The Option Genius Podcast: Options Trading For Income and Growth

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.