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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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