistake it's worth it because every time you make that mistake in the future you would probably lose money. And so if this stops you from making that one mistake over and over and over again it's definitely worth it over the long run. Because when it comes to trading learning on your own is probably the most expensive way to go about it because not only will you lose money you will not make as much as you could. And those missed gains, the money that you miss out on will not get compounded. We won't have that money to make it grow and grow and grow. And so taking a class that costs you  1000 bucks can stop you from making a mistake that costs you hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime. And I've seen this happen over and over and over again. I mean that's it. There you go. That is the lesson. Do not trade without a plan. Know what you're going to trade, how you're going to trade, what you will do when things go right and when they go wrong and how you will protect yourself from losses. I'm just gonna repeat that. Know what you're going to trade, how you're going to trade it, what you do when things go right, what are you going to do when things go wrong and how will you protect yourself from losses. You figure that stuff out, boom, consistently profitable. And one more thing. Come on guys. Don't quit in a week. What the heck is that? How do you go from, "I'm going to quit my job and be a full time trader" to, "Okay I give up in a week." Jeez. It's a good thing he doesn't listen to this podcast. He would be really pissed if he heard me talking about it but he doesn't listen to it so it's okay. I mean your dreams are worth the effort and time it takes to do this properly. Please don't wuss out in a week. Huh? I mean it can take whatever long it time it takes but everything you learn will make you better. Every minute that you spend to learn, every podcast episode of mine that you listen to, every course that you take, every email that you read, well not the stupid markety ones but the ones that actually have content, they will make you a better trader. The more time you spend on your trades trading, the better you'll be. But it's not going to happen in a week. It's not going to happen overnight. It might take a year, two years, three years and we have other episodes where I go over how long it should take you. So if you want to know what is a good timeframe then check out our other episodes. But seriously your dreams are so so important that you just can't give up on them. Because what is the alternative? You're going to live in a humdrum boring insignificant life? I don't want that for you. Not when there's so much out there that you could be doing, you could be enjoying your life, you could be doing whatever you want to do. You are on the right path and I'm super super excited for you, that you are on the right path. If you are listening to this you have the access to the knowledge, to the ability, to actually make all your dreams come true. To have this stuff work for you. Because it's not that complicated. It's just about doing the work. It's about having the plan, going through the procedures, going through the motions, doing it over and over again, fine tuning it so that you do not make the mistakes. But if you go all gung ho and just trade whatever you can and not have a proper planning plan, not have a proper strategy. If you do it that way, the way this fellow did it, you're going to end up in the same boat. Time's gonna go by, your money's gonna go away. Your wife's gonna be pissed at you. Your kid's are gonna be mad at you. And you're not going to have anything to show for it. I don't want that for you. I want you to have everything you deserve, everything you want. And when you're selling options and you're trading passively you can have that. Because if you don't have any other examples and just look at me, I am the example. I have been able to do it and I'm not some Harvard graduate Wall Street person. I learned the hard way and it took me years and years and years. It doesn't have to take you that long because I've given you all the stuff, I'm giving you all the knowledge. I'm like, "Here. I do this. Do this, copy this." And just do it. But you got to have the plan. You got to have the formula. You got to have the methodology. And then you have to have the practice and the patience to do it over and over and over again to nail it. And then once you do man, the sky is the limit. There is nothing holding you back. All right folks. So take from this what you will. I hope the story helps. Please don't quit in a week. Please don't quit. Don't quit on yourself. You have everything you need. Your dreams are worth the effort and the time it takes to do this properly. So that's it for this episode. Don't forget, always trade with the odds in your favor.    -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Hey, hey, hey, Genius Nation. How's it going today? Coming to you today from the home office. Didn't feel like going to work today and felt like relaxing. Trades are doing well, everything's going well. And so, I'm here just relaxing today, but I did have this really, really exciting thought. So, I thought that, you know what, I need to record this. I need to get this down before I forget. And so, here I am. And, what happened was really that the last couple of coaching calls that I've had with clients, both of the fellows said something very similar and they both had a similar issue, which was that they are having a hard time adjusting. It's not that they don't know what adjustments to make, or they don't have a trading plan that we gave them, but they are not sticking to the rules. And so, they are not doing it properly and they're not treating properly. And so, they're having losses that they really shouldn't have, and they know that, and they know it's their fault. But, for some reason, whatever, they had their own little reasons. Oh, I lost track, or I didn't have my records, or whatever not. They felt that their issue was that they could not stick to their adjustments. And, really it boils down to discipline. So, if you don't have the discipline, you won't stick to the rules, right? You'll just try to do it fly by the seat of the pants. It might work, it might not work. But, that's not the way that you want to be doing it. Now, discipline is like a muscle. It's like a habit. I mean, the more you do it, the stronger it gets, the more ingrained it becomes in you, and the better off you are really in life. But, I understand where these guys are coming from. Because discipline, not one of my strongest points. I would rather take the easy way out if I could in most cases. But, there are certain things that you can't do that. There's certain things that you really have to focus on. And so, when it comes to trading, it comes down to how serious are you, and how important it is to you. So, for example, both of these guys, they had a similar situation where there's no real urgency in terms of, hey, I need to do a great job in my trading because that's what I do for living. Or, I need this money to survive, or to pay off bills, or whatever. So, they're basically dabbling. They're not totally committed to it. And so, it's really a negative in itself, and that's a telling sign that, hey, you're not taking this seriously. So, if you can, stop dabbling, get serious, commit to this, and that will, for some people, that'll solve their problem. They'll just be like, yeah, you know what, I'm going to do it. But, the longterm way to overcome this is to really know your why. Why are you trading? What is the end result? What is the goal? What are you trying to accomplish? Is it, hey, you know what, I'm not going to have enough money in retirement and I need that, right? And, I need that money, otherwise I'm not going to survive or want to be dependent on other people to live, and that's horrible. And, I'll never want that to happen. Is that I need to pay off my debt? Is it I need to pay for the kids' college? Or, whatever it is. I just need another thousand dollars a month to survive. Whatever that is, you need to know your why, and you need to keep that first and foremost in your brain. And, if you can't, put it up a big sign, or pictures or whatever in front of you or all over the place around your house, or on your computer or on your bathroom, so that you are constantly reminded, why are you trading? Why are you working hard? Why are you trying to get ahead? That will help you with the discipline problem, that will help you trade better. Now, I do understand that if your goal is, hey, I need more money for retirement, that might be 10 years, 20 years down the line. And so, just human psychology tells us that we do not see ourselves as us 20 years from now. So me today, one person, when I think about me 20 years from now, oh, that's a totally different person. I'm not worried about him. I'm more worried about me right now. And so, if I can not put off something and not have to do it, then I'd rather do that then work hard and be disciplined, so that the guy 20 years from now gets the benefit. I mean, I want the benefit now, right? I want instant gratification now. And so, by not paying attention to my trades, or watching TV, or just forgetting about them one day when I should be paying attention to them on a regular basis is, in a sense, it's laziness. But, it's human psychology. And so, I was thinking about that and I'm like, that's the way it should be, that we should be focused on it, and have that why and be committed to it. But, sometimes, it's just not there, especially if you're going from zero to 60, from not trading at all, not being disciplined at all, to be super disciplined, you can't do it. And so, I've been working out with a trainer lately and basically, he's starting me off at really, really low weights, three pounds, five pounds. We're not going to 20 pound dumbbells because I haven't worked out in 25 years. I can't handle it. Right? I could do maybe one or two reps, but that's not going to do anything. So, he starting me off small. And so, that's where I got this idea. And, it's something really fun and interesting and I want you guys to ... this is going to excite you. So, this is one way that I think that, in a fun way, that you can overcome this discipline problem and start moving on the path to being more disciplined and having better off trades and sticking to the plans. So, what I want you to do is not worry about your end game, not worry about retirement, paying off debt, whatever the issue is. What I would like you to do if you're having this issue of not being disciplined and not adjusting on time and not paying attention, what I want you to do is to pick a goal or a item or a product that you want to buy just for fun. And, it might even be frivolous. It might be something like, oh, there's this expensive watch that I want to buy or a piece of jewelry or, for some people, it might be a new car, I don't know, whatever it is, but something that is just for you, just for fun. Something that you would probably not buy for yourself. And, we're going to make that your short term goal. We're not going to worry about anything else. This is going to be your short term goal. And, what I want you to do is set that goal for, let's say, three months, six months, maybe nine. You could do it for a year, but that's really, really pushing it. I don't want to go that far. Our goal here is to make you excited about something you want right away, and to help you build that discipline muscle. Okay? So I think if I tell you, okay, you're going to retire 20 years from now, and you have to be disciplined every single day on your trades, that's not going to excite you very much as to say that, you know what, we're booking a cruise six months from now, and the only way that you can go on this cruise is if you make that money from your trading. Right? I think that would be a lot more exciting to a lot more people. And so, a cruise, most cruises, seven day cruises, whatever, they're going to run you around a thousand bucks or so per person. I think that's doable, or even if they're a little bit more 1,500 or whatever. But, I think, a one week vacation on a cruise, or maybe an all inclusive resort in Mexico or whatever, airfare, all that [inaudible 00:08:30], I think it'd be costing you about a thousand, two thousand dollars per person. And so, if you were to say, you know what, it's me, my wife, my kids, or just me and my girlfriend, or whatever it is, this is how much money I need. I need a thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollars, whatever, to go on this trip, I think that is an amazing short term goal for anybody that is trying to build up their discipline, and who was trying to just get into that habit of checking on your trades, and sticking to the trading plan over and over and over and over again. And now, in the short term, yeah, you'll spend a little bit of money going on this trip, or whatever you want to buy, but in the longterm, it's going to help you because we're developing that muscle, we're developing that habit, and that's the important thing. You're going to have a lot of fun, right? You're going to be excited about whatever this thing is. It's got to be something really fun. Something you probably wouldn't do for yourself, or something that you thought, oh man, that's a luxury. I wish I could do that. Well, let's make that our goal. Let's be a little childish. Let's put our little responsibilities aside for a second, because right now, if you're losing money on your trading because you're not paying attention, well, you're losing money anyway. So, the thing, the goal here is you're going to pick something that you really want, maybe frivolous or maybe a fun or something you've always wanted that's kind of a luxury, probably, I would say $5,000 or so. So, maybe a car, unless you're really, really rich already, maybe a car is out of a contention here, but a vacation or some kind of experience, maybe something that you're really looking forward to a trip, going to see your grandkids, going skiing or whatever. It doesn't matter. That would be your goal. That would be something that could excite you. And then, you set a timeframe. So, okay, I need to do this within three months. I need you to do this in six months. Depending on how much it costs and depending how much you're trading account is, how much you think you could make every month, six months, nine months, hopefully not a year. Don't go past a year. Because then it's not going to excite you that much because it needs to be simple and it needs to be soon. The more sooner it is, the more excited you'll get. So, if it's, let's say, six months from now, you look at your trading account and say, okay, you know what, I need X amount of dollars. Let's say $4,000 for this. I need to make that. So, I need to work. The only way I can pay for this thing, this trip or activity, or whatever it is, is by making money from my trades. That's the only way I can do it. And, the only way that's going to work is if I pay attention, right? If I focus every single day, and if that's the case, if you're going on a cruise, I mean you get cruise ship pictures and beach pictures and whatever and you just post them. Post them around in place so that you always have that top of mind. You always remember, hey, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm doing. I'm going to have a lot of fun on this trip. And, that will excite you to the point where, okay, I need to check every day. And, you check everyday. I need to focus on my trades. And so, when the times comes for an adjustment, you're not going to be thinking, oh well, maybe I'll just put off the adjustment. Maybe it'll come back. Say, no, I cannot afford to lose money because, if I lose money, I'm going backwards away from my trip. This is too important. My trip is too important to me to not make this adjustment, and not stick to my trading plan. I'm not going to wing it. I am going to do what I need to do to be profitable, to be consistent so that I can go on this trip. Right? And that's all we're trying to do. So, if you've had problems in the past with discipline, with not adjusting properly, sticking to your trading plan, I think this is a really fun way to do it, so that you build that muscle automatically because it's something that really, really motivates you. And, then if, let's say, you're successful at this, let's say you go for a few months, you're profitable again. You're making money consistently and you're able to get close to that trip, or maybe you have to put in a little bit money to actually go on the trip. Okay, that's fine. But, you did what you were supposed to do trading wise. That is my goal for you. I know your goal is to go on the trip or buy the thing, but my goal is for you is to actually become consistent. Get that experience, build up that habit and have the confidence because if you can go through this exercise and you can focus on your trades, make adjustments, traded properly for three months, six months, nine months at a time, and accomplish your goal, well, then you can do anything. Then retirement or early retirement or whatnot is not that far away. Buying a new car, buying a new house is not that far away. Paying off your debt is not far away because you've already done it. You've already had that experience, and then it's just a matter of numbers, right? Having a goal, picking a timeframe and being committed and being focused and being disciplined, that's all it is. That's what trading is. That's the formula. If you were to ask me, what's the secret to trading? Well, you got to know why you're doing it, right? You got to have a proper trading plan, and then you got to stick to it, and that's it. You got to have some kind of urgency that, yeah, I need to make this happen. And, that is trading in a nutshell. Right? And so, I mean, I'm really excited. I haven't thought about what I want to do. That's gonna be really cool. I don't know if I'm going to do the same exact thing because I'm not having that many issues as these other two guys that were having problems with adjusting. I do have issues from time to time, so I'm not going to say that I'm perfect, or anybody's perfect, you will fall off the wagon. But, the stronger your muscle is, the more consistent you will be properly trading, and then the more consistent you will be in your results. And, that is what I want for everybody. Consistent profits, or just even if you're breaking even. But, if you go month one, making money, making money, money, money, making money. Oh, breakeven. Oh, I lost a little bit. Couple of percentage points. Okay, no problem. Making money, making money. Over time, all those gains add up. All of that percentage adds up because the game that we're playing when we're trading passively, and where we're selling options, we're not trying to make half a percent a month. We're not trying to make 8 percent a year like the stock market. No man, we're have the capability of doing 10 percent, 12 percent, 15 percent a month. So, you don't need super, super high returns to do really, really well. You can do three percent a month. And, for some of us that's like, man, three percent? That's horrible. No, it's not. Three percent every month is 36 percent. That's much better than any mutual fund. That's much better than most hedge funds. Most professional money managers. So, the odds are already in your favor, the numbers and the math already works out. It's already in your favor. The only thing that's holding you back from the success that you want in your trading is you. And, if discipline is the problem, then I think this exercise is a great way to start building that habit, to start building that muscle. And, I'm really excited for this, and I hope that you would email me, or let me know, send me a message, hit me up on Facebook or whatever, and let me know what is your goal, and when are you going to do it by. So, those are the three things I want to know. I want to know what your goal is. Is it a cruise? Is it a trip? Are you buying something? How much is it going to cost? Okay, how much money you need for that, and by when are you going to do it? If you could send me those three things, I will do my best to hold you accountable. Okay? So, let's say you're telling me that I want to go on a trip. It's going to cost me $3,000, and it's going to be six months from now? Well, three months from now, I'm going to try to send you an email and say, hey, three months are up. How are you doing? I'm gonna hold you accountable. Here you go. I'll do my best. I don't know how many of these responses we're going to get, so we might be overwhelmed, but I will try to set it up in my calendar, and have this maybe done automatically. Where if you send me something, we'll send you an email in a certain amount of time saying, hey, are you on the ball? Are you still doing it? And, that'll be my of helping you out. But, I would love, even if you don't want that, I would love to know what you're gonna do. What is it? Cruises are my thing, or vacations really, any kind of vacation, going on a trip, that's my thing. But, if you want to buy something, that would be exciting. So, just let me know. Are you going to do a Montblanc pen. I did that one time. I love pens. So, I bought myself I think a thousand dollar pen from Montblanc, and now they have even more expensive pens. But, that's the one I liked, that's the one I got. So, it was really cool. That was something that I cherished because it's like, I worked hard for this, I bought it and no regrets. I am not going to regret spending money on this because I earned it, and I know that I did it once, man, I could do it again and I can do it again and again and again. And, the numbers just get bigger. It's the same exact process to accomplish anything you want. But, we start off on this small, small scale for something that really, really motivates you, really gets you excited. It really gets you juiced because it's fun. We're not being serious here. We're being frivolous. We're being playful, we're being like little kids again. So, that's the thing. Right now for my daughter, we're trying to potty train her. So, we're like, hey, do you want ice cream? Yes, I want ice cream. Okay, well then you better do poo poo in the potty. If you do poo poo in the body, you get ice cream. And, that's her goal. It doesn't always work every day. We're trying to get there, right? So, this is your thing, do you want ice cream? Okay, well be disciplined. Focus on your trades and you'll get whatever it is that you want. So, let me know. Email me, let me know what your big, exciting goal is and I'll do my best to help. All right, take it easy and, remember, trade with the odds in your favor.   https://optiongenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- This is a special episode because it is a recording of a one on one coaching call with a student. The questions he asked are probably the same questions you have about trading options. How much can I really make? How do I get started? What do I need? We cover a lot in this call. So listen and learn. And if you think you need a trading coach to help you become a better trader, then email us at help@optiongenius.com     Allen: Okay, all right, so Keith, how you doing? Keith: I'm well, thank you. Thank you very much for talking. Allen: Good, no, no, no, thank you. What I wanted to do is if you could tell me a little bit about your background, tell me a little bit about yourself, and then after that, then we can go ahead and jump into your questions. Keith: Okay, I'll try and be quick. Allen: Just so I get a little bit of a feel, so where you're coming from. Keith: Okay, I could ... I'm the one who'd probably sit there and tell you, 35-40 minutes, my background, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to try to be really concise and get to the point. I have a full-time ... I have a wife and four kids, teenagers, a full-time job. It happens to be very luckily a good job. A really good job with a fine schedule. I say that for a reason because I've been training for years, like over a decade with no progress. Maybe because I don't need it. It's not like I'm hungry. I don't need it like I want to get out of my job or anything like that. I've just delved into it for years thinking some day I'll get it. Some day I'll figure out the niche I want and someday I'll ... too much time has gone by. I like spending time learning but I feel like now I'm wasting time. I need to actually do something productive. I'm 48 and I'm thinking I want to take my retirement account that's being managed by a firm in New York who's not really doing the job. They have been up until like I said recently. Just like everyone else. They're doing well I think with their niche, but I can look at the numbers and say okay, this isn't gonna do it. This isn't gonna be my retirement. It's not gonna happen. I've got to do something more active myself. That's why I'm thinking, okay I've got to either stop or get moving. I've had some bad losses in the past. I don't really need to go into those. It's just one of those things that a lot of traders have gone through. I don't need to bore you or want to get into that. Enough where I'm like okay, I've had enough. I've got to do something. Like I said, I'm 48. I'm looking into what's the future gonna hold. What am I gonna do when I retire? What's my next leg gonna be like? There's education, kids education kind of a little bit of a factor. My brothers, we talk to each other a lot about things we use to practice together, but I moved away and I still talk to them a lot. We talk about ideas a lot. They're getting into some things business wise after their dental career to account for what are they gonna do in retirement. I look at what they're doing as pretty cool. I know this trading thing will work and can work. I know it can. I just haven't gotten it off the ground. Now I feel more like I have the need to. I don't again, think I've gone into as much detail as I wanted, but I don't want to take all this time just to tell you my background meaning to take up your time. A typical story. I'm not really unique. As far as trading goes, basically why I haven't been successful number one is rules. I know the rules and I don't follow them. I follow the rules in my business. I'm very disciplined in my business with overhead and all that stuff. For some reason trading, I did at the casino. If I ever go to a casino, which is rare, I'm pretty disciplined. I don't have a gambling problem. But with trading, for some reason that's different. I don't follow the rules. I don't do what I'm supposed to do and I've been trying to figure myself out. I think that part of this too is I've got these kids that I'm busy with. I sit at the computer for a while and I like doing it. I feel like I got to figure out a niche that doesn't involve me at the computer a lot so I can hang out with them and do my thing with them and then when they're gone, maybe learn more. Along the way I want to keep learning. Basically, where's my niche? I'm going from one method to another without fulling trying it out. I'm floundering. I finally settled on I want to day trade. I love that. I can't do that. I've got a job and other things to do. Anyway, hopefully I've kept that as concise as possible because it's a lot to that. I've got to the conclusion where okay, it just seems to me like the iron condor/oil trading is what I want to do. Again, I'm trying to keep this- Allen: Don't worry about it. Just let it out. Keith: ... concise for you. Allen: I'm trying to figure out what your goals are. I'm trying to figure out what is the mental blockage here. Why haven't you done it before? The more you tell me, the more it'll help. So don't worry about it. Keith: I've just done all sorts of trading. I've tried all sorts of things, but I don't stick with it. I see another method comes through, I'm like oh let's try this. I see something else come through, oh let's try this. In doing that, I guess I wanted to try out a lot. I took a lot of webinars. I actually probably know a decent amount. If you show me a chart and say tell me what you see, I actually know. I think I know a lot . I can't really put it to work. I thought of you recently because finally I think I know what appeals to me. I know what I want my niche to be. That doesn't mean I can't switch it. At least if I land on something that appeals to me that will work, then I think if I want to delve into something, that's fine. At least don't do that until you've gotten off the ground there. Traders that are making money and traders that are losing money. Simple as that. I'm not on the one side. As soon as I get on the one side, even if it's a little bit with some form of consistency, then oh okay I can branch from there. What appealed to me was and basically it's this whole building an account thing. All these investment opportunities out there that people are getting into that I hear about that I'm thinking, wait a minute. Trading, it just seems like trading is a lot simpler way to build an account than starting some business. It takes some discipline in that. I just think from what I hear about you and other people on the up and up as far as options trading, that it's very doable. I thought about you because what appeals to me is iron condor trading on the indexes in oil trading. It's almost like right now I don't want to do any stocks. I just want to keep it very streamlined. Basically I'm here to ask you. I've got some ideas, but I wanted to find out from you if they would work or if that's how you'd do it. Basically like I said, I've done scans for stocks. I've done all sorts of things. They just seem to make me be stretched to thinly with my whole life. I thought, if I could just streamline this to what I think will work, I can still definitely be ... it's not like I don't want to learn. I want to learn, but I think I want to learn and learn my method and get really good at that and not try to just learn about other things before I've landed on this. Again, what appealed to me is I've been on and off oil. Do I do it? Do I not? Do I do it? Do I not? Finally I thought, you know what? Yeah. I want to tackle the oil thing. I think I want to tackle the iron condor on the indexes thing. My question to you was, what would you, as far as let's take the iron condor thing. I like the monthly butterflies, the monthly calendar, the monthly double diagonals, I've learned those from another source. They're the monthly workforce trade that you just kind of rinse and repeat. You're a big iron condor guy. I guess in order to find out what I would like to do works, would work, if you took ... that's why I'm gonna ask a pointed question. If you took an iron account, let's just call it a hundred thousand dollars because that's just a round number. You just traded iron condors off the XPS and the [rustle 00:09:21], they might be long balled, they might be shorter ones. If you just said, okay I'm dedicating this account to iron condors where I'm not white knuckling anything and just following the rules, what could you do a year percentage wise? You Alan. Allen: Is that your question? Keith: Well, that's one of them. What am I gonna do with my chunk of money that I just transferred to an IRA? That's one of them. Iron condors and oil but I just have some ideas on how I would do it. You might say, no, no, no. That's not how- Allen: Let me come back to that. I'll get you the answer, but let me come back to that. Before we go any further, I have to tell you and everybody listening, first of all, thank you for letting this be recorded. I wanted to record this because like you said, you said you're not unique. I believe that you are unique. Everybody's situation is a bit different. The boat that you're in, the situation that you're in, there are a lot of people that are in a very similar situation. The questions that you had asked me in the email originally I thought of that. I was like wow, there are so many people that are thinking the same exact thing. If we can get this as a two way conversation. You having questions, I'm sharing my experiences and trying to lead you in certain directions. I think it would be beneficial for everybody that's listening. Then I have to preface it and say that I'm not a licensed financial planner. I can not give you specific financial individual advice. It's about telling you hey do this or buy this or securities or what not. I can get in trouble if I do any of that. We are going to basically give you some advice in a sense of what I would do if I was in your situation. What I do because I am in a similar situation to you as well. Maybe I'm a little bit further down the line. I have my answers or what I want to do. What we need to figure out is exactly what you want to do. Then get you on the right path so that you can learn exactly what you need to do so that you can get it done. That being said, I do have some questions for you. The four teenagers that you have, are they going to be going to college any time soon? How old are they? Keith, you there? Keith: Yeah. Yep. Can you hear me? Allen: Yes. I can hear you. Keith: Somehow I got dropped. Allen: My question to you is I want to start off with talking about ... not talking about. Just I want to get a bit more details. How old are your kids? Keith: Senior, freshman, freshman, seventh grade. Allen: College is taken care of or you're still gonna be paying for that or they're doing scholarships and doing their own or how's that gonna work? Keith: I'm not worried about college right now. I've got college taken care of without trading, without trading. I brought that up because it's just something I'm obviously involved in right now and dealing with. Mainly I'm thinking about a future as in retirement during retirement. Allen: Are any of those kids financially minded? Would they be interested in trading? Keith: Yeah, I think so. That brings up a good point and I'll be quick about it. Part of the reason why I want to learn this too is because I want to pass it onto them to some extent. I just feel like it's a great opportunity. If I don't learn it, I feel like I'm doing them a disservice because I know a decent amount about it and if I don't actually land myself somewhere, I feel like I won't be able to teach them what I think I should or lead them where I should. So yeah, I think they do. Some of them, yeah. Allen: Cool. Because you told me that the following of the rules is an issue for you. That's really a mental thing. I think in the past it's because you didn't really take it that seriously. It wasn't that important. It was great, hey this is cool and all, but you lose interest very quickly. I think we really need to dial down on the goal or the why. Why are you doing it? If you really need to figure that out, what is the actual goal that you have? Is it to retire from your job? Is it to have a certain [inaudible 00:14:58]? Is it to buy a house? Whatever it is, we need to make that more concrete. Once it is more concrete and you review that every day before you go into your trades or before you go to work or while you're brushing your teeth, you look at that goal, that is gonna solidify that in your brain this is important. I need to pay attention to this. That's one of the tricks you can use to help you start following the rules. The other one that you can do is, and I talk about this in one of our training camps program. You can get somebody to trade with you. If it's a child or a spouse that's interested, that's great. They don't have to be completely interested, but they have to have ... how do I say that? They have to have authority over you in a sense where you give them some basic information about what you're doing. They don't have to know intricate details. If you're trading iron condors, they don't need to know what are your strikes every day and what is a deuton and all this stuff. But they need to have a sheet where they come in every day at a specific time or they text or whatever and they ask you specific questions. What is your [inaudible 00:16:26] short strike? It could just be them just reading off a sheet. When are you gonna adjust? Are you close to being ... what is your rule for this? What happens if the market goes up one standard deviation? What happens if the market goes down? Then you have to answer them. To them it doesn't matter what the answer is. They're only job is to make you go through that process every single day that you're in the trade so that you follow the rules. After you supplement trade or after you lose on a trade, then they're gonna come back with a separate sheet and say, why did you lose? Give me a specific reason. Then you have to come up with that reason. Then eventually they'll see a pattern. If you keep losing trade after trade for the same reason, they're gonna be like hey dad what's going on. You have to answer to them so you can't just blow them off and say, hey son I'm not answering you today. I didn't focus on my trade, well I'm not answering you. No. That's part of the discipline you have to instill in yourself if you want to do this seriously. When I did it, I was just like you. I didn't check in on my trades. A lot of times if there's not much going on, the markets are not moving much, I don't check in on my trades very much. Then I have somebody else that asks me. It's like, hey what happened? How is this trade doing? How is this trade doing? How is this trade doing? I have to actually go in, log into my computer, log into my broker's account, check everything, and then make those answers. For me, it's a livelihood thing. It's not just for fun. If I mess up, that's money that's not gonna come into the household for that month. I had to figure out a way that okay, I know that this is a problem for me. I lose interest just like you do. These trades are boring because there's not so much excitement every day that's up and down, up and down, getting in and out. There's no dopamine hit every single day. You see it, oh okay. It's moving. Oh yeah, hey market's up ten points. Oh market's down 20 points. Okay my trade is fine. I don't have to do anything. Day after day after that, you forget about it because it's not a routine. You really need to build a habit. If you can build a habit of checking your trades every day, then that's great. If not, you need to use a hack like getting somebody else to come in and ask you these questions. Does that make sense? Keith: Yes. Allen: Cool. If you can find somebody like that, that'd be great. Somebody that's already trading. Somebody that's a spouse or a child that is interested or not even interested but they'll be like, yeah I'm gonna hold your feet to the fire and I'm gonna ask you these questions every day at a certain time frame so that you have that reliability. Even if you forget, even if you fall down on the job, they come in and they're like okay. What are the answers? You just answer them and that's it. It takes roughly two or three minutes of your time every day to just go through them and say, this is what's going on. If you need to do something, then you do it. Most of the time we don't follow our rules is because we don't make the adjustments that we need to. If it's in black and white and the person is standing right there, you're like according to my rules, I need to adjust. Okay well then go ahead and do it. That is something that I would look into as well. You are from what I checked in our records, you have both of our iron condor course and you have the blank check, which is the oil options course. Correct? Keith: Yes. Yes. Allen: Yes, okay. Have you been through both of those? Keith: Yes. Allen: You face another problem that's very common where people get sidetracked. Once you get on one email list about options, somehow you get on a hundred different lists about options and trading and this and that. A lot of these other companies, they'll sell your information and they'll sell their list to other people. You're just bombarded every single day. Bombarded. That's their job. That's the company's whole main goal is to get you to buy more, and more, and more stuff. You got to clean the clutter and you got to get off all these email lists. A lot of them, most of them. If it's not providing you value, if it's just sending you offers to buy stuff every day, then you need to get out of it. One of the things that we focus on is what is the one thing or the one strategy that makes the most sense to you? If you told me I'm looking at oil and I'm looking at condors so I'm gonna take a step back and say, no. Right now you're not allowed to do that. You're allowed to pick one. Whether it's a simple credit spread and not even the condor, or if it's a condor, or if it's the oil, but you can pick one. If you need to go even simpler than that, then let's go simpler than that. Let's just do a covered call. Let's get consistent in that so that you build up your confidence and you build up the account. Say, okay I'm doing this right. In the beginning, I don't know how much cash you have available, but until you are consistent for at least three or four months, I would even say you do this and you do paper trading. You don't put your real money in because as you mentioned, you're doing different things. You're not focused. I don't want you risking your money until you do have that focus, until you have figured out what is my goal. Why am I doing this? You make it a must. This is not a I'm just dabbling kind of thing. It's like, okay you had a realization. You woke up to the fact that hey I'm 48. Time is running out and I'm not gonna have the money that I need, that I want to retire so how do I do it? Well you have all the tools. You have all the courses. You have access to everything that you need. You've already paid for it so you don't need to buy anything else. You just need to find the one strategy that makes the most sense to you and then just plug in and just single minded focus. Put the blinders on. Just go at this and forget everything else. Do not worry about anything else. Do not read all this other crap, all the emails that come in and all the financial media ads and all that stuff. Just focus on one thing that makes the most sense that you think that you can learn or get good at consistent the fastest. Once you have that one and then you put real money at it, you'll start seeing it and you'll start feeling good. Then and only then would you want to break out and say okay, now I'm gonna add strategy number two because I want to diversify or what not. Some of these you don't really need to. In both of these, iron condors on indexes and the oil trade, we have people that are trading these with hundreds of thousands of dollars and that's the only thing they do. I got a friend who lives on Lake Tahoe. He does one- Keith: I know who you're talking about, yeah. Allen: He does one massive iron condor trade every month. Now, it doesn't stay as a familiar iron condor with four legs. He's always adding lines and subtracting and adding contracts and subtracting contracts. He's more into it. He's looking at the Greek. He's managing by what the Greeks are telling him. It changes, it morphs. It starts off as an iron condor and he does just one trade every month. That's how he has his lifestyle living in Lake Tahoe, which is pretty expensive. Then we have plenty of our students in the blank check course, which are only doing oil and are making a living doing that. It's definitely doable, it's possible. I don't think your there yet. You told me that you've been doing this for ten years. You know enough about it. We have this thing called the option continuum which is from option zero to option ten where option zero is you don't know anything about options. Option ten is you're a professional money manager managing money for other people using options. I think you're somewhere in level six or level seven where you know enough to be dangerous. I think that's level five, but you've been studying this so that you don't need a lot of hand holding. You can figure it out. You know the lingo. You know the jargon. You put on trades, you have experience. What we need now is just a little bit of discipline and just picking on one. Just focusing on one and the discipline to stay in that one thing until you go further. Does that make sense? Keith: Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Allen: The other thing that you had asked me in the email was how I manage my stuff. Up til maybe two or three years ago, I was doing everything. I was doing oil. I was doing more and more oil. I was doing the condors that do all the option genius stuff. Simon puts on his trades for our Simon Says Advisory. I do all those as well. Then we also do the weekly trades. Then I have my own retirement accounts that I manage in which I own stocks in those. Then I do cover calls on those, I do naked puts on those, and then credit spreads on the stocks that I own. I was all over the place doing lots of different things. I got to the point where I hit ... I'm 42 now. This was roughly when I was hitting 40 or a little bit after 40. It was like, okay what do I want to do with my life? I'm spending time trading all this stuff. What comes after you have all the money? With your job, you have enough money coming in so you're not worried about it. What comes after that? What's the next step. For me, I decided the next step was gonna be to help other people and tell more people about options. Also, I wanted to create a way where I could still have the income from the options but not spend so much time on it. And not have the big risk. We don't talk about this much in options, especially if you're an iron condor trader. The biggest risk is a big bear market or a flash crash market. When the market is down 20, 30% in a month, that's gonna kill your iron condor unless you're very quick to the trigger and you're really good at it where you're buying ports and hedging all your positions and what not. As an option seller, we make money in calm markets. If the market is going up, we're fine. If the market is going down, we're fine. Markets going sideways is fine. When we get hurt the most is when the market changes direction very quickly. If it's been going up and up, and up and then boom one week is just down 10%, that's gonna kill a lot of our positions. Or just the opposite. It's going down and then it just V shapes recovery back up. That's gonna kill a lot of positions. How do you remove that type of risk without letting go of the gains or the benefits of options? That's when I came up with something that I call passive trading. I've been working on that, moving over my retirement accounts and transitioning that into my other stuff. We're working on a course. We have a course right now that we've created based on these strategies. We're working with a bunch of people that are in the course right now and trying to get them results as soon as possible. We haven't released it yet but basically the idea of that is we want a foundation. This really depends on how much money you have. If you had 500, 600 thousand dollars or more, that would be your end goal. This is how much money I have, I need to have enough money out of this so that I can live comfortably, retire early, whatever the goal is. If you had this larger amount of money, the foundation would be in dividend paying stocks. Good, high quality dames, dividend paying stocks. Then we would trade around those positions. Meaning we would do iron con ... not iron condors. We would do cover calls and we would do naked puts and we would do credit stripes on those stocks. It's a matter of picking a handful of names. Four, five names that we want to own, getting good dividends from those, reinvesting our dividends into the same stock, and then using options to boost our return on those. If we're getting a seven, 8% return from the stock, we're getting 3% from the dividend, so that would be like maybe 10%. We're adding another 10% a year from our options. We're getting not 10% but we're getting 20%. We're doubling what we could make if we were just in the stock itself. That literally takes maybe ten minutes a month. You're breaking it down and you're making it just cookie cutter. These are the stocks I own. These are the only ones I'm watching. These are the only ones I'm gonna be trading. This is the trade I'm doing, so all I need to do is just if I'm doing covered calls, all I need to do is either roll a call or let my current call expire and sell another one. If you're doing puts, it's the same thing. Either do another one or just roll it. Do another