Recently I attended a mastermind meeting with other online marketers. These folks are super smart, super rich, and super savvy. They are the ones that introduced me to crypto arbitrage. Yes, that is a thing. Everyone presents something in the meeting that can help the others. I decided to talk about 3 things that have shaped my life up to this point. I expected them to already know about these secrets, but not one of them knew of all three. In fact, none of them knew about #3. The three I talked about were: 1. The Wave Theory of Life 2. The Five Finger Theory 3. Passive Trading Passive Trading literally blew them away. They were mesmerized. Listen to the episode to hear me describe all three secrets! Link to Episode 4: 5 Finger Strategy <a href= "https://optiongenius.com/blog/five-finger-strategy/">https://optiongenius.com/blog/five-finger-strategy/</a> <a href="http://www.passivetrading.com" target="_blank" rel= "noopener">PassiveTrading.com</a>

Recently I attended a mastermind meeting with other online marketers. These folks are super smart, super rich, and super savvy. They are the ones that introduced me to crypto arbitrage. Yes, that is a thing. Everyone presents something in the meeting that can help the others. I decided to talk about 3 things that have shaped my life up to this point. I expected them to already know about these secrets, but not one of them knew of all three. In fact, none of them knew about #3. The three I talked about were: 1. The Wave Theory of Life 2. The Five Finger Theory 3. Passive Trading Passive Trading literally blew them away. They were mesmerized. Listen to the episode to hear me describe all three secrets! Link to Episode 4: 5 Finger Strategy https://optiongenius.com/blog/five-finger-strategy/ PassiveTrading.com

The Option Genius Podcast: Options Trading For The Individual Investor - Trading Stock Options For Income and Growth

3 Secrets The Rich Do Not Know -65

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

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

Selling Puts vs Owning Stock - 64

Etrade Trading Account Hacked, Lost $15,000 - 63

A Decade To Freedom - 62

We're going to talk about something that is downright scary. FEAR Has the fear of losing money stopped you from trading or made you trade in a way that led to losses? If yes, you are not alone. Fear is the one thing that stops humanity from achieving our highest potential. And everybody has fear. Every trader is afraid of losing money on every single trade. On this episode, I share an exercise that I have used in the past to help traders get over their fear of loss. It takes just a few minutes and it can help you overcome your fears and get you back in the game. <a href= "https://optiongenius.com">https://optiongenius.com</a> <a href= "https://passivetrading.com">https://passivetrading.com</a>

We're going to talk about something that is downright scary. FEAR Has the fear of losing money stopped you from trading or made you trade in a way that led to losses? If yes, you are not alone. Fear is the one thing that stops humanity from achieving our highest potential. And everybody has fear. Every trader is afraid of losing money on every single trade. On this episode, I share an exercise that I have used in the past to help traders get over their fear of loss. It takes just a few minutes and it can help you overcome your fears and get you back in the game. https://optiongenius.com https://passivetrading.com  

Overcome the Fear of Losing Money - 61

What would a good yearly return be for you? What would you be happy with? 10%? 15%? 25%? Our goal at OptionGenius is to make 10% a month. We don't always get there and we sometimes lose money but even if we average 5% a month, that is a great year. Well in 2019, I made 168% and in this episode I want to share how I did it and how you can do it too, and why I think that 2020 will be just as good a year as 2019 if not better. <a href= "https://optiongenius.com/oiloptions">https://optiongenius.com/oiloptions</a>

What would a good yearly return be for you? What would you be happy with? 10%? 15%? 25%? Our goal at OptionGenius is to make 10% a month. We don't always get there and we sometimes lose money but even if we average 5% a month, that is a great year. Well in 2019, I made 168% and in this episode I want to share how I did it and how you can do it too, and why I think that 2020 will be just as good a year as 2019 if not better. https://optiongenius.com/oiloptions    

Case Study: How To Make 168% Returns in One Year - 60

The Tale of Two Traders - 59

Selling options on the day of expiration is all the rage right now. In many online forums and groups there are traders who are bragging about how they are making great trades and profits by selling options that have very little time left to expiration. Is this something that you should consider? Isn't it risky to sell so close to expiration? When you sell close to expiration, time decay works very quickly. But most of the value of the option has already been lost. But you can still earn a good percentage especially since you will only be in the trade for a few hours. Check out the episode to see what strategy works best for 0 DTE trades and if the risk/reward is something you should be looking into. <a href="https://optiongenius.com">For more info on selling options visit https://optiongenius.com</a> To learn how I trade weekly options and make 5% per week: <a href= "https://weeklytradingsystem.com">https://weeklytradingsystem.com</a>

Selling options on the day of expiration is all the rage right now. In many online forums and groups there are traders who are bragging about how they are making great trades and profits by selling options that have very little time left to expiration. Is this something that you should consider? Isn't it risky to sell so close to expiration? When you sell close to expiration, time decay works very quickly. But most of the value of the option has already been lost. But you can still earn a good percentage especially since you will only be in the trade for a few hours. Check out the episode to see what strategy works best for 0 DTE trades and if the risk/reward is something you should be looking into. For more info on selling options visit https://optiongenius.com To learn how I trade weekly options and make 5% per week: https://weeklytradingsystem.com  

The 0 DTE Trade - 58

Which is the better way to live: to plan every detail or to let the Universe look out for us? And which of those makes for a better trader? "If you want to make God laugh, make plans." We cannot control the stock market. We cannot control individual stocks, or their reactions to news. So what can we control as traders? And should we? That is the question we tackle in this episode. How to be able to flow with the market but still protect ourselves from volatility and excessive fluctuations. Books mentioned: The Surrender Experiment Where The Magic Happens Links: <a href= "https://optiongenius.com">https://optiongenius.com</a>

Which is the better way to live: to plan every detail or to let the Universe look out for us? And which of those makes for a better trader? "If you want to make God laugh, make plans." We cannot control the stock market. We cannot control individual stocks, or their reactions to news. So what can we control as traders? And should we? That is the question we tackle in this episode. How to be able to flow with the market but still protect ourselves from volatility and excessive fluctuations. Books mentioned: The Surrender Experiment Where The Magic Happens Links: https://optiongenius.com  

Sailing Across The Stock Market - 57

In this episode we review what impacted the stocks markets in 2019 and what we see coming in 2020. Now keep in mind that these are just my interpretation of things to come. I might be right, I might be wrong. That is not the point. The point is to hone in on trends. If you can spot a trend coming before anyone else, you can make a lot of money. Or even if you spot it in enough time to ride it, you can still make a lot of money. And as they say in trading, the trend is your friend. So the trends will probably continue. So if we can identify these trends, especially if they are long term, if they have been occurring in the past and they're going to continue to occurring. Then those are things that we can actually benefit from in a financial sense. The 2020 Predictions have to do with: <ul> <li>Volatility</li> <li>How The Markets React To The Election</li> <li>The Automotive Industry</li> <li>Technology</li> <li>Medicine</li> <li>Why Recycling Will Be Stopped</li> <li>Border Changes</li> </ul> <a href= "https://optiongenius.com/">https://optiongenius.com/</a> Link to 2019 Predictions: <a href= "https://optiongenius.com/podcast/38-2019-predictions/">https://optiongenius.com/podcast/38-2019-predictions/</a>

In this episode we review what impacted the stocks markets in 2019 and what we see coming in 2020. Now keep in mind that these are just my interpretation of things to come. I might be right, I might be wrong. That is not the point. The point is to hone in on trends. If you can spot a trend coming before anyone else, you can make a lot of money. Or even if you spot it in enough time to ride it, you can still make a lot of money. And as they say in trading, the trend is your friend. So the trends will probably continue. So if we can identify these trends, especially if they are long term, if they have been occurring in the past and they're going to continue to occurring. Then those are things that we can actually benefit from in a financial sense. The 2020 Predictions have to do with: Volatility How The Markets React To The Election The Automotive Industry Technology Medicine Why Recycling Will Be Stopped Border Changes https://optiongenius.com/ Link to 2019 Predictions: https://optiongenius.com/podcast/38-2019-predictions/

