The Option Genius Podcast: Options Trading For Income and Growth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The question asked was: "Allen, what has been your greatest investment?" I was asked this by a coaching student recently. And I told him, I have to think about it and get back to him. Right? Well, I have thought about it, and I want to share the answer with you as well. So when it comes to success, at anything, really, there are three major components. Okay, number one is the skills, you got to know what to do. And then you got to get good at it. And that's doing the thing. Now, whether this is trading, whether this is parenting, weightlifting, anything, there are certain skills that you have to be able to perform. And the best way to learn those skills is by investing in education, something like a book or a course or something like that. Right? Now, these are basic skills. So when it comes to trading, you have to know some stuff, you have to know what is a stock? How do they go up? What do they go down? What is an option? What does it call? What does it put? How do they work that you go, and you get from a book you get from a course or a video right? Now, most of the questions out there that you want to know, you can get the answers for free. From about skills, you can get the answers for free at the library, in a book, and now maybe even on YouTube. Now YouTube's a little sketchy, because you don't know exactly who's making these videos and how good it is. And if the answer is actually going to legitimate how old this stuff is, I mean, I've I've tried some things on YouTube that were so old, they didn't work anymore, and you can't tell. But at the bookstore library, you know, the skills, the basic skills, hey, I want to learn fundamental analysis, I want to learn technical analysis. 90% of what you need to know, you can learn by a book or a course, that stuff is out there, there aren't that many things that are secret out there. And that's like a myth, right? Everything you hear about is like, oh, the secret method to do this the secret to do this, oh, they that person got so rich, because they have a secret. No, the skills are the same trading, the skills are the same, you got to know how to chart you got to know how to look at a stock, you got to know how to read the direction, you got to know how to put the trade on, you have to understand how the trade works. Right, you have to know probability of profit, you got to know when to get in when to get out, follow a trading plan, you got to have a trading plan. These are all skill-based things. Because the skills are just the basic level. That's like the entry level. Right? That's the first things you got to learn the skills. And some people they spend their whole life working on the skills. But that's why they never become successful because they don't do the other two components. Getting good at the skill does not guarantee success. There is a lot more to uncover. Just because you know, this skills or your book smart doesn't mean you're going to be successful. Knowledge is not power. I don't know why people say that. So I've heard that before. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. No, it's potential power, if you use the knowledge, right. But if you only have the knowledge, that's not good enough. If you know some of the skills, you could do some of the things that will get you some success, but will not get you the ultimate success that you're after. Okay. So I know a lot of people that are very smart. You know, they went to Harvard, MIT brainiacs, you know, everything. They're like a walking encyclopedia, but they struggling to pay the bills every month, because they are missing the other two components. So now, component number two is the habits, the discipline, the work ethic, these are all based on character, right, you have to have the right character. In order to succeed, you have to have discipline, you have to have work ethic, you have to be able to get up when you get knocked down. You can only get that one way. By doing the thing over and over and over. Like they say, practice makes perfect. But then again, there's no such thing as perfection. Because there is always another level, there's always a way to get better, there's always a way to achieve more to improve more. So you never get to the end goal. So there's no such thing as perfection. But you still got to practice and you have to have it internally. It has to come from inside. That's the only way to have the discipline and the work ethic you have to work on that everybody's not born that way. You know, you look at take a look at Arnold Schwarzenegger or the rock, Dwayne Johnson. They got bodies like crazy, I'm never gonna have a body like that, because I don't have the discipline to be in the gym for six hours a day. That's not me. That's not my thing. I don't have that discipline. Right. And so I might have the skills, I might know how to lift weights, I might know how to be a personal trainer or whatever, but I'm never going to look like them because I don't have that work ethic or that discipline or that desire. So whatever it is you need to master, if it's trading, you gotta follow the trading plan, you got to follow the rules, you got to have that discipline, you got to be able to take a loss, you have to be have your emotions in check. That's all character, that's the second component. Now these character traits like habits, you can have them by working on themselves on yourself, if you're lucky, you might be able to do it on your own. It's not easy, but it is doable. The easier way to do it, the shortcut is to do it with somebody else. So they can see where you are falling behind. Okay, so they can help you, they can motivate you, they can point out certain things that you might not be able to see, they can push you, when you fall down. When you don't want to go, they can give you that nudge, that encouragement. If you do what somebody else, the habits, the character traits are easier to develop. Does that make sense? Okay, now, number three, the third component, this might be the one that's the biggest one that people miss that that causes them from having the ultimate success that they're looking for. They might have the skills, they might even have the character traits and the habits. But if they don't have the belief, it's not going to work. And not just any belief, they have to have the right belief. And that is the toughest one yet. Because if you have the skills and the habits, but you're not achieving what you desire, then it is