one or just roll it. That to me, is the easiest way for anybody to get started with options and to really ramp up their money. If you don't have that money in the beginning, you don't have four or five hundred thousand dollars to put in the stocks, then we also talk about you can do what's called the poor man's covered call, which is you're using long options or I'm sorry. Leap. Leap options and then selling covered calls on those. Or you just do credit spreads on the same stocks that you want to buy until you have enough where you can actually start buying those and investing in those. What I found, especially in, what was it? This past November when the market ... or was it December? I forgot when it was. November, December time frame, market dropped like 20%. I wasn't really worried because my stocks are losing, yes, but my options that I'm selling on these stocks are all expiring. We've had a good bull run for the last several years. Starting in January, I remember I was selling calls on all of these stocks. They're all going up, up, up. I'm still selling calls, again so I'm enrolling them higher, and higher, and higher, and higher, and higher. Then they all went down and then finally all those options expired. I had this big really nice windfall and then now that their stocks are going back up, then I'm repeating the same process. Does that make sense? Keith: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Allen: That is something you can do as well. That is what I'm focusing more and more on. I'm still gonna be doing oil because I love it. I'm still gonna be doing iron condors. More and more my money is going to the sense because I'm looking at the future. I'm looking like when I stop doing option genius, what do I want to do? What do I want to do with my life? I want to be in a position where I have the money coming in. I don't want to give it to a money manager and make four or 5% after all their fees and what not in a good year. I want to still be able to manage it, own good quality stuff, have good income, at least 20% a year. But I want to spend ten minutes a month. This is what I found looking at a thousand different things. This would be the simplest way for me to get the result that I wanted without putting up a lot of time. I think that was one of the things you asked for. How do you trade without spending a lot of time on it? If you don't have the time because oil is very fast moving and you got to watch it daily. Iron condors can be laid back. It's like playing poker. Somebody told me this about poker. They're like, poker is hours and hours of boredom and then 30 seconds of super much excitement where you have to be on the edge of your seat. That's what an iron condor is. Most of the time it's gonna be very slow, very methodical, very easy to do. Then when the volatility spikes, you have to be ready to change your mentality as well. That's when a lot of people get lulled into a sense of security where they don't move fast enough when the volatility strikes. That's when they get hurt with iron condors. That's the biggest drawback to the condor is that it puts you to sleep. Then when it's time to wake up, you're groggy and you're not moving fast enough. Based on that, I would say you have already two things that you have an interest in. I showed you a third one just now if that's the way you're going. Really what I would like you to do is just pick one of those, focus on it, spend some time on it, spend two, three, four months putting on these trades. Just really getting that experience and just doing it over and over, and over again so that it's second nature. Not paying attention to anything else. Does that make sense? Keith: Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Allen: Because even if you were to ... I would even say go as far as not even paying attention to the news. If you're doing the iron condors on the indexes, forget the news. Don't even watch CNBC or Bloomberg or whatever. Just watch the charts. Watch the volatility and trade based on your trading plan accordingly. You'll do probably better that way in the beginning without all these other instances coming in. A lot of times we don't adjust properly is because oh hey, there's a meeting coming out from the fed in two days. Even though I need to adjust right now, I'm gonna wait for that fed meeting. By then it might be too late for your trade. Forget the news, forget all these other advertisements and stuff. Pick one thing, focus on it for three or four months. If you have to get help, get somebody to help you out and come and ask questions for three or four minutes a day just so that you have to go through the mental process of looking at every single one of your trades every single day. I know you have the time. You said that, right? You have the time, so it's not like you can do it during the day. You don't have to do it at night after the market closes. That's a benefit. If you could do that, if you could do those three or four things that are laid out, I think within six months you'll have a much better idea of how much and how much you can actually do from this. Your question earlier was, if I was only trading credit spreads on indexes, what is a normal return that you could get? I think it really depends on each individual and it depends on the trading plan that you use. Now for option genius, my trading plan is a little bit more conservative and more hands off because we go out a little bit further in time and further away from the money. You can also come in closer to the money with less time, get a much higher premium, get much more greater percentage and then be out of the trade faster. That model, you have to watch it more and you have to be able to adjust faster. It really depends on how much time you can put into it and what your temperament is. If you're willing to take the risk a little bit for a bigger gain, then you might want to go for a shorter time frame. If you want to be more conservative and just be more hands off and just look at it once in a while, then the further away from the money is better. Now I know I've been throwing a lot of stuff at you. What are you thinking? Keith: A lot of what you say makes sense. I understand it. What you said real quickly about the news, it's funny how you listen to the dudes and listen to these events and then later on you look at the charts. It doesn't seem ... the charts still generally speaking seem to do what they were gonna do. It's odd how the news definitely can effect the movement, but overall it seems like you can't look at a chart and look back and go, where was the news? It's just like the chart is gonna do what it's gonna do. I've heard that from somebody else. They go, I don't care what synopsis for the day, I don't watch that. They end up being fine because they end up almost being influenced by pre announcements instead of just going with their plan. That was interesting that you said that too. Allen: That applies only to the indexes. That applies to the indexes. That applies to all the financial news about, oh the chair wars we got going on and the wall stuff and everything else. That stuff is just secondary noise. If you're watching a stock, if you're trading a stock, then you have to know when earnings is gonna be. Keith: Yeah, that is a definite. You're right. I was just thinking about the XPS or the [rustle 00:39:02] when you said that. Just non stock, just indexes. I think that sounds good. I had some more targeted questions about the condors and the oil. I can ask you those later too if you like as it relates to a plan that I was thinking about. I'm not sure how you want to- Allen: Yeah, that'd be fine. Are you in the Facebook group for the oil? Keith: Yeah. yeah. Allen: If you want to put them up there, that's fine. If not, we'll have a group coaching call coming up this month. Towards the end of the month you can come on there and as there. That'll be fine. If you want to send them to me in advance, and then we can do that on the group coaching call. That'll be fine. Keith: Okay that sounds fine. Can I ask you some after we're done with this? Or do you want me to ... Allen: Yeah. If they're specifically, then I would rather do it there. If you have anything about which one should you pick or how much can you make or any of those type of general questions, then we can do it now. Keith: I'll ask you those now then. Here was what I'm thinking before I called you. First of all, for oil, it seems like you're going off a ten thousand dollar account on Facebook when you're putting your trades on. Your two calls or your one put. Generally speaking, what are you looking to do per year when you trade the blank check plan? What's the general idea? Allen: I go into each month and it doesn't matter the account size. I only use that as an example. I had separate accounts that are much larger. For this reason I want to have ... I do this with option genius as well. I'll have a separate account for that with ten thousand dollars so that I can tell people how many contracts I'm actually doing. I always get that question like, how much do I allocate? Do I allocate the whole ... if I have ten thousand, do I put all ten thousand into this first? No. I have ten thousand as well, I'm doing two contracts. That's what you should do. Obviously there's a lot more money sitting in the account. We're gonna save that for adjustments or other trade. That's why. If somebody has 20 thousand, then they can do double what I'm doing if they want to follow along in that way. That's the only reason. I go into each month with blank check looking for or trying to get, or wanting to get 10% and that's 10% on the entire account, whatever is in that account. If it's ten thousand, I want to make a thousand bucks every month from that account. We don't get it all the time. There are months that we're gonna make less. There are months that we're gonna lose money. Overall, if I can get 5% I'm very happy. I feel that it's a wasted month if I lose money. Unless it's something that came out of the blue that I couldn't ... because oil it moves much faster. It can move to the point where we really couldn't do anything even though we followed all the rules. We took a small loss and we got out and we're done for the month. We'll make it up next month because it doesn't stay volatile very long. It doesn't stay volatile forever. We can easily make that up in the next month. In that sense, it's very important that we don't try to, how do you say this? We don't try to win on every single trade because sometimes you don't want to be in it because it's just too volatile. You have to be aware of that as well. Keith: That's good to know. Allen: It's in the rules as well. Part of the rules we talk about, these are the adjustments that we make. If we're doing an adjustment, that's fine. If you're forced to do another adjustment, then you're on the wrong side. We did something wrong either the market changed and it went against us, or we didn't read the chart properly and we're on the wrong side. That's it. If this second adjustment doesn't work, we're done for the month. That's how you limit your losses. Keith: That helps because it helps me look at opportunities. Let's say you've got a hundred thousand dollars. Do I give it to a private lender? Do I invest in this realty or this? A lot of colleagues and friends or doing that with some success. I look at that like for instance at the blank check trader [inaudible 00:44:00]. If I could learn to do even 3% a month, that's 36% a year. That's double what anyone else is doing. That leads me to believe, like jeez, I need to learn how to do this because it's very streamlined as opposed to running a business or doing a new business venture. That's why I was trying to get out of what you're looking to get per month. If I even lowered it to 3%, you probably would say, that's a brief. I don't know. If I say your goal is 3% a month, if that's the case, that makes me feel like yeah, I do need to tackle this because that might be the low end. That's still better than anything else you're gonna do by giving your money to somebody else. The other question I had about iron condors was I always wanted to do a situation where ... Like where's the sweet spot? It seems like it's a 45 day ish pen delta iron condor. That seemed like it reoccurred in some other people's teaching methods also. Let's just say that's the case and I'll ask you if that's true or not in a minute. You take a 45 day iron condor, pen delta and you've got a hundred thousand dollars, I'm using a round number. Say well I'm only gonna put a third of my ... let's say you're doing 50% of your money is in the market out of this hundred thousand dollars because you need to save some for adjustments. I don't know if that's a good rule too. I just talk to myself. 50 is half, half. Then you do a third of your position, meaning I'm gonna put on iron condor today and then ten days I'm gonna put on a second one. Then another ten days, they're all gonna be 45 days out. Then another ten days I'm gonna put on another. I'm basically putting on three a month and then every ten days let's just say they went to [inaudible 00:45:55]. Every ten days I'd be taking one off. I stagger them. Then with watching your iron condors from hell video, I thought to myself well jeez. Or even two a month, I forget how I did the math. Let's say you did two a month so you had to split your position. You're actually doing ... you're staggering. You're having a same day expiration but you're putting, you're staggering them two weeks apart. I thought if you could win on one, your goal and you could scratch on the other and not really lose, on that money you'd be making 10%. You notice you'd be making 10% a month on half of your accounts because half of it is sitting on the sidelines. That would be 60% a year on your account because 10% a month times 12 is 120. You're only doing it on half of your account. Does that seem reasonable or is that way up in the clouds? A 60% number sounds high, but then when you break it down and say I'm gonna win on a one and scratch on the other every month. Even if I don't have an iron condor from hell video, it seems like that iron condor method might fly. Yes or no I guess. Allen: It's more tricky when we're talking about iron condors because there are so many different ways to do it. I would say that if you take a look at it, because we like to think of okay, what can I get in a month? What can I get in a year? You're like, if I can get 5%, then that's 60%. Okay, that's great. Are you gonna do 60% every single year, or does the market change? Obviously I think the market changes. There are going to be some months or some years, if we take a little bit longer time frame. If we go after ten years or 12 years, or 15 years, there will be some years where you're doing iron condors and you're going to make over 100% a year. Then they're are gonna be some years where you're actually gonna lose money. You're looking at a month to month picture. Year by year it's the same thing. There are gonna be some times where you're just gonna hit it out of the park. Then there are gonna be some times where you're actually gonna be negative for the year because of market volatility and it just unexpected stuff going on in the market. Two thousand whatever, a little financial crisis. That was a horrible time for iron condor people because it just kept bouncing up and down and up and down with no rhyme or reason. At that time it was a great time to be out of the market and just be like, okay I'm gonna stay on the sideline until the fix comes down to something a little bit more manageable for my iron condors. What could you normally expect? It depends on the trading plan and what it is. Then the other thing is you mentioned the 4510 delta. That is very common. That is a lot of people talk about that. Putting on the trade, I think that one is pretty conservative. You have a very good chance of making a good amount of money with that. Then also in that iron condor course, I talk about it where putting on the trade is super simple. You go to XBS, 45 days of expiration look for ten delta, boom sell it, done. Anybody can do that. The point of what separates the winners from the losers is how you adjust and what is your methodology for adjustment. I had a friend, he's in real estate. One of his real estate buddies was like, oh man I just got to tell you about this iron condor thing. It's so awesome. He knew that I was trading options. He learned a little bit from the guy and then he learned the strategy and then he came and asked me about it. Basically it's the same thing. It's you do an iron condor XPS, 45 expiration. I think it was 40 days or something. Ten delta, you put it on, and then you just don't do anything. It's either gonna win or it's gonna lose. I told my friend. I said I think that doesn't make a lot of sense because you're losing control of the trade. The reason that we're managing our own money is because we control it and we can use our brains. If you're just putting on a trade and then not doing anything, even if you can tell, look this trade is gonna be 100% loser, then it doesn't make a lot of sense because in the iron condor it's very, very, very, very crucial that you don't have those 100% losers. Because they're very hard to recover from. One of those is gonna mess up your whole year. We use the adjustments so that we can keep our losses smaller and get out at a quicker basis. His whole thing was, that was a strategy. Just put it on and he got it from these famous guys on ... they were with Think or Swim. Now they have their own brokerage. That was what they used to preach. That you put this on and you just don't let the percentages work in your favor and don't worry about it. My friend, he did it for a few months. He was like, this is working great but he's very analytical. He goes, you know what? I want to test if this actually works over the long term. He found somebody. He hired them and they went back in time I think about 15 years. They put the trade on every single month on XPS and rut. The did both. XPS and rut for like 15 years. Can you take a guess of what the results were? If you did that without touching it on both of those for 15 years, what do you think their results were? Keith: I got to believe they're gonna be ... I'm about to be safe. Maybe break even at best just because I've gone to max and lost on a couple. I know that, that blows out. That takes nine trades or ten or 11 winners out of your way. I know that, that ... I don't know. Break even or losing money? Allen: They broke even. It pretty much broke even. After all the fees and everything, they lost money. Yeah, you're right. After doing that for years, he's like, what the hell? He's like this iron condor stuff doesn't work. I'm like, well yeah do it that way it doesn't work. You do it my way, it's a little bit more work, but yeah you can actually do something with it. To me that was eye opening. I was like, this is really cool. This is real legitimate data. What he did to do that was he back tested. That is something that I would advise you to do as well. If you have the time and if you don't want to wait, get a back testing software and go back the last ten years, 20 years, whatever, take your trading plan, your iron condor trading plan and just trade it month after month, after month on the software day, by day, by day and see how you would do. The one I use is called option net explore. I think it's 600 or 700 dollars a year for it. You can buy a shorter time from if you want. The thing is that you can actually trade one month of iron condor in five minutes or less. Keith: That's cool. Allen: Because you go to a specific date and it looks just like your broker software. You type in I want to sell two of these, buy two of these, sell two of these, buy two of these. Commit the trade and then you just walk through it day by day and it shows you the charts. It shows you the deltas of your options, the prices, everything. It tells you. You can even look at the chart before you put on a trade. Say okay, I think it's [inaudible 00:54:08] whatever. This is how I want to do it. Then you just walk through it day by day, by day. Then when your trade gets to an adjustment point, then you can just adjust it. Of course, it's not real time pricing but it's close enough. You adjust it and you commit it. Then you keep going through it. You do that for five or six years and you'll realize this particular trading plan either works or it doesn't. Most of the time you'll find out that the trading plan works. Some of the times you'll find out that you take the same trading plan and you start doing it for real in real money and you start losing money. You're like, what the heck happened? That happened to me a lot too. It was working on the back testing. Why is it not working now? There's a couple reasons. Number on, maybe it's a different market. Most likely it's because you are doing it differently. When you're doing the back testing, you're not looking at the news. You don't know what's going on. You're just looking at the chart. You're just hitting the button. What happened the next day? What happened the other day? You show me the price, you show me the price, you show me the price. That's how you're trading. You're not looking at anything going on around you. Your focused on the trade. It's not like a day goes by where you're not looking at the trade because you're just pushing the button day by day, by day. You're examining the trade every single day. You're completely focused on it. You're not watching the news and you're completely focused. You're just gonna trade better naturally because of that. That goes back to the stuff that we were talking about originally. Keith: That's interesting. Allen: Having the discipline. Keith: That's interesting actually. That goes back to are you gonna be consistent and do it how you're supposed to do it every time? Period. Just rain or shine are you gonna do your consistent rules. Is there iron condors that you can still lose on? I watched your video on iron condors from hell. It almost seemed like you could almost trade your way out of any one of them. At least for extremely small loss or scratch. That way you let all your winners run and you pretty much lose on little or none. Is that not true? How does that work? I saw you winning on ... coming up even at least on all three of those. I thought, well jeez. If he can come even on those, you can probably scratch trade at least every iron condor. Allen: The point of that video was I took three of the worst ones over the years of us doing option genius. I wanted to walk through them. Actually I used this specific software that I just mentioned, option net where I go through it day by day. I wanted to show and expose what is going through my mind. Which adjustments do I use, why do I do it, and I wanted to verbally just go through it day by day so you guys would have a feeling and understanding of what is he thinking while he's making adjustments. Why is he choosing that adjustment over something else? Sometimes I looked at two or three different adjustments. I can do this, I can do this. Which one am I gonna do? Okay I'm gonna do this one. Why? Because of this, this, this. You have a better ... like as if you were sitting right next to me every day. I don't want you to feel that you can't lose. I lose on iron condors. It's part of the game. You're gonna lose. It might be something that you don't control. It might be a different circumstance. For example, it was recently on one of our trades for option genius. We had an XPS condor and it was doing fine the whole month. The whole time it was doing great. Everything is fine. Two weeks before expiration, XPS starts to move in one direction. That put my calls, I think it was my calls at risk. All right, what do I do? I only got two weeks left. Not a lot of time. I can either adjust it to the next month, which is a possibility or I could just get out of it now. At that point, I got out of it now which was a 5% gain or something and I didn't want to take the risk. If you had not done that, because it was not at an adjustment point. If I'm just following my trading plan without thinking about it, I would've just sat there and said oh hey I don't have to adjust yet because it's not at a whatever, 20 delta, 25 delta, whatever the plan was. If that thing kept moving up, and up, and up, and it got to that 25 delta, now my trade is sitting at a loss and I got three days left until expiration. Great. What do I do now? Then it's the only option. Keith: Okay, it's not automatic then. Allen: No. Then the only option is okay I got to take it to the next month. Buy me some more time, which is something I didn't want to do. In those cases I'd be like, okay do I take it to the next month or do I not want to trade it at all because something has shifted in the marketplace? Let me just take a small loss here and get out of it. Then I will wait until things calm down to get back in. Keith: That's a good point because I didn't know whether you would say, no, no you got to live and die by the rules. Because if you do that, you're gonna start cutting your wins. I guess you really do have to be judicious because you don't want to cut your win. You want to let them run, but you definitely want to do what you just did. The question is, how do you know when to do that? Maybe that just goes back to, hey it's got an automatic gain. You've got to have experience and just make some good judgment calls. Make sure they're conservative I guess. Allen: When you're trading with a different account and different trades, you also have to look at say how do I do the rest of the on everything else. In that particular account, I had already done two trades that had already made me 10% each. Here's the thing. I have two trades done that made 10% each. Now I have this one trade that's up 5%. I can either take my 5% and have a very nice month and I'll be done. Or I could roll the dice and try to make another five, 6%. If I lose on that, then I'm gonna wash everything I already made. What's the risk reward in that scenario? Sure, I'll take the burn on the hand in that sense instead of I can make another 5% on this trade, which to my overall account might make an extra 1%. If I lose on this trade, I could lose 20% on this trade. That means for the overall month I break even. That really sucks. Keith: That goes back to the philosophy that I learned. Allen: Burn on the hand is better. What really hurts people is when they have a thinking where they're going into a trade and they're saying, you know what? On this particular iron condor I can make 12% but I'm gonna get out when I'm up 6%. I've seen a lot of people teach this particular strategy and it hurts because your purposely limiting yourself in how much you can make. You're gonna have months where the month is awesome. XPS behaves beautifully. You don't have to touch it, you don't have to do anything. Those are the months where you have to take the maximum. You got to get 10%, 12%, whatever you can make. Then there are the other months where it's a wild child and it's like, bouncing up and down. You're like, man if I could just get out of this with a break even, I'd be super happy. Or even losing 5%. Those are the months both of those are on the different ends of the extreme. If you're going into the thing and saying that I'm only gonna take 6%, even though I could get more because it's so calm, I'm gonna get more. If you only take 6%, then when you lose 20%, then it's just too hard to overcome the math. Keith: That makes sense too. Yeah, I can see that side also. I guess it just takes ... that's a big question that you answered today. It's like, can I do this and just follow the rules and make a little less? I guess if you truly follow the rules to the T too much without using any judgment, then that's disadvantageous too. I can see how you're saying, all right that's another reason for just concentrating on one strategy because then you really become good at it. Instead of being decent at two or three strategies, being really good at one. You might be doing better financially and with less stress. That supports that point very well I think. Allen: Exactly. Another thing is we're not algorithms. We're not computers. You have the ability to not just focus on that. You can use your own methodology. You can use your own brain. That's why I've never seen a bot or a trading software that does iron condors or credit spreads that has actually worked over the long term. You have to use your common sense sometimes. Then the other sense was if you're picking one. If you're picking XPS to trade or rut to trade condors on, or if you're picking oil on, those are very specifically chosen where it's only one thing. Even when I told you about my past trading thing, I didn't tell you that I'm in 25 different stocks. No, I was like I've narrowed it down to a very short list of things that I want to own so that I don't have to watch everything. I don't have to focus on everything. Even if you're only trading oil, that's one thing that you watch. Everything else it doesn't matter what's going on in the world. It doesn't really matter. I'm just watching my oil. That's what I'm trading and that's what's gonna work for me. Or if I'm only trading XPS. That's why I don't like doing condors on stocks because they move around too much and the news effects them. Indexes, ETFs, if you don't have the money, those are the best for trading condors. Even then, if you want to focus on one, XPS or rut, or if you want to diversify, then you can do both. Then add the other indexes. Even though all three of them, they trade pretty much close together. A little bit here and there. They normally trade pretty close together. Even if you just do one of those, you should be fine. Keith: Do you also do oil directionally on your own, on the side? Or do you on your accounts just trade larger, but the same philosophy as a blank check? Allen: Very rarely will I play it directionally. Very, very rarely. Keith: That's good to know too because there's times where I want to but I can see how it works sometimes. It'll burn you sometimes. I'm trying to figure that out too. That helps. I'll have to let the dust settle in my brain and take in everything you're saying and develop a plan based on all that, which I think I can do. The only thing I might do is trade on contract. If I'm doing instead of paper trading, at least have some skin in the game by even doing a contract in the spies on our entire condor. At least the max losses are still small. I'll never get there, but at least doing something. [crosstalk 01:06:46] Allen: Then you got to watch it. Then you have to have the discipline to stick with it, follow the rules, and watch it. That's the habit I want you to develop. The simplest way to do that is to [crosstalk 01:06:57] Keith: I think I will if I have money to gain. I think if I have money in the game, the skin in the game, I'll do that more. Allen: That's what I used to say. I found out that wasn't always the case. Keith: Really? Allen: Yeah. You get bored. Even if it's a hundred bucks. All right, got a hundred bucks. Big deal. We spend more. You're going to dinner, you pay more than that. It's like, it's not enough. You have to know yourself. I can't tell you yes or no. Keith: You're right. Allen: You think you can do it? Go for it. I would prefer you focus on one in the beginning because your goal here, it doesn't ... I don't care if you're trading oil or condors or what-you-ma-call-it. It doesn't matter. You're only goal is to be consistent. To be profitable on a monthly basis and to be consistent. If out of 12 months, you're positive eight months out of the year and you lose four, but you come out way ahead, that's great. If you're losing one month and then making money and then losing money and then making money and then losing money, that's not what we want. That means you're out of control. You don't know what you're doing. The odds, putting them in your favor, trading high probability. You're gonna win a certain amount of time anyway, even if you have no clue what the hell you're doing. If you're not consistent month after month, profitable or at least break even, that means you're doing something wrong. That is what I would want all of my students to get to. That level of consistency with one strategy. Then once you get there, okay fine. Now I want to branch out into something else. Go for it. Keith: That makes sense too. It's also a little bit liberating to know that I'm gonna let go of everything else and just focus on one thing. It really is. The streamlining, at least to me, is liberating. I don't like to have all those balls up in the air. Especially when I don't know where they are. Allen: It's so much less stress and so much easier just to manage. It's really, it is. Like you said, it's liberating. We got some people that trade, 30, 40 trades a month selling options. I don't know how you do it. I can't do more than ten, 12 trades at a time. I can't follow all of them. Keith: I've done that before. You lose track of some. I wasn't even watching this and it's down. I totally see that. You really have to narrow it down and if you want to eventually branch out, fine. It's got be gradual. I can see how just throwing yourself in the lines and went too early. That's good advice. Thank you. Allen: Cool. Anything else? Keith: Gives me good perspective. No. Like I said, I'm all over. I may have a question here or there later. I at least want to take in all you're saying and develop a plan. Try it for a few months and then call you with questions once I've actually done something and had a track record with something. Allen: If you're really cool, we could do a follow up and maybe four or five, six months from now. We'll do a follow up. Say, okay where were you Keith? Now what'd you do? Where are you now and what's going forward? Keith: That would hold me accountable. That's good. That really is good. That's good. Allen: Awesome. Keith: Well we'll keep in touch. I really appreciate, yeah. This is very helpful. Very helpful. Allen: Awesome. Great. Again, thank you for letting it be recorded. I think we touched on a lot of different things here. I would expect you to even listen to it a few more times. Anybody else that is in a similar boat as Keith, go through this one again and again. There might be a sentence or two that I just mention and I just glanced over. There was a lot of depth for somebody who actually knows what they're looking for in this particular interview. Keith, this was fun. Thank you so much. Keith: Thank you. Talk to you soon. I will correspond soon. Thank you. Allen: Okay. Great. Keith: Bye. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Good day to you My fellow options trader and individual investor. This is Allen Sama coming to you with another edition of the Option Genius podcast. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much for supporting us. Thank you very much for accompanying me on this journey as we learn about options, about selling options, about passive trading, about making money while we sleep. It's amazing. I didn't think it was going to happen, but this month marks the 10th year anniversary of Option Genius. Company started 10 years ago, had no clue where it was going to go, what it was going to do, but it's amazing the thousands and thousands of people that we've actually been able to help over these past 10 years. And the really exciting thing is that we are just getting started to really ramp it up because, in the past, options unions were started as a lifestyle business, meaning that we didn't really want it to get very big. We wanted to stay small, just like one website and one service and that's it. But slowly, slowly it's grown. And now, it's at the point where we're like, "Okay, we need to really get this message out there. Get other people to know what we're doing and how it's working and overcome all the obstacles that people have to a safe retirement." Not worrying about money. Not worrying about expenses and all these bills and all this stuff that people ... it's just, life is too short, and then we have to worry about all this money stuff. Right. I really appreciate you listening. Thank you for sticking with us for so long. And if you could do me a favor and just rate and review the podcast. Five stars is better than four, but if you could leave a review for us, that would be amazing. It's easy. It's free to do whatever podcast listeners software that you use. Just rate it and review it in there. That's how other people find us. That's how other people learn about the podcast and start listening and then, hopefully, we can help more and more people get the word out that, "Hey, people need to be selling options," so I appreciate that. Now, today's episode is going to be a little fun one. Video games. Totally, totally, really tangent, right? I'm not even trying to transition in a proper way, and I'm just like, "Oh, leave a review. Okay, now I'm going to talk about the video games." So look video games, all right, I've played them since I was little, and I love them. I still play them. I was an introverted only child, lots of time alone in myself. So you got to stay busy, right? Not that time. Nowadays, the kids, man, everybody's playing online, so you can play with people thousands and millions of people in the same game all over the world. But back in my day, it was just you and the computer. I still remember my Super Nintendo system. I spent, I don't know, countless hours with that thing. It was very fond memories. Very lonely memories, but very fond memories. Nowadays though, I still play, but I play on my phone, and the graphics and everything it's just much faster on the phone even though it's a lot smaller, but you can play anywhere you want, and you don't play the big long games anymore they take hours and hours and hours. Those you used to play on the computer. But the little games that you play on the phone they take two or three minutes at a time and whatnot. The companies that make these video games they make incredible, incredible amounts of money. If you haven't looked into this or if you don't know about it, I mean, it's unbelievable how much money they make. Millions and millions of people are playing these games, and it's not just one or two major games. There's like a lot of these games and millions and millions of people are playing them, and they actually spend money on these games. And these companies are making hundreds of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue every single month. It's incredible. Now, the way these games normally work is there're two ways that they make money. The first one is the most logical one is where people can pay the game maker, whoever made the game to advance, so these games are pretty long, and they're complicated. You have to have certain equipment, and you have to have certain space to be able to play in the game. You have to have land, and you have to have resources and upgrade your equipment, upgrade your characters and all that stuff. You can actually pay money to do that. Some games they have diamonds that you can buy. Some have ruby's or coins or whatever they're called. But in almost every single game, if you want to go faster in the game, you want to progress through the different levels faster, then you can actually put money up, real money, pay to get these coins, ruby's, whatever, and then use those in the game to buy stuff with it. That's the one way, and that's the way a lot of people do it. But there is another way that most of the recent games came out with. Now, the older games, they were out a couple of years ago or a year ago, they didn't have this other facet, but the newer games now they are adding more and more ads to their games. Now, the ads are not intrusive, so they're not in the game. You're playing a game and then just an ad shows up in the middle. No, people hate that. And those are games that people don't play anymore but now if you want diamonds or rubies or coins or whatever, you can watch ads and get those. For example, let's say you want to, if you have time, you'll watch a 30-second commercial, and they'll give you five rubies for that and then you're allowed to do that every hour or two. So every time you watch you get five, five, five, you just add those up and eventually then you can spend those. For the people who don't have the money to spend on the games or who don't want to spend the money on the games, like me, you can actually buy ads, and so this is overcoming one of the obstacles that these game makers had there where kids were playing and kids didn't have money to buy and the parents wouldn't give any money to buy stuff in the game. But now they can actually watch the ads and these game makers are making money from all these people that are watching ads. And it's incredible. It's a two-way revenue source. It's amazing. Who knows, maybe my next life I'm going to be a video game maker. That'd be pretty cool actually. Most of these ads are from Facebook right now. That's just the way Facebook has really tapped into video ads and most of the games that I've been playing lately, they have these Facebook ads built in. Why am I telling you about video games? I'm leading into something. Okay. It's just part of the story. So I'm playing my favorite video game. Right now, it's called Hustle Castle. That's just the name of the game. And this little thing pops up, "Hey, you want to extra turns or spins or whatever? You can watch this video." So once in a while, I watch a video, especially when I have nothing else to do or I'm waiting for something else to happen in the game if I have 30 minutes to kill, I'll go watch an ad. So I say, "Okay, here, let me watch this ad." And this guy comes on, nice looking guy. He has a video, he's in this private jet, laughing and smiling with a bottle of champagne or wine or something. Then he's driving this exotic sports car. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was a Ferrari Lamborghini something, who knows, but he's driving his car around and whatever. And then he's meeting all these other people and they're all well-dressed. They're all laughing and they're smiling and they're walking around, I don't know where they are, in some big office building or something or whatever. And then he starts talking and he goes, and most of the time my phone is off, the volume is off. So I don't know what he's saying, so I just ... The ad was over or whatever the first 30 seconds of the ad was up and then I could skip it. So I just skipped it. And then that ad just kept coming over and over and over again. So I was like, "What is this guy talking about?" And then one time I had the audio was actually on, the volume was up. So he started talking and he says, "Hey, I am the richest option trader in the world, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," whatever else he was saying. And I was like, "You're the richest option trader in the world? Oh, that makes sense. That's why you're in the plane and the car and all that stuff. Okay, cool, fine." And then that intrigued me because he'd said he was an options trader. So I said, "What's this guy doing? Let me see what this guy's all about." Now, obviously, you don't believe them right away but let me check it out. I go over to his website and it turns out that he is a option day trader and the whole point of his website and whatnot is because he's going to teach you how to make millions like he's made, supposedly, but he's doing it through day trading. Now, for those of you who have never done it, day trading stocks or Forex or commodities, futures is very, very hard. Most people lose a lot of money because you're competing in that market against high-frequency traders. You're competing against real good professionals that know what they're doing. You're competing against Wall Street with its hundreds of trillions of dollars and resources and everything. To be a day trader you're competing against all those people. So it's very difficult to make money doing that but this guy, the guy in the ad, he is an options' day trader. So I mean you take the hard difficulty level and you multiply it by 10 because we already know right, on this podcast, we already know that buying options is a loser's game. But this guy, he's taking the risk to extreme because he's buying and selling options in seconds or in really, really short timeframes. But he's buying the options. You can't be an option seller realistically and make a lot of money day trading. You have to be a buyer. Now, I don't want to judge. I don't know. I didn't look into his numbers and whatnot. So maybe he is making a lot of money and I hope for his sake he is and I hope for his students or whatever that people are paying him, tens of thousands of dollars to teach how to do that same thing. I hope they're learning something that they can actually get their money back. But guess what? Day trading is nothing more than a job, right? Are you with me here? Do you understand what I'm saying? Basically, you trade. Okay. Hopefully, you make money and that's it. If you're not trading, you're not making anything. And that to me that sounds really sucky because I want to make money in my sleep. I want to make money no matter what I'm doing. And I don't want to be stuck to my screen looking at my monitor, looking at this chart and that chart, what's happening in the news and having my attention span all over the place. So while this guy was filming his commercial, right, he wasn't making any money. While he's flying in his little private jet or whatever, hopefully, it's his, he's not making any money. While he's renting his exotic cars to show off, I mean, you know what I mean? Sorry. I mean, driving his Lamborghini, he's not making any money. Me, on the other hand, as I record this option I'm sorry, as I record this episode, my options, the ones I've sold, they're decaying. They're making me money even as I'm doing whatever I do in normal life. Theta, which is another word for time decay is just a lingo, just a jargon that we use in options trading. The theta decay of my options is working in my favor, right? I don't need market volatility. I don't need news to make my stocks go up or down. Heck, all I really need is a laptop. Or you could do it on a phone too, but I prefer the bigger screen. Getting old, eyes are it's harder to see now, so I prefer my laptop and I really would prefer my desktop. But you could easily do it on a laptop as well. It's just simple. So you have this, the commercial guy, the day trader options guy, and then on the other side you have me, which is the opposite. Right? I guess compared to him I would be a country bumpkin or I'm just laid back and I don't want to trade a million times and, and I'm still making a ton of money, but I guess it comes down to really what you want. I mean, sure. Yeah. It'd be great to have a private jet. Right? Well, I mean, I don't really fly around that much. I like to stay with my family at home. And since I use my credit card for most of my purchases anyway, whenever you go out, you go to dinner by buy jazz whatever. I use my credit card. I have so many points and miles that whenever we do go on vacation, my points and my trips are free anyway. True, I've always wanted a Ferrari. It'd be really cool to have a Ferrari. I always wanted one but then when you think about it, realistically, where am I going to put the three car seats and the boosters for my kids? Right? We've got three kids, they're all still in boosters and car seats. Where am I going to put them? I don't have any room. So having a Ferrari and exotic sports cars is not really practical. Our house, yeah, we could buy a bigger house, but it's already huge enough as it is. I mean, heck it has six rooms and we barely even use two of them. They're just for storage. Right. So, I mean, I think that if you want to take big risks. If you want to aim and, and go for the home runs and grand slams and get rich quick, then day trading options might be something that you want to look at. Like I said, it's super dangerous. It's super risky. You're going to lose all your money most likely but it might be for you. Let me just keep in mind that you're playing a loser's game in which most traders will lose. Most traders are going to lose their shirt and quit doing that. So I mean realistically the best way to make money in day trading is to sell day trading coaching. I said it, there you go. The best money to make money in day trading is to teach other people how to do it. I mean I really don't know if the guy in the commercial is the richest option trader in the world or not. I mean I hope he is for his sake. Right. I mean, you wouldn't want to be lying or anything. I mean, he seemed like a nice guy, but at what cost? What are you willing to give up for the money? That's a personal thing. I'm sure if you're younger if you're in your 20s you might say, "Yeah man, I want to do day trading. I don't want to work. I don't want to, I don't want to do anything. I just want to be trading all day long and make millions of dollars and have my own plane and Ferrari." And for those type of people, if you're that age, if you have nothing to lose, then yeah, maybe that sounds awesome. And I think that those type of commercials when you see them where they're appealing to that get rich quick type mentality people, they're aimed at those type of people. Younger, nothing to lose, not a lot of money. People gullible enough to pay tens of thousands if not hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars to pay for coaching programs but that's not me. And I don't think that's you either because I mean I don't want to be the richest guy. You can't take it with you anyway. Right. I mean if it were me and I had a lot of extra money, I was thinking about it the other day, A couple friends were talking and they're, "Yeah, the lottery Mega Millions, whatever is up to something." And I'm like, "Oh, cool." And they're like, "You going to buy tickets?" And I'm like, "No, man, why am I going to buy lottery tickets? That's crazy." And they're like, "Well, you never know. You could hit, it's only a couple of bucks, you can put it in ... And I'm like, "I don't even know what I would do with the money. If you give me, tomorrow if somebody calls me and says, "Hey, you won the lottery," or, "Here's $10 million that your rich uncle left you that you didn't even know about." I'd be like, I'd probably look for ways to give it away. I don't know what to do with it. I don't even want it. Right. I would rather have time to spend with my family, to volunteer, to enjoy my life, to travel, to learn new things, to take different classes maybe. That's what I would want to do. But sitting at a screen, day trading, doing a lot of stuff, that's not it. I mean, that is why I designed passive trading as a way to make me more than enough income, but still have the life I love, so that when I do go on vacation right, and we do, our family goes on lots of different vacations and we love going on vacation. But when we do that, I make money the whole time, right? I'm not stressed out that, "Oh, my God, I'm on vacation. I'm not making any money. I got bills to pay. I've got to pay for the Ferrari payment. I can't go on vacation and I need money to make." No, that's not this kind of stress that I want. There're a lot of people say that the thing like, "Oh, I want to be a trader. I want to trade for a living." Oh, that's great. That's wonderful. That's a very aspirational thing. But they look at it and they say, "You know what? In order to survive, I need to make $10,000 a month and I need to make it from my trading each and every month." Well, that kind of stress is going to put you in the hospital because if you have to start over at zero and you have to make 10 grand every month, and if you don't make it, then you're eating into your capital. That is going to, I mean, you're just going to be bitting your teeth and grinding your teeth all night long. You won't be able to sleep because that's crazy, crazy stress, right? But if you follow the things that I've been sharing with you guys in this podcast in these different lessons and the stuff that we teach at Option Genius, you will be able to set yourself up in a way where you get to enjoy trading. You do it in a way that's passive, doesn't take a lot of time. You earn a lot more money than you do in almost any other investment out there. And you get to do it without a lot of stress. And then eventually, yeah, you do get to trade for a living if you want to. You will be able to build up your accounts so that the theta decay and the income that you get from your stocks and your selling options portfolio will equal whatever you're making as income right now, so it's definitely easy to get there. But to make the jump from, you know, "Hey, I'm going to quit my job today, and I need to duplicate my income right away." People, that's the dream that these type of commercials, the riches option traders, the day trading commercials, the trading academy's and whatnot, those are the things that they get you. That's how they sucker you in. That's how they get you to pay for the dream because that's what they're selling. They're selling you a dream. Realistically, if you could learn all that stuff on your own, but they're like, "Okay, we're going to give you a shortcut. We're going to show you a shortcut." Well, I mean, I don't know how they have the time to do all of that because every time that the Mr. Day Trading Option guy is teaching the class, he's not making any money from his trades. So yeah, if he's making money from teaching, then he doesn't have to trade. And I think that's the thing, right? And that's what people ask me all the time like, "Allen, if you're making so much money, why are you teaching people how to do it?" Because I got plenty of free time. Like I said, I'm recording this episode. My options are decaying, and I'm making money just like Warren Buffet says. I mean, it's his favorite and one of my favorite quotes of his, and he's saying that if you do not find a way to make money in your sleep you are going to work until the day you die. And that's what I'm going to leave you with. All right? If you do not find a way to make money in your sleep, you are going to work until the day you die. Folks, keep the odds in your favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Today, I have an awesome guest with me. I have Mr. Chris Miles from moneyripples.com. And I am bringing him on because I've learned a lot from him in the past from his audio course and his podcast about how to actually get more money out of what we already get. Right? So, you know, if you read the book of "The Richest Man of Babylon", the idea is to pay yourself first. Well, Chris goes much farther and much deeper into that. And he's all about cash flow. I would say that he is a finance advisor without being a financial planner type of thing. So, he's not gonna tell you what socks to put your money in or what mutual funds to put your money in. But he will actually help you keep more of your money by finding ways to save it, by finding ways to save on your taxes, by giving you ideas that up 'til now have been privileged of the rich. You know? Because the rich, they're not afraid of loop holes. They know all the loop holes because they can afford to pay for advisors. Chris is the advisor to the every man. Is that right, Chris? Is that a fair portrayal? Chris Miles: Yeah. I would say I'm kind of like an anti-financial advisor, if anything. I'm an absolute mutual fund hater. You know? I believe that if everybody's gonna invest in anything, they're gonna invest in things that they could control and do themselves, which is what you're teaching. Resources: http://moneyripples.com/   Podcast Transcript Allen: Hey there, Option Nation! How you doing today? This is Allen back with another interesting episode. Today, I have an awesome guest with me. I have Mr. Chris Miles from moneyripple.com. And I am bringing him on because I've learned a lot from him in the past from his audio course and his podcast about how to actually get more money out of what we already get. Right? So, you know, if you read the book of "The Richest Man of Babylon", the idea is to pay yourself first. Well, Chris goes much farther and much deeper into that. And he's all about cash flow. I would say that he is a finance advisor without being a financial planner type of thing. So, he's not gonna tell you what socks to put your money in or what mutual funds to put your money in. But he will actually help you keep more of your money by finding ways to save it, by finding ways to save on your taxes, by giving you ideas that up 'til now have been privileged of the rich. You know? Because the rich, they're not afraid of loop holes. They know all the loop holes because they can afford to pay for advisors. Chris is the advisor to the every man. Is that right, Chris? Is that a fair portrayal? Chris Miles: Yeah. I would say I'm kind of like an anti-financial advisor, if anything. I'm an absolute mutual fund hater. You know? I believe that if everybody's gonna invest in anything, they're gonna invest in things that they could control and do themselves, which is what you're teaching. So yeah. I started out being the traditional financial advisor 17 years ago and I did that for four years. But, it didn't take me long to realize that even after decades of advice, people were still not any better off financially. They follow that, kind of, crappy advice. And I learned with people that were like friends of mine, they were millionaires and things like that, they didn't believe that advice. They thought that advice was stupid about saving for the long haul and diversifying in all these different funds, which really isn't diversification. Right? It's just putting your money all in the same kind of asset class and just hoping and praying that you're in it for the long haul, however long that is. Even if you lose money, oh well. You're in the market so stay in for another 15 years and maybe you'll make your money back. All that kind of crap that you're told by financial advisors, right? So, yeah. I left that about ... after four years of doing that, I left it, vowed to never do it again, was able to retire in 2006 when I was 28 years old. And then, of course, went through the recession. Actually went from millionaire to upside down millionaire, was in a million dollars of debt when that hit. Was able to dig back out of that without going through bankruptcy and was able to retire again about two years ago. This time with a lot more streams of income and a lot more safe guards in place to make sure that I keep it coming in. Allen: I mean, I'm interested in knowing how you did that both times. How did you retire twice? Chris Miles: Yeah, the first time was pretty accidental. You know? It was March of '06 that I went to a seminar that some of these guys put on. And they were talking about how financial advisors basically suck. And I was the only financial advisor in the room by the way. But I couldn't deny the truth. I mean, when they said, "Hey, high risk create high returns. So if that's true, how is that 90 percent chance of losing create a 90 percent chance of winning? That's dumb. No, you want lowest risk possible, create the highest returns, right?" And things like that. So, I've vowed never to teach about money again. I just basically said I'm gonna do mortgages. I'm gonna teach ballroom dancing at the local university. And so, I did! I was starting to do that but then I wanted to get to know more about what these guys knew. So, I started to learn more about what they did and one really rocked my world because there's people still coming to me asking me financial questions, even though I said, "Hey, I don't want to do that." But I was learning different strategies. I learned about leverage. Like, "Hey, could I use the equity from my house to create more returns?" And things like that. In situations, the focus were on cash flow. That was one of the biggest shift in me was when it was it wasn't about how do you compound your interest and things like that. But how does this actually create real streams of income? Real cash flow? I remember people were asking me questions and one of my friends said, "Hey, do you like doing mortgages?" And I said, "You know, I like teaching them but I, seriously, hate doing paper work." I hate when I tell people, "Hey, I'll be like three or four weeks before we're ... we got approvals. We're done here. So hang tight." And then the next day, they're like calling me up saying, "Hey, are we closed yet?" They're calling all hours of the day. That was annoying for me. So he said, "Well, why don't you find somebody who actually does like doing that?" In a scarcity world like I was in as a financial advisor, 'cause financial advisors teach out of scarcity. It's always lack and never enough and all that kind of stuff. Well, I never thought about splitting commissions and things like that. When he said that, I was like, "Wow! I could do that." So, I found a guy that was really good at doing the paperwork, didn't mind doing the underwriting but wasn't a big marketing kind of guy. Good guy with integrity. So I just said, "Hey, if I basically spoon feed people to you to where they're ready to do it, I just need your help to do the paperwork. Would you split me in 50/50?" And the guy's like, "Yeah, of course." I'm like, "Sweet!" And so, I would educate people for maybe half an hour to an hour max about ways they can leverage their mortgage and refinance and free up cash flow and stuff. They were like, "Great! Well, who do we go talk to?" I'm like, "Go talk to this guy." And next thing you know like a month or so later, I get a check for like a thousand or fifteen hundred bucks. I'm like, "That's like a thousand dollars an hour! That's way better!" This is great! And so, I started doing it with other companies. I even did it with a wholesale jeweler, getting paid five percent on any sale. And I was like, "Hey, these guys are like two, three times cheaper than the malls. Use these guys instead. They're great." Or,"There's other companies." And between these four or five different companies, I was seriously making four, five grand a month passive income. Like, I was doing very little to get. I was only working a few hours a week to make that money. And that's when it hit me 'cause at that point, I mean this is 2006. I only had two kids at the time. So, it was like by July of '06, I'm like, "Dang! That was only four months after I quit being a financial advisor and I thought I have to work forever and save every little penny and be cheap until I was 40 to be able to retire." And here I am doing it four months later with no real money in the markets. Just purely because of referrals. So that was the first way I did it. And then I started building it out of things like real estate income and things like that. By the way, at the same time, I was actually stock coaching and teach people how to trade stocks and options. So every money I was making from that was purely gravy. It was just like, "Well that's extra six grand or so a month. I can go and invest myself." I was having fun with it. So anyway, this last time around though, to be able to hit that retirement nest, I decided to create very multiple streams of income. It's not just from referrals but I was doing it from like my podcast. Can I get paid for advertising and things like that? Could I get paid from certain affiliates? Or could I get paid from monthly programs I have for clients and things like that? Where it's more system based versus me, my own time and attention. Pretty soon, same thing. But this time it wasn't like four or five grand a month 'cause I've got eight kids now with a blended family. Allen: Wow! Chris Miles: So, three or four, five grand a month is nothing. For my family, I've got to make at least 15 to 20 grand a month minimum to even make ends meet. So,  that's why it took me until two years to go and do it again even after the whole nest the recession. But yeah, that's really what it was. Investments, business streams, things like that, I found multiple ways to do it and it's awesome. It's ... truly, the key to freedom is creating that cash flow. Allen: So, how do you classify yourself? Like if someone, "Hey, what do you do?" What would you answer to that? Chris Miles: Depends on who's talking to me. I mean, if it's a business owner, I'll say I'm the cash flow expert. But in most time, I just refer myself as the anti-financial advisor because I'm basically against everything financial advisors teach. Allen: Okay. Alright. So our audience is made up of individual investors with a slant towards selling options. So, we focus more on more passive strategies, covert calls, puts, eye condors, credit spreads sells, those kinds of things where we have the probabilities in our favor. We put them on and then we have the time to go do other things while the trades are working for us. And they're not to the point where we have to sit there all day long, monitor them by cell by cell, like a day trading kind of thing. Chris Miles: Yeah. Allen: So, a lot of our people are ... they are already investors so they already have some kind of amount of money to put in. But then we also have a bunch of people who are trying to get in. So they're still working a day job and they're still saving up money and they're still trying to get ... put together an amount of money so that they can go and open an account and start trading. So for those type of people, could you give us a couple of hints of ways that they could generate more cash flow from what they already have? Chris Miles: Yeah! Absolutely! It kind of reminds me of a situation like I actually have one client right now where ... funny enough, he actually is kind of in a similar situation like yourself. He actually teaches people how to trade options. And he came to me, he says, "Okay Chris, I'm great at this." And his strategies more day trading than he does covert calls and things like that. But he's like you know, for myself personally, I love this and I make good money with this but I need other streams of income. Like, I just can't have this. Like this is a good active stream but I want some passive streams too that I don't have to work so hard for. Allen: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Chris Miles: And so, I was like, "Okay cool." We'll see good stuff. And so we started looking at these like, "Do we do things with real estate?" Or how about oil and gas? I'll tell you like, it's especially if you work at another job, you get crapped on when it comes to taxes. It's horrible. My business owner clients, they love it because we can do all kinds of things ... strategies to minimize taxes. But, using IRA's is a joke when it comes to ... 'cause you don't really save on tax with IRA's. You're just delaying the inevitable. Especially, right now where we have some of the best tax benefits right now. We're at some of the lowest taxes we've ever had in the last century. It's kind of tough to say, "Oh yeah, let's delay tax until later 'cause yeah, tax are gonna keep going down, right?" All that kind of stuff. So people, most time when they come to me where they've had ... they make several hundred thousand a year at their job or they're doctors and things like that. They're looking for options to do. Definitely, options can be great, but a lot of times we would look for other things too of like, "Hey, can we do oil investments where we can write off everything that we're investing that year to bring your income down and stuff." And heck, you're like, "I want to get out of these stupid self-directed IRA's because they're telling me what I can and can't invest in." Cool! Well, maybe we can do some things to offset that. Maybe we do like conservation easement strategy where we donate land and you can write off four times whatever you donate. And that offsets the penalties and taxes if you're not 59 and a half. Like things like that. That's kind of stuff that I usually run into with situations like this. It's ... the biggest thing is like how do we keep as much money as possible and how do we get the money working for us as much to generate that cash flow? Allen: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Chris Miles: And yeah. I think it's fun. Allen: Okay. I mean, yeah. It sounds like ... so one of our earlier episodes is, we call it ... I called it the five finger strategy where you have to have five different sources of income if you want to be truly, financially independent. Because when you're trading, if that's the only thing you're doing, if you're trading options or whatever. If that's the only thing you're doing, then you have that stress on the top of your head all the time. That I have to make enough to pay the bills. And it's not like where you're working a job where you go in and you know that you're gonna ... you're in the office, you're gonna get paid no matter what as long as the company is still in business. So being a trader is kind of like a sales person or a real estate agent or something like that where you have make the money in order to get it. There's that pressure on you all the time. If you do diversify and you have other streams of income, whether it's real estate or whatever, you can ... it takes the pressure off of you. And then you actually trade better at the same ... in the same regard. Chris Miles: Exactly! Yeah, and that's kind of like why that guy came to me too. He's like, "Okay, I'm rocking the options world but how can I get some pressure off of me?" And even though from a business standpoint and I tell this to business owners all the time, even people that I'm like network marketing. Like, I'll get people network marketing. They're like, "Oh, I'm set for life 'cause I've got", they might have hundreds of thousands of people in their down line and they're making what they refer to as residual income. And I tell you, I've watched those same people lose their businesses, like lose everything. And I tell them like, "How powerful is it if you can work because you want to, not because you have to?" That you've got other streams coming in and you say, "Hey, I don't need to do any more business. I don't need to do this. I'm just doing this 'cause I think it's fun." I think that the way investing should be. I think that's the way everything in our life should be is like, "Hey, I'm doing this because it's fun." And I'll tell you my experience, even with the people I had trained to do, trading with stocks and options, and any other type of investment, any time somebody said, "I think this is just fun. I don't care if I even make money. I think it's a bonus I make money." Whenever they say that, I'll tell you like when I follow them over the years, they just get better and better at that investment or in that business. They just ... things work out. For some people, they're just doing it for the paycheck. It's like, "Well, how's that different than having a job?" That sucks. So, it's true. You want to have multiple streams of income. You want to take that pressure off yourself 'cause you never know. Things might change. You might have to make ... you have to call an audible. That's what happened to me. That's what I did wrong before the last recession is that I was kind of banking ... in fact, I cut off a lot of those strategies, a lot of those income streams right before the recession. 'Cause I remember I was coming out of retirement. I was starting to teach people how to gather a rat race. And I remember the guys I was working with, his partner said, "Hey, well we can't have you doing these other side activities. We need you focused here." So I'm like, "Alright. But to be a team player, quote on quote, and for the mission, alright, I'll cut off these streams of income", which was so dumb. It was idiotic to do that. And it got me from a place of freedom to a place of bondage. Cash flow is really the key to freedom. 'Cause when you have more cash flow, there's more options. And when you have more options, that's when you have freedom. Allen: Right. Now, so you don't think that ... you've always just said that, "Hey, you hate financial planners." So you don't think that they have any value at all? Chris Miles: No, not at all. In fact, I think most financial planners have a good heart. Their hearts in the right place. What's wrong with financial advice is that they've been sold a bill of goods. And they're taught to regurgitate it back to you. Think about it. A bank, if you look at the rules of a bank. What does a bank want you to do when you give them money? They want you put money as often as possible, give them as much as possible, keep in there as long as possible, take out as little as possible and then take all the risks yourself. I mean, that's basically what a bank will have you do. Now, what are we taught to do with investing from the traditional point? They'll tell you, "Hey, put in money all the time, like every paycheck. Put it in all the time because you need that money going in. You need to start stuffing in lots of money and live on the interest." And they'll you, "Hey, put in as much as possible 'cause man, look how much it'll accelerate. And as long as possible, man that miracle of compound interest? Oh it's awesome." Like, "Imagine what your money will look like in 20,000 years!", "Seven percent off the S&P 500 index off the spider." That's after all the fees they've taken out by your financial advisors and stuff. And then they're telling you, "Yeah, don't take any money out. Like you gotta live on less than an interest." And it always seem dumb to me. I was like, "Wait!" Most time you see right now, most is biased. They'll say don't take out more than two or three percent of your account." So if you're a millionaire, you've got a million bucks saved up in a 401K or an IRA, they're basically telling you to live below the poverty line at 20 or 30 thousand dollars a year. I mean how is that right? I think that's stupid. So you have to, I mean really, I actually ran the numbers if someone wanted to retire in the next 20 years and you want to have a $60,000 dollar a year lifestyle which is not great. That's $5,000 a month. And you factor for inflation? Based on the current just typical mutual funds and stuff like the ones that are in the marketplace right now. You would have to save, I'm kidding you not, like adjust for inflation, everything, to pull out what they recommend pulling out, you gotta seriously save about $10,000 dollars a month for the next 20 years to be able to retire at a $60,000 dollar a year lifestyle. And that's just ridiculous. So it's not that the financial advisors are trying to deceive you but they've been sold everything from banks and financial institutions that are teaching everybody was just supposedly the rules of money. But you've been teaching and what I've been teaching as well is that, no, we gotta throw this thing upside down on its head is that, "No, when we take the investments under our own control. We take less risk, not more. 'Cause the banks want you to take all the risk. That's why mutual funded companies like Fidelity and what not, they're not gonna tell you like, "Hey, we're gonna take some risks for you. If you lose money, we do too." It's like no. They take their guaranteed fees, no matter what. Whether you may get it, they're making money. They take no risk. You're the one that takes all the risk. And that's why you've been taught, "High risk creates higher return." 'Cause they want you to actually believe that you have to take all the risk. And that's just bull crap. You don't. Allen: Yup. Yup. So, in your ... like for your clients and what not, what type of financial products do you recommend? Chris Miles: You know, it really depends. Everybody has their own recipe. I mentioned earlier, we talked about finding things that light you up. What are the investments that you're just like, "Wow, that'd be fun!" It could be ... if it's options trading? Sweet! Let's make that like your active investment. You're totally rocking it and building up your cash and everything possible to make more. Then outside of that, cool, maybe look for passive streams. And that could be in different aspects of real estate. It could be in oil and gas. It could be with different notes or funds. I know funds out there that'll pay you consistently 10 percent a year but paid out monthly. So, if you got $100,000 bucks, they'll pretty much pay you about $830 ... what was that? What is it? Like $830 somewhat dollars a month just on that. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to worry about it. You just let them take care of it. They're investing their own stuff. Allen: So what type of funds are those? Chris Miles: That one particular company, that one's one that invest in mortgage, like delinquent mortgages. And they help people refinance and so this is buy-out huge portfolios of mortgages from banks and then try to refinance people and keep them in their home or help them sell their home and split the equity and that kind of stuff. Allen: Ah, I see. Chris Miles: So, I mean, and like the one company I've referred people to, they're actually reports of the FCC every year. They're monitored by them. But they're own portfolio usually makes at least 39, 40, 50 percent a year. But they'll pay investors, people that basically loan money to them like 10 percent, paid out monthly. Allen: Wow! Chris Miles: Not huge. That's like, for me, that's the low-end of the return scale. I like higher. I mean I know other funds that might do 12 percent or more if you let it reinvest. Turn-key real estate. I have turn-key being hands off, you don't have to deal with anything but you get to collect the checks. I mean, some of those can easily do at least 10 or 12 percent a year. And that's just cash on cash. That's not including the tax benefits or appreciation or the fact that they're paying your mortgage down for you which could lead to easily 20, 30, 40 percent year over year cash on cash return. Allen: So what would be an example of turn-key real estate? Chris Miles: Yeah. I'll give you an example. Recently, I bought a property in Memphis, Tennessee. And I didn't have to find the property, I just used a turn-key provider that found the properties and said, "Here's a list. Which one do you like?" I said, "Well, that one looks sweet. That one's paying 14 percent cash on cash right of return, so I'll take that one." Bob that, after interest rates kicked in a little bit when the interest rates climbed a little bit, it ended up being more like 11 percent cash on cash. So I basically put ... all of a sudden, I put about three grand down. But my cash flow was $270 bucks a month. Allen: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Chris Miles: And then, the next are $120 bucks a month that's going towards paying down a mortgage. But that's like phantom income. That's like filling net worth and that becomes more important when I sell the property down the road. But the cool thing is actually just recently, we just raised the rent on the renters another $55 bucks a month and they signed a one year lease again. So now it's the ROI's now jumping up. Now it's like $320 or so a month. Now, my ROI's like about 13, 14 percent. Allen: Nice! How many of those do you have? Chris Miles: Those ... I've got a few of those, actually. And then we got like things like multi-family. You could do things like fourplexes, you can even go bigger. 'Cause if you got a lot of cash, our thing is you drop them like 30 grand or 20 grand down as a down payment, you've got like $500,000 dollars. That's a lot of properties to buy. So better is you can go look the fourplex route, which you might put down like a $120 grand or something on. And make money off that. In fact, I just had a deal recently that came across and I was already leveraged from my own money. But there was an offer that came across for a 55+ senior community where I can't remember how many units were in that deal. It was like $2.65 million dollars down payment. But the cash flow was already paid 'cause they were already in it. There was already people paying for it. There were already ... the cash flow was already $311,000 a year. So $2.65 million dollars down for $311,000 a year passive coming in. And the thing that was cool about that is they're still raising the rents. So, they're still trying to make more and more cash flow on that deal. I actually ended up sending it out to my clients. I'm like, "Hey guys, maybe ..." I knew a few of them could do it by themselves but they probably weren't wanting to go on that big. So, I'm like, "Hey, partner up. This is an awesome deal! That's almost a 12 percent right of return from a big deal like this." I mean from that much cash, that's hard to do. Allen: Yeah. Chris Miles: That's not including any appreciation or anything else. That was just purely from the cash on cash returns, you know? Allen: Uh-huh. Yup. It's just that, I think, for most people and I'm sure your clients included, it's ... unless you're really tapped in, it's really hard to find these type of investments. And then, it's hard to know if it's a good investment or not. Right? Chris Miles: Exactly. And that's why you have to have the right relationships, the right connections and stuff. 'Cause, yeah, I didn't have to find those properties. They basically found me. That's what's beautiful about it is that there's an over-abundance of deals out there. That's why I tell people like, "Don't just do something 'cause they'll pay you a lot of money. Do something because it actually is exciting to you beyond the money." There's plenty of things you can do ... there's a million and millions of ways to make millions of dollars. Allen: I'm sure you know that but there's so many people that'd be like, "Well I don't know any of them. I can't find any of them. Where do I find all these deals?" Chris Miles: Well, you know and that's what I teach on my podcast show. The Chris Miles Money Show 'cause like recently, I had a really popular episode with a guy that he actually had him on my show, I think it was like, five years ago. Like early on. And he was talking about real estate and what not and it was cool. Well, I started to see in some of his emails and his emails started turning towards short-term rentals, like Air B&B rentals. And I had a few clients were like, "Hey Chris, what do you think about doing air B&B? What about buying a property and doing air B&B on it?", which I'm like, "That could be cool." But this guy, he's like, "Hey, you know what? You don't even have to buy the property. What if you go to a building, like an apartment building and say, I know you got a ton of these units up for rent right now. How about I just rent all these from you. Let's say there's like six of them that are unrented. I'll just rent all these six units from you. I'm gonna sub-lease them to somebody else but don't worry, I'm gonna be doing all the cleaning. It's gonna get cleaned every week. We'll even clean the vents that you won't do, that your own tenants won't do. We'll keep this probably in better condition than any of your other tenants. And you're gonna get paid every single month. And you don't have any more vacancies. And then you go and you just furnish the place and then you start collecting in like a couple of thousand bucks a month of passive income from the air B&B rentals. And you have your own team that's coming in and that's managing the property so you're not managing it yourself. I mean that kind of stuff is ... that episode right there when he's like, "yeah, you could drop ten grand and furnish a place and you end up making that money back within a year and a half. Then it's just like your cash flowing net at least a thousand bucks a month above and beyond your rent payment." He's like that's ... when you think about that. That's like a 50 percent rate year over year rate of return. That's pretty incredible. More of an active investment? That's a thing about it. There's so many options out there you can do. It's just a matter of one, figuring out what lights you up. That's a lot of times when I have to discuss with people. It's like, "Alright, let's investigate some of these and see which ones you lean towards." Then, create a road map from there, a game plan to get you out of that rat race so you can quit that job or work because you want to, not 'cause you have to. Allen: Okay. Now you also have ideas on how to help people with their taxes, right? How can they ... so like, if you were to give our audience some tips on ways that they can reduce some of their taxes? Chris Miles: Yeah. It depends where you're coming from. If you're already a business owner, you've got lots of opportunities. Sadly, most accountants don't teach you that much what to do. For example, like this year, you're allowed to pay your kids $12,000 dollars a year ... your minor children $12,000 dollars a year tax-free. So I remember I had a woman in California that she had six kids. And she was only paying them $6,000 a year. When she found this out, she started paying them $6,000 a year, saved her $13 grand a year in taxes. And the cool thing is she's still using that same money to pay for the same crap that she was paying for before; schooling, extra curriculars, all that kind of stuff. College savings, if they want to save for college or whatever. But that's like tax-free money. So, if you can get yourself in the business owner status and if you're not there, say you're working for a company or whatever. Then, it's like, "Okay, can we get you to do professional investor status?" And that can be tough to do. There's things to do. It might not be you. You might have to get a spouse to do it depending on who works the least. You kinda have to work ... you have to usually work about an average of 15 hours a week to hit the professional investor status. But if you do, you can actually start claiming losses on your taxes. Making money there. There's things of that. I mentioned a few of those things from the investment world. There's like the oil and gas. You invest a hundred grand in oil and gas this year, usually you can write off at least $85,000 of that. So if you're like, "Hey, I'm making $250,000 a year. I want to get down on the next tax bracket. Cool! Maybe you dump a hundred grand on oil and gas and get the tax write off this year. But then starting in the second year, you start getting cash flow from the investment. Possibly even a 200 or 300 percent rate of return after three to five years on the reposition and sell off their land shares that you're a part owner in and stuff. Or do you do that conservation easement strategy where you donate land, like I mentioned before. You write off four times the amount you donate. So if your land share is $50,000 bucks, you write off $200,000 dollars off your income tax. Things like that. There's so many cool things you could do. It's just depending on where you're coming from. If you're ... the sad thing is if you're an employee, your options are pretty limited. It's pretty much either you get to that professional investor category or do a few of those types of strategies ... those investment strategies. Allen: So now, let me go back. You said for the .. you can pay your kids if you have a business. And now, obviously, the kids have to do something in the business where you have to be able to say that they're providing some type of service. Then you also mentioned that you could pay them $12,000 this year. Now, I've heard of that and I'd do it with my children but we pay them six. Chris Miles: Yeah. That's kind of like until this last year in 2018. Allen: Okay. Chris Miles: Yeah, it used to be $6,000 but then recently with the whole Trump tax plan, they said, "Hey, you can actually do twelve with your kids." It's also justifiable, you can't just pay them for doing nothing. You pay them like you pay any adult for. If it's cleaning or if it's helping you with marketing if you're in business and that kind of thing. Obviously, you gotta be a business owner of some sort. It could be filing. It could be computer work. Come on. You have them help you build a web page if they're better at that than other people, you can easily pay them at least twelve grand a year. Allen: Exactly. Chris Miles: All kinds of stuff. It just depends on your business, the nature of your business and what you can do. The challenge with me is I've got eight kids trying to figure out how to pay them all that much is pretty tough. Allen: And this is only for this year or is it for until they change the tax code? Chris Miles: Until they change it, yeah. Allen: Okay. So there's no time period that says, "Okay, this will be enacted for the next three years," or something. And then it has- Chris Miles: Not that I know of. But, like I said, in two years, we have a new president and new tax bill comes through and who knows? But yeah. In the meantime, we can definitely exploit that fact. Allen: Wow. Yeah, okay. Chris Miles: That's one strategy. Another one that's pretty cool that a lot of accountants never teach because a lot of them just ... by the way, if you ever have an accountant that says, "Oh I'm conservative." What it really means is they're saying, "I'm ignorant." 'Cause they just don't know the tax laws. So they're conservatives 'cause they don't want to go and learn any new strategies. So they just tell you the same old crap. Like for example, there's one and in fact, I had an accountant that told one of my clients, "You cannot do that. That's against tax code." So I found freakin' articles, even in like New York Times and stuff for like this corporate rent strategy as an example. Where if he had a corporation, especially if you work from home, and heck even if you don't work from home. Maybe you just have a home office, you could actually pay to use your house say for one day ... one day's use. Almost like you would for a hotel. If you've ever booked a hotel, like a meeting space or something like that, whether you had people coming there or maybe you just meeting with a potential client or whatever it might be, you say, "Hey, alright, I'm gonna book this hotel meeting space. Yes, I'll pay for the wireless internet. Yes, I'll pay for this. Heck, why not pay for lunch too or catering." You start to add it all up, it's a lot of money for a day's use for a hotel. Well, not too uncommon, you could pretty much see like a day's use of a hotel could be easily be at least ... for cross country, it's different state by state but cross country, like $1250 bucks let's just say for a day's use of a hotel. Well, you could do that same thing by renting your corporation, renting your house from you, personally, for that one day. Now, if you know about rental laws like you don't get tax on rent until it passes 14 days in that year. So, let's just say you only pick one day out of the month that you do something. And it could be something with clients. It could be something not. It could be you're doing a planning meeting inside your own house or whatever. Whatever it might be, you basically use your home for that day's use of business purpose. Well, if you did that for 12 days a year, that's fifteen thousand bucks that you've been paid personally from your corporation. So that's a write off from your company. You're getting a company write off. But that income is income tax-free because you haven't surpassed the fourteen days. So depending on your tax bracket, if you're in a pretty high tax bracket, that could save you at least five or six grand. In fact, I had ... I tested it once. So, I actually ... I had an accountant who forgot to count it and I said, "Hey, hey, go back. This thing right here, this expense, this income is actually should not be counted as income 'cause that was 11 or 12 days of those corporate rent payments." And so he put it back in, he's like, "Oh, let me adjust that." And seriously, it was a six grand savings that year. Allen: Okay, so let me get this clear. If you have a property that you rent out and you  collect income, you collect rental income on that, whether it's a house or a car or whatever- Chris Miles: This is actually for your own home you live in. Allen: Right. Okay, so it's only for your home? Chris Miles: Yep, just for your home. Not talking about the rental properties. This is just for your own house. Allen: And if it doesn't exceed 14 days, there's no income tax on that? Chris Miles: Correct. Yep. And then, tax usually ... if you go over 14 days, it's passive income tax. You're taxed like you are for real estate but as long as you don't go over 14 days a year, that's income tax free to you. Allen: Wow. I didn't know that one. Yeah. Chris Miles: Yeah. It's pretty awesome. I have actually, I have one friend. He has a bigger home and he's like, "Hey, my accountant has me justifying $1500 a month ... or $1500 for that day's use. So he's like, "I'm going all the way up to the 14 days." So he's basically writing off like 21 grand a year. That's saved him probably at least 7 grand in taxes that year. And you're still getting paid. That's the cool thing. You're still paying yourself. But rather than paying yourself, you have to pay income tax and social security tax and everything else, you're taking that totally income tax free. Allen: Hmm. And so how would you ... you have to still report it as income but the accountant should know how to handle that, right? Chris Miles: Yeah. You have to let them know, of course, that that income is from however many days it were in that year for that rent payment. You just have to classify ... tell them that 'cause if you don't, then they will just count it as normal income. But yeah. You just have ... and they can use ... if they know the strategy obviously, they'll see, "Oh, there's that rent payment coming out of your business and there's the income. Perfect." Allen: Awesome. Cool! Yeah, so I think those two tips could save people a lot of money. But both of them, obviously, you have to have a corporation. And I think one of the ... couple of episodes ago, we talked with another one of our traders who had gone ahead and started trading inside of his corporation for an asset protection. That was the main reason, for asset protection, but then he also was able to take out all these expenses as deductions. And then the losses were also classified as differently than on his personal. That helped out a lot as well. Definitely, I think, it'd be good for most traders depending on how much they actually have and how much they could actually save. They could probably easily do this and open a corporation and just do all that stuff out of it. That's really cool! That's really cool stuff! Chris Miles: Yeah. Allen: Is there a way where people can get a hold of you? 'Cause we're out of time here but I know that we could keep talking and I'm sure you have lots of other strategies as well. But is there a way for our listeners to find you and get a hold of you? Chris Miles: Yeah. Like I mentioned, you could check out the Chris Miles Money Show that's on iTunes or you could find it online that way. There's also my website, moneyripples.com. That's M-O-N-E-Y-R-I-P-P-L-E-S dot com. Even if you have questions specifically, you might just say, "Hey, let me send an email Chris." You can just send that email to Chris with a C-H. So, Chris@moneyripples.com. Allen: Cool! Thank you. And before you go, I got one last question for you. Chris Miles: Yeah. Allen: So, let's say, you ran into somebody and you really wanted to impress them with your financial knowledge. Maybe this person is a big whale type person and you're like, "Okay, I want this guy as a client. I'm gonna give him one tip that's just gonna knock his socks off." What would that be? Chris Miles: That's not an easy answer 'cause I always adapt to the person. For me, usually it's mostly listening. All I have to do is usually ask you a series of questions and just find out like where you are and usually, I'll find out something like, "Oh, hey, have you considered this?" So, it could be like conservation easement, like, "Hey, here's a way you can write off four times and get massive savings if taxes are a big pain." Or "Hey, passive income, you want more of that? Dude you can totally rock your world by making passive income over here and doing this kind of stuff." It's not hard for me. It really just depends on the situation where they're at. I would say, probably for me, to knock their socks off, I usually do less. I usually do less talking, more listening. Allen: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Okay. Alright. Alright, Chris! Well this has been an interesting conversation. Those of you who are looking for more passive streams of income, that are looking to save money on their taxes even, do reach out to Chris. Like you said, there are lots and lots of ways to make money. We just have to find them. So, appreciate it, Chris! Thank you for spending some time with us. Chris Miles: It's an honor. Thanks for having me on your show. Allen: Alright, take care. Chris Miles: Alright, see ya. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.   