2020 Predictions - 56

Happy Halloween or happy belated Halloween depending on when you listen to this. For me, actually it is the day after Halloween, and I was lucky enough to take my three kiddos out last night for trick or treating. Normally the wife does it, but she was sick and so it fell to me. Okay, no problem. We had fun. We spent about an hour and a half going around. We've been living in the same house now for about 10 or 11 years. With my oldest turning nine in a couple of weeks, that means that we've probably been trick or treating about seven times I think. We would probably missed a couple of times but we've been about seven times trick or treating since we've been in this house, but we have never tricker treated in our own neighborhood. It sounds kind of weird, right? Normally you would stay where you are, but I don't know. Our subdivision is never very decorated for Halloween. I mean they go all out for other holidays, but Halloween it's just not a lot of decorated or lights or anything. I never thought that we would get much candy. You know? If you know about Halloween, or if you have little ones, or grandkids or whatever, you know that the amount of candy you get determines if the night was a success or not. Right? They don't care if it's cold. They don't care if it is windy like it was last night. All they care about is how many things they get in their little pumpkin. You know? Last year my wife and her friends, they took all the kids to the quote unquote rich neighborhood. You know, the one with the million dollar houses thinking that, okay, if they're rich, they're going to have more candy. They'll be more generous. Yes the kids did get a couple of the King size candy bars from a couple houses. Mostly it was the same. Everybody's giving the same little mini size stuff. Overall, at the end of the night, they ended up with less candy than they expected. They didn't think about it, but it ended up that the reason was that these million dollar houses are so large, and they sit on so much property that it takes forever to walk with these little tiny legs, these five, six year olds to go from one house to the other house. You end up hitting a lot fewer homes. You're not knocking on as many doors when you have such big houses, even though you might get a little bit more candy from each one. Oh boy. Well last night I think it was in the lower forties, no sorry, upper forties in temperature. It was very windy. With my wife being sick, it fell onto me. I mean I didn't want to be out for a long time. I just wanted to get this over with. So we stayed in our own area. We stayed in her own little subdivision, and I was pleasantly surprised. We weren't even done with our own block when my kids, pumpkin started filling up. I mean that's how much people were handing out. Being the resourceful dad that I am, I saw that there was a newspaper on the sidewalk. In our neighborhood we get these free newspapers. Nobody really buys the newspaper anymore, but there's this free newspaper that they come every week and they throw on the ground. I took the papers out, put them back on the ground, and I took the bag, the newspaper bag that it comes in. I started taking the candies, the excess candies from the pumpkin's and filling that up so that their pumpkin's would be empty again. It just kept filling up over and over again, and eventually we had to stop at a neighbor's house. We had to ask him, "Hey, do you have anything we can hold all this candy in?" They gave us those plastic shopping bags that you get when you go to the groceries or whatever to haul all the treasure. We actually filled up one bag with everything, and then it was so full, we had to actually double bag it, even triple bag I think. It was literally 30 to 40 pounds of candy that I was lugging around. My kids are bouncing up and down, and I'm holding my three year old's hand, and I've got the 40 pounds of candy I'm cradling in the other hand because I didn't want the straps to break. That's how we were going from house to house to house. By the time we were done we had enough candy to declare that this Halloween was the best ever. Not because it was with dad and I was more fun. It was just because there was so much candy. My God, it was the most candy in the shortest amount of time from people that we already knew. That might've been part of it. Since we didn't know the kids, they might've given them a little bit extra. Who knows? Why am I sharing this sweet story with you? Well, you know me, I always have a motive, right? We always have to tie it back into trading. We take life and then we bring it back. When it comes to trading, people are always thinking that the candy will be better in another neighborhood, that their own neighborhood is not good enough for some reason and they got to go to another neighborhood where it costs money, or there's an admission fee to get in. Right? Now, countless times over and over again, traders have told me that they're doing well with one approach, but they want more so they're going to switch to something else. I just got an email today. The fellow said, "Hey, you know, I've been using this particular strategy and I'm up about 25%. I've learned from my dad how to do this, and he doesn't know very much, but I'm looking to do something else." My question always is, why? You know? Why stop what is already working? That makes no sense to me. I mean, you can always add to it, right? I mean if you're doing something that works you keep doing it, but you can add to it slowly. Before you do that, make sure that you are extracting every single Kit Kat out of what you're already doing. Test it. Tweak it. Maximize your gains because the big thing here is that you already know it works. Right? It already works. You already know how to do it. I mean, sure other neighborhoods look enticing, but it could be a trap, or maybe even an old folks home where you don't get nothing. Just a bunch of scary people looking at you. Right? I've said this before, you only need one strategy to make a lot of money, and if you've already found something that works, stop buying courses, stop watching videos, and going to seminars. Celebrate that win because that is rare. Celebrate it, and improve the results. Now, if you don't have a strategy that works, you can check out our website at optiongenius.com, and we'll share some of ours with you. Okay? If you already have something that works, and many of you do, just keep tweaking it and improving it. If you need coaching to help you with that, then we can help you with that as well. Okay? I still have a couple slots open for my coaching program where we do one on one coaching with people. If you already have something that might be perfect because you're already making money. You can take some of that money, invest in coaching and maybe double, triple whatever your gains are because there might be something that you don't know, or there's another way to protect yourself. Same program, same strategy, same concept, but now it's done in a more professional way where you're protecting yourself. That would be the way I would suggest to go. I know you get emails every day from all these gurus saying, "Hey, I have this amazing course, and I have this amazing thing that never fails, and it always works. It makes 1000000% every year. Look at this stock, I made a 100%. Look at this stock, I made 20%. Look at this stock, I made 50%." I know they have very good, enticing copy, very good sales letters, and it makes you think that, "Oh my God, this is the Holy Grail. What I'm doing is peanuts compared to what this guy is going to teach me." You never know, most of that stuff is marketing hype, and gimmicks, and it doesn't work. Okay? I mean, that's just the plain, simple truth of it. Unless they can show you, unless they're actually doing it themselves day in, day out, don't fall for it. That's like going to trick or treat at the old folks home. They can't have any candy because they can't eat it, so they don't have any laying around, and they didn't go to the store to buy any candy so you're just wasting your time. Okay? Remember while I go out and eat another Snickers bar, I want you to trade with the odds in your favor. Alrighty? Happy Halloween.

