operating officer (COO) for a hedge fund. I also launched and ran three separate investing newsletters.
I’ve also done a fair bit of coaching, an activity that – believe it or not – really aided my quest to design a wealth-building trading system that is simple, fast, and safe.
In addition to those extracurricular pursuits, I’ve spent the better part of the last 16 years preparing lesson plans to help young people understand complex subjects.
For example, I’ve taught investing – stocks, bonds, and the financial markets – to elementary school students. I’ve also taught economics to kids in grades three through six to help them get ready for a statewide competition. (More than a dozen of the teams that I trained across all four of those grade levels have scored first-place finishes.)
Here, yet again, I saw how this ability to transform the most- sophisticated concepts into simple-to-follow systems led to pay dirt. Let’s face it, you can’t fudge “marginal utility,” “opportunity costs,” or “supply/demand equilibrium curves” to third graders. They either get it – and win ribbons – or they don’t.
I’m proud to say that the kids I’ve worked with – all of them wonderful – have managed to get it.
Helping investors get it is what The 10-Minute Millionaire is all about. The “it” here is our system – one designed to be a reliable and repeatable way to identify and profit from the stock market extremes that show up virtually every day. By using this system, you’ll have the opportunity to take a small, underperforming part of your portfolio and grow your trading account to a million dollars or more. And you’ll be able to do this with consistently small commitments of time.
I’ve broken this book into three sections, each with a specific goal – a format designed to help you learn the 10-Minute Millionaire system in the most efficient way possible.
• Section I instills the 10-Minute Millionaire mindset. It shows you the importance of time, and how to transform it from an enemy into an ally. It presents the most useful and simple way to understand the stock market – as a big auction in which lots of items (individual stocks) are up for bid each day. And it shows you that the best markets to exploit are those experiencing out-of-whack extremes.
• Section II takes you from the mindset of the millionaire-to-be to the system that will get you there. Here we learn the benefits of a systematic approach and how the system helps us overcome the biases that can trip up traders. That’s followed by the nuts and bolts of how to Find the Extreme, Frame the Trade, and Book the Profit.
• And, finally, Section III reinforces the lessons we’ve learned by presenting sample trades that show the system at work and reiterating key terms you’ll need to keep in mind. We bolster the importance of being systematic by presenting a customized worksheet that will let you record the key elements of your trades, and we complete your training by highlighting the key points one final time.
I believe you’ll enjoy the simplicity, time efficiency, and comprehensive nature of the 10-Minute Millionaire method. In fact, I hope this book serves as the life-changer I’ve intended it to be.. that it allows you to look down from a higher vantage point.. and picture a future that’s financed by wealth and marked by great personal fulfillment.
After all, you deserve it.
My personal goal here is as powerful as it is simple. I want the work we do here together to give you the money and free time you need to do the things you love and help those who need you the most.
If today serves as the starting point for that new journey, that new direction in your life.. then I’ll know I succeeded.
Because you’ll have succeeded, too.
SECTION I
It’s Time to Think Like a Millionaire (aka “The Path to Wealth Is a Lot Shorter Than You Think”)
INTRODUCTION
The Huck Stops Here
Study the past if you would define the future.
One of the most powerful lessons I learned during my career as an entrepreneur, chemical engineer, futures trader, hedge fund risk management officer, best-selling author, and TV stock analyst is also one of the simplest.
The lesson: there’s nothing better than a good story to get your audience engaged.
And I’ve got a great tale to share with you.
The story is about the American Revolution.
And 10 minutes that changed the world.
As anecdotes go, this one’s a stunner.
The lesson we learn will serve as the cornerstone for this book.. and will end up being your ticket to a much wealthier, more fulfilling life.
So let’s get started.
Flying South
It was 1780, and the War of Independence was in its fifth year.
Great Britain’s inability to bring the rebel colonists to heel – coupled with the Redcoat defeat at Saratoga and worries that the French would throw in with the colonists – caused the Crown to shift its strategy.
To the south.
When British strategists looked at those southern colonies, they saw Loyalist strongholds and envisioned a postwar future in which agricultural products like tobacco, rice, and indigo would let them line their pockets.
At first, the southern strategy went well for the Crown.
Indeed, it went very well.
The British captured Savannah, giving them the Georgia coast. On May 12, 1780 – after laying siege to Charleston, South Carolina, for about six weeks – that port city fell. And 5,00 °Continental Army troops under the command of Major General Benjamin Lincoln had to surrender. It was a humiliating defeat – indeed, the worst loss the Americans would suffer during the whole war.
Further defeats followed: damaging losses at the Waxhaws, Camden, and Fishing Creek obliterated most of the Continental Army – leaving Great Britain with almost total control of both Georgia and South Carolina.
But instead of just holding and policing this territory, these victories emboldened the Redcoats: certain regiments of the British Army decided to inflict as much suffering as possible. Colonial morale was about as low as could be, so these particular Redcoats figured they’d rub out any remaining Patriot dissent – and maybe even get the colonists to switch sides to the soon-to-be victorious Crown.
Raids, murders, and reprisals became standard fare. Plantations were leveled, crops destroyed, and businesses wiped away. If you ever saw the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot, you can picture the very kind of brutality I’m talking about here.
In a rural area just outside of what’s now York County, South Carolina, a man named William Hill experienced this onslaught in a very personal way.
Today, we’d refer to Hill as an entrepreneur or a self-made man. Back then, however, Hill was a pioneering “iron master.” He and