because your beliefs are not right. Now you already have beliefs, you already have some, they might not be the ones that you need to get to your goal. Now, for most people, the reason is that they believe something that is not accurate. They have what's called false beliefs. And the crazy thing is that we often don't know what we don't know. We think we know. But what we know, is the thing that is blocking us. Does that make sense? I'll say it again, we don't know what we don't know, we're blind to it. We're the guy in the forest, you can't see the forest from the trees. We think we know, we already have beliefs we think we know. But that thing that we think we know, the thing that we know, is the thing that is blocking us. That's the false belief. Now, like Einstein said, or maybe he didn't say, I don't know, he said, the quote is the thinking that got us into the problem won't get us out of the problem. And for the longest time, I couldn't understand what that meant. Right? But when you're in a problem, and then eventually you have an epiphany, you have an AHA moment you have like, "Oh, my God, why don't I think of that", that is a change in thinking to get you out of the problem to show you the solution. Okay, now, for example, in our credit spread mastery program, the hardest thing I have to do is to get students to break their false beliefs, the ones that they already have, when they come into the program. They understand the system, they understand how to find trades, place trades, all that that's easy for me to teach. But then they keep trying to use their own beliefs, and their things that they learned into the new system. They're taking their old skills, trying to apply it to a new system. And that's why they don't have the success that they could have. That's what causes them problems and losses. Now, the students that have the most success, are the ones that are new to options and just follow the program. They just take what I say at face value and just do it, you know, it's like run Forrest run, just do it be like Forrest, just do it. And the results for them have been crazy, amazing. I mean, so good that you won't even believe them if I share them. But they're not my results, right? They're the results of students. And there are so many of them that are getting similar results. Because they're doing the three steps. They're believing what I tell them, they get developing the skills, and they're developing the work ethic, the character. Now, on the other hand, we have the students that have been trading for a while. They keep trying to do it the way that they've learned to do it, and they keep struggling. Right now they still make money, they still end up doing well. But they're not doing as well as they could. And that's where they get frustrated. They see it in front of their eyes. They're like, Man, this is working. This is working. It's working for other people. Why isn't it working for me? If you ever had that problem, if you ever felt that way that oh, my God, this thing works. I see it working for others. It's not working for me. It's because there's something wrong with the belief level, or maybe even the character level. But most likely, it's the belief level. If your why is strong enough, if you really, really, really want to make it work. That's your character level. But if the beliefs are wrong, it's still not going to work. Okay, now this is crazy to me, because I do the same thing. I'm preaching to you about it. But I do exactly the same thing. So don't feel bad. But if you want to succeed at something, this is a shortcut, I'll give you the secret, the best way to do it is to have someone who has done it before you who has the success you want, and then have them point out the beliefs that you have that are holding you back, basically, get some coaching. Hire a coach, and that person will tell you why you're being held back if they're any good. Okay, now, I heard a podcast today where a guy, the speaker, the guy doing the podcast, he said he hired himself a coach for $30,000 an hour. 30,000 an hour, and he had to buy for hours. He had to pay $120,000 for a coach. Now that's freaking crazy, right? That's amazing. But for him, it was worth it. Because this guy's already making according to him, he already makes a couple 100 million dollars a year. So for him $100,000, $120,000 no big deal. But, I mean, it is still a big deal. I bet you still a big deal. But he's looking at it in a different lens. He's not looking at like, Oh my God, that's 120. He's looking at it, like, what can I get out of this? What can I make from this? Like, what is my return going to be? What is my value going to be? Okay, the answers that he got, were worth a lot more to him than the $30,000 that he had to pay for one hour. He was able to go to the source to somebody who had already done what he wants to do, and got the answer from the horse's mouth. He was able to say, Hey, this is my problem. What do I do? This is my thinking. I'm thinking about doing this. Should I do this? Yes, no, why not? Oh, you did it before? Oh, it didn't work for you. Okay, that makes sense. What about this? Oh, I see that now. Oh, my God, I didn't think about that. I didn't know anything about that. What does that mean? etc. So not only does he know what to do, but he knows what not to do? What not to waste his time on what not to waste his money on. Right? He's saving his time, which is a lot more valuable to somebody who's making 200 million a year, than the $120,000 that it cost him. Now it's the same with most traders online, I see it every day. They said that they would never pay to learn to trade. Oh, yeah, I'm not going to pay to learn trade, I'm going to figure it out myself. I'm going to do it myself. That's great. If you want it to take forever, do you really have forever to learn? I mean, think about it. Let's just say it takes you five years to learn how to trade to be successful to be profitable consistently. Okay, that is five years of profits that you never get back. So either you have two options, right? Let's do you can do it yourself is gonna take you five years. And in that five years, you get some winners, you get some losers, you lose some more, you get some you kind of break even. But after five years, you know what you're doing. Awesome. trader number two, trader B goes and hires a coach takes a mentoring program. And he learns it right away. Like let's say he takes credit spread mastery, and he learns how to trade in three months, and it becomes profitable. And so after three months, he's profitable