Happy Halloween or happy belated Halloween depending on when you listen to this. For me, actually it is the day after Halloween, and I was lucky enough to take my three kiddos out last night for trick or treating. Normally the wife does it, but she was sick and so it fell to me. Okay, no problem. We had fun. We spent about an hour and a half going around. We've been living in the same house now for about 10 or 11 years. With my oldest turning nine in a couple of weeks, that means that we've probably been trick or treating about seven times I think. We would probably missed a couple of times but we've been about seven times trick or treating since we've been in this house, but we have never tricker treated in our own neighborhood. It sounds kind of weird, right? Normally you would stay where you are, but I don't know. Our subdivision is never very decorated for Halloween. I mean they go all out for other holidays, but Halloween it's just not a lot of decorated or lights or anything. I never thought that we would get much candy. You know? If you know about Halloween, or if you have little ones, or grandkids or whatever, you know that the amount of candy you get determines if the night was a success or not. Right? They don't care if it's cold. They don't care if it is windy like it was last night. All they care about is how many things they get in their little pumpkin. You know? Last year my wife and her friends, they took all the kids to the quote unquote rich neighborhood. You know, the one with the million dollar houses thinking that, okay, if they're rich, they're going to have more candy. They'll be more generous. Yes the kids did get a couple of the King size candy bars from a couple houses. Mostly it was the same. Everybody's giving the same little mini size stuff. Overall, at the end of the night, they ended up with less candy than they expected. They didn't think about it, but it ended up that the reason was that these million dollar houses are so large, and they sit on so much property that it takes forever to walk with these little tiny legs, these five, six year olds to go from one house to the other house. You end up hitting a lot fewer homes. You're not knocking on as many doors when you have such big houses, even though you might get a little bit more candy from each one. Oh boy. Well last night I think it was in the lower forties, no sorry, upper forties in temperature. It was very windy. With my wife being sick, it fell onto me. I mean I didn't want to be out for a long time. I just wanted to get this over with. So we stayed in our own area. We stayed in her own little subdivision, and I was pleasantly surprised. We weren't even done with our own block when my kids, pumpkin started filling up. I mean that's how much people were handing out. Being the resourceful dad that I am, I saw that there was a newspaper on the sidewalk. In our neighborhood we get these free newspapers. Nobody really buys the newspaper anymore, but there's this free newspaper that they come every week and they throw on the ground. I took the papers out, put them back on the ground, and I took the bag, the newspaper bag that it comes in. I started taking the candies, the excess candies from the pumpkin's and filling that up so that their pumpkin's would be empty again. It just kept filling up over and over again, and eventually we had to stop at a neighbor's house. We had to ask him, "Hey, do you have anything we can hold all this candy in?" They gave us those plastic shopping bags that you get when you go to the groceries or whatever to haul all the treasure. We actually filled up one bag with everything, and then it was so full, we had to actually double bag it, even triple bag I think. It was literally 30 to 40 pounds of candy that I was lugging around. My kids are bouncing up and down, and I'm holding my three year old's hand, and I've got the 40 pounds of candy I'm cradling in the other hand because I didn't want the straps to break. That's how we were going from house to house to house. By the time we were done we had enough candy to declare that this Halloween was the best ever. Not because it was with dad and I was more fun. It was just because there was so much candy. My God, it was the most candy in the shortest amount of time from people that we already knew. That might've been part of it. Since we didn't know the kids, they might've given them a little bit extra. Who knows? Why am I sharing this sweet story with you? Well, you know me, I always have a motive, right? We always have to tie it back into trading. We take life and then we bring it back. When it comes to trading, people are always thinking that the candy will be better in another neighborhood, that their own neighborhood is not good enough for some reason and they got to go to another neighborhood where it costs money, or there's an admission fee to get in. Right? Now, countless times over and over again, traders have told me that they're doing well with one approach, but they want more so they're going to switch to something else. I just got an email today. The fellow said, "Hey, you know, I've been using this particular strategy and I'm up about 25%. I've learned from my dad how to do this, and he doesn't know very much, but I'm looking to do something else." My question always is, why? You know? Why stop what is already working? That makes no sense to me. I mean, you can always add to it, right? I mean if you're doing something that works you keep doing it, but you can add to it slowly. Before you do that, make sure that you are extracting every single Kit Kat out of what you're already doing. Test it. Tweak it. Maximize your gains because the big thing here is that you already know it works. Right? It already works. You already know how to do it. I mean, sure other neighborhoods look enticing, but it could be a trap, or maybe even an old folks home where you don't get nothing. Just a bunch of scary people looking at you. Right? I've said this before, you only need one strategy to make a lot of money, and if you've already found something that works, stop buying courses, stop watching videos, and going to seminars. Celebrate that win because that is rare. Celebrate it, and improve the results. Now, if you don't have a strategy that works, you can check out our website at optiongenius.com, and we'll share some of ours with you. Okay? If you already have something that works, and many of you do, just keep tweaking it and improving it. If you need coaching to help you with that, then we can help you with that as well. Okay? I still have a couple slots open for my coaching program where we do one on one coaching with people. If you already have something that might be perfect because you're already making money. You can take some of that money, invest in coaching and maybe double, triple whatever your gains are because there might be something that you don't know, or there's another way to protect yourself. Same program, same strategy, same concept, but now it's done in a more professional way where you're protecting yourself. That would be the way I would suggest to go. I know you get emails every day from all these gurus saying, "Hey, I have this amazing course, and I have this amazing thing that never fails, and it always works. It makes 1000000% every year. Look at this stock, I made a 100%. Look at this stock, I made 20%. Look at this stock, I made 50%." I know they have very good, enticing copy, very good sales letters, and it makes you think that, "Oh my God, this is the Holy Grail. What I'm doing is peanuts compared to what this guy is going to teach me." You never know, most of that stuff is marketing hype, and gimmicks, and it doesn't work. Okay? I mean, that's just the plain, simple truth of it. Unless they can show you, unless they're actually doing it themselves day in, day out, don't fall for it. That's like going to trick or treat at the old folks home. They can't have any candy because they can't eat it, so they don't have any laying around, and they didn't go to the store to buy any candy so you're just wasting your time. Okay? Remember while I go out and eat another Snickers bar, I want you to trade with the odds in your favor. Alrighty? Happy Halloween.  

