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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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