for five years. Whereas trader A is still breaking even after five years, because he's learning it on his own. He didn't want to spend the money for the coaching. Okay, that's five years of profits that trader a could have had, but he'll never have, he doesn't get it back. The years of profit could compound into millions of dollars. That's what these guys don't think about. They don't think about long term they don't think about they're just thinking about the short term like, Oh, I have to pay for coaching right now. No, it's not worth it. But they don't look at the long term compounding image 10, 20, 30 years down the road. Right? Now, I'll give you an example. I put aside $20,000 for each of my kids, in their IRAs for them, three kids 20 grand each. Okay, now, when my oldest turns 65 when he retires, and he can take money out of his account, even if I don't add another penny. And if I only leave it in an SPX index fund, like an index eval, put in the index fund, it matches the stock market. I don't touch it. We don't add anything. We don't do anything. It's just that 20,000 just growing, growing, compounding, compounding, when he's 65. He's gonna have over a million dollars in that account. That's pretty good, right? I mean, the kid is 10 years old. He's gonna have million dollars. He's a millionaire. That's amazing. You know, hopefully he'll thank me. Might not be around but hopefully he'll thank me Like, oh, yeah, my Dad was a great guy. I don't know, hopefully, right? Fingers crossed. Now my youngest, my youngest child, I also put 20,000 aside for her, when she hit 65. Same thing, no extra money, no touching it just index fund, her account, her 20 grand will turn into over 2.5 million. What? One kid gets 1,000,000, 1 kid gets 2.5 million? What's the difference? Well, they're six years apart in age. So the oldest, he's got six years less of compounding. And that means over a million dollars difference in account size. Six years of compounding means over a million dollars. So yeah, when you try to learn something on your own, you're gonna pay for it, you're paying, you're paying a lot more than it costs to hire a professional to teach it to you. Let that sink in. You're still gonna pay, you pay this way you pay that way. One is harder, takes longer, and you got to pay more. The other one, you get to learn the right way quicker. And you have somebody on your side, and you profit sooner. So what was my greatest investment? Investing in coaching. It had to be the greatest return on investment of anything I've ever done. Okay, I mean, I read a lot. I've read lots and lots of books. I've been to seminars, I've watched videos, but nothing can replace that in-person coaching, where somebody is talking to you looking at your situation, looking answering your questions, it made a complete world of difference. There was one program I joined three or four years ago, I think was like four or five, a four year five years ago, not sure how many, it was for $8,000. And I was like, and I don't know, if I want to spend $8,000 for this. There's a lot of money. It was for business marketing and business development stuff. And I paid for it. I was like, Alright, you know, I'm gonna plug it in, I need some help. I'm gonna do it. In the first, very first session, I went up to the main guy, and I asked him a question. I said, Look, man, I have this specific problem. It has to do with my technical stuff that we're using in my business, my systems, my software, what do I do? I have a problem. What do I do? Okay. And his answer, he looked at me, he goes, "Oh, that's simple", you know, in our business, and this is him talking goes in our business, we use this system, we set it up this way. This is the guy that sets everything up for us. So why don't you talk to him, I'll introduce you, you talk to him. And he'll set up the whole thing for you. Now, I'm getting a referral from somebody who's doing millions and millions of dollars in revenue, somebody that I look up to somebody that I paid to coaching to teach me because I want to be where he is. Right? And he's telling me to use this software that he uses, and to use this guy that he also uses to set everything up. Is that not the ultimate shortcut? I mean, that paid for the 8 Grand right there. Just that one introduction. Okay, that was it. One sentence, I followed his advice, I hired that guy. And guess what? That guy was an idiot. a total idiot. It was a waste of money. And time, he promised to do something he tooks part of the money. It took him a year and a half, and he still hadn't done it. But what it did was it got me on the right path. It got me that software, it got me thinking along those lines of how to improve my systems and my processes. And then eventually, I did find somebody to finish the job. I got to find somebody sooner if I wanted to, but I was still being cheap. And instead of hiring somebody else and firing that guy, I was like, No, no, he's gonna do it. He's going to do it. I kept pounding and pounding and kept pounding. Finally I gave up. If I'd given up a year earlier, I would have been done a year sooner. So I found somebody else to finish that job. And then that helped me reach my goals in that particular area for Option Genius. That one sentence, that that coach told me, not one cent is telling me what systems they use was worth the whole price of the program that $8,000 that I paid for them. But I still get value from that program in other areas. Even years later, I was still looking at some of my notes the other day from that program, and it's still giving me ideas. I'm still helping me out. Okay, so save yourself the frustration of learning things yourself. If I could start all over again, which I can't go back. It would be cool, right? If I could start all over again. That is the thing that I would change in my own life. I would have found somebody who was trading profitably the way I wanted to and paid them to be their apprentice or be in their coaching program, or whatever, and then followed exactly what they say. That's the biggest thing. Yeah, we can pay people. But when we don't follow them, we don't believe what they're telling us. We bring our own misconceptions and our false beliefs to a new system. It doesn't work. So you need those three things. You need the skill, need the character traits, and you need the right beliefs. All right, folks, that's it for this episode. Much love to you and trade with the odds in your favor. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... 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