The Candy is Better in That Other Neighborhood - 55

Hey there passive traders, it's me, Alan and today I am coming to you from the sunny beach of Cancun. I believe they call it Playa Mujeres because it's the beach of Mujeres. Out there behind me, somewhere over there is the Isla Mujeres and this resort that we're at is actually on the Beach of Mujeres and so we're here on vacation with the family and I just wanted to shoot this quick video podcast to let you know that I learned something yesterday that I wanted to share with you guys and it's really ... Right behind me in the water, we took our kids snorkeling for the first time, the seven year old and eight year old boys. Sorry about the squinting it's really sunny today, but we took them snorkeling for the first time and I don't know if you've ever been snorkeling, but you get a little mask you put on and you get a little snorkel and you breathe through the snorkel and you look down in the water and you see whatever's in there. Now, there wasn't much to see out here. There was some fish. You go a little bit further over there, there's some seaweed and stuff. There were some pretty cool fish, a couple of big fish actually. They were really excited about that, but when they first started, I had prepped them ahead of time before we came on the trip. I told them, "Hey, we're going to do snorkeling. It's really cool. It's really cool. You put this thing and you can see all the water and all this different world, all that stuff." They were all excited. They were wanting to go. When we got here, it's kind of like trading, right? You hear about it, you picture it in your mind. It's like, "Oh my God, this is so cool. I want to do this. I want to do this. Yeah, I'm going to be awesome at it." Then you get your equipment, you get your mask, your snorkel, you get some instruction. "Yeah, this is what I'm going to do." Then you go do it for the first time and you totally freak out because it's not easy and it's not normal. You're not used to it because you're not breathing with your mouth anymore. I mean, you've got breathing with your nose, you have to breathe with your mouth. Then if you get a little water in the top of your snorkel, then drinking water and then the water is coming in your mask and your eyes are burning from the saltwater. Believe me, we had that same experience. Basically, we walked them through it. It's the same thing with trading. The first thing you have to do is you have to put your mask on, cover your nose, get used to breathing with your mouth. Open mouth breathing, breathe with your mouth. Once you got that done, you put the snorkel on. You got to make sure it's all tight and snug and then you have to breathe with the snorkel. You're just breathing with the snorkel. Once that's done, then you stand in the shallow water, you put your head down and you just look around, focus on your breathing, don't even worry about what you're looking at, just focus on your breathing, making sure all your technical aspects are right, making sure you're following all the rules, making sure step-by-step you're not making any mistakes. Then once you have all that done, then that's when you get into the water and you go deep and you start floating and then you can go a little bit farther. First time is going to freak out. You're going to ... It's going to be like, "Oh, it's not happening. It's not happening the way exactly that I planned in my mind." There's a fish and you'll freak out or there's a piece of thing, something touching my foot. All that stuff happens, especially in trading. It doesn't go exactly as you want, but if you go back and you stick to it, eventually you end up like my boys. I mean, they loved it. They loved it so much, they want to go again today and they want to go ... There's some shipwreck off the coast of the Island. They want to go over there. It blew me away how I couldn't get them out of the water. I couldn't get the snorkel off their faces because they were like, "No, no. More, more, more." There's nothing to see here, but they were so excited and that is how I want trading to be for you. Whatever your issues are right now, if it's not going well, if you don't know what steps to take, if you don't know exactly what instruction you need, it's there where it's available. You just got to take the simple, simple, slow, slow steps, right? Get your stuff, get all your equipment, practice the easy things. Practice putting on paper trades. Getting on the trade, putting it on, getting out, putting it on, getting out. Practice finding trades. How do I find a trade? What do I go through? How do I make it streamlined as possible? Right? Because I don't want you to just put on your stuff and just jump in the deep water right away. That's what most people do. That's why they get burned. I have a lot of people, a lot of students that told me, "Oh no, I don't want to do paper trading. I'm going to put ... I got $20,000 I'm just going to let it ride on one trade." You're freaking crazy because you're going to lose a lot of money that way and they do. Then they come back and they're like, "Yeah, I should've listened to you." Well, that's too late now. You just learned a very, very expensive lesson. Let's not do that. Let's do it snorkel time, right? One at a time, because in snorkeling, you mess it up, what happens? You just stand up. You drink some salt water, no big deal, but what could have happened and what almost happened with my second son is that he almost gave up. He tried it the first time. "Oh man, daddy, I don't like it. This is horrible. I don't want to do this anymore." He threw the mask down and he threw the snorkel down and he just stormed away. That's what we cannot have happened to you because if it does, then you lose out on a passive income stream that has the power to change your life. I mean, take a look around. I'm here on a weekday in Cancun, enjoying with my family and my trades are still working, right? I mean, you can see ... There are not there many people here, right, because this is a private beach for a private resort. There's not going to be a lot of people here. This is not like the cheapest resort on the place as you can imagine. That's what comes with from trading properly and passive trading and the ability for you to be able to take vacations, not have to worry about your trades as much. I mean, I checked on my trades this morning. It's actually the same time frame here in Mexico as it is back home for me. I checked on my trades this morning and they're fine. They're doing great. I'm making money, my options are ... They got [inaudible 00:06:13] going on everyday so I'm not worried. I checked it. It's all done, but I got to take the chance and the day, or at least a few hours, to teach my kids a skill or have an adventure with them that they are probably going to remember for the rest of your lives because I remember the first time I went snorkeling and it was with a school trip. It wasn't with my parents, but they were here with their parents and I think they're going to remember that for the rest of their life, which is pretty cool. I don't know what else to say. I'm trying ... I'm making this video here in Cancun with the beach and everything because I want to inspire you. I want to motivate you. I want you to be like, "Yes, I got to do this right now. I got to get going right now." This is the time. Today is the time. I have a couple of other stories from Cancun. I'll share on them later, but in this one, I just wanted to say, look, every day that goes by is a day that you get closer to retirement or you get closer to that next bill that needs to be paid, right? Today's the day that we need to start so that you can start enjoying stuff, do the things that you want to do, take your families on trips you want to do, adventures. Teach them the stuff that you want to really teach them. Just take it step by step, just like snorkeling, it's doable. You start off in the shallow water. Step one, step two, step three. Break it down as easy as you can. If you don't know the steps, let us know. We'll show you the steps. Okay? With that in mind, you want to take a look. That's the beach. It's beautiful. Blue waters everywhere you can look. It's gorgeous. Take care and happy trading.

Hey there passive traders, it's me, Alan and today I am coming to you from the sunny beach of Cancun. I believe they call it Playa Mujeres because it's the beach of Mujeres. Out there behind me, somewhere over there is the Isla Mujeres and this resort that we're at is actually on the Beach of Mujeres and so we're here on vacation with the family and I just wanted to shoot this quick video podcast to let you know that I learned something yesterday that I wanted to share with you guys and it's really ... Right behind me in the water, we took our kids snorkeling for the first time, the seven year old and eight year old boys. Sorry about the squinting it's really sunny today, but we took them snorkeling for the first time and I don't know if you've ever been snorkeling, but you get a little mask you put on and you get a little snorkel and you breathe through the snorkel and you look down in the water and you see whatever's in there. Now, there wasn't much to see out here. There was some fish. You go a little bit further over there, there's some seaweed and stuff. There were some pretty cool fish, a couple of big fish actually. They were really excited about that, but when they first started, I had prepped them ahead of time before we came on the trip. I told them, "Hey, we're going to do snorkeling. It's really cool. It's really cool. You put this thing and you can see all the water and all this different world, all that stuff." They were all excited. They were wanting to go. When we got here, it's kind of like trading, right? You hear about it, you picture it in your mind. It's like, "Oh my God, this is so cool. I want to do this. I want to do this. Yeah, I'm going to be awesome at it." Then you get your equipment, you get your mask, your snorkel, you get some instruction. "Yeah, this is what I'm going to do." Then you go do it for the first time and you totally freak out because it's not easy and it's not normal. You're not used to it because you're not breathing with your mouth anymore. I mean, you've got breathing with your nose, you have to breathe with your mouth. Then if you get a little water in the top of your snorkel, then drinking water and then the water is coming in your mask and your eyes are burning from the saltwater. Believe me, we had that same experience. Basically, we walked them through it. It's the same thing with trading. The first thing you have to do is you have to put your mask on, cover your nose, get used to breathing with your mouth. Open mouth breathing, breathe with your mouth. Once you got that done, you put the snorkel on. You got to make sure it's all tight and snug and then you have to breathe with the snorkel. You're just breathing with the snorkel. Once that's done, then you stand in the shallow water, you put your head down and you just look around, focus on your breathing, don't even worry about what you're looking at, just focus on your breathing, making sure all your technical aspects are right, making sure you're following all the rules, making sure step-by-step you're not making any mistakes. Then once you have all that done, then that's when you get into the water and you go deep and you start floating and then you can go a little bit farther. First time is going to freak out. You're going to ... It's going to be like, "Oh, it's not happening. It's not happening the way exactly that I planned in my mind." There's a fish and you'll freak out or there's a piece of thing, something touching my foot. All that stuff happens, especially in trading. It doesn't go exactly as you want, but if you go back and you stick to it, eventually you end up like my boys. I mean, they loved it. They loved it so much, they want to go again today and they want to go ... There's some shipwreck off the coast of the Island. They want to go over there. It blew me away how I couldn't get them out of the water. I couldn't get the snorkel off their faces because they were like, "No, no. More, more, more." There's nothing to see here, but they were so excited and that is how I want trading to be for you. Whatever your issues are right now, if it's not going well, if you don't know what steps to take, if you don't know exactly what instruction you need, it's there where it's available. You just got to take the simple, simple, slow, slow steps, right? Get your stuff, get all your equipment, practice the easy things. Practice putting on paper trades. Getting on the trade, putting it on, getting out, putting it on, getting out. Practice finding trades. How do I find a trade? What do I go through? How do I make it streamlined as possible? Right? Because I don't want you to just put on your stuff and just jump in the deep water right away. That's what most people do. That's why they get burned. I have a lot of people, a lot of students that told me, "Oh no, I don't want to do paper trading. I'm going to put ... I got $20,000 I'm just going to let it ride on one trade." You're freaking crazy because you're going to lose a lot of money that way and they do. Then they come back and they're like, "Yeah, I should've listened to you." Well, that's too late now. You just learned a very, very expensive lesson. Let's not do that. Let's do it snorkel time, right? One at a time, because in snorkeling, you mess it up, what happens? You just stand up. You drink some salt water, no big deal, but what could have happened and what almost happened with my second son is that he almost gave up. He tried it the first time. "Oh man, daddy, I don't like it. This is horrible. I don't want to do this anymore." He threw the mask down and he threw the snorkel down and he just stormed away. That's what we cannot have happened to you because if it does, then you lose out on a passive income stream that has the power to change your life. I mean, take a look around. I'm here on a weekday in Cancun, enjoying with my family and my trades are still working, right? I mean, you can see ... There are not there many people here, right, because this is a private beach for a private resort. There's not going to be a lot of people here. This is not like the cheapest resort on the place as you can imagine. That's what comes with from trading properly and passive trading and the ability for you to be able to take vacations, not have to worry about your trades as much. I mean, I checked on my trades this morning. It's actually the same time frame here in Mexico as it is back home for me. I checked on my trades this morning and they're fine. They're doing great. I'm making money, my options are ... They got [inaudible 00:06:13] going on everyday so I'm not worried. I checked it. It's all done, but I got to take the chance and the day, or at least a few hours, to teach my kids a skill or have an adventure with them that they are probably going to remember for the rest of your lives because I remember the first time I went snorkeling and it was with a school trip. It wasn't with my parents, but they were here with their parents and I think they're going to remember that for the rest of their life, which is pretty cool. I don't know what else to say. I'm trying ... I'm making this video here in Cancun with the beach and everything because I want to inspire you. I want to motivate you. I want you to be like, "Yes, I got to do this right now. I got to get going right now." This is the time. Today is the time. I have a couple of other stories from Cancun. I'll share on them later, but in this one, I just wanted to say, look, every day that goes by is a day that you get closer to retirement or you get closer to that next bill that needs to be paid, right? Today's the day that we need to start so that you can start enjoying stuff, do the things that you want to do, take your families on trips you want to do, adventures. Teach them the stuff that you want to really teach them. Just take it step by step, just like snorkeling, it's doable. You start off in the shallow water. Step one, step two, step three. Break it down as easy as you can. If you don't know the steps, let us know. We'll show you the steps. Okay? With that in mind, you want to take a look. That's the beach. It's beautiful. Blue waters everywhere you can look. It's gorgeous. Take care and happy trading.