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Giddy up Option Nation! Welcome to another episode. Today we're going to be talking about financial planners. And really the title is, What Your Financial Planner Really Thinks of You. Because although you might know it, he doesn't think as much of you as you think. A couple weeks ago I was in Austin for a digital marketing seminar event type thing. Now before I started Option Genius, I was a marketing manager for a small publishing company and I mean I geek out on marketing stuff. Especially online marketing stuff. I can't get enough of it. Now at Option Genius, we get most of our clients online. Now a large portion do come from referrals and I do have a book coming out that I'm working that we're gonna get people from there as well. But most of our customers find us online. Either through ads that we run on Google or Facebook. We get people from our Facebook page and our Facebook group, the Option Traders Alliance. We get people from our YouTube channel, Twitter feed, all that stuff. So I mean to me, all of that stuff is really, really interesting. How do you get more people to come to your website? How do you get them interacting with you? All that sort of thing. So I went there to meet with people and talk and learn what strategies are there. At the event they had us doing different workbooks and exercises to really figure out, who's the person that we want to target? And where is the person hanging out and all this kind of stuff. And at the end, they wanted to show how to apply all the things that we had just learned to real businesses. So they did what they call hot seats. So everybody, anybody that wanted to come on stage and be helped by the speakers, they could put their name in a hat. Everybody did and they picked three different people. One of those happened to be a financial planner, who's on the hot seat. So I was like, okay this is going to be interesting because I might be able to use some of this stuff from him. I mean, he's a similar market, right? And whatever they help him with, it could help me as well. So they asked him, "Hey what's your business? What do you do? What do you want? How can we help you?" He said that he wanted more clients. That's what he want, more clients. And the normal way that financial planners get clients is by word of mouth or they do stuff like educational seminars and stuff like that. Hey, call us and we have a free booklet or something like that. But this guy, he had a unique request, and that's why he was at this online marketing event. He didn't want to talk to anybody. He wanted the whole process to be automated, meaning from the time people see the ad, to they go to his website, to they sign up, to they get more information, to they send him a check. All of that he wanted all automated. He didn't want to deal with anybody during that whole process. Because what he said was, he hated talking to people that were not going to become a client. I mean, that's literally ... he's up there on the stage. I think they even recorded this on video. This guy's up there as a financial planner saying he hates talking to people about financial stuff that are not going to become a client. Okay, that's kind of rude. I don't know?  But then they asked him, "Okay, fine. What do you do right now?" I mean, they didn't want to judge him, right? So they're like, "Okay fine, what do you do now to get clients?" So he said that he and his partner, they held free informational seminars. So they have a lunch, they pay for lunch, and they invite people and people come and they talk about finances and this and that. And that they were getting a lot of people to come to the seminars, but none of those people were becoming clients. So then you gotta ask, hey what type of clients does he want? To which he replied, and I'm going to quote him here, okay? This is his words. He wants clients that are, "Really rich ones. I don't want to deal with low level people, I want clients with over a million dollars to invest." That's actually what he said. And he wasn't even ashamed to say it in front of all these people. I was like, my God! So people who don't have a million dollars are low level people? And they're not worthy of getting financial advice? You can't help them? Huh. With that kind of attitude, I mean, no wonder he wasn't getting any clients. Geez! And then somebody from the audience, they raised their hand and they asked him, so how much does he charge? And he said that he charges a percentage or a flat fee. He could do both. But mostly he charges ... No actually, sorry, they asked him how he charged. Was he a percent guy or was he a flat fee guy? Because lately more and more people are going towards the flat fee brokers, the flat fee advisers, because it's better for the customer. It's better for the client, right? So he said that he was a percentage guy. He charges a percentage of assets under management. Just guess how much that this fellow charges. Now knowing a little bit about his mentality you might already ... you might get close. He charges 5% of assets every single year. So if you give him $100,000 he's gonna take $5,000 out of that as his fee for just dealing with you, okay? And then the investments that he will put you in, the funds or whatever he puts you in, those are probably gonna charge you 1 to 2% or more every year as well. So just to break even, his clients have to get a 7% return, just to break even, right? I mean, listening to this guy made me want to throw up. I was nauseous. I was like, this guy, he can't even get 8, 9%. The stock market averages 8%, this guy is nothing special. This guys another bumpkin off the boat or whatever and he wants to make ... he wants to charge 7% in fees so that his clients get like 1 to 2% a year. The sad part is, that nobody else in the room was nauseous. Nobody else was offended. Nobody else was upset. They were looking at him like that was normal, because it is normal. I mean, 5% is really high, but the sad fact is that there are idiots all over the world right now claiming to be financial experts who do nothing but take money and put it into different funds and they charge this much. I mean, heck you could do that for yourself. The majority of individual investors do not need a financial planner. 'Cause when broken down into the basics, investing in options are not that difficult. That's why it's awesome that you have decided to learn this stuff for yourself. And I applaud you for that and I want you to keep going and save the money that you're paying these rip off artists, okay? Now, in the building where we have our office, right next door, is a financial planner. Really nice guy. Really smart too. I mean, it's just him and an assistant. So he's not really, really big. He doesn't have 100 people working under him, but he's been at this for a long time, okay? And actually, mainly, it's just the assistant because he's in the office maybe a couple of days a week. And maybe like around five hours a week, on a busy week. Whenever we see him, he's either coming from his workout or going to his workout, so he's always in a t-shirt and shorts. Unless, on the odd occasion when he has to meet a client, that's when he'll actually have like a suit and tie on. But that's very, very rare. And the assistant, she's just there to answer the phone if it rings. Which we hardly ever hear it ringing. Most of the time she's just on her phone playing games or on Facebook, or even napping. Now to this gal's credit, he's been doing this for a long time. So he has built up his book of business. He has his customers, people who like him and trust him. They've given him money to invest and he also does 401 programs for some small companies. So he does very, very well for himself. And in fact, he's going to be retiring soon. The only thing he's waiting on is for his daughter to graduate so she can take over the firm for him. He was going to sell it, but now she wants to get in, so he's gonna wait for her to graduate, train her a little bit, and then he's gonna back out and let her handle it. He's gonna be actually the first financial planner that I know that is going to be retiring before age 65. Can you imagine that, right? Financial planners are supposed to be really, really good at investing. They're supposed to know how to make money in their investments, so they'd be the ones that you would find being retired. It should be hard to find a financial planner, but it's not. There are thousands, millions of them all over the place. It's easy to find. And unfortunately for my friend, it's not that he's being able to retire because of his investing prowess, okay? It's not the investments that he puts people in that are helping him retire. It's the fees that he charges his customers. Now when I first moved in the office I sat down with him a few times and we would talk. I told him what we do and he told me he knows a little bit about options, but he said that his compensation wouldn't allow him to get his clients involved in options. And I was like, "What does that mean? What do you mean, you can't put them in options?" And he was like, "No, I can't. I'm not allowed by the fund companies," this is what he said, he's "not allowed by the fund companies that he represents to tell his clients about options or other investments that are alternatives." So he could get in trouble by the company's that he represents if he started advertising other funds. Investment funds, like real estate funds, or options funds or what not. He couldn't really do that because the company's that he works with, that's he obligated ... contractually obligated to, they don't have those type of investments. I mean, I was like, well to me, the whole point of a financial planner, of anybody going to a financial planner, is for them to tell the investor what are the best, best, best alternatives out there for that person? And if you are limited because of a contract, or because of who's paying you money, then you're not actually working in the best interest of the investor. Even though that's the case, this whole Wall Street business model, has worked really, really well for him. I mean he's about to retire. He's doing good, he only works a few hours a week. People give him money, he puts the money into different funds, some of which give him a commission, and then he charges his clients a percentage of his assets. Of their assets. So if the markets do good, they that's awesome! We're gonna charge you even more. If the markets go down, well we'll blame it on the market, but we still get our fees. And that's the whole module, the whole business model of Wall Street, right? It's a great business for my friend the planner. And the way it works ... Because it works, Wall Street makes it seem that investing is too complicated and that you need help figuring it out. You, Mr. Individual Investor, you should go do whatever you do for a living. Focus on that, because you're too stupid to figure it out. You don't understand PE ratios and revenue models and accounting principals. You don't understand. Don't bother your pretty little head with all that stuff. We are the mutual fund investors, or we run Wall Street! We can do this. We do it on a full time basis. We've gone to Ivy League schools and gotten an education and all this stuff, so we are much better at it. So we are worth the fees that we're charging you and you should give us that money because otherwise, you're going to lose all your money! And most of the time, it's not even about beating the market averages or doing as good as you can. Their whole pitch is, you should give your money to us so that you don't just lose all of it. Which is a totally wrong way to look at it, right? 'Cause I mean the alternative, it's not ... The alternative is not, okay I'm going to give my money to a mutual fund or I'm going to lose all of it. That's not ... Those are not the only objectives out there. Those are not the only alternatives. You can just keep your money in cash and you won't lose any of it. And you'll still do better than the mutual fund if you do that, right? So I mean, these guys on Wall Street, they take your money, they charge you a fee for the privilege of taking your money, and then they get to play with it. And if they make money, cool! They'll take more from you. If they lose money, oh well, it's the markets fault. It's not our fault, we did a good job. And I mean, if you look at it, it's gonna be super, super hard for you to go to Wall Street and find anybody that actually loses sleep because your money is at risk. You know? I mean, you put your money at risk, you will lose sleep if you're investing in a way that is too risky or you're not comfortable with it, you're gong to lose sleep. But these folks on Wall Street, they don't lose sleep because your money's at risk. The only thing they're concerned about is to keep their assets under management and their fees high so they can continue what they do. That's the truth of it. And recently, I mean, Jack Bogle the founder of the index fund, passed away. And my hat's off to this guy. He was responsible for saving people millions and millions of dollars that they would've just lost in terms of fees. And you can go read all the stuff that he wrote. He wrote ... There were several books written about him. He's the founder of Vanguard. There's a reason why they have such low fees. If you have to go to a mutual fund, then you should be in a Vanguard or a T. Rowe Price. 'Cause those two are the ones with the lowest, lowest fees out there. Vanguard, in fact, they are corporate structure is different. So they're ... The way that the company is structured, they don't have ... They're not a public company. They don't have to keep making money for their investors. They're privately owned and all that stuff, so they're able to keep their fees lower. And that's the whole reason for that company. Now even though there's oodles and oodles of research out there that says that mutual funds do not beat the averages, that hedge funds do not beat the averages, there are still guys out there, these stock pickers, that claim that they can beat the markets. I mean, they're on CNBC, they're on Fox Business, they're on Bloomberg and Reuters every single day telling you what to do and what not to do and all that stuff. And you look at most of them and they all have losing records. Or they will be able to beat the averages that they compare themselves to, which is really sad. I mean, there are a few people that can beat the markets. But those guys are doing so well that you already have to be mega, mega rich for them to manage your money. And most of us are not in that boat. We don't have millions of dollars to give them. So that's why we sell options. And it's pretty hard to beat the averages just by picking stocks. It is. Mutual funds can't beat the averages and neither can most hedge funds. No other investment class has done as well as the stock market over time. So, why do I think that I can beat the averages? Why do I keep saying that selling options is the better way to go? Because when you take the averages, you take the stock market returns, and you add options into the mix, you get more bang for your buck. You get appreciation and time decay working for you in tandem together, right? They work together, so you get appreciation and the time decay. That's exactly what I'm going to be covering in my upcoming book. How to use stocks and options together to not only beat the averages, but achieve your financial goals in a way that you can do so in your spare time? But I'm getting ahead of myself, I don't want to talk about that right now. We'll cover that more in detail later on. But for now, if you use a financial planner, maybe you've used with them ... maybe you've used that guy for years. Maybe you've been with him, maybe you trust him, maybe you like him, maybe he's a family member, I don't know. But dig a little deeper. Look into the fees that you're paying. Look at the returns. Compare the returns to the overall markets, to the index funds, would you be doing better? Ask questions. And if you don't like the answers you get, well then my friend, it's time for you to put the odds in your favor and join us as an option seller. Take care. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? 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People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Allen: All right, everybody. Welcome, Genius Nation. We have a special edition today. We have a video podcast episode, and I'm today here with Mr. Virgil Hughes, who is a full-time trader. I wanted him to get on the podcast to share his experience, to share his stories, how he got started, what he does, so that he can explain to you how he trades for a living. But I also wanted, and what really spoke to me about Virgil, is that he mentioned that he uses his time away from trading to actually give back to other people in the world, and I wanted him to come on and share that message as well and to share with us what he's doing and how he's actually making the world a better place. So, Virgil, how you doing today? Virgil Hughes: I'm good. Thanks, Allen, and thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure to be talking with you and sharing your story as well. Allen: Yeah, no, I mean I always love talking to traders and the students that come through our system. We've been doing this for a while now, so we have a lot of people that reach out to us and share their success stories. And I think that really, for me, that has actually given me more of a passion of giving back and helping out and sharing their stories as well so it's not just about me talking about myself but it's actually other people are doing well, and I want to share their stories as well. Virgil Hughes: Good. Allen: So that's why we're here. And so, Virgil, tell us, how'd you get started in trading? Virgil Hughes: Well, it's a little bit of an odd story. I think I've always been engaged or interested in the financial markets, but I spent a career as a CEO doing turnarounds, and that was more than full-time. And at one point, I was diagnosed with cancer and- Allen: Wow. Virgil Hughes: ... had to step back and had tried to get back into the workforce and had a relapse. Allen: Oh, my. Virgil Hughes: Eventually, I just said, "I got to figure out something else." And so I started doing some trading in the futures market and then learned about options and so I traded half heartedly for a number of years while I did some consulting but in the last few years have been doing it full-time. Allen: Okay. So, I mean, how are you doing health-wise now? Virgil Hughes: Oh, it's long gone. Allen: Oh, that's wonderful. Virgil Hughes: Fortunately, cancer is a distant memory now. Allen: That's great. Virgil Hughes: [crosstalk 00:02:58] Allen: I mean, I can imagine doing turnarounds, that sounds very stressful. I mean, I- Virgil Hughes: Yeah, it's extremely stressful. You have a lot of people that don't like you. Allen: So you were like the Richard ... What was he? Richard Dreyfuss guy in Pretty Woman? Was that him? Virgil Hughes: No. Not quite. I can't think of a good cultural icon to compare myself to, but companies that got broken because somebody screwed up, I would come in and fix them. Allen: And that would probably mean letting a lot of people go. Virgil Hughes: Well, people get comfortable doing what they're doing, and even if it's wrong. And so I would have to help them see the light or help them see the door. Allen: Awesome. All right, so what are you trading now? What are your specialties? Virgil Hughes: Well, mostly just equities and options and combinations of equities and options. And I've, over the last year, been introduced to your crude oil trading process, and so I've done that as well. But mostly just combinations of equities and options. Allen: Okay. And how much time are you spending doing that right now? Virgil Hughes: Well, over the last six or eight months it's probably been, oh, half-time. Over the last four weeks, as crude has collapsed, it's been more than full-time. Allen: Just watching the markets, right? Virgil Hughes: Yeah. Typically, I can spend some time checking on the markets and the rest of the time doing what I do. Allen: Right. Okay. And so how long did it take you to make that transition from dabbling in the market, learning about it, to going and saying, "Okay. You know what? I'm going to do this for a living [crosstalk 00:05:19] time"? Virgil Hughes: Yeah. I don't think it's a matter of time. It's a matter of when you decide to do it. And what happened was I was running a chain of hospitals and felt called ... I just left and felt called to do the non-profit full-time, and that meant that I needed to have some source of income. And so I just took the knowledge that I'd gathered and just started doing it. [crosstalk 00:06:04] I think some people maybe their minds work differently, but for me, it was just a case of, "Okay, now time to get serious about this and do it." Allen: So I mean, because a lot of people, they reach out and they say that, "Hey, I'm really hesitant or I'm really scared because I don't know what I'm going to fall back on." But I think it sounds like you found your why, you found your purpose, like, "Hey, I am going to do this thing, and nothing's going to stop me. And for me to get this, I have to succeed at this other thing over here, which is trading." Virgil Hughes: That's exactly right, Allen. Yeah. You put it very well. I don't think I can elaborate on that. I found my purpose, and so this is how I'm going to get there. Allen: That's awesome. That's awesome, because a lot of times, people, they don't know. And that's one of the things that we've repeatedly, we've told people, "If you want to get good at trading, it has to be done. If you make it a must," and this is Tony Robbins talking, but, "If you make something a must, then it's going to happen," right? Virgil Hughes: Yeah. Allen: And if you have your why, if you have your reason behind what you're doing ... because when it comes to trading, at the end of the day, how do you know if you're a successful trader? Well, you have more money in the account. And in the beginning, for people who don't have money, that sounds like, "Oh, that's going to be awesome. I'm going to have more money. I'm going to get to go out. I'm going to spend money. I'm going to buy stuff." But then you get to a certain point where that's not enough anymore. And I see a lot of traders, in the beginning they do really well and their accounts grow, but then they get to that point where money is no longer the motivator, and they lose focus. They lose interest. And so then they have a relapse and they lose all that money, and then they start back over again and they grow. So there was this one exercise that I read about in a book, for people who don't know their why. Basically, it was to sit down with somebody, like we're sitting here, just sit across from somebody that you know or that has your best interests at heart and just ask you a question like, "Hey, why are you doing this? Why do you want to get into trading?" And then whatever answer you come up with. "I want to make more money." Okay. "Why do you want to make more money?" "Well, because I got to pay my bills." Okay. "Why do you need to pay your bills?" And then you just keep asking that. They just keep rephrasing what you're saying, and then just asking deeper, deeper, deeper, why, why, why. And it's a simple process, but if you do it right and you still go deep enough, you'll find something about yourself that totally blows your mind. When I did it the first time, I was like, "Oh my God. I never knew that I felt that way inside." And I think for you, it was a little bit easier because you found out right away. You're like, "Hey, I'm going to go do this non-profit thing, and nothing's going to stop me." Virgil Hughes: Yeah, that's exactly right. For me, trading is simply a means to an end, and the end is outside of myself. It's not so that I can put more money in the account. It's not so that I can build a bigger house or something like that. It's so that I can get over to Africa more often or that I can bring on people who can get over to Africa more often, that sort of thing. Allen: Okay. So I do want to talk about that, but before we get into that, can you give our listeners any advice or any tips or tidbits that you picked up over these years to help them on their journey as how they can get to where you are? Virgil Hughes: With trading or- Allen: Yeah, with trading. Virgil Hughes: Okay. Wow. Allen: Or it can be anything in life, generally, but mostly ... because most of our guys, they want to know, "Okay, how do I get to where Virgil is?" Virgil Hughes: Wow. Well, the thing that comes to mind right now is, first of all, every trader is different and every market is different and every season of every market is different. And so you have to find your own style. You have to find what works for you. Maybe it's futures. Maybe it's an indicator that you know how to trade really well. John Carter uses The Squeeze. Somebody else uses this. Somebody else uses Bollinger Bands. The best advice that I can give is be in the game and keep accurate records of what you do and what works and what doesn't. And eventually, something's going to click, and you're going to say. "Look. You know what? I can do this, and this works for me." And maybe it's Forex or maybe it's futures or maybe it's short options. Maybe it's long options. Maybe it's trading MACD. Who knows? Something at some point is going to click, and then it's stepping out of the boat. I mean, it's literally stepping out off the cliff and just doing it. As you well know, Allen, when you take a position with a short put, you know that there's a possibility that that thing is going to keep going down, and you just have to get in there and do it. And I think, for me, I spent years buying different training programs and this person's advice and that person's advice and subscribing to different services, including yours. And at some point, you just have to say, "This is what I know. I know how this works, and I'm going to take responsibility for it." As a friend of mine wrote, based on that movie, that Tom Hanks movie, he wrote to me the other day. He says, "There's no crying in trading." And that's right. You got to man up and just [crosstalk 00:12:42] Allen: There's a lot of crying in trading. We might not admit it, but there is a lot. Virgil Hughes: There is crying in trading, but we can't ... Allen: Yeah. It doesn't make anything go away. It doesn't make it easier. Virgil Hughes: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:12:55] got to man up and take it. Allen: Right, so, okay. So it took you years, and you did all these different things. What did you find in the end that worked for you? Virgil Hughes: What works for me, and I don't want to give specific trade type details because [crosstalk 00:13:17] Allen: No, no, no. Just general. Just [crosstalk 00:13:18] Virgil Hughes: Yeah, I don't want somebody to take my advice and say, "Oh, this works for Virgil. I'm going to go do this." But what works for me is [crosstalk 00:13:27] Allen: Yeah, financial disclaimer here. Trade at your own risk. Virgil Hughes: Yeah. What works for me best is a combination of selling short options around long positions and then with a smattering of other more exotic kinds of things. But you got to keep your position size small. Shorts, triangles, and BCT trades. I have not really gotten into butterflies and back ratio spreads and stuff like that. Allen: Yeah, the very exotic strategies. Virgil Hughes: Yeah. I know that people do them well. I explored at one point the ... you build a net with several different calendar spreads and stuff like that, and it looks intriguing as all get-out on the graphic chart on thinkorswim, but one strong move, and that's blown out of the water. You just got to learn risk management and how to adjust. The trades that require a lot of adjusting really aren't good trades, and people will tell you that they make a living doing it. Bully for them. I'm glad for them. I got work to do during the day, and then I'm in Africa four times a year. I need simple stuff that I can put on and actually leave for a few days because if I'm without internet, I can't have my account be blown up. And I wish I'd taken that advice the last four weeks. Allen: Okay, so I think what I'm hearing is that the base or the bulk of your positions are in stocks, in equities, and then you're selling foots against those? Virgil Hughes: No. It would be in equities or very deep in the money [crosstalk 00:15:50] and then selling individual options or spreads around that position. Allen: Okay. Okay. Yeah, we actually have something that I'm working on right now. It's called passive trading, the passive trading formula, and a lot of that is the bulk of it, really how do you set up trades? How do you set up your portfolio in a way that it only takes a few hours to manage it for a month where [crosstalk 00:16:20] still earn the money but it's just there regularly growing, growing, growing. So that's cool. You mentioned BCT. For those of you who don't know, BCT is the blank check trade, which is our oil course. You can find more information about that on OptionGenius.com. Okay, so Virgil, you've mentioned Africa a couple times. What's that all about? Why are you going to Africa? Virgil Hughes: I spent this time doing my work as a turnaround guy, and that's just hard work. And I always felt that there ought to be something else. And then when I got diagnosed with cancer, something clicked and I just said, "I got to think outside the box." I went to Africa on a church mission trip in 2012, and had always heard about the concept of micro lending, but ended up doing a bit of research on that before I went and was able to see some great examples of how a small loan helping somebody start a small business can make a huge difference in a person's life in an undeveloped country or an underdeveloped country. For us- Allen: So this is microfinance you're talking about? Virgil Hughes: Yeah. Yeah. For us, what would be pocket change almost for an American can help somebody in an under-resourced country set up a business and can make all the difference. So I ended up chartering a non-profit in 2014 after a couple of trips to Africa. And then in 2016, yeah, I left the hospitals that I was running and felt called to just do that full-time. And so that's what I've been doing. We have a non-profit. We're federally tax ID'd, so we're a registered charity, and we have operations now in ... We're in four sites in Kenya. We're starting in the Ivory Coast. We're starting in Ethiopia, and depending on some negotiations, may be starting soon in Haiti and have been invited into even more countries than I've just named. So there's a huge need there, and it makes a huge difference. Allen: So you're a US-based non-profit that is lending money directly, or are you going through a local intermediary? Virgil Hughes: Yeah. Well, what we do is you have to follow the banking laws of the countries that you're in, and each one is different. And so normally, what we're doing is we're working through an intermediary in that country. That's an issue in and of itself because you got to find a trustworthy intermediary that's not going to make off with your money or charge you huge fees or something like that. But normally, our first effort is to find a good partner in that country that we can trust and through whom we can work and then begin the process. Allen: Okay. So it sounds like ... because I mean, I've read Muhammad Yunus's book. He started this in Bangladesh, and it helped a lot of people. And I've given money with Kiva.org, and they do something similar to that where you can pick the loans and you can give it to certain people. And for those of you who don't know, micro lending is really, really small loans. What range do you give your loans in? Virgil Hughes: Well, at this point, typically it's between US about 125 to US about 1,000. And I got a couple of pictures that'll blow you away, but I'll give you just one example. My very first trip, we spotted an opportunity among the- Allen: Yeah, so if you have those pictures, let's put them up. Let's see. Virgil Hughes: Yeah. Okay. Give me just a minute [crosstalk 00:21:31] Allen: Cool. Sure. Yeah, no problem. Virgil Hughes: ... some pictures and ... Hang on. Allen: Yeah. So from what I know, there's this guy, Muhammad Yunus, in Bangladesh who was a professor, and he found that there were women in the main city there of Dhaka or in the little towns where they were trying to make, I think, baskets or something. But for every basket, they got paid very little for the actual amount of work they were doing because there were so middlemen. And so the idea was he found one lady and he said, "I'm just going to give you the money that you can go and skip all the middlemen." And it really changed her life. And one thing I'm going to ask you, Virgil, is how do you make sure that they give you the money back? Because in the Grameen Bank, which is Muhammad Yunus's organization, they have it where the women, they form a group, and then each woman is responsible to make sure the other women pay back the loan. Virgil Hughes: Yes. First of all, can you see my screen here? Allen: Yes. Yes, I can. Virgil Hughes: It should show two stories. And this is a very poignant story. The little guy you see on your left is a little kid that I met in an orphanage in the hill country of Kenya. And he was in the orphanage because his mom disappeared. His father had passed, and his mom was struggling to take care of him, to provide. There's not a lot of jobs in the mountains of Kenya, and she was praying with her pastor every week and stuff like that. She got a job offer from a company in the Middle East. Allen: Wow. Virgil Hughes: And they told her, "Well, leave your son with some friends or relatives. Come out. Get established, and then when you're established and comfortable, you can send for your son." So she did, and they never saw her again. And they did get a couple of calls that were cut off within 30 seconds, and they came to the conclusion that she'd been kidnapped and trafficked by the people that- Allen: Oh, no. Virgil Hughes: It was a false offer, and it was just a sham. And she's probably been trafficked into the sex trade. Allen: Oh, boy. Virgil Hughes: And so the other picture there, the woman with the sewing machine, similar story. Her husband left. She's got four boys, but because an American gave $125 for a sewing machine, she has a small tailoring business, and she's able to support her family. What's $125 to you and me? That's $10 a month. Allen: Yeah, that's nothing. It's a dinner. Not even. Virgil Hughes: Not even a dinner, but this woman has built a business with it. And that's what happens. That's the promise or the opportunity from this kind of small lending. You had asked a question too about how do we get the money back. Yeah, well, Muhammad Yunus was a genius in more ways than one, and we do exactly what he did. We help set up what we call ... The technical term in the industry is a savings and credit association, and I'm going to go here. Here's a good example. We help people set theirs up. It's actually like a homegrown credit union where it's 15 to 30 people getting together to save together, to be responsible together for each other. They learn to take out loans from the group and pay back the group. We use those groups as a springboard for training where we teach them about good money management. We teach them about some business skills and perspectives. And Yunus actually didn't go that far. He made the group responsible for the loan. We and some others have taken it a step further and we're actually providing training within the group. And what we discovered is that the training is more of a life-changing thing than actually the small loans because only about 20% of the people will take out a loan, but the training affects everybody, and everybody learns from it. Allen: Okay. So the small group, it's not just loan holders but just anybody who's interested in learning? Virgil Hughes: Right. Exactly. So, like I said, we've taken the concept that Muhammad developed and tweaked it a little bit. And, like I said, an easier term is a self-help group, and like a little credit union where it's owned by the people. They're saving together, but they also help each other. They can give loans to each other from the group without ever coming to us. It serves as a social insurance. If somebody gets sick, breaks a bone, something like that, the group can step in and help them. So, like I said earlier, our process is three parts. One is helping them set up a self-help group. Two is providing some key training, and then three is the micro loan. Allen: So the loans are given from you guys or from amongst themselves, like they pool their money and then they share it? Virgil Hughes: Yeah, both. Allen: Both. Virgil Hughes: We encourage them to lend to each other, and then we also we teach them business principles. We teach them how to develop a business plan. We teach them how to assess their product in their market. We teach them how to assess the market itself. And then we insist that they put together a small business plan. And we're not talking about a Wharton MBA here. [inaudible 00:28:28] about some basic principles that have been structured to be at this level, and the same thing. We're not looking at a 50-page business plan, but we are looking for people to think through their business and their process and then get the advice of their group. Then the group submits it to us, and we'll look at it. Allen: That's awesome. It says here on the slide, it says, "Our goal," of your organization, which is NewVines International, your goal is, "One million adults in self-help groups hearing the gospel, praying together, receiving business skills and training, and providing for their families by 2028." Virgil Hughes: Yeah, that's correct. Allen: Okay, so now I got to ask you. How many have you gotten to? Virgil Hughes: Well, that's a fair question. What we've found is that the best way to achieve that goal is not to just go out and try to set up small groups. What we're finding is that the best way to achieve that goal is to develop effective relationships with leaders in different countries. And so we end up doing what I call train the trainer, and so we will train a group of leaders to go out and work within other churches and community ministries to essentially expand the network. Hang on a minute while I flip through some ... Here we go. So here is a group of trainers in the mountain country of Bomet. They have graduated our program and ... I'm sorry. The mountain country of Kenya. They graduated our program, and each of them will be responsible for reaching out to between six and eight different churches. Then over on this side, this is about a dozen people from Western Kenya representing a whole group pulled together by an NGO, which is the equivalent of a non-profit in a foreign country. And this happens to be an orphanage/medical clinic ministry. But it serves as a center to pull together a group from about six or eight local denominations. And so these guys, we're training them to go back to their denominations and each one would then be working with anywhere from six to 20 different churches. So our first goal is not to just go out and set up a bunch of groups. Our first goal is to find leaders and train trainers to go out to train other trainers. Allen: That's awesome. That's great. So it's building upon itself, because once you're in the field, then they'll just keep passing on their information and their knowledge and it'll just get bigger. That's awesome. Now from what you said earlier, you were saying that you trade for a living, so you trade to pay your expenses and your bills, and then while you had your position with the hospital company, that's when you started this organization, right, this charity, this foundation? Virgil Hughes: Right. Yeah. Allen: And so you funded it yourself, and now you're at the pace where you're able to accept more ... because it seems like you're doing a lot of work, so it would be pretty hard for just one person to fund it. So you're seeking donations, and you're opening it up to more people. Is that correct? Virgil Hughes: Yeah. Allen: Because I've just recently a couple weeks ago I was looking into starting a foundation myself, and there are different ways to do it. There's different structures. There's the charity, and then there's the private foundation and then there's the family foundation and all different ways. Some of them can accept donations. Some of them cannot. But yours can? Virgil Hughes: Yes. Ours is a 501(c)(3), which is classified by the IRS as a public charity. So we can accept donations and do accept donations. They're tax deductible, and so we have a level of accountability as well to the US government. Actually, technically it's to the attorney general of the state in which we're chartered. But yeah, we accept donations, and like I said, I pay my own bills through the trading, and then the donations that we get are ... We call them partners. Our partners fund the travel and training that we do. Allen: Okay. Yeah, because a large part of most charities that I've seen is human resources, is marketing, administrative work. And I have a friend that she works for an NGO, and I was talking to her and I was like, "Hey, I'm thinking about starting my own foundation. I'm just learning about it. You already have experience in running one of these. Would you be interested in running mine, because I don't know what to do with it. I'm just going to fund it." And she goes, "Yeah, I'll run it." And I'm like, "Okay, how much money do you make doing that? How much do I have to pay you and whatnot?" She gave me a figure like mid ... not mid six figures, but it was over six figures. And I was scratching my head. I'm like, "Every dollar I give to you doesn't go to the people that we're trying to help, right?" And she's like, "Yeah, but I'm worth it, and I deserve it because I'm doing a great job," and this and that. And I was like there's a total disconnect right here between ... There's the employee mindset and then there's the employer mindset and just totally different disconnect. So what you're doing is basically you're not taking a salary. You're not taking any money out of this organization- Virgil Hughes: Correct. Allen: ... because all your expenses are paid for by the trading, which is awesome, which is a great way to do it. Virgil Hughes: Yeah. That's correct. Yeah, so every dollar that we get in helps me either get over there and do training or goes into the loan fund, with the exception of about 2%. I still have a website up. I still have to have an audit at the end of the year. I still have to, from time to time, buy a new computer and stuff like that. So there's a fractional amount of what I would call administrative costs [crosstalk 00:36:06] and things like visas. You got to get a visa every time you go and that sort of thing. So there's some administrative costs, but- Allen: You got to get your shots. Virgil Hughes: Shots. Yeah, that's another one. Allen: Yeah. It's part of the job, right? Virgil Hughes: Yeah. Allen: So let me ask you. Now, from what I learned, most charities and organizations, they are required ... To stay a charity, they have to give away at least 5% of their assets on a yearly basis in order to maintain their 503c charter. And then with the rest of the money, they can actually invest it. So are you actually trading the money that you- Virgil Hughes: No. No, I would never. I talked about being a turnaround guy. All of that was in the non-profit world until my very last job was running a for-profit hospital chain. I would never trade money that's given to a charity. In fact, there's actually some IRS rules about that in terms of the ways that you can invest that money. And I think trading would be a clear violation of the IRS rules about that. Allen: Oh, really? Okay. Virgil Hughes: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Allen: All right. What is your website so that people can find out more information? Virgil Hughes: Sure. It's www.newvinesintl.org. So that's N-E-W-V-I-N-E-S-I-N-T-L dot O-R-G. Allen: Okay, and that's NewVines International if you want to search it online. You'll be able to find them. Cool. Virgil, anything else? You have any other advice for our listeners? Virgil Hughes: I wish I did have something that was insightful and would catapult people forward, but unfortunately, I don't, Allen. It's just plugging away, keeping at it, and eventually something clicks. I guess the advice would be just that. Keep at it. And there are going to be hard times, and financial markets can knock your socks off. But part of trading is to get back up and go at it again and keep your account size small or your- Allen: Your risk small. Virgil Hughes: ... position size, your risk small. Yeah. Allen: Yeah, I mean, it's just something that I talk about a lot, and it's like you don't need 100 different things to work. You need one to work. You just need that one thing, like you said earlier, the one thing that you find that you're good at, and then you just keep doing it and you keep doing it and you keep doing it instead of looking for 15 different ways to trade, 15 different strategies to work out. You find one thing that works that fits your risk tolerance, that fits your temperament, how much money you have in your account, and even how much you want to trade. If you want to sit in front of the screen all day, then yeah, you can day trade, but then you won't be able to do stuff like this. If you're more of a passive trader, more of an options seller, then you can still earn enough money to survive and to live a decent life, live a good life, and then with the rest of your time, you can go and help other people, which is amazing. And it's something that I've always wanted to do, but unlike you, I never felt that strong enough urge to say, "All right. I'm ditching all this stuff, and I'm just going to go do it." So that is awesome, and I think you're leading by example. So if there's anybody out there that wants to do what Virgil is doing, I think I'm pretty sure that if you reach out to Virgil ... He's also on Facebook, if you want to reach to him there. I'm sure he'll help you and guide you and say, "Hey, you know what? Try this or go in this direction or whatnot." It's been a pleasure to talk to you, my friend. Virgil Hughes: Yeah. Glad to. If anybody wants to reach out, I'm here. Facebook, Virgil Greg Hughes. And I got to say it's been a wonderful journey. This is where life is at is getting beyond yourself and doing something good in the world. Allen: Yep. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's more than just leaving a legacy, because I mean, we talked about this earlier. After you get to a certain point where it's like, "Okay, I've made enough money. Now what?" People ask me all the time. "Allen, why do you have Option Genius, and why are you doing all this stuff? If you're so rich or you're doing so well trading, why don't you just go live on a beach in Hawaii or something?" I was like, "Yeah, you could, but after a while, you get bored and actually you want to help other people. You want to give back." Virgil Hughes: [crosstalk 00:41:22] it still becomes kind of empty if you do that. Yeah. Allen: Yeah. Yeah. There's only so many pina coladas you can drink. All right. All right, folks. Well, we appreciate you tuning in. like I said, contact Virgil if you have any questions, and we'll see you on the next episode. Virgil Hughes: Good. Allen, thanks so much. It's been an honor to be with you. Allen: Thank you, Virgil, for having us. Virgil Hughes: Take care.   References: NewVines International, Inc. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Welcome Genius Nation to another exciting episode of the Option Genius Podcast. This episode, we're going to be talking about 2019, and what's going to happen, or what I think is going to happen. Now it's called the prediction episode. And I hate predictions, mostly because most of them are, you know, wrong and people are pulling stuff out of thin air. But last year's episode, where I made predictions for 2018 was so popular that I decided to do again and just have fun with it. Really, that was one of the episodes that we got the most feedback on, one of the most feedbacks. And people were listening to that episode all the way to the end of the year, really. We had some comments, emails, that came in towards the end of 2018 where people who had just found the podcast were like, "Hey, I listened to your 2018 episode, because I want her to see how you did and what was right and what was wrong." A couple of things, I actually had chuckles on, so I'm glad I was able to make them laugh. But the way I do prediction, is really I try to look at trends. What is going on? What has been going on? And as they say in trading, the trend is your friend. So the trends will probably continue. So if we can identify these trends, especially if they're long term, if they have been occurring in the past and they're going to continue to occurring. Then those are things that we can actually benefit from in a financial sense. Right? So for example, the aging population of the United States, more and more people are getting older. The boomer generation is older. And so there are ways to monetize that, if you want to. See those are the types of trends, something that's not going to just be a flash in the pan, and just go away in a few months, but something that's going to continue for a long term. Those are the types of trends that I would like to identify. Those are the trends that I would like to invest in. And just, put your money in and take advantage of this over, and over, and over again where you don't have to watch it, and monitor it, and really be more passive about it. So before we get into the predictions of 2019, let's take a look back at what I said was going to happen in 2018, and see if I was actually right, or if I have egg on my face. So prediction number one from 2018 was that AI, artificial intelligence, is going to be used more and more in daily life. This is a trend, right? This is something that is occurring. This is something that we see. So this was kind of an easy prediction. And AI was more ingrained in almost all aspects of life nowadays. More and more cars have the self driving features. We have these firms, these financial firms, like Betterment that are money managers who are mainly using AI to manage people's money and allocate it in certain investments. The Quant Funds, the hedge funds that are run by algorithms and computers. They made money this year, while most funds lost money, and the marketing as a whole was down. So all the index funds were down. And most of the stock picking funds where they actually have people doing the work were down. And if you're interested in this, in AI, and learning about what's coming down the road, where we might be going as a species, take a look at the book called "The Singularity is Near" by a guy named Raymond Kurzweil. I mean, this is crazy, crazy stuff that he predicted years ago. Now not all of it has come to fruition yet, but we are much closer now than ever. And basically what he calls the singularity is when man and computer will be basically one. I mean, we're still human, but computers will be part of our brains is what he's saying. And we're not there yet. But I mean, do you know anybody who still doesn't have a smart speaker in their home? Right? One of these Alexa Echos, or the Google Home, or the Facebook Portal, or any of the others. I mean, everybody's got these things. So it's moving more and more in that direction with smart homes, and smart doorbells, and smart alarm systems, and all this stuff. I mean, the quote unquote smarter our homes get, the more stupider we get, because we're using our brains less and less and less. But that is seeming like what the future is going to be holding. So this one particularly, I was right. So I'm one and oh, so far. Now, prediction number two from 2018 was that the stock market will actually be up in 2018. And I missed on this one, but only by a little. I mean it was up for the whole year, until November when it dropped about 20% and then we ended down somewhere around 6% for the year, depending on which exchange you're looking at. And well, I mean it was over done, market going up was overdone. And the feds started raising interest rates, which was inevitable. Growth also seems to be slowing down. So earnings growth, share growth, all those things, revenue growth, those are slowing down. And so those were particularly the reasons why the market was down. It was down a little bit, not too much, and for those of us who were long stock or long index funds and ETFs, and then we were selling calls against them, we actually turned out a really good year. So if that's something that you haven't been doing, I would suggest you do so even, especially if you don't think that the marketing is going to continue to go up 20% a year. All right, so far I'm one and one. Prediction number three was that oil prices will be higher. And oil was at $60 a barrel at the beginning of the year. Currently as I record this, it's trading at $52 a barrel. So I was wrong on this one as well. But again, just like the stock one, I was right until November. And then oil tanked, from $77 all the way down to $42 and then rebounded in January of 2019. So why? Well OPEC really, they decided to take back their production cuts. So they had cut production and that had sent oil higher and then they came out and said, "Hey, you know what? We're not going to do these cuts anymore. We're going to put more oil into the market." And prices dropped. That was the main reason. And once they did flood the market, oil prices started to drop. But there was something else at play here as well that I want to talk about. You see, being long oil was a very easy trade. You listen to what OPEC is saying and you follow along with it because over the last couple of years, two, three years, they've been spot on. So when they say they're going to pump more oil, prices go down. When they say they're going to cut back on oil, prices go up. So it's been pretty easy to see that. And long oil was a very, very crowded trade, meaning that there were a lot of people who had long options, and long futures contracts in oil where they were just buying them, thinking that the price is going to go up and up and up. And so when the price started dipping, the price started dropping, these algorithms, these funds that use computers, started selling and that caused margin calls on a lot of futures trading firms. That caused panic selling, which caused more dropping of the oil price, which caused more margin calls, and more selling. And in the end it was a bloodbath that blew up many futures trading funds and firms. And it wasn't pretty. And that's why you have a drop from 77 to 42. I mean, that's almost a 50% drop because not because of a huge major fundamental change, but because of the way these firms were trading the futures markets. And so that part has now, it's over, the selling on that is over. And since then oil has actually rebounded. So, it's up about, it was at 42 at the low. Currently it's right around 52, so it's up $10 since then, which is about 25% from the low. So what is oil going to do next year? It's hard to tell. So I'm not going to be making a prediction on this one. But I do believe that oil is going to remain steady. It's not going to be as volatile as the November. I mean, most of the year was not that volatile. It got very volatile in November. And so at that point, if you're trading oil, like we do have our blank check trading course where we trade options in oil. One of the first things I said was, "Hey, if you don't need to be in the market, don't be in the market." The volatility is getting super high. Just take a step back as option traders and options sellers, we don't need to be in the market every single month. We do not need to put our money at risk when things are going crazy. And so that is why you really need to look at volatility as well as what is the stock doing, what is the market doing, to keep an eye on volatility as well, especially, well, we'll get to that in my future predictions. Prediction number four from last year, 2018, was that China would be more independent and stronger. And I was right about this one. As I record this, the US and China are at odds right now, and going toe to toe in a trade war. They got terabytes on both sides. And they're trying to talk it out and it doesn't seem like they're going anywhere. This was unthinkable 10 years ago, I mean, even five years ago. This was unthinkable. But it is happening and the Chinese are not backing down. I mean trump had a trade war with Mexico and Canada recently, right? And both of them made concessions fairly quickly, and those are pretty big markets, especially Canada. But China is holding firm. So they are getting stronger and stronger. They are becoming more dominant in the world, especially certain parts of the world where the US is not. And they're taking over, and I would say that their influence is even greater than the Soviet Union was at the time in the 80s. So that leaves me two for two in my predictions. The last prediction of 2018 was that it was going to be a great year for option sellers. And it was. It was truly. The majority of the year, we had low amounts of volatility and put spreads and non directional trades worked very, very well until the end of the year though when the markets dropped. The VIC spiked, and people that were unprepared, they got hurt. So although the markets were down themselves, I'm going to say that option sellers still came out ahead at the end. So after my first year of predictions, I'm going to end up three and two. So I won three and I lost two. Okay, so let's look at 2019. What is on the horizon? First of all, I'm going to say that interest rates, I believe, will be higher at the end of the year and inflation will be higher as well. In fact, you can already sense and feel the inflation in consumer goods like food, travel, and any kind of services that you pay for. So to tame inflation, the Fed will have no choice but to raise rates, two times, maybe three times, maybe more. Hopefully not more, that's going to kill the stock market. But at least two times, maybe three times. And that will put a damper on a lot of things. So I would say for prediction number one, interest rates will be higher. Inflation will also be higher. Second prediction is that we are actually headed for a recession here in the United States. Now this one is a little bold, I think, because most pundits out there are saying that we will not have a recession in 2019. But I do think there we will have one. Now to have a recession, you have to have negative growth for two quarters, meaning the economy has to contract for two quarters in a row. And so you will be in a recession for a while before it is officially called a recession. So let's say, whenever you hear this three, let's say for the next three months you have negative growth and then another three months you have negative growth. So six months from now is when they would say, "Oh, you know what? Hey, we're in a recession." It's a lagging type of indicator. So even though you'll start feeling the effects of it now and for the next six months, it won't be called a recession until six months from now. Okay. So I see economic activity slowing down in at least the back half of 2019 if not sooner. We're not going to have much growth in the first half. We will have inflation, and layoffs in the second half. And then in 2020 they'll actually come out and say, "Hey, you know, we were officially in recession and that it started in 2019." So that is my prediction. It won't be called the recession until 2020 and they're going to try to keep that as far away into the future as possible, because we do have elections and all that stuff coming up. But I think in 2020 they're going to say that yeah, we're in recession and it started in '19. So that leads me to prediction number three, which is that the stock market, will be lower. Last year, I said it was going to be higher, this year I'm saying it's going to be lower. And as I record this, the S&P 500 is at 2,600 right around 2,600. So I believe it's going to be lower at the end of the year. Now again, this is contrary to most analysts. According to most analysts, the markets should be higher next year, because what they're saying is that when January is a positive month, the market overall for the year is positive. So, that's the way it normally happens. I think this year is going to be an abnormal year.  I don't know what we're going to do for the rest of February or rest of January. Market has been up a little bit so far. We did have a little bit of a Santa Claus rally at the end of the year of 2018. That normally bodes well for the markets. But I think growth is going to stall. I think earnings will stall for most companies and after a decade of strong stock market, we're going to have another year of declines. So that's my prediction there. Onto prediction number four. Everywhere you look, and this is a little bit more localized. So everywhere you look now, when you see financial ads. Now if you are a trader, if you are an option seller, you see ads on Facebook, you see ads on Google, you see ads following you around with the remarketing. And eventually you'll subscribe to something like a download, a free PDF report or some something and you'll buy some small thing, and you'll get on these email lists. So then once you get on one email list, it seems like you get on a thousand different email lists, because then everybody starts selling you and sending you emails about buy this and buy that. And so when you look all over at these financial ads run by these financial newsletter companies that want you to give them money for their financial information and research, a lot of the marketing you are seeing nowadays and it started in 2018, but it's really going to, it really picked up towards the end, is about pot stocks, right? Marijuana, that pot stocks are going to be the next boom in investments. You probably already understand this and now you have to understand why this is. Okay. Why all of a sudden is there this huge focus on marijuana? Well, because financial newsletter companies have to keep coming up with new ideas to pitch you. That's what it is. They can not just come out and say, "Hey, we want you to buy our newsletter and we're going to give you stock picks." Even though that's exactly what they're doing, right? They're going to be like, "Hey, we're going to show you how to get rich." Well, that's what everybody else says. So they have to stand out from the crowd. They have to make it enticing and mysterious. So even in their ads, they're going to be talking about this big opportunity or there's big amazing company, they're not going to give you the name, they're not going to give you exactly what it is until you actually give them some money. And the way the financial newsletter space is right now, it's dominated by a few companies that are owned by the same people. So I mean it could be all one big company, but for whatever reason, they've broken it up into several different sister companies that are all fighting amongst each other. So they do cooperate in the sense where they share their promotions and they share their email lists and stuff like that. But they are set up a separate company so that they look different. And so if you've heard of any of the names, like Agora Financial, Stansberry Research, Weiss Research, Palm Beach Letter, Oxford Club, Money Map Press, and I mean they got like a dozen others, all of these guys are owned by the same people. They all operate the same way. They try to entice you into buying their cheap newsletter for like $50 or $100, and then they hit you up with, "Hey, buy this thing for a thousand dollars. Buy this thing for $10,000. Buy this cruise for $15,000." A year ago, it was cryptos. That was the big thing, "Oh, cryptocurrency market, cryptocurrency market." Now, pot stocks are the big idea. I mean, who knows what it's going to be next, I don't know. But these guys are super smart. They're super creative. They're going to come out with something that will be new and mysterious to give us, to make us give them our money so they can tell us about their research. And myself, I don't think that most individual investors should actually be wasting their time on pot stocks. I'm going to get to my prediction. I'm not at the prediction yet, but when it comes to these marijuana stocks that are talked about in these new letters and whatnot, most of these are very small companies. Most of these are going to be knocked out of business, they're going to go out of business by themselves, or they're going to have somebody come in and knock them out of business before they make any kind of money. So I think that most individual investors should not be wasting their time on pot socks, but take it for what it's worth. Now, this ties into my prediction, which is prediction number four is that more and more states will be legalizing marijuana. Again, this is a trend. You can probably see this yourself, right? It's not something out of left field. They are already 11 states that allow it for recreational use. So it's legal for everybody. More and more are coming. Heck, I mean, I'm in Texas and Texas is going to have it up for vote very soon in the government. And Texas is as conservative as it gets. In fact, in Congress, they now have a congressional cannabis caucus, led by a representative from Oregon, which is going to try to get pot declassified, so that it is not treated the same way as other narcotics. Right now, pot is the same as crack, or cocaine or, all those other ones. But they are trying to make it so that pot is not as bad, and is not punishable by jail time, and fines, and whatnot as the other ones. If that happens, then it'll actually make it easier and more compelling for other companies to get involved in the marijuana trade. Now Canada, the whole country of Canada, it's legal, in the whole country. And the tax windfalls that are being collected by Canada, and by all these states that have already made it legal, I mean for everybody else, for the rest of the country, I think it's going to be a race not to be the last one to get to the punch bowl. I mean, you have all this money collected in taxes, and these governments are spending more than they collect. And that just seems like it never changes. But they going to see this as an additional tax revenue and if they see more and more states, like a domino effect. A few of them have already been doing it now more and more are going to be racing to it. And so I say that we'll probably have about 20 states legalize it for use by anyone, by the end of the year. And I think 30 of them will allow it for medicinal purposes. So medical reasons, for pain relief. So hopefully by the end of next year, you might have more than half the country allow pot for one reason or another. That's going to be a tipping point. And so in 2020 it might be a free for all. .And we might have legal marijuana everywhere, who knows. Or maybe just one or two states that are left holding out. But it's going to really change a lot of things. So the one company that I want to buy, to take advantage of this would be Philip Morris, ticker PM, because, I mean, they've been making cigarettes and smoking. They know about it, they know marketing, they know distribution. They have all the channels already there. Everything is laid out. As soon as they get the go ahead from the federal government that we're not going to prosecute you, they could go in and just blow up everybody in every state. The only limitation would be that the way the laws are now in each state, you actually have to draw or grow the marijuana in that particular state. You cannot take that marijuana to a different state to sell it. So you have to grow it in that state and then you have to sell it in that state. Actually, I'm not too sure about the selling of the actual goods. But I think you have to grow it in that state and you have to sell it in that state. I don't know about those, like those edibles, you know, like the gummy bears, and the chocolate bars. I don't know if those can be transported. I don't think so. But if that's the case, it'll be a little bit harder for Philip Morris. But I think they're going to be the ones that really hit a home run with this, or at least for recreational use. Now for medicine purposes, big Pharma, the big giants, Pfizer, Merck, all of them, they will make it a pill to some point, or an injection or something and they will dominate that field once it becomes legal. And so that's why the little companies that you have now, they're recommended by all the financial newsletters, those guys are going to be put out of business by these big firms once they come in. Now they might make a little bit of money for a year or two until everything becomes legalized. But the point is that right now, it takes such a huge investment to get that going that they might not ever get their investment back, before they're shut down, or put out of business. Now you might get lucky if you're an investor in one of these, and they might get bought out by a larger company. Philip Morris might come in and say, "Hey, you know what, we're not going to start our own nursery or pot growing facility. We'll just buy a couple that are already there." And then you might get bought out at that sense. And that might be lucky for you. But I wouldn't bet on it. I wouldn't say that that is the only way to make money. You never want to be an investment, in a stock and investment, hoping that the only exit you can have is a buyout. So that's prediction number four. On to prediction number five. This one is a little bit of a negative. I'm saying that real estate prices are going to drop. Now this one is going to be hard to gauge, right? We don't know if I'm going to win on this one or not, if I'm going to be right or not, because it depends on location. But overall, I feel that it's going to be a buyer's market, in the US when it comes to real estate. There're going to be fewer, fewer buyers in the market, and fewer sales overall. Now we're already seeing this happen. So if you look at the earnings calls, the earning reports of the larger home builders that we have, they already report fewer and few people coming in to see the models, right? They're having fewer closings. They still have people coming in that want to buy a house, to get in before interest rates go up too high. But they're looking at cutting down their expectations for 2019. They're not going to be constructing as many homes, because they're not seeing new people come in, saying that, "Yeah, yeah, we want a house six months from now. We want a house a year from now." And I'm seeing this effect myself as well, because an investment that I was in, which was, it was an investment where they were buying properties that are broken down here in Houston, they were fixing them up and then they were selling them. This investment actually did very well, but the fund is closing down, because there are too many investors like them. There are too many people that are chasing these deals of the messed up houses. There aren't that many houses there. There are more people chasing them, trying to buy them. And there are not enough people buying the homes, when they're fixed up. So that is leading to smaller and smaller profit margins for these fix and flippers. So the people running this investment decided to just shut it down and return all the money to investors instead of trying to keep doing it and go after smaller and smaller margins. And I'm hearing more of that sort of thing happening all over the country. Not just in Houston. But in other areas as well, like Atlanta, Denver, and others. So if you are looking to buy a home or a business property or even a business itself, you might want to wait. Or I mean, you could put in a low ball offer. Right? And just sit on it. And just let the person know and say, "Hey, you know what? Here's my offer. I think the market's turning and I think this is a legit offer. I'm ready to buy if you agree to this offer. Now I know it's less than what you were expecting. But keep my offer, keep my phone number. And if you ever decide to change your mind, let me know." And then just keep calling that person back after a couple months, two, three months, give them a call, "Hey, I'm still here. My offer's still valid. You want to do it, let's do it." Eventually I think there's a good chance that you're going to buy whatever you want to buy will be cheaper in a year or two. So, keep your powder dry. Keep some cash on hand, and be careful. So that's it for my 2019 predictions, much more dire than last year, unfortunately. But it does seem that there are dark clouds on the horizon. Now, I wish I was wrong. I wish I will be wrong on the direction of the markets and real estate, and other real assets, but we won't know until next year. That's the whole thing about predictions, right? I would love to hear what you guys think of this episode. Email me and let me know. If there's something I'm missing, please share that as well because I learned from you guys as much as you learn from me. So I hope you have an amazing year. Be vigilant, be careful on any risky ventures and maybe keep a little more cash than you have in the past on hand, because when things go down, that's great time for people who have cash to be able to buy stuff really, really cheap. So take advantage of that as well. And remember trade with the odds in your favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Should you trade in your own name or a Corporation? How do you protect your assets? Do you even need to? In this episode, I talk to individual investor Brian Canter who explains why he trades inside a Corporation, how he set it up, the benefits, and pitfalls. This is an episode every serious trader needs to listen to.   Resources: Momentum Structural Analysis - Anderson Business Advisors - " data-userid="424194864991944704" data-orgid= "425237368832946176">Moore Research Center - mrci.com Momentum Structural Analysis -olivermsa.com Anderson Business Advisors - andersonadvisors.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. 

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Genius nation, it's time for you to lean in. That's right. I said it's time for you to lean in. Recently I was interviewed on the Live Your Passion podcast. It was a lot of fun. It was fun we talked about a couple of things especially about how I live my passion and how I discovered my passion and all that. But when I was telling my story and I was doing the interview, I shared that when I got started in trading I had a really, really rough time. Why do most traders lose money? Because they are stupid? Lazy? Nope. In this episode I reveal why most traders lose money and why you will too if you do not make this one small shift in your thinking and your trading. This is an exciting episode with a lot to learn from... Resources: Book: Think and Grow Rich Podcast: Live Your Passion Podcast -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Brad Pitt starred in a show called MoneyBall. It's about a guy named Billy Beane. That's his real name. He's a former ballplayer who was hired to take over as the general manager of the Oakland A's. One of the worst teams in baseball at the time, they were doing okay but they had a problem. See, they're not a ... They're called a small market team, which means that they don't have a lot of fans to draw from, and so they don't make as much money as other teams do. And so their budget is much, much smaller. So they need a budget in order to hire the best players. So if you want the big home run hitters, you want the, the names that everybody knows, you got to pay him a lot of money. And the Oakland A's, they didn't have that budget. His job, Billy Beane's job was to recruit a team of players that could win games with the budget one third the size of the other teams in the league. So Billy did something controversial. He stopped focusing on the players and started focusing on what actually wins ball games: getting on base. If you get on base, you will games. And in trading it is the same thing. You win on your trades, you make more money. Small hits: singles, doubles and walks. Small hits: winning on trade after trade when the odds are in your favor. Hear about how you too can win in trading by taking the unconventional route. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Theta is an option sellers best friend. It is the money we make. If you put on a trade, an option-selling trade, you can look at it and say, how much theta is this trade? If the stock does not move that whole day, that's how much that your trade will decay. That's how much money you will make in your trade, because the options will be worth that much less at the end of the day. Now, theta decay, I don't want this to be a big lecture on theta decay, but theta decay does go in a exponential curve and whatnot, and we can cover that in a later bit. But my point here is that the more theta we have, the more money we make, and when the markets are closed on holidays we still get the theta, but there is no risk, since the stock's price is not moving. Stocks are closed, the markets are closed, there's no even after-hours trading. There's nothing, it's just closed. And the options that we sold are losing value every day. There's a theta decay rate, there's an amount every day that the option loses value. That sounds like we're getting something for nothing. That's like free money, huh? I mean, that'd be kind of pretty cool. But do we really get a free day of theta on a holiday? Kind of, not exactly. Kind of, all right? Let's get to this. Now, if you think about it, the weekend is the same thing, because the markets are closed, so more free money, right? We don't even have to wait for the holidays. Every weekend we get free theta. So let's just do this, let's go in on Friday close to the close, sell a whole bunch of options, get the theta decay on Saturday, get the theta decay on Sunday, and then on Monday morning at the open we buy all those options back. Oh man, that's like free money. No risk. That is a wonderful, can't lose scenario, right? Well, you wouldn't be the first person to think of that. I hate to break it to you, but everybody knows that. Everybody knows about theta and the weekends. Sellers do, option buyers do. So yes, we do get the theta decay every day the markets are closed, but how much we get is the issue. And there are ways to take advantage of how the theta decay works. Which will be revealed in this episode. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Are there are people in your life that are trying to get you to give up on your dreams? There are aren't there? Somebody's skeptical about you trading. Maybe a mother-in-law, or a mother, or a wife, or a husband. Somebody, it doesn't matter who it is, but their comments hurt. Right? Their comments sting if you listen to them long enough. 'Cause it makes you lose confidence in yourself. And for a trader that is killer. If you lose confidence in yourself as a trader, then there's almost nothing that anybody else can teach you to overcome that. I can give you all the strategies and all the tricks, and all the trading plans in the world, but if you lose confidence in yourself, if you don't think that you can do this, then you can't. The average person on the street doesn't sell options because they are too lazy, maybe lazy is not the right word. Or they're not motivated enough, or whatever. But they don't wanna take that action. They don't wanna learn. It's easier to watch TV. It's easier to watch Real Housewives of Orange County on TV. Or Maury Povich or Doctor Phil, or any of this other stuff that is like, it just lets you check out mentally so that you don't have to think about your own life. Or think about how things could be better but they're not because you don't take any action. Right? And we have this in every culture. If somebody is out there legitimately trying to make their life better, the haters will come in and put them down. The haters will tell them that it's not something that they should be doing, that it's not possible. Who do you think you are? That sort of thing. How to overcome the haters is what we discuss in this episode. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- How do you deal with the emotions of losing money when trading? How do you get over the feeling of being punched in the gut and seeing your hard earn money disappear? That's what this episode is about. There are 4 Steps or Stages that I go through when I lose a hefty sum and I detail them in detail. Losses are part of trading. We will have them. But sometimes, the markets throw us a major curve ball and the losses are larger than we are emotionally ready to handle. And that is why we have the 4 Stages of Dealing With Losses. If this is a path you want to take, this is what you want to do, and I hope it is because it's amazing, 99% of the time, it's amazing. Maybe once a year, you might have a time where you're feeling, at least, for me, I feel this bad. When I was learning how to trade, it was a lot more often. It was maybe once a month, but since it's gotten better, I've been more in control over my emotions, and now it's got a lot less. Follow these four steps, if you have any cover, if you have any losses, overcome them. This is how you do it. This is the plan. If you need any help, reach out to me, and we'll be sure to help you out as much as we can. Peace. Don't forget, trade with the odds in your favor. Links: Trade Hacks Protect Your Portfolio -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Genius Nation, welcome to another edition of the Podcast. Today, I really want to talk about something that has been ... a lot of people talk about it, a lot of people as questions about it and it's hard to answer this question because it's different for everybody. And that question is, "How long should it take for me to be successful as an options trader?" Again, it's different for everybody, depends on how much time you put in, depends how much effort you put in, how serious you take it and how much money you have. The less money, obviously it will take longer to build that up into a sizeable amount and if you make mistakes in the beginning, it could affect your confidence if you have the wrong trading plan or if you have the wrong strategy that doesn't fit to your style or your temperament, your risk temperament, then that could affect you as well. But really, all of that is fine and good but really the thing is that does it really matter how long it takes? As long as eventually, you get there or eventually, you're making progress as you go along. Because as we say, the destination is not the important thing, the journey is what makes you happy. The journey is the longest part of it, right? For example, let's say you're on this journey, you're learning how to trade, all of a sudden, boom, you get there, "Hey, I just made a million dollars this year trading." Okay, you pat yourself on the back, "Woo hoo." But then after a while, that feeling, that euphoria kind of goes away. So, it's the journey, it's the learning, it's all the epiphanies you get while you're learning, it's what you learn about yourself, it's how you discipline yourself, how you learn that discipline that really makes you a better person as you're trying to become a better trader at the same time. Another way to think about this is let's say, go back in time, when you were in high school, or you graduate high school, you went to high school, right? You spent four years, five years, maybe you got your masters so, two years after that. Maybe you did some PhD, maybe you did whatever, some more time after that. If you had a doctor, you got more time, and you go to school for four, five, six years in order to go and get a job. So, you graduate, now the days the kids are making, they graduate, they're making 40, 50,000 a year and that's a decent salary, decent starting salary. But it takes a few more years before they can actually go and pay off all those student loans because college is so expensive nowadays, you know? Who knows what it's costing right now. It's crazy how expensive college is right now, and it hasn't kept up with wage growth so, you're spending more to go to college, you're spending several years of your life, you're probably taking that out on loans and then, you're coming out, you're making a decent amount, but most of that money is going to payoff those loans so ... I have some friends who've been out of college for ten, 12 years and they're still paying off their debts. They can't live the life they want to, they can't buy a house, they can't do this because they're still paying off all their college loans, which is nuts. So, let's say you go to college for six years, right? You rack up couple hundred thousand dollars worth of debt, you get out, takes you maybe another four, five years to pay it off maybe. So, we're looking at about ten years from start to finish to get to the point where you're probably making 75,000 a year. I'm just ball parking here, right? So, it took you ten years to get there. Would you be willing to put that time into trading? I mean, if you think, "Man, I've been trading for three months, and I can't get this stuff." Well no, that's not the way it works, you know? Whether you've been trading for a year or two years or five years, you have to put in the time, you've got to put in the effort. And if you do then eventually, you'll see yourself progressing on the option continuum. You'll see yourself moving up from level two to level four to level five to level six and then maybe you'll get stuck. But if you get stuck, then reach out, get some help and then mow to the next level and that's how you keep progressing and progressing and progressing and eventually, you'll be able to get to the point that you want to be where you're making enough money to pay off your bills and not have to do that crumby job that you get $75,000 a year for or go spend more money in retirement or do whatever else you want to do. But it takes time to get there. So, that's what I want to stress to you is that this is not gonna be an overnight success kind of thing. You hear stories, you hear, "Oh yeah, this one trader, he made a million dollars on one trade." Or lately we had the whole Bitcoin thing where people were buying Bitcoin and they became millionaires. There's that one guy ... what's his name? The guy with the curly hair. [inaudible 00:05:09] or something, I don't know how you say his name but he had ads all over the place talking about how he's a Bitcoin millionaire. Well no, he spent a few thousand dollars buying some Bitcoins when they were like a dollar. He got lucky, he placed a bet, he bought a really, really long call option and it paid off for him and now he's trying to get you to give him money to give you advice about Bitcoin because he got lucky. It's not like he has a plan or a trading method where he's gonna make you money over time. He just got lucky once and now, he's just milking it, which is fine, that's cool. Everybody does their thing but that's not likely to happen again, right? It's very rare that that happens and it doesn't happen to the person the first time they're doing it. This guy probably made a lot of bets in other things, he probably put a lot of money into other things that didn't work out and this one thing worked out. So, if you're thinking that, "Hey, I'm gonna make my first trade and I want to make a lot of money or I'm gonna start winning money off the bat," it doesn't really happen that way because there's gonna be a lot of mistakes that you're gonna make in the beginning. You might be trading too large, you might not pay attention, you might not have the discipline to adjust, you might not know how to adjust properly. There's a lot of different reasons why you could be not trading the way you're supposed to do and then hopefully, you do get enough wins under your belt to get you going and to not totally wipe you out and if you're selling options, then that's one win already in your favor because the odds are in your favor when you get going. And that's why I prefer option selling is because when you're new, you have that room to make those mistakes, you know? You sell far away from the money so, even if the stock does go against you, you still have that room, you still have that time, you still have that ability to adjust your trade or get out a small loss instead of the people that are just starting out and then they buy options and you either double your money or you lose everything. And most of the time, they lose everything. So, that's my take on it. You go to college, you spend all that time, you spend all that money, you spend all that effort to come out with a job that maybe you like, probably you hate and takes years to pay off all that debt. Ten years later you're wondering, "What have I done with my life?" Ten years of options trading, your life would be radically different. So, to answer the question, "How long should it take me?" There's really no telling because it's different for everybody, like I said. But if you are disciplined, if you can put in ... I want to give you an answer, I want to come up with some number and say, "Okay, if it's taking you more than ten years and you are working at a full time, then there's something wrong." Right? But if you're gonna go at this full time, all day long, nine to five, whatever, as a job, you're not doing anything else or maybe you're working a nightshirt and you're doing this in the daytime, you should be able to be positive trader within a year. I'm going out on a limb and saying this and again, it doesn't apply to everybody but if you do a lot of trades, you do a lot of paper trading, you do your homework, you do your research, you find strategies that work for you, you do a lot of back testing to find out which is working, what is not working, what works for you, what doesn't work for you and then you concentrate on those strategies, and those stocks and those trades that work best for you, you should be able to be positive within a years time. If not, then definitely you need to get out, you need to get help, you need to say, "Hey, somebody help me." Find a coach, find a mentor, reach out, take a course, do something in the field or in the the trade or in the strategy that you have chosen. So, if you decide, "Hey, I want to do Iron Condor, that's the thing that fits me, that's what I want to work on, that's what I want to do," of course, the market has to be conducive to that during your learning time but if it is and you're learning and it's been a year ... you know, and if you're doing monthly options, which with Condors, you probably should be doing monthly options, that's only 12 real trades, right? That's 12 trades but hopefully, you're doing back testing, hopefully you're doing paper trading where you're doing a lot of them and that's where back testing really comes into play where you can actually go back in time. So, if you can pickup a software that will actually let you go back in time and trade day by day by day to see how well you've done, in one year's worth of time, you can do 500, 600 trades. Whereas if you're not doing that, if you're only doing real money, you can only do 12 trades so, the guy who's doing 500 is gonna go through a lot more market's ups and downs and get a lot more experience than the guy who's just doing 12 months so, when you're serious, when you're focused on it, you have to have the right tools and a good back testing software can run you a little bit of money, a few hundred bucks a year but it's not something that's gonna break the bank if you are serious about this, if you're full-time on this. If you're saying, "I have $50,000, $100,000 and I'm going to trade this money and I'm going to turn this into enough money to live off of." Okay, it's gonna be really tough, unless your bills are really small, if you're single or whatever, then you can do it. If you have a family, three, four kids like I do, you're gonna need a lot more than that but in the beginning, you can say, "My goal is to make 25% a year." That would be an awesome goal. If you can get that within the first year and say, "Okay, I'm gonna practice my first year, I'm gonna work, work, work and then in my second year, I'm gonna make 25%," and you get there, that would be amazing. Because from then on, it only gets better, right? You can have more money, you can get other people to give you money, you can improve, whatever not. But even 25% would be awesome. People would be throwing money at you and say, "Wow, you made 25% a year? Here please, please do it for me, please do it for me and we'll split the profits." So, if you can show a positive track record, there's always ways to get more money. But I think that would be a good benchmark, a good place for you to be. So, if you're full-time, it might take a year. Paper trading, back testing, putting on lots and lots of trades, looking at different strategies, doing education, coming up with your own trading plans or finding ones that work for you and then maybe tweaking them a little bit if you want to.  But I would say a year would be a good amount. If you are doing this part time, you got a full-time job, maybe you can spend maybe an hour a day trading and if you can't spend any time at night ... I mean, you're gonna have to put in extra hours. One hour a day during the market open is not enough to really, really get there. Yeah, you can make maybe $1,000 or $2,000 a month and if that's all you want then that's fine for you. But I'm talking about the people who actually want to do this for a living. If you want to do that then you'll have to put in time after the market closes doing your research there, doing your back testing there, that's another feature of the back testing software, it's there when you want to use it so if you work during the day, you can't do any live trades okay, that's fine. When you go home at night for maybe an hour, two hours, three hours, do as many back tests as you can and you can go through them really quickly and get that experience while you're building up, right? And while you're saving your money or while you're learning and that way you'll get years of experience in a couple hours a night so, that would be an awesome thing to do. And if you're doing part time, I would say give yourself maybe three years. Because it's part time, of course. And you're working because you need to save up money, you can't just go into it full time, like I said, with $50,000 or $100,000. But if you're doing part time, you're saving up your money, at the same time you're building up your experience, you're building up your strategies, you're doing all that so, I would say give it a good three years. And at the end of that, you should be at the point where, "Hey, I can make enough money that I can pay my bills." You're not gonna be living in a super mansion but that's not the point, the point is to get to that financial freedom. That point where, "How much money am I making from trading? That's the money that I can use to make my bills so, I'm not getting super rich yet but I don't have to work for a job. I can work anywhere in the world. I can work when I want and how I want, no boss, nobody telling me what to do, wake up in my pajamas. Trade in my pajamas," all those cool things that go along with being your own boss and being able to have that kind of freedom. So again, if you're going at it full-time, I would say about a year. Dedicated, right? Dedicated. Full-time everyday. One year. If you're doing it part time, I would say maybe three years. Some people can do it faster, some people, it will take more time. But if you're serious, you're disciplined, you're at it, I think that would be decent amounts. Obviously, depending on who you are, if you want to put more time or less time and if you understand the concepts better, depending on the market you're in as well. If it's a very stable market, very slow market then you'll be able to accumulate faster. But I think that the paper trading and the back testing definitely are things that you need to do to help you out. And that's the name of the game, right? To get on this journey, to enjoy the journey, it has it's up and downs, it's like a rollercoaster, you're gonna lose, you're gonna win. Emotionally, it's very draining and so, that's why if you can do it with back testing and paper trading where you don't have any real money at stake, you can be a lot more calmer and a lot more disciplined on your investments and your adjustments and your plan. So, that's the case. Remember, don't get discouraged if it doesn't happen overnight. If it doesn't happen within a few months, if it doesn't happen in a year. If you're doing it part time and you've been at it for a year, two years, don't get discouraged. Look at where you were when you started. Look at what you knew and now, look at what you know now. Look at all the stuff that you've done, look at all the trades that you made. Listen to some of the other podcasts about going over your trades, reviewing your trades, looking for patterns, seeing what works for you, seeing what doesn't work for you. Find your niche in trading. Find what works best for you, what you enjoy doing the best, what you enjoy doing the most and then focus on that, concentrate on that, really go in, all in on that one strategy. You don't need 20 different strategies, you don't even need five strategies. If you can focus on one and get really, really good at it, in the beginning, that's all you need. Really. To get you over that hump, to get you to the point where I'm confident in myself, I'm confident as a trader, I know I can make money out of thin air. All I need to do is just focus on my plan, stay disciplined and I can make money consistently month, after month, after month. If you have that, if you get to that point, your life changes completely. 100%. Everything changes for you. That's where we need to go, that's where we need to get to and the simplest way to do that is to put in the time, focus on one strategy, one technique that works for you and then put in the time, put in the effort, pay your dues. If you're doing it full-time, probably a year. If you're doing it part time, probably about three years but then compared to other aspects, you know, compared to other ways of making a living, this is a lot easier. Right? Going to college for four, six years, paying your bill, paying your student loans for another four to six years after that and then working in a crumby job. Or maybe you start ... maybe you buy a franchise, you have to pay a couple hundred thousand dollars in loans and fees and all that to start a franchise and then, most of those go out of business. Most small businesses go out of business in the first five years anyway, right? So you're basically buying yourself a job and you might not like it, you might like it, it might work, it might not work. There's a big risk there. Here, we're talking about smaller numbers, small risks and a lot less time to get to profitability. So, you guys already know this. There's lots of benefits to trading but that's the timeline that I would say. If it's taking you longer than that, again, reach out, get a mentor. If you wanted to go faster than that, I've already told you what you need to do. Get more practice, more paper trades, more back testing. Nobody can really do it for you. If you want to learn it, you're gonna have to do it and go through that practice, go through the motions. You're gonna have to do it trade after trade after trade and that's really the only way to do it. Nobody can take what ... if I wanted to, I can't take all my trading knowledge and just take it out of my brain and stick it into your brain, doesn't work that way. You'll have to develop it on your own. But that's part of the fun, that's part of the journey. Stay on it, stay focused, don't get discouraged. If you do, reach out to us, maybe I can send you some encouraging words or two but it is worth it. The end of the journey ... the journey's worth it, the journey's fun. The end of the journey when you get to the goal, that is awesome and so, just keep at it. If you need anything, we're always here for you, let us know. Help at optiongenius.com. Take care, bye. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Ho, ho, ho, here we are, back for another edition of Option Genius Podcast. I wanted to answer a question that I get from newbies, which is what should my first trade be? I remember, it was a while ago, but I kind of remember what it felt like when I first got trading, selling options. It was so exciting, it was so new, it was like a ray of hope because ... I don't know if you know my story but I had lost my job and so, I took this money that my wife had saved up. You know, she worked during college and after that, she got a job as a nurse and she saved up all of her money because she was working at home and all that so, she had a bunch of money saved up when we got married. And basically, she let me use it to try to get to my dream of being a full-time trader. A trader where I'm paying the bills by trading. I had gotten laid off and I was like, "Baby, I can't go back to work, this is not for me. Wearing a suit and dressing up and it's choking the life out of me. Let me try to make it as a trader." So, she agreed and I went to work, I proceeded to basically lose a ton of money very quickly. Day trading, swing trading, futures trading, all kinds of different stuff, buying options. And I did sell some options too because, you know, you read articles and you watch videos and say, "Oh, this is cool. Let me try this thing." So, I was trying everything, I was learning, I was doing things. Most of it was horrible. I would have some wins, it's not like I lost all the time but normally, if you look at it week to week basis, month to month basis, my account balances were just going lower and lower and lower but then, I reviewed all my trades, I sat back I said, "I can't do this, I'm gonna run out of money very soon. What is going on?" Going through all my stuff, doing the review, I found that there were some trades where I actually sold options that worked out in my favor and so, I was like, "Alright, let me focus on this. Let me see if I can just pick one thing and do it and really learn about it." And the more I looked into it, the more I studied it, the more I read about it, I was fascinated, I was enthralled. I was like, "Wow, this is so cool. Why didn't I know about this before? Why didn't I do this before?" The odds are in your favor, the money is really good, it doesn't take a lot of time, there's not as much stress and I don't have to be stuck in front of my corrupter all day long. I remember there were times when I was day trading that you're in the chat rooms, like every single broker or a lot of these websites, they have chat rooms where these guys who are day trading, they hang out in these chat rooms because they're in front of the computer anyway. And so, I remember there was this story of this one lady who she put on a trade and then she really had to go to the bathroom. I mean, really, really bad. She couldn't do it and she was a big trader. She ran to the bathroom, by the time she came back she lost $30,000 in like three minutes. And I was like, "Holy cow." And it broke her, it completely ... she had bankrupted her. I don't know if it bankrupted her but her account was like almost zeroed out, she had margin calls, she had to quit being a trader, we never saw her again in the chatroom and it was insane. That's the kind of pressure that these people are under and I don't want to have that kind of pressure. I mean, jeez, that was crazy. How do you sleep at night? That's why they tell you when you're day trading that you always get out of your trades before the end of the day, before the market closes. Don't go into any trades overnight because that's just insane. You wouldn't be able to sleep at night, you'd be jittery all night, that's not for me. I like sleeping at night, I sleep really well at night and it's all because of the way we trade, you know? And so really, when you think about it, you go back and you say, "Alright, if I was brand new to this, I had never sold an option before, didn't really know what it was about. I understand push and calls but what would the first trade be? What should I do to get my toe in the water? To really just try this out. I just want to see, I just want to get a feel for this." And there's two options really, I think, I wouldn't want to get into anything really complicated. I want to do something where you won't really have to understand all the mechanics behind it. You don't have to know about implied volatility, you don't have to know about the Greeks, you don't have to understand the probabilities and all this stuff. Really, what I would say is, okay, if you have an account already and you own maybe 100 shares of stock, okay? Hopefully it's maybe an ETF, maybe it's a big company like Coca Cola or Disney or something like that. I would go ahead and just place a covered call. That would be my first trade. That would be my advice to go in, take a look at it and say, you know what, let's say Disney is trading at $100. In the next 30 days, I don't think it's gonna get to 110. That would be a 10% gain, it's not gonna get to 110. I want to go and sell the 110 call. And maybe I only get $20 for it. That's okay. This is not about how much money you can make, it's about just getting your toe wet, just doing it, popping your cherry so to speak. And so, that's what my advice would be to be for that. Your first trade, if you have some stock, never done this before, covered call, it's easy to get approved for. Almost nobody gets rejected when you apply to add options trading to your account if you just say, "Hey, I just want to do covered calls." Because that's the one that the brokers for some reason, they really think that's the safest one even though it has as much risk as a naked put on the risk graph. That's another story, we can get into that later so, if you have some shares and you want to just do it and you just want to get a taste of it, what option selling is all about, go ahead and sell one call above where your stock is trading at right now. We don't want to lose your stock, we don't want anything to happen with your stock, we want this option to expire and we want to take that money that we get, right? So, let's say we sell 10% above the price. So, if your stock is trading at 100, we sell 10% above that so at 110, we sell that 110 call option, do it for about a month, maybe a month to 45 days away and whatever you get. Maybe you get $15, maybe you get 30, $40, whatever you get, that money goes into your account. That's yours. No matter what happens, that money is yours, you never have to give it back. And then for the rest of the time, until that option expires, I just want you to watch it. I just want you to look at it and be like, "Okay, I sold it and I got $30 for it," let's say for example. Let's say you got 30 cents for it, which is $30 credit to you so, you got $30 and every day, that option goes down in value. Little bit, by little bit, by little bit, by little bit, it's gonna go down, down, down in value until hopefully, it will expire worthless and you'll still have your stock, you'll still have any dividends that you've gotten from the stock but you've also gotten the $30 that you got from the call option. So, that will give you a nice taste of what option selling is all about. It's very basic, it's the simplest trade you can do and if you hone the stock, you can do that. Now, if you do not own stock you can do that. Now, if you do not own stock already or if you have a small account then covered calls might not be the best for you. There is something that I'll call the, "Poor man's covered call," but that's a little bit more complicated. We're not gonna get into that right now. What I would say if you don't have any stock and you still want to do your first option trade. I would say probably you do something that at our company, we call, "The layup spread." Now, the layup spread is a credit spread with some twists to it. The criteria for getting in and if you want to learn how we do layup spreads, then you can go to simonsaysoptions.com/layupguide and get the guide. It's really cheap and it walks you through exactly how do you pick a trade, how does a trade work and what are you looking for, okay? So if you need, if you've never done it then pickup the guide, it's really cheap and it will go step by step tell you how to do everything. Now, the reason that we call it, "The layup spread," is because in basketball, the easiest trade you can make for most people is the layup, right? You're standing really close to the basket, you just jump up, bank the ball and just throw it into the net and percentage wise, that's the most made shot. So, the other shot ... we were thinking about calling it, "The dunk spread," because if you go for a slam dunk, that's kind of easy, right? That's probably the easiest ... that might be easier than the layup but for myself and for Simon, Simon is the one who wrote the guide and who does these, we really have never dunked in our life and so for us, a dunk is not the easiest trade or not the easiest shot in basketball because we have never done one, we couldn't do one if our lives depended on it and so for us, it wasn't the dunk that was the easiest, it's the layup that's the easiest and so, we called it, "The layup spread," because it's probably the easiest trade you can make and so, that's why we call it that. It's a spread, meaning it has two options, you sell one and then you buy another one but really it's something simple and basically what you do is you find a stock that you like, you want it to be ... for your first trade, you want to find something that's really big. Like an ETF, you can take a look at SPY, that's the S&P 500 ETF, that's a good one. Or find a large company, maybe Apple, Facebook, Google, any one of these large tech companies or just ... those would be good to work with and you see the chart. Now, you don't want to find a chart that's just moving up and down, up and down all over the place, you want to find a stock that's moving in one direction, smoothly. So, relatively if it's going up, you want it to go on your screen, if you look at the chart, you want it to go from the lower left to the top right and you want it to go up slowly, slowly, slowly, not have really, really big moves but small moves and just generally going up, up, up. Or if you want one going down, you do the other way but you don't want it to have big jumps and big movements. You want it to be [inaudible 00:11:48] have a decent slope going up but smooth. We don't want it to look like big hills and have gaps in the middle and what not. So, you go through some charts, find one that you like and then what you do is you want to sell away from the direction. So, if it's going up then we want to sell some puts. So you take a look at the chart and say, "Okay, in the next month of so, I don't think it's gonna drop more than 15% in price," and I can't go through all the mechanics here. If you want to know in detail, then you have to get the guide but the answer to the question is what I'm trying to get to here. So basically, how it works is if the stock is going up, we think it's gonna keep going up, we don't think it's gonna drop but if it drops a little bit, it's okay. We're gonna pick a point where we do not think the stock is gonna go so, if it's training at $100 and it's just been going up, up, up, up, we don't think it's gonna go all the way down to 90 or 04 or 85 or even 80 so, we pick a number or we pick a price where we do not think the stock is gonna go in our timeframe. Maybe 30 days or 60 days, however long we want to sell the option for and then, that's the option that we sell. That is the put option that we sell and then we buy another put option right below it, the next put option there. And you can get into this trade for as little as $100. The average trade is probably gonna be around $500, sometimes ... you do that, that's the spread you have. The probability's in your favor, probably 80 to 90% probability of that working out and you can make 5%, 8%, 10, 12% in that short timeframe of a month or so. So, I think it's a very good strategy because it's less risk, it's very calm. Basically, you're just selling some options, have the odds in your favor, the trend is also in your favor, which is a good thing and then you just sit back and you just watch it and you just let it expire. In this particular strategy though, you have to know when you're gonna get out. So, you can say, "I'm not gonna do anything. I'm not gonna adjust it, I'm not gonna change it. And so, if I'm risking $100, I have an opportunity to make $10 but I'm gonna risk $100 so if I lose it, I lose it." So, in this case if you're putting up $100 as your margin, you're gonna lose $100 if you don't do anything and the trade totally goes against you, 100% against you if it goes. If it doesn't, the other option you have is that you can get out if you're down a little bit or if you can learn to adjust, you can do that. There are different ways to play the trade in the beginning. If this is your first ever trade, I would probably put up 100 bucks and just not do anything, I would just watch it. That's it. See how it goes, see how it feels. If you lose the 100 bucks, see how that feels. That's a learning experience right then and there. You know? It's like, "Oh man, I just sat here, I didn't do anything. I lost 100 bucks, this is horrible, I don't like this. I'm not gonna do this anymore." But if you understand how it works, most of the time it's gonna be profitable so, if it's something that you enjoy doing, then you can look into it further. Because for some people, selling options might just be too boring. Putting on a trade and just waiting for it for a month, man, that sucks. I don't want to do that. I want to be a gunslinger and I'm gonna be a better, I'm a poker player. I want to just, bet, bet, bet and hopefully I'll hit the lottery. If that's you, then option selling is not for you and this is not the Podcast for you anyway. But if this is your first trade, like I said, if you have 100 shares, covered call would be good. If you don't have 100 shares, the layup spread is something that is right up your alley. Now, of course, you could do other things. You could be selling naked puts, you could be doing condors, butterflies, straddles or something. That is pretty popular, strangles and straddles are good for people but I think if this is your first ever trade, you're just looking to get in, you're just looking to get your toe wet, get an experience of what it's really like, covered calls or layup spreads. And again, covered calls are really simple. You can get more information on our website and credit spreads are ... the layup spread is a credit spread with a little bit of the twist and the twist is how Simon actually chooses the trades that he does because you can go into any stock and say, "Okay, I'm gonna do a credit right on this trade, on this stock." But to really get maximum gain out of it, to make sure you win on most of your trades, you're gonna have to do a little bit of digging, you're gonna have to look at the chart, you're gonna have to look at what stocks should you be trading and what stocks you should not be trading and so, Simon actually goes through that in the guide, in the layup guide and you can pick that up if you want to. It just puts more odds in your favor, so to speak, those are the two things I would recommend. Again, if you wanted to learn about covered calls, you can go www.optiongenius.com/covered calls, we'll put the link in the show notes and then, if you want to learn about the layup guides, you can pick it up at at www.simonsaysoptions.com/layupguide. Alright? If you have any questions, please let me know and remember, trade with the odds in your favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.   -- Hey Genius Nation, so I'm still here at the beach and this episode is going to be a continuation of the last one. If you haven't listened to the last episode, it's called, "Working on your business." Go ahead and listen to that one first so you'll have a better idea of what I'm talking about here. If you can't find it, that's okay. You can listen to this one because it's similar topic, but it's different. I'm going to go more in depth into this topic in this episode and so what I talked about last time was what exactly is working on your business and different ways that you can do it to improve yourself as a trader. In this episode I want to talk about my trading reviews. What I do is every so often I will set aside some time to get away from the office to go by myself and to take all of my trading records and then review them to see how I've done over the past however long it's been since the last review. What I want to do in this episode is actually go through the questions I ask myself, go through the things I look at and then, you know, you can take some of that, maybe tweak your own, add your own stuff and then you'll see patterns. You'll see ways that you can improve, you'll see instances where you'll have revelations and epiphanies about your own trading that you can tweak to improve. I'll show you some of mine later on as we go along. What I like to do is for my review is to go to a quiet place to be alone. It has to be away from the office, away from my normally trade for the most part of it. I personally, I like to go to the beach and I like to go on a cloudy day when it's not so sunny and not so hot. Then just sit back either you can grab a chair, sit on the beach and listen to the waves and review everything or sit in my car with the windows down. I'm in a sense old school when it comes to trading and when it comes to record keeping and I guess old school is better than calling it old fashion, right? Old fashion has a bad ring to it, but I'm old school and so I write everything down on paper. Every trade I do is on paper. Depending on the strategy, if it's a simple credit spread strategy then I will have several trades on one piece of paper. All the information for each trade will be there. If it's a more complicated, like an iron condor or a butterfly or something like that, then I'll have one sheet of paper for every trade. That way I have all the information about what happened. What was going on when I got into the trade? What I was thinking about when I did the trade? What happened during the trade? What adjustments I made? Why? I keep records, I keep notes of all that stuff and then what eventually happened at the end. I take all of these trades. I take them with me and I like to do this at least at bare minimum should be done once a year and if you're doing, if you've been trading a lot, you've been trading for years and if you're doing really, really well then you go one year between reviews. If you are a newer trader, I would do it at least every three months. I mean, if you're brand new you should probably do it every month. You won't have as much to go after but at least three months. Then if you're more experienced then you can push it out to six months. I like to do it at least every six months but at a minimum I'll do it for a year. Normally, like I said, I like to go out and not have it be nice weather outside. Nice and cool. I like to go springtime or in the fall, something like that. That's just me, but you can go anywhere. You can just go in the kitchen table and do it. You can go to the coffee shop, you can go wherever you are where you can just spread out with your paperwork or if you have all your stuff on a laptop, take your laptop, open it up. Be careful not to be doing any trading. We're not doing any trading, we're not watching the news, we're not on Facebook. We are only focusing on our trades and reviewing them and going through them. That's all we're doing. Okay? Make sure you do that. Now, one thing I want to look at is I look for patterns. What trades did I lose money on? Why? What was the reason? I should have written that down but I want to go through all of them. Let's take all the losing trades first and I'll set them aside and say, okay, what happened? Was this something that was my fault or was it something that was out of my control? Was there some kind of surprise announcement that made the stock a little crazy? Was it something else? Something in the economy, something the president said or something some other country did or anything like that. Was it something in my control? Did I not follow my trading plan? Did I mess up? Was I not feeling well? Was there an emergency and I couldn't go to the office I couldn't drive that day and I messed up? Was it that it was out of my control? Now if it's out of my control, I'm not so worried about it because those things happen. You're going to take losses. It's just the nature of the game, but you also have to look at how many times that happens. If you're doing 10 trades and you lose on or if you have 10 losing trades and six of them were outside of your control, you need to find out, dig deeper. Is there anything I can do to limit that? If it's the same thing, if it's, oh they had an earning announcement and the stock loss, oh there was an earning announcement. Well then if you see that, that happens repeatedly that you're losing money on earning announcements, then maybe you shouldn't be trading during earnings announcements, right? That's just common sense. This is the kind of things that you might not see while you're in the trading day to day, while you're doing it every day, every month trying to get better. You might not see this, but when you take a step back, when you're looking at the forest, when you're in the forest, you can't see all this stuff. When you're out of the forest looking at it from a 10,000 foot view, you can see, oh wow, okay, this happened good, this happened bad, oh look at that mistake I made over and over and over again. Let's not make that mistake anymore. Right? These are the kind of things that you're looking for. The other thing I want to look at is how have I done. Right? We all want to know that. What's the profit and loss like? Am I up money, am I losing money? What's going on? You definitely want to know that. Right? Am I up, down, sideways? What? I want to know this, but in fact, this is the most deceiving number when it comes to how well you're doing in trading. That's the first number everyone looks at. "Oh yeah. How'd you do last year?" "Oh, I made a million dollars." "Okay. That was great. You're a wonderful trader." No, that doesn't mean anything. You could have two traders, one lost 100,000, the other one made a million. It doesn't mean that the guy who made a million dollars is better than the other guy. Maybe he just got lucky, maybe he just bet the moon on one trade and he got lucky. That's not the thing that we want to look at. What we want to look at, if you made money, that's great, that's the goal, right? That's perfect. That's wonderful. Keep doing it if you can, but what we want to look at is, did I stick to my plan? Did I stick to my trading plan? That's what makes me happy when I have stuck to my plan, when I know I have a system that works over the long-term and I'm sticking to it. Whether I'm up or down, doesn't really matter because eventually the odds are in my favor. It's going to turn around. If I'm losing money but I'm sticking to my plan, I know that it's going to turn around and eventually I'm going to come out ahead. Right? That is why it's more important to stick to the plan if you know the plan works. Does that make sense? I learned about this in poker. If you play poker, you know that you could play a hand perfectly and you can still get beat and that's when people go on tilt. They're like, "Oh, I played it perfectly. This and that guy beat me." Well, you know, that's part of the emotions of it. You can't go on tilt, but it's okay. That happens and it happens in trading. You could do everything perfectly. You can still lose money. That's okay. That's why we have stuff like asset allocation. That's why we have stuff like diversification. That's why we have, we don't just put all our money in one single trade every single month. You can spread it around so that if one thing bites you, you're okay because you got other lines in the water. You got other things that are going to make up for that, and eventually even if that one thing bites you, eventually in the long run, you're going to come out ahead because you're following the trading plan and the odds are in your favor and the strategy just works right? That's why it's important to have a good strategy. Follow the plan and that way you don't have to worry about anything else. If you lose, you lose. Next month you make it back, the month after that you make it back. If you have a good record and say, "Hey, if I lose this much, I'm going to get out." If you follow that, then you should be able to get it back. That's one of the things that's really important. One of the things people tell me was iron condor, it's like, "Oh yeah, you know, if you lose it on a condor you lose nine times what you could have made." No, that's ridiculous. If you're going into an iron condor trade or any kind of option selling trade and you're going to say that, you know I'm either going to make this amount or I'm going to lose the maximum amount. It doesn't make any sense because if you lose the maximum amount that just wipes out all those trades, all that work for no reason. You need to have a stop loss. You need to have an amount that says, "Okay, if I lose this much then I'm getting out because the trade is not working in my favor." Right? You figure that out. What that works for you, is it 20%, 25%, 30%, whatever it is per trade that works out for you, that's what you have to set it at. You have to figure that out based on your trade temperament. Are you okay with risk? Are you not okay with risk? Do you want to be really, really close? And say, "You know what, if it goes against me even a little bit, I'm going to get out." Whatever it is, you have to find out what works for you and create a trading plan that works for you. You take a trading plan that you know works. Take one of mine or whatever, and then you can do it the way it's supposed to be done first so you understand. Then once you're good at it, then you can start tweaking it to go with your own risk appetite, your own risk temperament. That's another thing I look at. Some of the questions I ask myself, is my win loss record acceptable? Okay. If I'm doing, let's say credit spreads with a 80% probability of profit, I should be winning eight and losing on two, that's what the math tells you, right? If I'm winning on six and losing on four, that tells you there's something wrong here. My win loss is not acceptable. I need to do more research, I need to find out why. Right? If you're doing straight out buying puts and calls, and if you're doing it on a 50/50 coin flip, you shouldn't be winning at least 50%. If you're not, then something's wrong with your strategy, your trading plan, what you're doing, and you need to go back and adjust that. Another question I ask are, am I keeping my losses manageable? Now we all are going to have losses, can't get away from it. No way about it. You could do everything perfectly, you can still lose money, but are you keeping them manageable? Like I said earlier, do you have a stop loss in place that you are being strict with? If I'm saying that I'm not going to lose more than 25% on a trade and I have three or four trades in three months where I loss 50% or 60%, that means I am not keeping my losses manageable and I need to improve on that. I need to work on that. I need to focus on that. That tells me right away, oh, big big red flag, hey, it didn't just happen one time. It happened multiple times. Right? One time, it could be an anomaly, you know, maybe you fell asleep at the switch. I don't know. Multiple times, we have an issue and it's systemic and we need to fix it. Okay. Another question I ask are, are there any months or are there any circumstances in which I do better or worse? This is something you might not normally think about. Are there any months that are better off? Is some kind of seasonality coming into play? This doesn't just happen with commodities. It actually does happen with stocks as well. There are certain stocks that do better in certain months for option sellers than in other months. There are certain months that are better off for option sellers and it varies by trader, depending on your strategies, depending on your risk tolerance. For me, this is when I found out, you know, going back through a few years of records, I found out that my best month is December. That is the best month I have. That is when I make the most profits and most of my trades turn out to be winners. The way I trade, I do the best in December now. I don't know exactly why that is. I assume it has to do with how many days off, there are a lot of days off. There's the Thanksgiving break, there's the Christmas break, there's a New Year's break in there so the markets are closed many of those days. There's also the thing about, you know, people are taking time off for the holidays, they're not really at the top of their game. They're not really motivated. Right? Everybody has that, "Oh yeah, you know, I'm going on holiday," kind of mentality. A lot of the traders on Wall Street, a lot of the floor brokers, a lot of the hedge fund guys, they take off. A lot of them take off the whole month of December because they already know what they're going to do for the year. Maybe their hedge fund or whatever has already made good money so they pack it up and they say, "All right, we're done for the year. Let's go. Let's go on vacation, let's go to the beach." Then there's also everybody being happy because, you know on Wall Street at least because people are spending money left and right for Christmas. There are many issues where it's a lot of positivity in the atmosphere. A lot of relaxation in the atmosphere. I think that is why my particular style that I like to do works better in December. That's just something you would have to figure out for yourself after checking your results for a while. I've noticed that there are some months that are worse. Obviously if there's a best month and there's going to be a worst month, right. Some months I don't do good as well. I don't do as well. When I want to take a vacation, guess which month I'm choosing. I'm going to go in those lower months. Knock on wood, every month overall has been positive. Going back over the years, it's not like, okay, every October is horrible for me, but I do have more losses in October than normal. Is it October? I think it's September actually. In September or October I will cut back on my trades. I will trade less. I will go in with higher probability, I will be more on top of the ball, I will pay attention more, I will take on less other commitments. That's just because I know my own trading habits. I know my own records, right? I've been doing the reviews, I know where I'm strong, where I'm weak, and so if I'm weak in a particular month for whatever reason, maybe the market is just more volatile that month. If that's the case, then I need to be on top of it. It's not a normal month, you know, you'll see the seasonality, you'll see all these patterns when you do these reviews and then you'll realize how you can adjust so that you can flat line it, because every month you want to have a winning month. Right? The way I do it as I go month by month by month, those are my little subsections of the year. So I want to have a winning month. Every month. Doesn't happen all the time, but most months should be winning months. Most year should be winning years and if I find these patterns that can help me turn a losing month into a winning month, then that's all better. Right. That makes a big difference on my whole return for the whole year. Another question I would ask myself is, are there any stocks that I should stay away from or are there any stocks that I should go all in on? Stocks do change their patterns from time to time. A stock could be a great stock for a year, two years, and then something happens and it changes where it's not good to be selling options on anymore. That happens a lot. A new CEO might come or they might go in a new direction or they might sell off part of the company or they might get into financial issues. Who knows what, there's stuff that goes on. For example, Chipotle, I'll give you that example. This one for me was an awesome stock for a long time. Chipotle was awesome. It couldn't do no wrong. It was just going higher and higher and higher and I made a lot of money trading Chipotle. Then they had their health food scare, you know, they had the E. coli breakout and some people got sick, so they closed down one store. All right, one store. That's an anomaly. It's a blip. It's okay, everything will be fine, but then it happened in another store and another store and they had to ... They had a whole big issue and for a while Chipotle was a stock that could not be traded in my view in selling options sense because it was too unreliable. It was too volatile. You didn't know what was going to happen. You don't know if they were going to shut down more stores, go out of business, you know, get shut down by the FDA. You didn't know what was going on. That was a stock that we had to stop trading, before it was great but then all of a sudden, boom, it switched, it changed. That happens. You have to go through your results and say, okay, you know this stock was great for a long time. Now it's changed so I need to stay away from this stock. Let me take it off the radar. Let me take it off my screen so that I stay away from it. Because if you say, okay, hey, I traded whatever, Apple every month for the past year and the probabilities just didn't work out. I should've won eight out of 10 times and I only won three out of 10 times. Okay. If I'm following my trading plan, then maybe it's the stocks problem. Maybe it's a stock that's the issue, not me, not my trading. I can take that money, take it out of Apple, stop trading Apple for a while and put it into some other stock and hopefully the numbers will change and I'll start making money. You can't fall in love with a stock or a trade. Like I fell in love with Chipotle for a long time. I loved it. I did it all the time. I did it every month, but then it changed and I had to realize that and I had to look at it and say, this is not a one time thing. This is not a one month thing. This is a fundamental change in the stock movement. I had to stop completely trade again. You have to stay on top of those things. Then there's on the other side, there's the stocks that you want to put more money into because they just happen to work, you know, month after month they just happen to work. They're very calm, they're very reliable, they're very steady and they just work. Chipotle was like that. That would be something that, okay, I'm going to focus on this stock, I'm going to go all in on this stock, and by all in I don't mean like 100% of your money. I mean like a little bit more than the other ones, you know, but you focus on it. You read the headlines, you listen to the conference calls, you know what's going on, you know how many stores are opening, you know what their dollar per customer is, you know all the details about that particular company so that you can tell if something changes, right. When you know a company, you know, okay, hey, there's no big surprises coming up. I know what's going on. You can put more money to work in that company, you can maybe buy some shares, sell some covered calls, do some spreads on it and make more money while the going is good. Keeping in mind that the going could change at any time. While it's good, time to cash in, time to do that. You might not realize that until you do your review. One of the stocks that I realized I was doing really well with last year was Intuitive Surgical. This is a stock that has been doing really well, but it wasn't on my radar. I was trading it and I was like, oh, this is a great chart. I was trading it every once in a while but until I did my review I didn't realize. I was like, whoa man, that's done a lot of trades and they've all worked. They've all done really, really well. Okay. Maybe I need to do this a lot more often. Okay. Maybe I need to go researching more, learn about it more what's going on with this company and maybe I need to put more money to work. That's another thing that you would find in your reviews on. Well those are the questions I would ask and then after I'm done with all my questioning, after I'm done finding whatever patterns I could find, then what I do is I go back to the office. I have this software that's called OptionNET Explorer, OptionNET Explorer. It's a back testing software. What you can do is you can actually go back in time to a certain day put, you know, I take all my losing trades. Let's say I lost money on my Chipotle trade. I'll type in Chipotle. Go to the day I put the trade on, I can look at the chart from that day. I can look at all the options prices from that day and then I can put my trade on as if it's that day and then I can walk it forward day by day by day and I can see what my trade was doing. I can see what the stock is doing, I can see how my trade is doing, how much is it up, how much it is down, what the Greeks are for that day for those options. It's basically as if I'm going back in time and walking through the trade day by day by day. Since this was a losing trade, I can take a look at it and I can say, okay, this was happening, this was happening. I should have adjusted here, but I didn't. I should have done this here, but I didn't. Oh wait a minute, I did this instead, or I just did too late, I just did too early. I can try to figure out why the trade didn't workout. If it's my fault, then I can take notes and I can work on that. Now, not every trade can I actually learn something, from some trades. You just leave it up to fate and you know, they just didn't work out. That's fine. But a lot of the trade, especially in the beginning when you're learning, you can go back and realize and say, wow, I really messed up here. I needed to do this instead, and it just didn't work out because I didn't follow the plan or I didn't do that particular step or maybe I used the wrong type of adjustment. You could do one type of adjustment, maybe it didn't work out, but what if you had done a different adjustment, you can go back in time in the software and do that. That's what I like to do with all my losing trades. This is how I like to do my reviews. Just sit back, take a few hours, go through all your paper trades, go through all your paperwork. If it's on a laptop, it's not as ... That's why you can have computerized stuff to track all your trades, but you got to have a good bit of information on every trade. You can't just say, the stock was at 100 and I did the 110 calls. No, what was going on with the stock? When is earnings? How volatile has the stock been? What's the delta on the stocks on the options that you're trading? What do you think is going to happen with the stock? Is there any news coming out? How many days to expiration? All of these types of information you have to know and you have to record it so that when you go back and you do your review, you can actually tell why stuff happened and why it didn't happen, why it worked out, why it didn't work out. Was it your fault or was it not your fault? If it's your fault, why was it your fault? What did you do wrong? Then how can you change that to make it better? That's the name of the game. That's how we play. Put on a trade, record everything. Do the trade as best as you can, and then once it's over, record the final results. Then after a while, go back and look at all of them together because if you look at a trade that happened a month ago, you still remember why you did what you did. You still have some bias, like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember. I didn't adjust because this guy came on the radio and he said this, this, this, this, and I believed him so that's why I didn't adjust. Okay, but six months from now, you're not going to remember why you didn't adjust. All you're going to remember, all you're going to notice on your records is I did not adjust on time. I messed up. It doesn't matter what the reason was. It matters that you did not follow your trading plan. I mean, if you want to write down, you could write down, hey, this guy came on the radio and I didn't adjust because of him. Well, if you have that in your paperwork and you realized that you've been listening to this guy regularly, you'll have an idea of when he's right and when he's wrong. Actually you're logging it down. If you go back and you say, you know, I lost money on these eight trades and on all eight of them I was listening to this one guy. Well dang it, I got to stop listening to this guy. There you go. You found your pattern and then the next time that you're going to review, you'll be like, oh, I didn't have any losses because I stopped listening to that guy. That's the purpose of the review. You go back, figure out what you did wrong, see if you can improve upon it and eventually you want to get to a place where you don't have to review ever. But because we're human, because we're people were emotional, that never happens. You can always learn by going back and reviewing. It doesn't matter how many years you've been doing this, you always have to go back and review and then you can take it even a step further if you want. You can have somebody else review your stuff. Somebody that knows how you trade, somebody that knows the strategies, right? Then you give them all of your documents, all your paperwork, and say, I would like you to review my stuff while I'm not in the room and see what kind of conclusions that they draw from your trades. I mean, that's taking it to the whole next level, but you don't need to do that right now. Just focus on yours. I'm sure you'll learn a ton every time you do this. I still do and that's why I do it on a regular basis. That's it. Pretty simple. All right guys. Talk to you soon. Bye. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Genius Nation, this is Allen, coming to you from the sunny sandy beach of Galveston, Texas. Galveston is a beach town about an hour and 15 minutes from home for me. And so, I come here once in a while to just relax. And today I'm here, no wife, no kids. I'm actually gonna be doing something, working on the business as I say. That's the topic of this podcast. The cool thing about the beaches in Texas are that you can actually drive on the beach. Not every beach allows it but this one does. Most of Galveston you can drive on the beach. And so right now I am parked on the beach, sitting in my car about 15 feet away from the waves, from the water. And so if you can hear the waves, if you can hear the seagulls, that's me sitting on the beach. And I actually expected a lot fewer people here today. It is a weekday and school has started but there are still a bunch of people here, so I guess nobody told these tourists to go home yet. But glad they're having fun. And I'm here to actually do some work. I'm away from the office. But I took a day off today, drove down here, made a day of it. And what I'm gonna be doing is called working on the business, instead of in the business. That is a subject that I first heard about in the book called, The E-myth by Michael Gerber. And of course you know, it's about the e-myth, it's the entrepreneurial myth. That's what he's talking about. And it's a book about how to improve your business. And of course trading should be treated as a business. So trading is my business, one of them, options and this is another one. I'm gonna be working on both of those. But the idea between working on your business versus in your business is, you know there's two types right? Like I said, in the business is what you do on a day to day basis to keep your business running. On the business is what you do to actually improve it and actually grow the business. So, if you take an example of an accountant, if you're an accountant, working in the business would be meeting with clients, fielding out paperwork, doing peoples taxes, managing your employees if you have any. Anything that you do on a day to day basis. You know, paying the bills, paying the rent, all that kind of stuff. That's working in your business. You have to do it to maintain the business to keep the doors open. But that's not gonna help you grow. So working on your business for an accountant would be something like figuring out a way to get new customers. Or looking at maybe purchasing some new software, looking at some new software that might make things easier and smoother. Or going to a continuing education type event where you're learning about new techniques or new loopholes in tax law, or whatever you guys do. In the E-myth book, Gerber actually talks about and gives an example of a baker. So this lady she's making pies. But she's not getting ahead. Every day she makes the pies, she loves making the pies, and every day she's exhausted at the end of the day because she bakes the pies, and she sells the pies, and she cleans the store, and at the end of the day, she's just really tired and frustrated, and she can't get ahead. He explains to her that, all that stuff, you're working in the business. Making the pies, cutting the apples, baking the pies. I think we got an ice cream truck coming. All of that stuff is working and taking care of customers, cleaning the store, that's all working in your business. It's not gonna make your business grow. In order to make your business grow, what you need to do is create systems for everything that you do you in your business. And then once you have systems then you can actually, hopefully give it to somebody else, or streamline it. And then you take time away from the business to actually work on it. You know, how do you get more customers? How do you work on making your systems? How do you improve your recipes and all that kind of stuff? So in trading, if trading is our business, then for us, the day to day stuff is the actual trading. You know we think, oh yeah that's gonna improve my business. But no, that's the day to day stuff. That's working in your business. You're not actually gonna improve your trading that much by just doing trades. That's not how it really works. We think, I need more experience, I need more experience. Putting on trades for the sake of putting on trades is great, but it's not gonna get you to improve unless you actually work on your business and go back and review those trades. Listening to the news, that's again, reading the newspapers, or reading CNBC websites, or all that kind of stuff, listening to conference calls, working on your taxes, working on your profit and loss statement, all that kind of stuff, that's all working in the business. It has to be done. We have to do it. It's annoying sometimes, it's frustrating. And eventually hopefully you can get to the point where you can hire somebody else to do a lot of that stuff for you. You know, your taxes and what not. You can pay for more expensive subscription services that will listen to conference calls for you. And then just give you like the cliffs notes of it or something. I don't know. But what I want to focus on is working in the business because we're already working in the business. You already know how to do that. Working on the business is what I want to focus on. And that's what you do to become a better trader. And one of the things that I'm here to do, and what I urge you all to do is, take some time every few months to sit down with all of your trades and actually review them. Look at the ones that worked. Look at the ones that did well. Look at the ones that did not do well. Just go over everything and try to find patterns. Try to find why did I mess up on this trade. You know, I've been trading this one stock every month for the last two years, but I had these bad months and these three trades. Didn't work out. Why? What was the reason? So try to figure that out. Back testing would also be something where you're working on your business. Back testing all the trades that you did not do well on. Or back testing new strategies if you've come up with something. Or a tweak to a strategy that you already have, a trading plan that you already have. That would be working on your business. Improving your mindset is another thing that you could be doing you know? Working on yourself. Your mindset as in, what are my goals? Can I accomplish more with what I'm doing? Or why do I feel certain ways? You know, meditation is something that I've been looking into as a way to calm my mind and increase my results. A lot of traders that you read about, the more successful ones, they admit it. They say that they do trading. One of the books that just came out recently is called, oh man I forgot the name of it. Principles is the name of it by Ray Dalio who runs one of the biggest hedge funds in the world. And so he talks about how he meditates on a regular basis. And whenever he gets scared or whenever his mind is out of whack, he'll just take time out and just go and meditate for five minutes, and it calms him. So that is something. Learning how to do that would definitely help you in your trading. That is something that I would classify as working on your business. Working on controlling your emotions is another one you know? So worry, fear, anger, all of these things that we feel on a regular basis when we're putting our money at risk, all this stuff is something that you don't want to have impact your trading. And so when you're working on that stuff, that's working on your business. Getting yourself to do better. Education would be another one you know? Taking a class, taking a course, anything like that would be working on your business. Where you're actually trying to improve. Things like listening to this podcast. That's what you're exactly doing. You might be doing it in a car, but it counts you know? You're improving your thinking. You're learning new stuff. And that's also working on your business. I mean, in trading it doesn't take too long to work on your business you know? You don't have to spend an hour on it every day. But every few months is when I take some time out and I look at it. Especially once you have your systems in place. You know, when you have your trading plans in place. If you have all that stuff down, then it's not hard. You just follow your trading plans on a day to day basis and then once in a while you sit back and say, all right, how can I make things better? How can I improve it? If you don't have your trading plans in place already then that's the first step. You have to know exactly what your trades are. How you're gonna plan them out. How you're gonna do them. And then you review if you follow the trading plan. If you're not following it then you need to work on that obviously. But that's the first step. And then at least a couple times a year, you should spend a day from wherever you trade, wherever you normally trade get away from that environment. Go out to nature maybe if that's your thing. Go to the beach, go to the forest, go by the river. Go to the mall if that helps you. Go to the coffee shop, whatever. Somewhere you're not distracted by the trading. You know, you don't have your laptop with you or it's not open to your trading account. And we're just sit to thing. Sit back, review and think right? And you want to do this alone as well. Don't take your spouse with you. This needs to be done alone. Go over how things are going you know? How have you been doing the last few months? What your emotions have been like. How have you been feeling physically as well, your health? You know, because that also has an impact on your trades as well. If you're not feeling well, maybe you don't trade as well. So you need to check that as well. And then plan for the next few months. If you're happy with your latest results, if you're happy with what you've been doing from the last time you reviewed, that's great. Keep doing it you know? And you should go out and celebrate and say, hey I'm doing great. This is wonderful. I'm gonna have some fun. I'm gonna enjoy myself. If not, if you're not doing that well, if you think you can do better then work on improvements. That's the game right? We learn something. We create a plan for it. We create a system, a trading plan, and then we try it out. And if it works great. If it doesn't work we correct. And that's the only way to get better you know? Try, fail, change, correct, and then try again. And then you follow the patter until eventually you get to a place where you are very happy with your results. And it's definitely doable. It's definitely possible. If people have done it before you, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do it as well you know? Ray Dalio is a guy who starts off with like almost nothing, and builds up a multi billion dollar hedge fund. If you want, go read his book. He'll show you the way he thinks. He explains stuff, how he did it. He's done a lot of podcast interviews lately since the book came out trying to promote the book. So listen to those and you'll see how he thinks. And then you can try to incorporate that when you review your own stuff okay? And then just be looking to get better. Just looking to get better. That's all we're doing. Just doing it one day at a time. One trade at a time. Just looking to get better. So make sure you're working on your business. It doesn't have to be all the time. But in the beginning I would say maybe every couple months just step back and say, all right, how can I make things better you know? And then when you are more established, I like to do it at least every six months, four months kind of if I can, if I can afford it, to get out and do it. I would like to do that. But at least once a year, I do, do it. Normally I wouldn't be out here on such a sunny day. I forgot that it's gonna be so hot today. I thought it was gonna be a little bit more cloudy. This might be an abbreviated version for me because it's baking out here today. But anyway, that's it for today. Work on your business, and in the next episode what I'm gonna be doing is actually going through a little bit of how or what I'm gonna be looking at when I'm reviewing my own trades all right? Talk to you soon. Bye. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- I don't know too many people that would not like to have more money, do you? But I do know a lot of people that want a lot more money, and even more people that don't have much money. When it comes to trading and investing, well, if you want to do it, you've got to have money, right? Well, kind of. There are ways to get into investing with no money, and that is what this episode is all about. Join me as I give you 2 Case Studies of gentlemen that got recently got me to invest with them. One of them had limited capital, the other had none at all. But I and others still handed them thousands of dollars to invest for us. Learn the tricks they used and how you can use the same methods to get you started when you have no capital to trade.   OptionGenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Buenos dias genius nation, como estas. How you doing? This episode we're going to call it The Ultimate Options Trading Strategy. Really what I wanted to do is I want to talk about option strategies and which one is the best. I got the idea for this episode thanks to a couple guys on the Options Traders Alliance Group which is our free Facebook group. If you want information about that just search on Facebook for Option Traders Alliance or look in the show notes, we'll have a link to it there. Thanks to Dan Gibson and Ken Gilstrup for that. From what I could tell, these guys they were just, one of them asked a question, the other one responding, just a couple guys. They're on the lower end of the option continuum, a couple of lower traders just looking for some kind of direction. If you don't know what the option continuum is or where you are on the continuum, you can check out Episode 21 and hear all about it. It's a great question, which is the best option strategy, because when it comes to selling options there are well over a dozen strategies that you can use. You've heard all the names, all the crazy names, some of them; the iron condor, the credit spread, the calendar spread which is also the time spread, the butterfly, then there's the iron butterfly, and then there's the broken wing butterfly, there's the covered claw which can also be called the buy right. There are naked options so there's naked puts, naked calls, the straddle, the strangle, the ratio, the back spread, the box, the bag, the double diagonal, on and on and on, and that's just to name a few. Then, each of these strategies can be manipulated so that there are unlimited variations. You have, let's say the iron condor. You have the, some people call it the high probability iron condor and then there's the low probability iron condor. Then, there's the unbalanced condor, and then there's, some people have been calling it the weirdor which is like a mix of the iron condor and the butterfly together. There's so many different strategies out there. The question becomes which one is the best, which one do I trade because you can't do all of them, you'd be crazy. It would take you decades and decades to actually learn all of them and become good at any of them really. If you're a new trader and you just want to quickly get up to speed which is the easiest, the fastest, the most money making, that's what we need to know. Before I tell you the answer I want to talk about Simon. You see, Simon was a lot like you. He was trying to figure out all this trading stuff and he had tried all the different techniques, different types of trading, and he was pretty fed up. When you spend lots of money on courses, when you spend hours and hours learning about Greeks, and probabilities, and volatility, and all that stuff and you still cannot make it work you get pretty upset, am I right? You guys know what I'm talking about because you've probably done the same things; taking courses, watching videos, listening to podcasts like this one, I know there's a whole bunch of them out there because none of them give you the secret and then you get really, really upset about it. You just want the answer, why don't they just give you the answer. Boy, I wish it was that easy. For Simon, by the time our paths had crossed he had spent close to three years learning about options. In fact, he was much more knowledgeable about certain aspects of options than I was. To this day, honestly, maybe I shouldn't say this but to this day if you ask me to describe to you what Gamma is I don't think I could. I know it's important, I know it's one of the Greeks, and there's ... I know what it is, in my head I can, I just can't put it down on paper.  I'd have to look it up and look for the ways to explain it, I'd have to show you on a screen. I couldn't just simply tell you what it is but Simon, he can do that. Simon knows all the differences, what is implied vs historical volatility and what the numbers should be, and how to set up the different probabilities. He knows all about that stuff because he spent all that time learning about it because that's what he though was the answer. The more he learned the more complicated he made his trading, the more complicated he made his trades, the more intricate. He added in different indicators, some that nobody's ever heard of before. He added in all these rules. He added all this other stuff to make his trading better, to give him a better edge. That makes sense, when you think about it. You take a strategy and you improve it, you put your own spin on it, you craft it so that it works better. Then when you come up with something that you think is awesome you back test it over and over and over again. If you can't do that then you do paper trading and you have to do it hundreds of times. If you can't do that, if you don't want to do that, then you have to use real money to test it and hopefully it works. Usually though it doesn't and then you end up back on the drawing board. I remember when I first got started I wanted one simple trade that I could do month after month after month like the holy grail. I found ... I really like butterflies so I tried to do a butterfly on McDonald's, and I came up with some rules and then I started back testing it. I think I back tested it for four years, month after month after month after money after month, say about 40, 50 trades, whatever that is, 4 x 12, 48 trades. It was profitable and I was ecstatic. "Oh man, this is awesome, this is going to be so awesome." Then I did it with real money and I ended up losing, I don't know how many, I think it was $8,000 really quickly. That's what Simon was doing as well and for him it wasn't working, and that's when he came to me. That was his main question. He's like, "Allen, I know so much but I still can't make it work. Am I doing something wrong or does this stuff just not work? Please Allen, tell me that all my hours and years of trying to learn this stuff has not been in vain because my brain is just going to explode, I can't take it anymore. My self-confidence is in the gutter but I know so much about options, I know more about the people who write these option books, I could probably teach a college course on options. Allen, please help me." Well I got to tell you, if this stuff didn't work, this job option stuff didn't work, I would be flat broke. I can say, for those of you who are still skeptical, that yes, yes it does, in fact, does work. I can point out to dozens, and hundreds, and even thousands of people who have made it work and who it's working for. The problem ... If it's not the trading then maybe the problem's with Simon. It's either the trading work or the person doesn't work. Well, the person was Simon and the problem was not Simon either. The problem was all the nonsense that we as traders and learning traders get bombarded with every single day. We get bombarded on the financial media, we get bombarded in our emails. We get bombarded on Facebook, and Twitter, and all over social media. The ads are all over the place and all the ads are people pretending that they are amazing traders making oodles and oodles of money, and the only way to get the same results is to pay them to teach us what they're doing, that's the only way to do it. It's the magic bullet, it's the new thing. There's this new trading system or this new indicator or there's this new chart pattern or this new whatever that we have to pay to learn how to use so that we can also become wonderfully rich and super successful. It's like everybody else out there is so smart, and rich, and successful but we are not. No matter what we try it doesn't work, am I right? Do you feel that frustration? Have you been through this or am I by myself? I don't think, I'm not by myself because we get emails every day from people. Ken and Dan were talking about this same exact thing in the group today so you know what I'm talking about. Here is what you need to do, here is how you overcome this. You stop listening to the noise, stop believing all the crap. Go back to the basics, back to the fundamentals. The truth is that every single strategy that I mentioned earlier works. There are people out there making money with each one so you can make money if you only trade covered calls. Yes you can, you can be profitable consistently if you only trade covered calls. You can do the same thing if you only do strangles. You can do the same thing if you only do ratio spreads, and on, and on, and on. You don't need to be a master in everything, you don't need to understand 14 different ways to adjust your trade, you only need one strategy and that's the answer, that is the ultimate strategy. That's the best strategy, it's the one that you choose, the one that makes the most sense to you. There are lots of different strategies out there because they have different uses, that's true. Once you become a very advanced trader, once you are on the upper end of the continuum if you're on level nine or level 10 and you are already consistently making money then yes, go into the other strategies. Until then, you stick to the one strategy that makes the most sense to you, that's the one you start with or for many of you that's the one you re-start with. That is the one you keep doing until you figure it out because that's what I had Simon do. We identified together out of all the different strategies he preferred to trade credit spreads so that is what he focused on. That's what his time on to figure out. He spent time on figuring out the best way to enter a credit spread, he tested dozens of ways to adjust, and then he tested exit strategies, a whole host of different exit strategies. Eventually, he discovered the best way to trade credit spreads that worked for him. Now, maybe his way won't work for you but that's okay with him because it works for him. That is all he does now, he only does credit spreads. He doesn't bother with iron condors or naked puts, he only does the spreads, the credit spreads his way. He has molded the strategy so that now he calls them layup spreads. A layup spread basically is a credit spread but with Simon's special magic, his method to enter, to manage, and to exit.  If you want more information about the layup spread and why they work so amazingly well you can do so at simonsaysoptions.com. Now, I hope this makes sense to you. The best strategy is the one that makes the most sense to you and the best way to learn how to trade is to just focus on it until it works for you. Now, it might get boring, it might get repetitious, it might get monotonous, yes maybe but that's still what you need to do. I know we think that trading is all sexy and high flying and buy this, sell that, do this, do that. The reality is, if you trade well most of it is extremely boring and then there are certain pockets of craziness but most of your trading should be boring. If you are consistently making money then you know what I'm talking about. If you're flying by the seat of your pants, and if you're putting on dozens and dozens of trades, all different types, all different strategies on all different stocks that you never even heard of before because the chart looks good, then you are in for a very wild ride and so is your account balance. With our account balance what do we want? Do we want up and down roller coasters? No, we want slow and steady increase. In order to have that you have to be trading in a way that is actually boring because you know what you're doing, that's why it's boring. You've mastered it, because you've excelled at it. The alternative is to do what you're doing right now jumping around from strategy to strategy. I know what you thinking. Say, "Hey Allen, what about diversification, don't I need to diversify? If I have maybe some earnings trades over here or maybe I have some naked calls over here or maybe I have some box spreads over here." Yeah, you should diversify if you have an account that is well over six figures and you are already consistent and profitable. That's it right there. If you are over six figures, and I'm talking about mid-six figures; $400,000, $500,000, more than that, and you are already consistent and profitable then you can diversify as much as you want. If you're on the top end of the continuum, level's nine, level 10, then you are making money so you are going to stick with what you know automatically. You're going to go to the bread and butter and you're going to do those every month or every week or whatever your timeframe is. Then with a little bit of extra cash you're going to try other stuff. That's the smart way to do it. If you don't have over six figures, if you're not consistent, if you're not profitable already, then forget about diversification. Until you can make money with one strategy month after month, trade after trade. You have to be consistently profitable before you add another strategy to your arsenal, are you getting this? Is this sinking in? Yes? Hope so. Anybody that tells you otherwise is full of it and probably just wants to sell you something, that's the truth. Stop all the noise, stop listening, stop jumping around, because the noise is there, the offers will always be there. If it's not options it'll be Bitcoin. If it's not Bitcoin it's going to be marijuana stocks. If it's not marijuana stocks it's going to be sports betting, that's the newest thing that's going to come on, right? The Supreme Court just announced on Monday that states can now make it legal to bet on sports. Well, guess what? There's going to be stocks on sports betting and they might even have options on sports and betting and all this stuff. Who knows what they're going to come out with in future? That's going to be the new hottest thing. If you keep jumping from one to another, to the another, to the another, you're never going to get good at anything, you're never going to be profitable, you're never going to be consistent. Go back to the basics, back to the fundamentals. Choose one strategy and work on it until you know it inside out and you are profitable because that is the name of the game, that is the goal. That is the only thing that matters. I don't care what strategy you use, I don't care how you do it, I don't care when you do it. If you are profitable you are winning. That's the only way to know if you are winning, I don't care how much you know. I don't care if you know more than me, I don't know if you know more history than me, I don't care if you know more math than me, more about statistics, more about options, more about everything. If you are not profitable it doesn't matter so go back to the fundamentals, go back to the basics, one strategy. You focus on it, you work on it, you back test it, you paper trade it, you real money trade it until you are profitable. That's it, that's the answer. Now, if you can't figure it out, if you already tried, you tried your best and you can't do it, then reach out to me, maybe I can point you in the right direction. Maybe I can work with you like I did with Simon and we can identify what it was that works best for you or that makes the most sense for you, and then how to actually implement it. In the beginning you don't need complicated stuff, you don't need complicated indicators. You don't need complicated chart patterns, you need a strategy that you understand, that makes sense to you and you need to do it in a way where you can explain it to the third grader. Then if you can do that then you tweak it. Then you work on it. Then you look at, like Simon did, you look at the entrance of the trade, you look at the management of the trade, you look at the exit of the trade, and then you improve your percentages. That's how it works. Right now, Simon, like I said, he's only doing one strategy and, yes, he is well over six figures in his trading account. That's okay, it doesn't matter. He doesn't need to be doing anything else. I know people who only do one iron condor every single month. They do it on the same underlying, they do it on an index, and they trade literally over $100,000 worth of one iron condor every month. That's the entire trade, that's the whole strategy, one iron condor, six figures in that condor, every month. I hope this makes sense, I hope this is sinking in. I hope you got to this this. Then finally, no matter which strategy you choose, whether it's the condor, the credit spread, the ratio, the butterfly, I don't care what it is, whatever it is, no matter which one you choose make sure that the odds are in your favor. Peace. Resources mentioned in this episode: Option Traders Alliance Facebook Group SimonSaysOptions.com Podcast – Episode 021- The Option Continuum -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- This is the episode all credit spread traders MUST listen to. Jeremiah placed a credit spread trade with the max loss of a little less than $500. This was the 35/30 put spread on DBZT. Potential ROI was 19% in 10 days. The stock closed on expiration day at $47.80. So the trade is a wild winner, right? Then why did Jeremiah lose $1,250? That is more than the max loss! What is going on here? And this can happen on any credit spread you sell. Listen in to learn exactly what happened and how you can keep it from happening to you. www.optiongenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- I still remember when I first learned about options, so many years ago. My father, who is an infomercial and a get-rich-quick junkie, had gone to some free, two-hour options seminar in some hotel. You might have seen these commercials on TV, where they come to your town, and they have different hotels where they have two-hour free seminars where they teach you how to get rich with options. They're supposed to teach you how to get rich with options, but instead, it's basically a sales pitch for a much high-priced seminar. He went to this two-hour thing, and he came home $5000 lighter, because he spent it on a seminar that they were doing that weekend. Lucky enough for me, he was allowed to bring someone along, and so I got drafted. It wasn't really a choice. You know, I guess that's one of the benefits of being an only child. We went to the seminar. We were excited. I was like, "Okay, this might work. We might make some money out of it. Hopefully it's good." A lot of the stuff that they talked about was really cool, first time ever hearing about puts and calls and all this different terminology, and it was exciting. I mean, they taught us what a chart was. They taught us what an indicator was, that you could make money in stocks and options by just reading and doing what the indicators told you to do. I mean, I was like, "Whoa, this is so simple. Holy cow!" When you get three green arrows, that means that three indicators are all bullish, and you buy. It was that simple. You get three green arrows on their software, you buy, and then you hold it until you get three red arrows, meaning that all three of the indicators were bearish. I mean, that's pretty easy, right? Heck, yeah, we were going to make millions. That's all we had to do, just look at the charts, and keep looking at different charts until you see three green arrows. That's the stock you buy, or options, you call options on that, and then you get out when you get the three red arrows. That's all you have to do. My father and I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. I mean, "Great job, Dad! Awesome! Whoo-hoo! That's the best $5000 you ever spent! All right, we're going to make millions!" Now, I didn't have any money at that time, because I was still, I don't remember how old. I was pretty young, but my dad ... He's the get-rich-quick junkie, so he's been to these type of seminars before, and unfortunately, he brought all the credit cards with him that still had some balances on them. Now, I wish he had not done that, but he did. He brought them, and so he spent more money at the seminar. He bought some software. He bought some video courses that they had. They had other stuff, other seminars you could take. I don't remember exactly what package he bought, but it wasn't until the second day that the instructors really laid it on us. I mean, that was when the pitch for coaching really got started. They kept telling us over and over again that if you really wanted to be good at training, you couldn't learn it in a two-day seminar. They can give you some basics. They can give you some stuff to go home and try, but if you really, really wanted to get good at trading, then you would have to have a coach work with you, one-to-one basis, because then the coach could tell you what you did right, what you did wrong, give you some ideas, let you look over their shoulder. For that reason, you've got to have a coach, right? All the greatest athletes, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, all these guys, they have coaches, right? Yeah, so you need a coach, too, because that's where they taught the really good stuff. In the seminar they couldn't teach you everything, but all the top secret stuff ... That's what was taught in the coaching program. What was the cost of this amazing, wonderful, super, can't-live-without coaching program? Well, they were going to give us a great deal. They were, because we were they're real good customers. We had spent two days with them. They were our friends now. We were talking to them during the break and everything. We were telling stories, and laughing at their jokes, so they had to give us a great deal, right?   They were only going to charge us $30,000 for six months of coaching, but we had to act quickly, because they only had a limited number of spots, right? They couldn't take everybody, because their time was limited. There were four instructors there that weekend, and so we could pick whichever one we wanted as our coach and go in the back room, pay the $30,000, and then they would set you up with one of the coaches. I was like, wow! Whew! Can you believe that? For just the price of a car, you can get coached by a real trader, a real trader that's making money in the markets. At that point, it didn't dawn on me that this real trader, if he was doing so well, why the heck was he pitching coaching in seminars on the weekend? Why was he flying halfway around the country every weekend to do this seminar to pitch coaching. At that point it didn't dawn on me. It later did, but thank God my dad did not have the $30,000. Oh, my God, I can't imagine what would've happened if he did. I mean, after spending all his money on the seminar, which, basically, all the stuff that they taught us was basic introduction to options trading stuff. The software they gave us, the home study course. Luckily my dad didn't have any money left to trade. I mean, that's the funny part about it. We spent $5000 on the seminar. We spent several thousand more dollars on the software and the video and whatever else there was. At the end, there was no money left to trade, so we didn't get the $30,000 coaching program, thank God, but we couldn't really use the stuff that we learned anyway, to see if it was actually good or not. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.   -- Life insurance. Its something we all should have. And there are different types. 2 main groups… Term where you pay an amount very month and for a certain amount of time, if you die the insurer will pay off your family. So here you are basically betting against the insurance company that you are going to die. Wait… you pay money to create a contract…the contract has an expiration date…and if you don’t die before the deadline…the contract expires and the insurer keeps all the money….what does that sound like? That is exactly like selling an option. Except the insurance company is the option seller and you are the buyer. Hmmm  but I digress. And then there is cash value insurance. Whole, variable, universal. Etc. So back in 2005 things were looking up for me. Just got married, my first real job, wife was a nurse, and so I was looking for an investment…(wasn’t trading at that time) I stumbled upon life insurance and dug deep reading multiple volumes on the topic. And found that it has some awesome benefits. The money in the account grows tax free. You can withdraw the money tax free (as a loan) Creditors /lawsuits cannot touch it (OJ Simpson) The death benefit when you die is tax free Download the podcast for more details....   Links: OptionGenius.com/Map -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Hey there, Genius Nation. I want to ask you a question. What are some of the best times of your life? Can you think of any? I guess it really depends on how old you are, right? If you're younger, maybe the best time that you can remember was when you got your driver's license and you went out for your first drive, right? Or maybe when you graduated high school, maybe when you graduated college. If you're a little bit older, you probably remember the best day of your life was probably when you got married or you had a kid. If you're a little bit older, maybe the day that you actually retired or started your own business or something like that. How did that make you feel? We have those memories, we had these awesome experiences. Why are they awesome? Because the feelings that we had, when that happened, when that occurred and that's what we remember, that's the power of the feeling. How amazing was that feeling? Pretty good right? Pretty high, it's like you were on drugs right? I remember when I got married, that's the happiest day I've ever had. I was just super high. The world could have been crashing down burning, but I was so happy, nothing would bother me. Nothing could have touched me. I mean literally you're high on drugs kind of thing. Have you ever felt that way about money before? Because I know with money, if you don't have it, it's stressful. If you have it, it can be stressful, you know? The more you have, the more security you got to take, and the more you got to worry about investments and you worry about this and keeping it and getting not ripped off and it can be a very stressful thing, but have you ever had an amazing, awesome, awesome, awesome feeling about money? Most people don't. That's what this episode is about, because I want to tell you about the most amazing feeling that you can have when it comes to money. For that, I need to tell you a story... -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Okay so in this episode, I'm going to be doing things a little bit different because this is going to be a video and an audio podcast because I do have some graphics to share. Now, if you are listening to the audio and you want to watch the video, you can do that at www.optiongenius.com/continuum. So I want to start with a couple of questions. Number one, how long have you been trading options? And number two, in one word, how would you describe your proficiency of trading options. So in other words, what level trader are you? Kind of gets confusing, right? Sometimes. Because you don't know exactly. I ask this because it's super important to know where you are before you can make any progress. You have to know where you are so you can make the necessary correct improvements and even know what needs to be improved in the first place. Because in most areas of life, this is what's called a benchmark, right? So, if you know where you are now and you know they'll you want to get to, then it becomes pretty easy to get there. You can make a plan and you can just follow step by step by step and get there. No big deal. You just work on the skills that you need at the next level. But in trading, nobody ever talks about this, you know? There's no set criteria, there's no levels, there's no advancement. You know, even in college, you go to college you say, "Oh yeah, you're in college. Oh yeah, what year are you?" "Oh I'm a freshman, I'm a junior, I'm a senior." You know where you are, you know what you have to do to get to the next level and you know how many levels there are so, you know when you're gonna finish. In trading, we don't have this so, you hear terms like, "Oh, I'm new to options." Okay, what does that mean exactly, you know? Did you just start trading yesterday? Have you been trading for three months but you're not very good, or you're not confident in it? Who knows? Or, "Hey, I'm an advanced trader." What does that mean? Are you making money? Do you know 15 different strategies and 12 different adjustments for each one? Does that make you an advanced trader, you know? Or maybe you've just been doing it and losing money for the last 20 years trading options. Maybe that makes you an advanced trader. Or maybe you've been to 15 different seminars and you know all the lingo but you've never done trade in your life. Does that make you an advanced trader? Nobody knows, right? Because at Option Genius, we get emails about this all the time. We get people who want to know what course or membership that they should join and some of them, not all of them, but some of them try to make it easy on us by giving us a little background on themselves. But it's almost never enough. No we are not licensed financial people so we cannot give personal advice, right? But if a product is wrong, one of our products is wrong for you, we'll tell you, "Hey, you know, this is not for you based on what you told us." The problem is that we don't know these people well enough and we've never had a way to characterize them. For example, an email might come to us, might be something like this, says, "Hi, I've been trading options for three years and I really like your weekly trading system site." For example. "I'm retired and I have $20,000 to work with. Would this be the best product for me?" And to be honest, really, I have no idea. The email says he's been trading for three years but trading what? What strategy? Was he profitable? Was he not? Does he really understand it or not? Why does he want to jump into weekly options? Has he been doing monthly options, he been doing leaps? I don't know. You know? I mean we can go back and forth, emailing back and forth just to try to figure it out. So, I think you can see my conundrum, okay? No I mean, is someone who is only a covered call trader, is he a basic options trader? And someone who knows, for example, ratio spreads, are they an advanced trader? Well what if the covered call guy makes a lot more money than the ratio trader? Now who's the more advanced trader, you know? It's kind of confusing. So, I decided to sit down and end all this confusion. So I have come up with what I call the, "Option Continuum," basically, it's a scale, which you can easily tell what level you are at in your trading. And once you know your level, you can decide what level you want to move to and then you start working on those specific skills to improve. Now, everybody does not need to know every strategy to do well, okay? That's up to you. You could get to the top of the continuum, the end of the continuum and only know one strategy and just one way to trading. It is possible. Or you could say, "You know, I need to know five different strategies in case one doesn't work or the market changes or whatnot and I need to know five strategies and be good at them in order for me to get to the top." That's fine, you know? But I don't think that you need to know every single strategy. Nor do you need to understand say 20 different technical indicators, you don't. So the continuum will help you in many ways including, this is a big one, not jumping at the next shiny object that comes your way. And I think you know what you're talking about because I know how it is, I get them too. The daily emails touting the newest, the coolest, the most profitable trading strategy that's gonna make me millions, right? I get pitched ten of those a day if not more. But once you know what level you are at, you will be able to determine what you need next and eliminate all the other noise so that you stop jumping from one course to the next, from one guru to the next. Because that ride never stops, it's like a merry-go-round. Once you get on the merry-go-round, they keep pitching you more stuff and more stuff and more stuff. And if you're done with one guru's stuff, that guru will pitch you stuff from someone else and it just continues in a circle, on and on and on, you never get off that ride. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- How do we overcome our fears of making a decision and sticking with it and having faith in it and certainty. The truth is whenever you look at the human dynamic of decision making we're going to base our decision on getting our needs met. Every single one of us, if we look at what you're choosing to wearing today, where you live, what career you have. How you're in relationship with certain people and not in relationship with other people at this point in your life. What grocery store you shop at. What foods you eat. What TV shows you watch, all of them are being decided based on our human needs matrix. I'm gonna quickly give you the six human needs and from that I wanna tell you the one that, what you know and maybe you remember as the five C's and how those lay on top. So the six human needs, certainty, uncertainty, significance, love and connection, growth, and contribution. Now, those six human needs are dictating every single one of our decisions. For somebody who's fearing a decision what I know for certain is that they are stuck in certainty. I want to know that whenever I'm going to invest this time, this money, this attention towards something, that I'm gonna get a payback. And so, if we've got an expectation that's already creating a stuck vibration inside of our ability to make a decision because we're basing what we're gonna do now on something that hasn't even happened yet and we're wanting it to work out. I can completely understand whenever we want to invest our money, we want to have some understanding of a measurement that we're not gonna make poor decisions, bad decisions. We're gonna do it whenever we think our money's gonna be invested wisely and make more money. I know. I do it too. However, we can't predict the future, especially in America. So what do we do? We base things on as much information as we can possible predict right now, but not too much. If we go on too much, it's gonna create instability and panic, anxiety inside of us. So, take the two or three markers that you trust. Two or three markers that you're looking at and say I can see that. That's going to work and as along as I have this level of certainty I can make this amount of decision and move forward. Measure often, especially when it comes to money in the marketplace. You do this with your students and with the people that follow your program. Measure often. We've gotta measure. Don't just invest and then hope. I said don't be high on hopium. If somebody's high on hopium they're gonna set themselves up for failure. We've gotta participate. We've gotta show up. We've gotta do what we're being taught and apply those things because if we don't at the end of the day we're gonna regret. We're gonna, I know I should have done that. I was supposed to do that. Damn it I didn't do that. So if we have regret, remorse, fear, depression anything like that, it's just gonna compound on top of each other. Listen to the episode to get more guidance and step by step help...   References: Tina Marie's website: www.TinaMarie.com Podcast: UnleashYourExtraordinary.com Abolish! - Friday March 23rd -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.    

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Michael's story is one that we can all relate to because Michael has done what we all dream about which is basically to take the family and the kids, put them in an RV and travel the world. And basically Mike has ... he's been involved with dividends for a while, and so he had his website up which I was following him on his website, and then when he decided to travel all of the North America and South America, I reached out to him, I said, "Hey when you get to Houston or if you get to Houston, look me up, and we'll get together and we meet." So I was able to meet Mike and the family, they stayed with us and it's a wonderful story, so I wanted to bring Mike on. In this episode Mike shares how he was able to take the family all around North and South America - what where his favorite spots, his tips for travelers, how they handled school and a lot more. Many traders tell me that their #1 dream is to travel. Mike made it happen. He did not wait until "retirement" or until the kids are "a little older to remember everything". He did it now. And now is the best time. So check out how he did it. Resources mentioned: Dividend Stocks Rock https://www.dividendstocksrock.com/optiongenius --  LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- After 50 years of doing it "the way, you are supposed to do it" Mike's financial planner told him he did not have enough money to retire on time. And there was nothing he could do about it. So Mike took things into his own hands, and decided to trade in his spare time. In the past three years Mike has been successful enough to not only retire on time, but retire EARLY if he chooses to. Or, pretty soon, he will be making enough from his trading to equal his salary as a college professor, and so he will be able to trade in retirement and not have to touch any of his retirement accounts. As he says... "But basically as far as an outlook on the future from doing this trading, if my future performance continues to match the past results which, of course, there’s no guarantee of that there should be no question.  I should not only be able to last as long as they predict I’m going to live, but I should be able to replace my entire working income by the time I retirement. I shouldn’t even have to touch any of the IRA the 401, the social security, whatever.  Obviously when I get eligible Social Security I’m not going to turn it down.  But nonetheless, what I’m saying is that, you know, if the performance continues then within a few years I should be able to easily and more replace my entire income." Listen to the whole episode to hear exactly how Mike turned the tables and the trading strategy he used to change his destiny. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Question, big question for you, so what age do you want to retire? You probably have an answer in mind, right? What is it, like 50, 60, 65, today, tomorrow, you know? Well, what is it? When do you wanna do it? Because for most people, the age just keeps creeping higher and higher and it's scary really. Everything, you have these articles coming out always, people are now retiring, people don't have money when they retire. Back in the day you worked 20 years, you get a pension, you get a gold watch and you're done. Woo-hoo. Then if you want to, you can go back and get another job because you're still not that old or you could just leave up your retirement, live off your savings or whatever, social security. You have a good retirement. Back in the golden days when the old people actually got to not have to work at McDonald's. But then today the age is just going higher and higher. First it was work 20 years, get a pension. Then it was 55 was a good age to retire, then it was 60, then 62. Now the typical American retires at age 63 and it just keeps getting longer and longer. A few years from now they'll be like, "Well, you've got to wait till 65, 66, 67." Yes, I know we're living a little bit longer, but that doesn't mean that we should use those extra years that we're getting to be working, because those extra years that we're getting, we might be getting them, it doesn't mean we're going to be in the best of health. So the time that we're spending is going to be in poor health as retirement age. That tells me just the way people think about retirement is completely off to me. The fact that they look at work as so horrible and then retirement is so amazing. Recently I had a deadline that I wanted to get a calendar for, the kind of calendar, not a calendar but it would be like a countdown. So it was like a one year to this particular goal that I wanted, and I wanted something on my desk where every year it would tell me okay, you've got 365 days left. Then you would tear off the page and it would be like you've got 364 days left. I wanted a countdown calendar like that. Really couldn't find anything online, but they do have these retirement calendars, so if you have a year left to retirement, that's the one I got. It was a year left to retirement so it's this big thick calendar, sheets, 365 sheets. Then in big black letters it tells you retirement days left and it gives you the big number. I just used it for the number, but on the bottom it has all these quotes I guess to keep you motivated or just to be funny. It has all these funny things like, "Fifty days left till freedom." "Seventy days left till your time is your own." Here's a funny one, "The heck with adulthood. Time to start acting like a kid again." You know? That's what people think about. The way it's worded is like work is so horrible and evil and retirement is going to be so grand and wonderful. Well, not if you can't afford it like most people can't, you know? It's not going to be all that. I just read this article by this financial adviser Suze Orman who says that you should not even, you shouldn't even retire at 63 when the average person retires. You should wait much longer than that. You've probably seen Suze Orman. She's got, I mean she's older. I don't know how old she is, but she's got this colored hair, dyed I guess it's blond with blackish roots or something like that. She does a great job getting on TV and she has dozens of books out there, kits, courses and other products about financial planning. Every once in a while she'll do a special on PBS talking about how to retire and whatnot. She has this show, you might have seen it, it's late night, people call her and ask her if they can afford certain purchases. There will the guy that's like, "Hey you know, I've got $10,000 in the bank, but I want to go buy a boat and I'm 60-years-old." No. She'll be yelling at him like, "No, you can't do that. You have to take that money and put it in a mutual fund," stuff like that. There was the one time where this lady called and she was asking if she could afford to buy a $300 purse. Suze Orman is asking her all these questions. Turns out that this lady has $12,000 of credit card debt that she hasn't paid off in years. She still wants to spend $300 on a purse. Yeah, so those are the math wizards that Suze helps, you know? What age do you think Suze wants you to retire? Listen to the episode to find out.   What to Learn How To Sell Options? Get Our Free Course at - www.optiongenius.com --  LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book!   Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Dale Hefner is a 81 year old retired business owner in Amarillo Texas. He has fun spending time with his wife, going into town, and trading options. Listen in as he shares how he turned a $4,000 account into $21,000 - a $17,000 gain in just 12 months!   Allen:  So, 2011 that was the Option Genius that you signed up with? Dale:  Yes.  I was originally started and I started doing spreads following you on the Rut, SPX, ETF’s, and during the Iron Condors and the spread.  Didn’t do as many Iron Condors as you were doing, but I did do some.  And then I went to doing the spreads and I had good luck of spreads, but I had many, many spreads back then and still do and I had been exposed to the oil field industry some years back and I started looking at that and then all the sudden out of the clear blue you, you announced that you were going to start Blank Check Traders and I was elated when you did. I thought, well, this-this is going to be right down my alley and you haven’t let me down or any of your students from the way I can read on the Facebook page. Allen: Yeah, well we try not to [laughing].  So, do you do this, you’re still working or your full time trading or how long, how many, how long does it take? Dale: I’m more or less, well, I guess you could call it full-time, I have nothing other than that to do that pays. Allen:  [laughing]. Dale:  And, I probably make three to four trades a month.  I think last year I made a total of 30-31 trades and after I took my losses off of some of the trades I made I think I made it about $17,000.   Allen:  But like… So, Dale, but how long… how long does it take you to do the trading in time wise? Dale:  Well, I don’t I try not to stay in a trade over 20 days if I can. Allen:  Okay.  No, but I’m talking like in a minute.  Does it take you two hours a day? Four hours a day? Dale:  Oh. No.  My gosh no.  Uh, you know I’ll get up, I’m an early riser, I get up at 5:30/6:00 o’clock, I have my coffee, then when the market opens I’ve already got my screen up.  My think or swim platform up, maybe read up on fundamentals, things of that nature then, uh, then I start watching the market and if it looks pretty non volatile I may go into town, spend some time there, I may go over to my old business office and spend some time there and then that afternoon I might check it and see if I need to make an adjustment or get out. Dale:  I’d say if I spent a total of an hour a day that-that would be, uh, probably extravagant. Allen:  Okay.  Alright.  And I do have a personal question for you because I know that we get a lot of folks who are retired or looking to retire soon and I often get this comment from a lot of people that, you know, “Hey Allen I’m in my 60’s” or “Allen, I’m, you know, I’m close to 70 and I just don’t have, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to learn something new.  It’s going to be complicated, I’ve never done this type of trading before.” What-what would you say to that. Dale: Well, you just almost to the verbatim said some things that some of my friends and associates that I know ask me.  They said how are you doing retiring what you are doing with yourself.  And I get around to tell them that, you know, that I met you on the internet a long time ago back in ’11 and that I’m selling options and that intrigues them and then I get to tell in them about it, then you can see some of them get impressed about it and some of them get very skeptical and you said it well, I don’t know if I can learn it and I just tell them, frankly, what is there to learn, really? I said, hell, you can spend a few hundred bucks and I can put you on to a young man that if you follow his advice and follow his webinars and you can follow hiss trades along with it, you know, if you want to go with ETF’s or Indexes or whatever, but I said I’ll just… I’ve made it my goal to learn the commodities market.  I love it and that’s why I’ve told you in the past in past conversations that I feel like I’ve met my that I’ve found my niche.  I’m 78 years old, I don’t have to make a lot of money, but it sure is nice to have a 25, 30m $45,000 or more coming in.   Dale:  And for people… and for people that get bored during the day I think it would be, you know, there’s times that I come here and look and if it’s snowing outside or bad weather outside, this is a contradiction maybe, but if I got my screen up I’ll come in and check it once every hour. Just for something to do, it gives me something to do. Allen:  [laughing] Yep. Well, I mean if you’re making that much and the time you’re spending on it, you know, per hour you’re doing pretty well, so, you know… Dale:  I’ll put it this way, had I known that it was like this and that I could, find someone like you that could explain it in terms that I understood, without making it, uh, you know, sound like it was, you know like some people they bring the Greeks into it and all that.  Well, I’ve studied the Greeks and-and rightfully so, you need to know something about the Greeks if you’re going to play options, but, I just… I think it’s the greatest thing that ever happened.  I wish it happened to me 20 years ago. Allen:  [laughing]. Dale:  I’d of probably retired had it of happened and I had the fortune of-of-of meeting you, the good fortune of meeting you 20 years ago I’d probably retire 10 years since. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book!   Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- I realized that we have done many episodes already where we talk about why you should be selling options, but never gave an explanation. Option sellers trade in a market neutral way. So you don’t need to market to go up or down. You can trade it when it doesn’t even move. Also, option sellers have probability on their side. So we do trades that have for example a 70%, 80%, or even 90% probability of working out in our favor. These calculations are done using sophisticated statistics and mathematical formulas that won the Nobel Prize. In addition, to be even safer, we use other risk management techniques like stop losses, and spreads which limit our losses. And the example given was the insurance company. So just like the insurance company collects premiums so do option sellers. In fact, the insurance company analogy is a great one. Because as well talked about in 8, the real reason options were created were as a way to lose money. They were created as a hedge. As insurance. So the option seller acts as the insurance company be selling options to farmers, manufactures, and investors who are looking to protect their positions. That’s one way to describe the option seller. The second is as a casino or more accurately as the house. The house takes bets from gamblers and has the odds in its favor. Over the long run, the house always wins. For us, the gamblers are called speculators. These are the option buyers who are betting against the odds hoping for a big payday. Kinda like lottery ticket buyers. The option seller is the house, and takes the other side of the bet. Once in a while, the option seller loses, but over time, the house always wins. It’s just math. And with the odds in my favor, I don’t care which way the market goes. I don’t have to predict. If I want to do a bullish trade, I can, but I don’t have to be right to make money. This removes so much of the stress. When you have a 70, 80, even 90% chance of winning on a trade, you don’t have to be the best trader in the world to make money. You see, when you buy a stock it has to go up for you to make money. And if it does not, then your money is just sitting there not earning anything. Unless it’s a dividend stock and you get some measly return like 2%. And if it goes down then you lose. You have to be right about the direction. It is the same with buying options, except it is exponentially harder Not only do you have to be right about the direction, but you have to know by when the move will take place, and how much the stock will move. If you are wrong on any of those three elements, you lose. Here’s the magic: When selling options, you get to play a range. The stock does what it does and as long as it stays in the range you want, you win. Let’s use golf as an example. To make money with stocks you have to get the ball into the hole in 3 strokes. To make money by buying options you have to hit a hole in one. To make money by selling options you just have to hit the ball onto the course. One additional point I want to make is that emotionally, winning more often does wonders for your self-esteem and confidence. And as a trader, having confidence in your trades and yourself is a key factor to success. Because with selling options, what we are doing is hitting base hits. Over and over. Not trying to hit home runs. Because you know what happens to the guy who tries for home runs – he strikes out most of the time. And in investing, a strike out means losing money which is not a good thing. The episodes continues with examples of. Listen to the whole thing to get the complete picture. What to Learn How To Sell Options? Get Our Free Course at - www.optiongenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Around the end of every year and beginning of the next, the world is flooded with folks giving their predictions about what will occur in the coming year. Some of these actually come true. But most are just for fun. These fortune tellers think that something might happen and because of that something else might occur. Mostly these folks are just looking for some free publicity. Which is why I hate predictions. Don’t give me a guess. Give me some real information that I can use to make an educated guess So what I like to do instead of to look at trends. Long term trends. I am a more Macroeconomic guy than micro if you know what that means. And one of the folks I look up to is Jim Rogers. This guy started the Quamtum Fund with George Soros and made billions. His whole philosophy is to see where the money is sitting in the corner and go pick it up. No need to fight for it or work too hard. Sounds pretty good to me. So then how do we use this info Well you look at what has been happening in the world, compare it to history and see what you see. Stop looking at the minutia, the day to day news and look at the big picture. These are the Top 5 Trends that will shape 2018.   