The Option Genius Podcast: Options Trading For Income and Growth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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