Learning to Trade is Like Learning To Snorkel - 54

It’s the call we never want to receive, but at some point you do. Maybe multiple times in your life. And when it comes, you know it before you pick up the phone. You know its bad news. Really bad news. And you wish that if you ignore it, things will stay the same. But you know you have to pick it up, and that your life will never be the same again.  We got one of these calls on Sat Aug 31st. My wife and I had gone to dinner. My wife’s mother was watching the kids and was going to sleep over. As soon as we ordered, the call came…it was my mother-in-law. Someone had beaten up my father in law at work and he was taken to the hospital. So we canceled the food and rushed to the hospital. As soon we go there we basically got the silent treatment from the staff. That’s when we knew things were bad. After waiting in the family room a doctor, nurse, and cop showed up. My father in law was not beaten up. It was a robbery and he was shot. And he didn’t make it. Period. End of story. End of life. Death is part of life, and there are many ways to die, but for the survivors, it still hurts. It still causes pain. As the word spread we had to deal with relatives coming, people dropping by to give their condolences, and even the media. Without our friends, we would not have made it. We would not have know how to act or what to do. But thanks to our friends, they just came over, took charge and took care of everything. One family took the kids for one day, another took them for another day. One friend took care of all the food and arrangements from family flying in. Another handled the funeral.  It was amazing. As a severe introvert, I have never been one to keep in touch with people or to easily trust, but these people have my eternal gratitude. Death can bring people closer together and is a reminder that all of our time here is limited. For some reason most of us have to be reminded of this over and over. I am not sharing this with you for sympathy or pity. I am sharing this to remind you that life is short. Sometimes much shorter than we expect. No one even imagined that my fil would be gone. Heck his parents are in their 90s and still kicking. He had genetics on his side. But it didn’t matter. Whatever you want in your life, there is no telling if you will be around tomorrow to make it happen. So stop putting things off. The people that you love, tell them today. The people that you hate, forgive them today and move on. The thing that you have been putting of…start it today. No more excuses – no more… I don’t have time, or money, or education….just take the first step right now, today and move towards your dreams. My dream has been to start a foundation. But I keep putting it off. No more. I reached out to my mentor and we are starting it together. I will let him to all the work of organizing and running it, but I get a say in where the money goes which is all I want anyway. They say that everything happens for the best. When you’re in pain that is really hard to see or believe. But in the end, it doesn’t matter because we have to move on anyway. And live the best life we can. So again, I say, whatever is holding you back…do something about it. Now, today. Every day that you are alive is a day that must be lived. Live it to the fullest. No regrets. I wish for you joy and peace, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

It’s the call we never want to receive, but at some point you do. Maybe multiple times in your life. And when it comes, you know it before you pick up the phone. You know its bad news. Really bad news. And you wish that if you ignore it, things will stay the same. But you know you have to pick it up, and that your life will never be the same again.  We got one of these calls on Sat Aug 31st. My wife and I had gone to dinner. My wife’s mother was watching the kids and was going to sleep over. As soon as we ordered, the call came…it was my mother-in-law. Someone had beaten up my father in law at work and he was taken to the hospital. So we canceled the food and rushed to the hospital. As soon we go there we basically got the silent treatment from the staff. That’s when we knew things were bad. After waiting in the family room a doctor, nurse, and cop showed up. My father in law was not beaten up. It was a robbery and he was shot. And he didn’t make it. Period. End of story. End of life. Death is part of life, and there are many ways to die, but for the survivors, it still hurts. It still causes pain. As the word spread we had to deal with relatives coming, people dropping by to give their condolences, and even the media. Without our friends, we would not have made it. We would not have know how to act or what to do. But thanks to our friends, they just came over, took charge and took care of everything. One family took the kids for one day, another took them for another day. One friend took care of all the food and arrangements from family flying in. Another handled the funeral.  It was amazing. As a severe introvert, I have never been one to keep in touch with people or to easily trust, but these people have my eternal gratitude. Death can bring people closer together and is a reminder that all of our time here is limited. For some reason most of us have to be reminded of this over and over. I am not sharing this with you for sympathy or pity. I am sharing this to remind you that life is short. Sometimes much shorter than we expect. No one even imagined that my fil would be gone. Heck his parents are in their 90s and still kicking. He had genetics on his side. But it didn’t matter. Whatever you want in your life, there is no telling if you will be around tomorrow to make it happen. So stop putting things off. The people that you love, tell them today. The people that you hate, forgive them today and move on. The thing that you have been putting of…start it today. No more excuses – no more… I don’t have time, or money, or education….just take the first step right now, today and move towards your dreams. My dream has been to start a foundation. But I keep putting it off. No more. I reached out to my mentor and we are starting it together. I will let him to all the work of organizing and running it, but I get a say in where the money goes which is all I want anyway. They say that everything happens for the best. When you’re in pain that is really hard to see or believe. But in the end, it doesn’t matter because we have to move on anyway. And live the best life we can. So again, I say, whatever is holding you back…do something about it. Now, today. Every day that you are alive is a day that must be lived. Live it to the fullest. No regrets. I wish for you joy and peace, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Life Is Short and Then This Happens - 53