Resources and links mentioned in this episode: Jim Rogers Bitcoin Episodes: Episode 006 – Bitcoin Scams You Need To Be Aware Of Episode 007 – How To Invest In Bitcoin Contact help@optiongenius.com for your questions     Download the Free Option Trader's Treasure Map: http://optiongenius.com/map Join Our Free Facebook Group called The Option Trader's Alliance: https://web.facebook.com/groups/465974750429703/ -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- This is going to be a special edition because not only am I here by myself but today I am joined by Jeff Stanton. It's going to be our first ever interview podcast. So in the past all the other episodes that we've done I've basically been talking to the mic and I've been talking about whatever topic interests me and we go on and on and try to help and try to share my knowledge. But this time I've actually been lucky enough to get Jeff on the phone and I'm going to be asking him some questions. Jeff is a professional trader who lives out in New Jersey right now.   Download the Free Option Trader's Treasure Map: http://optiongenius.com/map Join Our Free Facebook Group called The Option Trader's Alliance: https://web.facebook.com/groups/465974750429703/ -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Many of the same skills that you need to play good poker are the same that you need to trade well. Something I realized was that a lot of people who are really, really good traders were good poker players at the same time, because they had the same types of skills. Currently, the best poker player in the world is a guy named Phil Hellmuth. Phil, and he’s also known as the poker brat. In fact, he’s got a book out called the poker brat. Now, I don’t know if he is the best in the world. I think he’s probably the best because he has the most rewards, and accolades, and what they call bracelets, and tournament wins, so I’m just going to say that he’s the best. I don’t really care. For the sake of this podcast I’m going to call him the best. Please don’t write in, and email me, and call me and tell me, “Hey, this guy’s not all that, he sucks.”           I don’t really care, but what we are going to be talking about is what I learned from this guy. Recently I just heard a interview with him where he's being interviewed by somebody else, and there were a couple things that really stood out to me that can actually be directly applied to trading, and that can make you a better trader just by implementing these things. I wanted to take the time out in this episode to actually go over both of these in a little detail so that you can take away some of the skills that this guy already has that he uses at a world-class level. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- So, the question really is, "How much do I need to make X?" Basically, I get this question all the time. For example, "Alan, I want to make $5000 a month. So if I sell options, how much money do I need to make that much?" And I mean, really, that's your question? How am I supposed to answer that. There's no way I can answer that. I don't you. I don't know how good a trader you are. I don't know how long you're doing this. I don't know how much risk you wanna take. I don't know what strategies you're gonna use. I don't know if you're gonna adjust or not. There's no way to answer that question. It's like a one-line email and they're like, "Thanks. Let me know." And based on my answer they either sign up for our Option Genius service or they don't I mean, it's kind of crazy. I think so much of it has to do with the individual. Because I have seen two traders be given the same exact trading plan, and one of them makes a lot of money from it and the other one loses money. The same exact rules. Like, hey, this is how you get in, this is what you do, this is how you adjust, this is how you get out. Everything. Give 'em the same rules, two of them. Let them do their thing. One of them will make money, one of them won't. But even simple than that, I have seen it where we have people who take the same trades that I'm doing and they lose money. Now I don't know how that happens. I mean, obviously I lose money too, so I'm not talking about a losing money trade. I'm talking about a trade that I won on, that I made money on. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  --   Hey there, Genius Nation. How is everybody doing today? I am excited about this particular episode because I am going to share something that took me several years to figure out. Basically, what I want to share with you is how to know if a individual trader or investor is going to succeed or not. Because let's face it, everybody wants to be a trader, everybody wants to be an investor, but not everybody is cut out for it, not everybody has the ability or the stamina or whatever you want to call it. Everybody doesn't do it. Everybody doesn't succeed. Now, I don't know why, well, maybe I'll tell you why, but I don't know the exact reason why everybody doesn't have this particular trait that I'm going to be talking about today. It seems to be something that should be there, but until you realize what it is, until either you figure it out on your own or somebody actually shares it with you like I am about to do today, a lot of people don't get it. They don't wrap their head around it, and so for that reason, I think that they give up. It's a shame because I think that when it comes to our finances, people just don't want to take responsibility, but you are not like that, and that's why you are on this podcast and that's why you're here listening, so let's get to it. Now over the years, I have had the privilege to work with tens of thousands of investors. We've dealt with people on the phone, we've dealt with people in coaching, dealt with people in our membership site, dealt with people on email and maybe even met several people at live events. And most people come to us not knowing much about options and passive training or selling options. They don't know about it, they want to learn, they're excited about it, they're amazed at all the benefits. They're amazed at how simple it is to get started. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- A few years ago, I wrote a book about hedging. An entire book. Yes. Hundreds of pages on just hedging and different ways to hedge and how to hedge your portfolio. And actually, the book's name is called Protect Your Portfolio, and it's all about hedging and protecting yourself from different ways of losing money and whatnot, while we're investing. By the way, you can get the book at Hedgingstrategies.org. That's hedgingstrategies.org. Yeah. Thank you for letting me do a shameless plug. Yes. You can buy the book there. It is available. So, if you want to get the whole book, go there, of course. So basically, what I found was, I was interested in the topic. I looked online and there's really very, very, very little on it. I could not find another book on hedging. There was some books that talked about hedging in a little bit. And there was some videos and stuff that you can, "Oh, you know what? If you wanna protect your portfolio, you should buy a put, and that'll protect your stock. Okay, that's great. But, under what instance do I do it? You know? How many days to expiration? What should I pay for it? What percentage should I protect myself? All these different question I had, there was nothing out there. But, that's not the point of this podcast, this particular version of the podcast. I thought that that particular book that I'm writing on how to protect yourself, was gonna kick ass. I thought it was gonna sell millions of copies. Remember, I'm an optimist, okay? So, I thought it was gonna sell a heck of a lot of copies. But, it didn't. It still, right now, to this day, I have not recouped the money that I had spent on it with doing all the research and all the writing and all the time that it took. You know, as many copies as we've sold, we've sold a bunch of copies, but we still haven't got our money back on this thing. And I can't understand why. And then, I was like, "Wait a minute. Maybe that's why I couldn't find any other books on the topic. Maybe that's why I couldn't find any courses on the topic. Because people just don't care." And that's when it hit me. You know? Traders don't like to talk about hedging. They don't. I'm betting that this particular podcast is not gonna get a lot of views, or listens, or downloads. I don't know how they judge if a podcast is popular or not, but this particular issue, or this particular edition, is probably not gonna get a lot because I'm talking about hedging. 'Cause people don't like to talk about it, which is crazy, because that goes against all the scientific studies out there that show that people are more inclined to protect their money, than to make more. It's crazy. You know? -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Welcome Genius Nation. Welcome to another edition of The Option Genius Podcast. So glad to have you here. You know, I gotta tell you. Today I'm going to be talking about something that is near and dear to my heart, because, well, I love options. If you can't tell. The guy behind OptionGenius.com, having traded options for years and years now, and really getting out there, and evangelizing options, and telling people, "Hey, you know what? You need to be trading options." I do it because, they have literally changed my life for the better, and I really feel that they are great for all types of investors. If you're going into retirement, if you're going to try to create your financial future, and be financially free, and talk about the different types of freedoms that we really aim for at Option Genius, they are ... If you're going after those with a gun, right? Well then options are a bullet in your gun. The problem is, that most people out there are being told myths about options. They're being told, or they're getting erroneous information. Most people lose money with options, and most people are afraid of options because they're told, "Hey, those things are risky. You better stay away from them. People lose money on those." Why? Why is that out there? It's because there's so much false information. Well, maybe not false exactly to say, but it's been told by people who don't really know the whole story. I mean, you could read any kind of article in most of these magazines that talk about finance, you know? There's so many of them out there now. But, when they talk about alternative investments, or they talk about ways to make passive income option selling, selling options, selling premium, none of that is ever discussed. Because, it's taboo in a sense, or it's too complicated, or too advanced, you know? It's a shame that people, common, every day normal people are not told this stuff.   http://simonsaysoptions.com/stocks http://www.weeklytradingsystem.com http://www.optiongenius.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- If you are thinking about investing in Bitcoin or if you've already done so I thoroughly encourage you to listen to that episode. Maybe you can do it after this one. In this one I'm going to basically show you really quick and easy how to invest in Bitcoin, if you want to buy Bitcoin and how I've done it, and what I consider a safe way to do it. Do this one first maybe. Or maybe this one should have been episode one. Yeah, this one now makes more sense, right? This one could be How Do You Trade in Bitcoin and the other one would be How To Avoid Scams When Trading in Bitcoin, that would be part two, but we did that one first. This one's going to be part two. Short and sweet. Links: GDAX - https://www.gdax.com/ Coinbase - https://www.coinbase.com/ -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Greetings, Genius Nation. We're back with another episode of the Option Genius Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. Today I want to be talking about Bitcoin. As you probably know unless you've been living under a rock, Bitcoin is going crazy. Just recently, Bitcoin passed $7,000 ... actually crossed the $7,500 mark just recently, although it has come back a little bit since then. It might be going higher. It might be crashing. I don't know the future, but right now, it is all over the news. It is everything anybody wants to talk about. Seriously, if I had a Bitcoin for everybody that has ever asked me about Bitcoin, I'd have a lot of Bitcoin. Seriously, there is so many people who are thinking about it, who haven't jumped on board. There's some people who are dabbling in it. Whether you have invested in Bitcoin already or any other cryptocurrency, or if you're thinking about it, I wanted to put this podcast out there, this episode out there, because there are a lot of scams. There are some things that you need to be aware of that are happening in the market right now, that are happening because there are people who want to take advantage of you. Everybody out there cannot be super educated about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and all that. Because of that, because of the way they are and how they are supposed to be so complicated that the normal person can't understand, there are people who are taking advantage of people who want to invest, taking advantage of normal people. So I have jotted down some notes, and I have three different scams that are out there that are happening right now in the marketplace that you need to be aware of. Now, these scams are not directly about Bitcoin. Buying Bitcoin itself is not a scam, or at least I don't think so. I'm going to share with you how I have bought Bitcoin, how I do it. I'll share with you what broker I use, what wallet I use, and what other coins I'm in. To date, basically I have more than doubled my money, and I only got started back in April, April of 2017, which is, for now, it's only about eight months. That's going to be on the next episode. Make sure you download the next episode as well as this one. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Today's episode comes about because of an email I got this week. Let me read it for you. It goes, "I'm very interested in joining your website, but I have some concerns you may be able to help with. I have friends who used to trade credit spread options, but had some very bad losses due to a black swan event a couple of years ago. If you advise us to place a trade, risking say 70 percent of account, and an event happens over the weekend, the market could gap and we lose 70 percent almost overnight. This is the only thing that stops me from signing up and learning how to trade options. Am I missing something here? Thanks. John". For those of you who've never heard of it, and I'm surprised if you have never heard of it because it's very common nowadays to say that, throw this word around. "The black swan". Basically what it is, it's an unpredictable event. Something that we can't account for. It could be man made. It could be natural. These are things that are not taken into event normally because they are so out of the realm of possibility that you wouldn't even think about it. Or at least that's what the guy says who came up with this theory. Now notice, it is still a theory. It hasn't been scientifically proven or anything like that. But it is something we should be aware of, and maybe even take into consideration while we're trading. A good example of a black swan event is 9/11, the attack on the trade towers, and all the other attacks that happened with the planes. Now nobody had ever, well they did kind of, they had some kind of inkling that something like that could happen. But for the general population, nobody ever considered that terrorists would take over airplanes and drive them into buildings. Never considered it.   Links: OptionGenius.com SimonSaysOptions.com/stocks -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Welcome to another edition of the Option Genius podcast. I'm your host, Allen Sama. Today, I want to be talking about something that I call the Five Finger Theory or the Five Finger Strategy, if you will. Basically, this is something that I think is very, very crucial to your success. Not maybe your trading success, but definitely your overall financial success. I think it's, super, super important. I call it the Five finger Strategy. That's my personal twist on it. Now, you might have heard somebody mention something in the past about multiple streams of income, so it's kind of like that but it's my own take on it. This particular strategy will help you overcome the financial pitfalls that happen to everybody. It's my opinion that you need five fingers in your life, or five separate, distinct sources of income. Now, I don't care how rich you are. If you only have one or two fingers, it can all be taken away from you very, very quickly, and in some cases over a night. Links: https://optiongenius.com https://optiongenius.com/blog/79-alternative-investment-platforms/ -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.                           

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Imagine giving the gift to your kids of them being able to follow their calling, whatever it is. Maybe they want to be a social worker, maybe they want to be a missionary, maybe they want to be a world traveler. Right now, if they go get a marketing degree or an accounting degree or whatnot, they can't do it. They don't have that freedom. Imagine them having the ability to follow their heart and their freedom, not worrying about money because they know how to go into the markets and just take it out at will. That's what option trading, the way we do it, gives you that opportunity, that ability.   Good morning, Genius Nation! Woo. That was my tribute to Robin Williams and Good Morning, Vietnam. I loved Robin Williams. He was a great actor. I didn't think he was always funny. He was very funny, not always. Amazing actor. I liked his more serious roles a lot, as well. Recently, we just, on Netflix the other day, I was just flipping through and they said, "Hey, Dead Poet's Society." I was like, "Oh man. I'm going to put that on my list because I'm going to watch that one, man." I remember that one. That was one of the movies that really shaped or ... It's one of my favorite movies. I don't know how well I have lived up to its message. When I saw it, I was young. I don't know how old I was. We saw it in the theater, with my parents. I didn't get the message. Only later on, did I get it. If you haven't seen the movie, I'm going to spoil it in this. I'm going to spoil it for you today. It's an awesome, awesome movie. "Gather the rosebuds while ye may." I don't remember the poet who said that, but it's an amazing line and it sums up ... That line sums up the whole movie. Basically, in Dead Poet's Society, Robin Williams is a teacher. He goes to, I think it's a prep school. They're not in college yet, but it's a boarding school for really rich high schoolers. Either that, or it's like some small little college, a liberal arts college somewhere. He is a teacher there. I think he's an English teacher, and he takes the class, and it's all boys. The whole school, it's an all boy school. He takes the boys, and these guys are ... They look pretty rich, they look like nerds, virgins probably most of them. Nothing really adventurous about them. He takes them to this trophy case in this school and there's this picture of one of the older teams that, decades ago, where they were standing there with their little football uniforms on or something. At that time, they didn't have helmets and pads and whatnot, so they're just wearing these little leather caps on their heads and cleats. I think they had cleats.  He's telling them to look at that picture, to really look in the eyes of the people that were in that picture. Every single one of the people in that picture is already dead. The message that those people, those dead people have, for these young kids, is to gather the rosebuds while ye may. Meaning, to carpe diem or seize the day. Don't let a day go by where it's just another boring day. Live for the moment. Live your life to the fullest, is the message. That's the whole message of the whole movie. He shows them this in different, different ways. One of the ways that he shows them is by getting them to change their perspective. Think back to when you were in high school or college and whatnot, and you had assigned seating. You would go and you would shuffle into the room and you would go to your little desk and you would sit down. That is the image that you have of the room. That's what you see, whatever's in your vision, that's what you see around. What if you turn it around and you go and you sit at the teacher's desk? Most of us have never done that. If you go and you sit at the teacher's chair, the whole room is totally different. You can see so many different things that you didn't notice before. One of the things that Robin Williams does, is he has them come to the teacher's desk and then he has them stand up on the desk, which they've never done before. They're all rule followers. They don't break the rules, they're all rule followers. He gets them to stand up on the desk. Standing up on furniture, with your shoes on. That's a big concept. Not only that, but you got to stand up on the teacher's desk. You could get thrown out of school for something like that. He has them standing up and looking around and seeing the new perspective, seeing how everything looks different. That's just one little tidbit exercise that he had them do. It's a great, great, great message, great, great, great story. One of the things that I definitely, I want to see it again. I definitely want to see it again, because I haven't been living it. We do think that we are living it and we try to live it, but then day to day grind gets to you and you forget. You get tired. One of the things that is so awesome about having little kids, and this probably happens at the older ages too, but you notice it a lot more when they're little, I think, that they grow so fast. They learn so many new things so quickly. It's like every day I come home, and there's something new. We have three kids, six year old boy, five year old boy, and one and a half year old daughter. She's at the age right now where she's shooting up. I still remember the days when she couldn't even walk, where you'd have to carry her everywhere. Now she doesn't want to be carried. Now, she runs everywhere ever since she started learning to walk, she wants to go everywhere, and she wants to go quick. She learns all these things, and she's learning to talk right now. Every day, it's a different word. It's so cool. Her mom keeps telling her, "You're so cute, I just want to eat you up. Can I eat you up? Can I eat you up?" She goes, "No, no." She shakes her head. Now she's wagging her finger. She's like, "No, no, no. You can't eat me up, you can't eat me up." It's just the cutest freaking thing. For those of you who have little kids and those of you who have kids, I'm sure you remember this. I go home, I used to work from home. Recently, I just got an office. I used to work from home and I had my separate room there. I had my office room, and I have my library, so I got two rooms in the house that are all mine, kids aren't allowed to go in. When my older son, my two sons, when they were young, when they were born, they were in the house. We had a nanny for a while, for them. My wife was there for the first one, we had a nanny for the second one. Whenever I got bored or whenever I got tired or whenever I heard them laughing or crying or whatnot, I would always run down and pick them up and hug [inaudible 00:06:52] and feed them and put them to naps. It was such an awesome, awesome time. For this one, I'm not there. We do have an nanny for her, and the nanny's awesome, but I'm not there every day. It was like, "Man." That was the biggest thing of why I didn't want to get an office. I wanted to get an office, it just got too loud at home and I couldn't get any work done. My hours of work were shrinking because I'm not a morning person. I don't really start my day until 10:00, 10:30. I would go upstairs at that time, start working, and then the kids would come home at like three o'clock, and then that's it. Hey, I'm going to go play with my kids, because I could do that. The style of trading I have, it doesn't take that long. For a while. For several years, it was awesome. I had that opportunity to spend with my kids, to watch them every day as they grow up, to learn what words and to teach them. All the little things that I was teaching them and helping them with walking and talking and eating and wiping your butt and all that kind of stuff. It's just awesome. Now after the time, I just hit 40, and I don't know if I'm going through a midlife crisis or what, but I'm like "Hey you know what? I really need to get this message about there. It's great that I can trade this way, it's great that I can live this way, but if I can put in a couple hours extra more and help other people to live the same way, that would be my legacy. I think my kids are going to be my legacy so I'm not really worried about that. I don't want statues or anything for me. I think helping more people is, for me, the next stage of growth. I've had Option Genius, the website, I've had weekly training system, the website, I've had other things.  I wasn't really paying that much attention, as I should have, to growing it. It people came into the system, if people came to our website, they had became members, I would do everything I can, or I still do, everything I could to help them out, to teach them, to help them out, to guide them. Now I think it's time to push the limit to open it up, to get more stuff out there and to help more people. For me, that's how I'm seizing the day. I'm making new goals and I'm getting out there, and I'm putting the time in. I'm still trading obviously, I got to pay the bills, but I am able to, now that I got an office, I'm actually trading a little bit better than before, now that I have an office. I'm in front of the computer more. I'm also helping more people and I'm seizing the day in that sense. I do miss things with my daughter, but I spend time with her when I get home. I spend a good three hours with her every day at home. That makes up for it, I think. She's too little, she's not going to remember anyway. I noticed that with my older boys, I don't remember a lot of the things that they used to do. I'm getting older or what, maybe there are just too many memories in my head now. I'm not remembering as much. We go back to the movies and I'm like, "I remember you used to say, "Ba-na-na-na-na," like that, man, that's so cute. Really, I'm now looking at the future and what my legacy is and how I'm going to help more and more people, and that's what I want to do. That's why we're getting the word out there. That's why we're doing recordings like this one. That's why we're doing videos. That's why we're doing blog post and more products and more trainings, just to help other people. Back to my original point with the movie and carpe diem, and it also has to deal with kids. The point I wanted to make is that if you have a teenager or if you have somebody in college or if you have anybody, really, but especially if you have kids. Some pre-teens might be 11, 12, 13 years old. Teenagers, maybe college kids. If you have those, you need to sit together and you need to watch this movie, and then you need to help them, to make a plan or to keep them grounded, because life will make you forget to seize today. I would like you to give them that gift and say, "Hey, you know what? Let's do this together. What do you think about it? What are some steps you can take, maybe on a regular basis, to bring you back and to remember this message?" One thing I always like you to do is as you are trading and as you are learning to trade, wherever you are on this trading journey, obviously you're probably listening to this because you are trading and you are investing your own capital, teach your kids how to do it. Have them do it with you. They don't have to be masters. You don't have to teach them Fibonacci if that's your thing. You don't have to teach them all that stuff. Give them the basics, show them how it works. Show them how money works. Most kids nowadays have no clue how money works. Most kids who even graduate college still have no clue. The only thing they're taught in college is how to go and be an employee. Even if you take entrepreneurship classes, even if you take marketing classes and small business classes, one thing is they're not taught by real people who are making things happen every day, small business owners. These kids don't have that frame of reference. Nowadays, with the internet and with all the social media stuff and all this technology that's coming out with the smartphones and the apps and artificial intelligence, the sky is the limit. Kids today can literally change the world and it doesn't even cost that much money. When Facebook started, he didn't pay a lot of money to develop Facebook. He did it himself. He learned to code, Zuckerberg learned how to code, and then he made it himself and then he hired other people that also learned how to do it themselves, and they just built it that way. A lot of apps can be built by kids. They are. There's software out there that can teach you how to make an app. There was a kid, I was watching these videos the other day. What this guy does is he talks about crypto currencies, which is like bit coin, and Ethereum. There are thousands of them. It's really hot right now, so crypto currency and bit coin is getting very, very popular. It's in the news. What this guy does is he makes a video every day, and he posts it on YouTube. That's what he does. He's went 100% into this bit coin thing, into this crypto currency thing. He spent his time researching it, learning about it, and then he makes a video every day, and he posts it online. He has I don't know how many thousands of subscribers and hundreds of thousands of people are watching his videos, on a regular basis. The other day, he did one where he talked about how much money he made from bit coin. That was the title of the video, "How I made $100,000 in one year from bit coin." That's what his video was. I was like, "I want to hear that story." I clicked on there, I watched the video, and he was showing how he started with $500. He's a high school kid, he's still living with his parents. He had $500, and he invested in a bit coin and whatnot, but the thing is, that he did not make $100,000 from his bit coin investment. What he did was he made money, most of his money, probably 95% of that $100,000 that he made, he made from his YouTube channel, where he's making these videos every day, and  he's posting them and then he's telling people in the video that, "Hey, you know what? There's this particular broker, bit coin broker, who's really good. You should try them out." You would have a link. If they clicked on the link and signed up, he would get a commission. He would tell them, "Oh, there's this other company that's doing really well, you can [inaudible 00:14:42] over here." He would get a commission if people bought from his link. He would tell them about something else, and he would get a commission. He made over $90,000 last year, in one year, from commissions from a YouTube channel, without any advertising, without any knowledge, without any education. He would just go online, read the stuff, and then talk about it in his daily video, and then tell people what to do. Basically, he became like an educator. He became a teacher. This high school kid is teaching other people around the world about bit coin. How is he learning? He's going on the computer and learning and then he's doing the same thing that the people watching the video could do. He's putting it in a video and people want to watch videos instead of going online, learning themselves. They watch his videos and they learn and they buy stuff through his links, and he makes money that way. My point is that it's incredible, the different ways that kids and people can make money nowadays, online. That old model of going to college and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, and getting into debt, it just doesn't work anymore. You're not going to get that big, cushy job that's going to make you 100,000 or 50,000 or 60,000. Even if you do, you have two or $300,000 worth of debt. That's why we have all these news articles every day, "Millennials don't want to buy houses because they have too much debt," "Millennials are moving back in with their parents because they have too much debt and they're not making enough money." I had a girl who called me the other day, she's graduating from the University of Houston, and she called me. Her mother knows my wife and her mother asked, "Hey, is Allen hiring?" She said, "Maybe, give him a call. Here's the number." The girl called me up, said, "Hey, you know, I'm graduating from advertising. I got a degree, a major in advertising and a minor in marketing. I'd like to come work for you." I said, "You know what? Come on by, let's talk." The girl didn't know anything. She's done. She's out of school. She did her four years in advertising and in marketing, and she did not know the basics. I asked her, "What have you done? What kind of marketing have you done?" She goes, "I've done SEO," which is search engine optimization. Basically, that's getting your website to the top of Google. I'm like, "That's cool. I know a little bit about that. I've done that before. How did you do it? What was your method?" She's just looking at me, like I asked her some ... Like I'm an alien or something. She didn't have an answer. She told me she did SEO, but she didn't know how to do it. She was like, "Well, we had one project in school, but I wasn't the main person on the project. I was just helping out." I said, "Okay. Do you know anything about SEO?" "No, no, I don't know anything about it." Cool, so you didn't do anything. "What'd you do about advertising?" "I made logos and I made graphics and I've done that kind of stuff." I was like, "Okay, well that's not advertising. That's graphics. That's graphic design. What do you know about advertising? What do you know about marketing?" She didn't know anything. Her parents have paid thousands of dollars for her to go to school and now she's out, and she can't find a job. I'm like, "You're pretty desperate for a job." She's like, "Yeah, I really need a job right now." I'm sure there are other people, like bigger companies, that come and recruit at your school, right? Job fairs and whatnot? Have you been to those? She goes, "I've been to those, I've been on interviews, but I still can't find a job." That's the state of where we are today. What I want you to do is not to put your kids into that same position. A few years ago, we got a testimonial, or an email, which was a testimonial, and I want to read it to you. It was from one of our long term members. Let me pull it up. Basically, this is his words. He goes, "A success story from my daughter, as she has been learning from your ideas. She is currently 14 years old, a freshman of a San Francisco high school. She started to read your free lessons in August of this year. By the help of her Hong Kong uncle, with $25,000, trading in his account, she started selling SBX and Iron Condors, purely from ideas from your membership. She has been up three months in a row, generating 12.5%, 14.57%, and 15.25%, with margin requirement of $15,000 each month, which is 60% of her 25,000. She has a profit of $6,365. She uses 25% of her profit for her pocket money, and 75% for cash reserve to pay back her uncle. She lets all trades expire as OG, option genius, designed perfect ranges, and far enough strike prices of both SPX and [inaudible 00:19:36], within six weeks of expiration. The option membership is really brilliant." [inaudible 00:19:42] San Francisco, California. This was a few years ago and she's much older now, she's probably in high school, maybe even in college. Probably not in college, she's probably still in high school by now. No, she was 14 and she was a freshman in high school. She's probably out. She's probably in college right now. I can imagine if this girl, a 14 year old girl, can learn how to trade Iron Condors by following along with me, trading her own Iron Condors and making 12%, 14%, 15% a month, can you imagine the confidence that this girl's going to have in her life? Can you imagine what it's going to be like for her when somebody comes and offers her a job and says, "We'll pay you 30,000 a year ... Or 50,000 a year." She's going to be like, "I don't want to do that. I can make my own income doing my own trading. I don't need to work in a cubicle." Nobody dreams to work in a cubicle. None of these kids who go to college today, they don't dream of having to work for a big ass company that's going to pay them some decent amount, but they're going to have to work their butts off for the rest of their lives. Nobody wants that. The old American dream where you work until you're 60, 62, 65, it keeps increasing. It used to be 60, where you could retire with a pension and your company would take care of you, and you would just retire, play golf, travel, that American dream is pretty much gone. If you look at the numbers now, if you look at the statistics, most Americans have ... Over half of Americans today, over 50%, have less than $1,000 in their checking account, saved. That's their savings. It's heartbreaking. The amount of people that are retiring, baby boomers right now, that are living only on social security, that's the only income they have, it just ... It's crushing. It's soul crushing. We get emails every day from people, "I got laid off. I'm 50 years old and I got laid off and I'm trying to get a job but nobody wants to hire me at my old salary and I have all these expenses, and my kids are in college." I'm sorry buddy, but you're probably not going to find the same job at a different place, paying you the same salary that you were making. Number one, you're 50. People would rather hire somebody out of college because they're cheaper and they can get pushed around. They can work longer hours. They have more stamina. They remember better. It's just a fact of life. We get emails like that every day. What I want is for your kids to not be in that position. For a lot of these people who email me, it's almost too late. We try to help them, but sometimes you can't. If the only income you have is your social security check, you don't have any money to trade. My thing is not for you. If I was teaching you how to get a second job or something, or get young again, you could use that and make more money. To trade, you have to have some money. You have to have some capital. For your kids, it's a whole different story, because they have their whole lives ahead of them. Teach them to trade. You're doing it. Teach them what you do, teach them what you're learning. Learn with them. Do it as a project together. Can you imagine the freedom that your kids would have, knowing that they can go to any college that they want? Any college that they can get into? The money will not be a factor. Cost will not be a factor. When I got out of school, when I got out of high school, I got into some really, really nice schools. Ivy league schools. I could not go, because I could not afford it. The school that I went to, Florida State, and eventually I had to drop out of, I went there because they paid me to go there. At that time, tuition, room, and board and everything was about $7,000 a year. They gave me a financial aid package of $8,000 for the year. They actually paid me $1,000 more than I needed. That's why I went there. I hated that place. Nothing wrong with it, it just didn't fit for me. It's a great school. It didn't fit for me. I applied to NYU and I got in. After my first year, I applied to NYU and I got in. At that time, NYU tuition plus room and board, everything was going to cost about $35,000 a year. Right now, it's a hell of a lot more than that. This is 1994, '95, I'm talking about. At that time, it was 35 and they gave me a financial aid package of about 16,000, which is half, about half. I told my dad, I'm like, "Dad, dad, you can do it, right? You can pay for it? You can work harder in your business or get loans or something?" He's like, "No. Not going to happen. You can't go." I couldn't go. I don't want that to happen to my kids and I'm sure you don't want that to happen to your kid. If your kid gets into Harvard, imagine you telling him, "Hey, son, I'm sorry. Sweetie pie, my daughter, you can't get in there because I can't afford it. You're going to have to go to a local public school," which is not cheap anymore, either. Imagine that they can go to any school that they want that they can get into, and cost is not a factor. Imagine that they can choose whatever major they want to study, whatever field of study they want to go into, without having to worry about the money. Some field that excites them. Maybe it's robotics, maybe it's teaching. Teachers don't make anything. People who go into teaching know they're going to be poor. Teachers are pretty much poor. If they really love to teach, they can go and do that because they know that they know how to trade, and that they can go into the markets and take the money when they want it. I have had people come over our friends come over, and their daughters are ready to go to college. It's like, "So, what are you going to study in college?" That's obviously the first question you're going to ask them. Where are you going, that's the first question, what school are you going to, and then what are you going to study? The response was, "Computer engineering." I was like, "What?" I knew the girl. I was like, "I've never even seen you on a computer. You don't seem to be the engineering type. You're more social, you're more active." She was like, "Well, that's the field that has the hottest jobs right now. That's the hottest industry right now with the best jobs." I was like, "That's how you're going to decide what to do for your life, based on what industry is hot right now?" She goes, "Yeah, because I'm going to have to take out a bunch of loans to go to school, and then I'll have to have a good paying job to be able to pay them off and have a good future. It was really disheartening. It broke my heart. Being a computer engineer, there's nothing wrong with it. Her father is a computer engineer and he loves his life. He loves his job, he loves his life, but I don't know if that's right for her. It didn't seem like she was too excited about it. I tried to talk her out of it, but at that point, it was too late because that was their situation. That was their thing. Your kids don't have to be in that situation. My kids are too small. They're five, six, and one. I can't teach them right now, but I want to. Eventually, when they're older, I will. I want them to have that freedom to do whatever they want. Imagine giving the gift to your kids of them being able to follow their calling, whatever it is, whatever their calling is. Maybe they want to be a social worker, maybe they want to be a missionary, maybe they want to be a world traveler. Right now, if they go get a marketing degree or an accounting degree or whatnot, they can't do it. They don't have that freedom. Imagine them having the ability to follow their heart and their freedom, not worrying about money because they know how to go into the markets and just take it out at will. That's what option trading, the way we do it, gives you that opportunity, that ability. Our trades are done month by month by month. You can if you want, but you can have really, really long one one year, two year trades if you want, but most of our trades are short time frames. You can trade for like three months and then stop, take that money out, and go on a trip. Come back, start trading again. Take that money out, go on another trip or go do something else. You can trade in your spare time. Literally, it doesn't take me more than 20, 30 minutes a day to do my trades and I make a very good income from it. A very good living from it. Imagine that. Imagine your kids had that ability. Wouldn't that be awesome? Could you give them a better gift? Of course, you can give them a few other things like teach them how to be a good person and how to live properly and respect of other people and how to love yourself and love your spouse and all that, love your kids. The gift of financial freedom? Imagine if you started them on that journey today. Even if you don't teach them about how to trade right now, or trade options, at least get them investing. Open a brokerage account for them, put some money in there. Buy an index fund if you have to. Don't buy an index fund, buy an index ETF, like SPY or IWM. Get them involved. One thing I did with a friend of ours, she passed away now, but she was like my sister. I'm an only child, but she basically ... We became friends, she became my wife's best friend and I was friends with her husband. The kids were like ours, we would treat them like our own kids. She started calling me her brother, her older brother. She had always wanted an older brother. She started treating me like an older brother. She became my little sister. For her daughter, I think she was 10 or 11 years old at the time, I wanted her to get involved in trading and investing, and I wanted to teach her how the world works, how money works, that you don't have to work for money. You want to get your money to work for you. That was the whole lesson behind it. I opened up an account for her at Fidelity, and it was a minor account with her mom being in charge of it. Every year on her birthday, she would buy stock. I would tell her, "Pick a company and I'm going to buy you $100 worth of its stock." One year, the first year, this girl was ... She was a normal teenager, but she was a little bit materialistic in things like makeup and clothes and shoes and whatnot. She knew about Ulta. She was like, "I really like Ulta. Does Ulta have a share?" I'm like, "I don't even know." I didn't know about Ulta at the time. We looked it up and yes, Ulta did. Ulta had a shares trading. We bought, I don't know how much it was, but we bought some shares of Ulta. Since then, that stock has gone up like two, 300%. Every year, she would buy one company. I put in maybe ... We did it for four or five years. I probably put in about 500 bucks. Right now, she just went to college, she just left for college. There is over $2,000 in that account. She was an amazing stock picker for not even knowing what a stock was. That's one way of teaching them. If you don't want to teach them options trading, get them invested in stocks and start with a little bit instead of giving them a big birthday gift or something, that's their birthday present. You can even do that for all types of events, for weddings. Have a smaller wedding, and put that money away for your future. Crazy concept, it might work for some people. Now that I think about it, I think I've changed my mind. My kids aren't too little. They're five, six, and one. Maybe not the one year old, but the five and the six year old. My six year old already beats me at Chess. I think he could understand how the stock market works. I think it's time to start trading with them, teach them the basics. They won't understand what a [inaudible 00:32:18] is, but teach them the basics. I think they'll get the hang of it. I think they'll be interested. I think they're already interested in what daddy does. They don't know what daddy does, but they're interested. They ask me questions and stuff. I think it's time to bring them on board and to learn. I can't imagine how awesome that would be for them. Crazy. Folks, that was my message for today. Carpe diem. Teach your kids to trade as you would learn yourself, as you get better. They might even be better traders than you are, which would be awesome, right? Give them that gift. Remember to always trade with the odds in your favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- Your stock broker is just another tool in your trading arsenal. Yet too many investors has a sense of loyalty to their broker. And when their broker says "no" the investor just takes it. The truth is, it is your money and your broker should not dictate to you what you can do with it. Another truth is that you are allowed to have more than one IRA account. So how many accounts should you have? As many as you need. Every broker has its strengths. There is no shame in having account at different brokers in order to use their free tools. Some nuggets from this episode: "Brokers do really well, and they make a lot of money from us, especially the more and more people are trading options nowadays, the individual investors, the people that are realizing that, "Hey, you know what? Giving my money to this financial planner or this mutual fund or whatever, it's not getting the job done. I'm paying all these fees and whatnot, and I don't have any control over money. It's better to have control of our money. Let me do it myself." More and more people are waking up to that reality. More and more people are waking up to that realization." "The one thing I want you to take away is that all these commissions are negotiable. If you don't like what you're paying now, if you think you're paying too much, contact your broker and say, "Hey, you guys ripped me of. I want to pay less money, and if you don't, I'm going to switch," because there are hundreds of brokers out there. They all want your money, they are all hungry for money, for income, for more customers. They will bend over backwards. They should bend over backwards to help you out and to get you as a customer." Links from this episode: https://optiongenius.com/blog/this-1-trick-can-save-you-thousands-on-commissions/ https://optiongenius.com/blog/option-friendly-brokers/ http://www.ameritrade.com http://www.etrade.com http://www.eoption.com http://www.interactivebrokers.com -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.  

At OptionGenius we believe that you deserve freedom. Financial freedom so you have no more worries and more than enough money, Time freedom to do what you want when you want, and Choice Freedom to live your life on your terms. But the system and wall street are rigged against us little guys. So how do we fight back? That’s what this podcast is all about. My name is Allen Sama and this is the Option Genius Podcast. -- People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.