Alan: Welcome, passive traders, to another episode of The Option Genius Podcast. Today, I want to be talking about trading for a living without trading. Huh? What? Allen, what are you talking about? How do you do trading without trading, but to doing it for a living? That doesn't make any sense. Alan, what you talking about? Well, allow me to explain. Now, you see trading for a living sounds great. Whether you do it professionally and you manage other people's money and you get a percentage of the profits or whatever, or you trade for your own. You trade your own money and you grow it, grow it, grow it over time, and then you have enough money to earn a decent income from it so that you don't have to work. You don't have to do anything else. You're covering your expenses. We have people doing it both ways, and it just sounds interesting and exciting. It's like I trade for a living and it gives you a boost to your confidence as well, I got to tell you that. If you feel bad about yourself, but you're like, yeah, I trade for living. Oh, man. You're on top of the world. That's why they call themselves, these hedge fund guys, they call themselves masters of the universe. Because he is a key man. You got your chest stuck out like, I trade for a living! It's like if you're at a party, people come up to you and say, hey, how are you doing? What do you do? And you're like, I, trade for a living! I go into the markets and I bend them to my will to do my bidding, with just my wits and my brains. I make money from thin air. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, I mean, you probably don't want to do it with the evil laugh at the end. But I mean that's the way most people look at it. Unfortunately, most people have, even traders, have a misconception about trading for a living because they normally think of day traders who by definition have to trade for a living because that's their job. That's what they do. If they don't trade, they don't eat. If they have a trade on, they have to go to the bathroom, they can't. They have to wait until the trade is over. They can either pee their pants or if they leave, then they might lose money on the trades and they can't do that. But most professional traders are not like that. They let their assets or their money work for them. They let the markets come to them and they only trade when they feel they have an advantage. This advantage, it doesn't come every day or multiple times a day. I mean, you take for example, Jesse Livermore. Now he's not famous anymore, but back in the day in the 1920s and '30's, this guy was the major trader. Everybody knew his name. He made millions back then and this is in 1920 dollars. He actually wrote a book about it called Reminiscences. I don't even know how to say this word. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. He used a pseudonym as the author of that book, but there's another book specifically about him called Jesse Livermore, World's Greatest Stock Trader. Now I would urge you, if you're interested in stocks and trading and whatnot, even options, you should get both of these books. I love them. I read them from time to time. He's one of my favorite classic traders and you can actually learn a lot from the way he thought by reading his books and understanding what he was going through when he was thinking about trades, when he was ... when things were happening in the markets, how he would react to them. How we would see them. He was probably one of the first people who ever used technical analysis before they even knew what that was. At that time back then, they didn't even know or they didn't have any understanding that markets would move in certain patterns. And so, he was in his brain without even doing the charting in his brains, he was able to discover these patterns. But, he did not trade every day. He wasn't in the market all the time. His keys to success, one of them at least was to wait. One of his most famous quotes is that the money is made in the waiting. He was called the boy plunger. So what he would do is he would wait. He had his whole big stock portfolio just sitting there waiting. Not in the markets every day. He didn't care what happened every day. But then, he would notice something happening in the market. He would notice that there is something abnormal happening and then when that happened, he would go all in. Now I'm not saying we need to do this. Eventually he did end up going bankrupt. Actually he went bankrupt several times, but the last time he couldn't recover. I don't remember if he actually killed himself or not. I don't remember that part, but he ended up, he never recovered the last time. But, he was able to make millions along the way If he had put it into other investments, he probably would've been okay, but he didn't, so there's also that lesson to be learned. But then we have, what he was waiting for, the proper opportunity. He was waiting for the chance where the odds were in his favor. Now he wasn't selling options. I don't even think they had options back then, so he didn't have the opportunity that we have as option sellers and passive traders to wait and to do trades that have the odds in our favor from the beginning. But his thing was, he was a stock trader and so he would wait until the market showed him or a particular stock showed him that he was going to make a big move in one direction or the other. That's when he would go all in for it. Now, I bring this up today because right now it's August, 2019. When I'm recording this, it's today's the seventh. The markets this month have started off very rough. We're down about 7% on the S&P 500 as I record this. Now, I don't know what's going to happen later on, and it doesn't really matter if you're listening to this much later. You could be listening to this to a year or two years from now. It doesn't really matter. But the fact is that this is going to happen. There are going to be times in the markets where we have big declines or we have big upswings, but mostly the declines happen really, really fast. The bull goes up the stairs, the bear goes out the window. The bear's going to go down a lot faster than the bull makes it up to the top. But in that event, what do you do? Should you be trading in such a market when in one week the market is down 7%, it's down 3%, then it's up 2% then it's down 5% or 4%. Well, if you can make money in a volatile market or you're a pro short seller, then yes, go ahead and trade. That's your element. That's your thing. You go and you do it. But if you're a at home gamer option seller, then probably not. I had this argument with one of my students in our Blank Check Coaching Program in which we sell oil options. That's the whole program there. We sell oil options. He was upset because he was trading for a living. Doing well at it for several months, over a couple of years. But he was upset when the oil market was not cooperating. Now I tried to explain to him, I said, look man, you don't always need to be in the market. Every month the market is not going to cooperate. It doesn't matter how good your strategy is, how good your trading plan is, how good of a trader you are. There are times when you will lose money and there's nothing you could do about it. But the reason that we sell options, we know that over time we are going to continue to win. It's a longterm game. Not just over one month or two months but over 12, 24, 36 months, we know that we're going to come out ahead. So yes, this month, August, 2019 might be a volatile month. It might be a down month and you might have lost a little bit of money. But if you're an option seller, we have the opportunity to get back in right next month and do it again and make money and then make money and make money and we'll go recover our losses. Over the long term we come out ahead. But if you are trading for a living, sometimes you don't have that ability to look at the long term because you've got to pay the mortgage this month. And like the student, he expected to take his expense money out of the market every single month. That's just not realistic. Now you might be sold something otherwise, you might be told oh hey, you could be a day trader or take this course or take this course and we'll teach you how to make money every single time. All your expenses will be paid from the market. No, that's not realistic. I'll tell you the truth, right now the markets are down. I currently only have one trade on in my trading account. I mean, in my retirement accounts, I still have my covered calls and I have some naked puts on that I sold to take advantage of the situation of this downturn. But in my trading account, I have one trade and it's a small trade. That one trade is not going to pay my bills this month, but that's okay because I knew that this type of event can happen. I built in a safeguard and I have a cushion. I know times like this will come when I don't want to be trading. You look at any hedge fund, they are not fully invested all the time. Heck, they're almost never fully invested. Meaning they don't always have 100% of their money at risk in the market invested in something. They don't have to make a killing every single month to survive. They play the long game. It's about a yearly return for them. Even though we sell options and we trade and we talk about trading for a living and our expenses come every month, that doesn't mean that we have to look at our trading on a month by month basis. I mean, of course we do because we want to see how we're doing. But if you look at it on a yearly basis, you'll get a much better picture and a much better idea. If you look at long term 12, 24, 36 months, that's how your account grows. So when people asked me, Allen, how much of my money should I put into this trade or into this strategy? Or how much money do I need to make X every month? I'm not sure what to tell them. It's surprisingly how often I get that question. Alan, I need to make $2,000 a month. How much money do I need? I can't tell you. I mean, we did an episode on that to help you figure out what number. I don't know what it podcast episode it was, but if you go on the list, that's the title of it. How Much Do I Need to Make X? You can listen to that one. I go into that more detail, but every month is different and every person is different. I don't know. I can't give you a number and say, if you want to make $5,000 a month, well you need to have an account with, oh, let's say $50 thousand dollars and you'll make 10% every month. I can't say that because there might be some months when you do, but they're going to be other months when you don't. That would be a lie. There's too many variables. You need to have your trading money and if you trade for a living, you need to have savings, a cushion that you can tap into when you are not trading or the markets are not cooperating, which they do from time to time. The worst thing to do in this situation is to force a trade. Because if you feel like, oh man, I have to do something. I have to do this. I have to do something. I have to take advantage of the situation. Oh the market's dropped 7% I don't think it's going to go up anymore. I think I'm going to go short the market right now. Well, when the market drops two, 3% in a day or more, it can turn around the next day and jump up the same amount or even more. If you force a trade, you stand the chance of getting your face ripped off and that's going to double the compound. I mean, maybe you already lost money because the market went down unexpected. Okay, fine. You lost money. Well, now you're going to double down and say, all right, now I'm going to short the market and the thing's going to rally because that's what markets do. Then you're gonna lose on both sides and then you're going to be even more upset. Then you're definitely going to be on tilt, which means you're not going to be emotionally stable. You're going to be looking at all different kinds of trades and you're always like, aw man, I got to pay the bills this month. I've got to pay the mortgage. Oh my God, what do I do? What do I do? That's not the way to trade. That's not the mental status you need to be trading. That's not the way, the time, the mental frame that you need to be in to trade effectively, to trade properly. It doesn't matter what strategy you're using. So yeah, if you want to trade for a living, you need to know when not to trade and that you don't always have to be trading. That's the whole point of this episode. Don't force trades. Don't always be trading. Like that student I mentioned, if you have to always be trading to earn an income, then that tells me that you don't have enough funds to be trading in the first place for a living. You should go up and save more. That's the bottom line. So while the pundits on the financial media are freaking out right now and nobody knows when the markets are going to stop falling. I am just going to sit on the sideline and wait. I'm going to wait for the VIX to calm down. I'm going to wait for markets to calm down before I dip my toes back in the water. I mean, I had my trades on and this month I'm going to lose money. I already know that. Well not necessarily, the month is still young. But I had my trades on, and the markets turned around and I got out. I took losses and I got out of every single trade except this one. I'm like okay. My losses that I took are manageable. I didn't wait and think, oh, things are going to turn around, things are going to turn on. No, I saw a change in the market and I said I'm getting out. We did that. We did that on all of our services Option Genius, Simon Says, every trade we're out. Now, when the market calms down, we're going to get back in. Then the trades that we put on, hopefully will recover what we lost and hopefully more. Or if not this month, then in the next two, three months we'll recover everything that we got back. That's how you play the long game. Because yeah, you'll lose a little bit of money in a month or two, but you add up all the wins from all the good months and that recovers and it gives you a good yearly yield. So when you look at the longterm picture, 12, 24, 36 you come out ahead. That's what I mean by you come out ahead that way. So again, trading for a living without trading means that if you are having to be forced to trade, if you have to be in the market all the time, there's a very good chance that you're going to lose all your money and that you're not going to be able to trade. Just like Jesse Livermore, he sat around waiting for the perfect opportunity for him. For us, we have good opportunities every month, but that doesn't mean we need to be trading. Doesn't mean we need to be in the markets. If we don't understand what's going on in the market. If the market is too volatile for our taste. If our strategy calls for a slow market and we don't have that, we wait. We only trade when the odds are in our favor. That's what it comes down to. Thank you so much for joining me on another episode. See you next time.

Alan: Welcome, passive traders, to another episode of The Option Genius Podcast. Today, I want to be talking about trading for a living without trading. Huh? What? Allen, what are you talking about? How do you do trading without trading, but to doing it for a living? That doesn't make any sense. Alan, what you talking about? Well, allow me to explain. Now, you see trading for a living sounds great. Whether you do it professionally and you manage other people's money and you get a percentage of the profits or whatever, or you trade for your own. You trade your own money and you grow it, grow it, grow it over time, and then you have enough money to earn a decent income from it so that you don't have to work. You don't have to do anything else. You're covering your expenses. We have people doing it both ways, and it just sounds interesting and exciting. It's like I trade for a living and it gives you a boost to your confidence as well, I got to tell you that. If you feel bad about yourself, but you're like, yeah, I trade for living. Oh, man. You're on top of the world. That's why they call themselves, these hedge fund guys, they call themselves masters of the universe. Because he is a key man. You got your chest stuck out like, I trade for a living! It's like if you're at a party, people come up to you and say, hey, how are you doing? What do you do? And you're like, I, trade for a living! I go into the markets and I bend them to my will to do my bidding, with just my wits and my brains. I make money from thin air. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, I mean, you probably don't want to do it with the evil laugh at the end. But I mean that's the way most people look at it. Unfortunately, most people have, even traders, have a misconception about trading for a living because they normally think of day traders who by definition have to trade for a living because that's their job. That's what they do. If they don't trade, they don't eat. If they have a trade on, they have to go to the bathroom, they can't. They have to wait until the trade is over. They can either pee their pants or if they leave, then they might lose money on the trades and they can't do that. But most professional traders are not like that. They let their assets or their money work for them. They let the markets come to them and they only trade when they feel they have an advantage. This advantage, it doesn't come every day or multiple times a day. I mean, you take for example, Jesse Livermore. Now he's not famous anymore, but back in the day in the 1920s and '30's, this guy was the major trader. Everybody knew his name. He made millions back then and this is in 1920 dollars. He actually wrote a book about it called Reminiscences. I don't even know how to say this word. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. He used a pseudonym as the author of that book, but there's another book specifically about him called Jesse Livermore, World's Greatest Stock Trader. Now I would urge you, if you're interested in stocks and trading and whatnot, even options, you should get both of these books. I love them. I read them from time to time. He's one of my favorite classic traders and you can actually learn a lot from the way he thought by reading his books and understanding what he was going through when he was thinking about trades, when he was ... when things were happening in the markets, how he would react to them. How we would see them. He was probably one of the first people who ever used technical analysis before they even knew what that was. At that time back then, they didn't even know or they didn't have any understanding that markets would move in certain patterns. And so, he was in his brain without even doing the charting in his brains, he was able to discover these patterns. But, he did not trade every day. He wasn't in the market all the time. His keys to success, one of them at least was to wait. One of his most famous quotes is that the money is made in the waiting. He was called the boy plunger. So what he would do is he would wait. He had his whole big stock portfolio just sitting there waiting. Not in the markets every day. He didn't care what happened every day. But then, he would notice something happening in the market. He would notice that there is something abnormal happening and then when that happened, he would go all in. Now I'm not saying we need to do this. Eventually he did end up going bankrupt. Actually he went bankrupt several times, but the last time he couldn't recover. I don't remember if he actually killed himself or not. I don't remember that part, but he ended up, he never recovered the last time. But, he was able to make millions along the way If he had put it into other investments, he probably would've been okay, but he didn't, so there's also that lesson to be learned. But then we have, what he was waiting for, the proper opportunity. He was waiting for the chance where the odds were in his favor. Now he wasn't selling options. I don't even think they had options back then, so he didn't have the opportunity that we have as option sellers and passive traders to wait and to do trades that have the odds in our favor from the beginning. But his thing was, he was a stock trader and so he would wait until the market showed him or a particular stock showed him that he was going to make a big move in one direction or the other. That's when he would go all in for it. Now, I bring this up today because right now it's August, 2019. When I'm recording this, it's today's the seventh. The markets this month have started off very rough. We're down about 7% on the S&P 500 as I record this. Now, I don't know what's going to happen later on, and it doesn't really matter if you're listening to this much later. You could be listening to this to a year or two years from now. It doesn't really matter. But the fact is that this is going to happen. There are going to be times in the markets where we have big declines or we have big upswings, but mostly the declines happen really, really fast. The bull goes up the stairs, the bear goes out the window. The bear's going to go down a lot faster than the bull makes it up to the top. But in that event, what do you do? Should you be trading in such a market when in one week the market is down 7%, it's down 3%, then it's up 2% then it's down 5% or 4%. Well, if you can make money in a volatile market or you're a pro short seller, then yes, go ahead and trade. That's your element. That's your thing. You go and you do it. But if you're a at home gamer option seller, then probably not. I had this argument with one of my students in our Blank Check Coaching Program in which we sell oil options. That's the whole program there. We sell oil options. He was upset because he was trading for a living. Doing well at it for several months, over a couple of years. But he was upset when the oil market was not cooperating. Now I tried to explain to him, I said, look man, you don't always need to be in the market. Every month the market is not going to cooperate. It doesn't matter how good your strategy is, how good your trading plan is, how good of a trader you are. There are times when you will lose money and there's nothing you could do about it. But the reason that we sell options, we know that over time we are going to continue to win. It's a longterm game. Not just over one month or two months but over 12, 24, 36 months, we know that we're going to come out ahead. So yes, this month, August, 2019 might be a volatile month. It might be a down month and you might have lost a little bit of money. But if you're an option seller, we have the opportunity to get back in right next month and do it again and make money and then make money and make money and we'll go recover our losses. Over the long term we come out ahead. But if you are trading for a living, sometimes you don't have that ability to look at the long term because you've got to pay the mortgage this month. And like the student, he expected to take his expense money out of the market every single month. That's just not realistic. Now you might be sold something otherwise, you might be told oh hey, you could be a day trader or take this course or take this course and we'll teach you how to make money every single time. All your expenses will be paid from the market. No, that's not realistic. I'll tell you the truth, right now the markets are down. I currently only have one trade on in my trading account. I mean, in my retirement accounts, I still have my covered calls and I have some naked puts on that I sold to take advantage of the situation of this downturn. But in my trading account, I have one trade and it's a small trade. That one trade is not going to pay my bills this month, but that's okay because I knew that this type of event can happen. I built in a safeguard and I have a cushion. I know times like this will come when I don't want to be trading. You look at any hedge fund, they are not fully invested all the time. Heck, they're almost never fully invested. Meaning they don't always have 100% of their money at risk in the market invested in something. They don't have to make a killing every single month to survive. They play the long game. It's about a yearly return for them. Even though we sell options and we trade and we talk about trading for a living and our expenses come every month, that doesn't mean that we have to look at our trading on a month by month basis. I mean, of course we do because we want to see how we're doing. But if you look at it on a yearly basis, you'll get a much better picture and a much better idea. If you look at long term 12, 24, 36 months, that's how your account grows. So when people asked me, Allen, how much of my money should I put into this trade or into this strategy? Or how much money do I need to make X every month? I'm not sure what to tell them. It's surprisingly how often I get that question. Alan, I need to make $2,000 a month. How much money do I need? I can't tell you. I mean, we did an episode on that to help you figure out what number. I don't know what it podcast episode it was, but if you go on the list, that's the title of it. How Much Do I Need to Make X? You can listen to that one. I go into that more detail, but every month is different and every person is different. I don't know. I can't give you a number and say, if you want to make $5,000 a month, well you need to have an account with, oh, let's say $50 thousand dollars and you'll make 10% every month. I can't say that because there might be some months when you do, but they're going to be other months when you don't. That would be a lie. There's too many variables. You need to have your trading money and if you trade for a living, you need to have savings, a cushion that you can tap into when you are not trading or the markets are not cooperating, which they do from time to time. The worst thing to do in this situation is to force a trade. Because if you feel like, oh man, I have to do something. I have to do this. I have to do something. I have to take advantage of the situation. Oh the market's dropped 7% I don't think it's going to go up anymore. I think I'm going to go short the market right now. Well, when the market drops two, 3% in a day or more, it can turn around the next day and jump up the same amount or even more. If you force a trade, you stand the chance of getting your face ripped off and that's going to double the compound. I mean, maybe you already lost money because the market went down unexpected. Okay, fine. You lost money. Well, now you're going to double down and say, all right, now I'm going to short the market and the thing's going to rally because that's what markets do. Then you're gonna lose on both sides and then you're going to be even more upset. Then you're definitely going to be on tilt, which means you're not going to be emotionally stable. You're going to be looking at all different kinds of trades and you're always like, aw man, I got to pay the bills this month. I've got to pay the mortgage. Oh my God, what do I do? What do I do? That's not the way to trade. That's not the mental status you need to be trading. That's not the way, the time, the mental frame that you need to be in to trade effectively, to trade properly. It doesn't matter what strategy you're using. So yeah, if you want to trade for a living, you need to know when not to trade and that you don't always have to be trading. That's the whole point of this episode. Don't force trades. Don't always be trading. Like that student I mentioned, if you have to always be trading to earn an income, then that tells me that you don't have enough funds to be trading in the first place for a living. You should go up and save more. That's the bottom line. So while the pundits on the financial media are freaking out right now and nobody knows when the markets are going to stop falling. I am just going to sit on the sideline and wait. I'm going to wait for the VIX to calm down. I'm going to wait for markets to calm down before I dip my toes back in the water. I mean, I had my trades on and this month I'm going to lose money. I already know that. Well not necessarily, the month is still young. But I had my trades on, and the markets turned around and I got out. I took losses and I got out of every single trade except this one. I'm like okay. My losses that I took are manageable. I didn't wait and think, oh, things are going to turn around, things are going to turn on. No, I saw a change in the market and I said I'm getting out. We did that. We did that on all of our services Option Genius, Simon Says, every trade we're out. Now, when the market calms down, we're going to get back in. Then the trades that we put on, hopefully will recover what we lost and hopefully more. Or if not this month, then in the next two, three months we'll recover everything that we got back. That's how you play the long game. Because yeah, you'll lose a little bit of money in a month or two, but you add up all the wins from all the good months and that recovers and it gives you a good yearly yield. So when you look at the longterm picture, 12, 24, 36 you come out ahead. That's what I mean by you come out ahead that way. So again, trading for a living without trading means that if you are having to be forced to trade, if you have to be in the market all the time, there's a very good chance that you're going to lose all your money and that you're not going to be able to trade. Just like Jesse Livermore, he sat around waiting for the perfect opportunity for him. For us, we have good opportunities every month, but that doesn't mean we need to be trading. Doesn't mean we need to be in the markets. If we don't understand what's going on in the market. If the market is too volatile for our taste. If our strategy calls for a slow market and we don't have that, we wait. We only trade when the odds are in our favor. That's what it comes down to. Thank you so much for joining me on another episode. See you next time.  

Trading For A Living Without Trading - 52

How To Make 400% With Financial Journalist Wayne Duggan - 51

Let's talk trading. Especially how to trade options for income. Buying Puts and Calls is great, but selling options is much better. Whether you want to trade for a living, have a side hustle, or make extra monthly income from stocks, this is the place. We are here to help individual investors learn to trade options in a way that is simple, fun and profitable. The goal is to help you achieve Freedom. Financial freedom so you have no more worries about making ends meet and so you have more than enough for safety and security. Time Freedom so you can do what you want when you want. And Choice Freedom so you can live your life on your terms with no restrictions. We call it living the Option Genius Lifestyle. Where you can earn consistent monthly income by selling options using safe, conservative strategies. We place high probability trades and earn market beating returns in a way that takes just a few minutes a day. Listen in to learn how you can do the same. Hear from professional traders that have beaten the game. Some of the strategies we discuss are covered calls, naked puts, credit spreads, vertical spreads, iron condors, butterfly spreads, calendar spreads, strangles, straddles, and more. This podcast is about how we trade options and how it lets us life a lifestyle other people can hardly imagine. Trade from anywhere in the world, for just a few minutes a day, in a way that is super safe and can still make more than the averages? Listen in to learn how and check us out at OptionGenius.com

hubhopper

The Option Genius Podcast: Options Trading For The Individua...

hubhopper