Twitter Founder: In order to succeed Spectacularly:

Twitter Founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey was quoted as saying "In order to succeed Spectacularly you must be willing to fail Spectacularly."

And this is true in the world of option investing. Options are a tricky beast. The differ from stocks in that they have expiration dates and are therefore subject to erosion. However they have tremendous upsides in the fact that a little bit can leverage a lot of stock. So if you know what you are doing you can be part of the 10% club that makes a lot of money. Or really specialize so that you can squeeze in the 1% club. I myself am content with the 10% club. As I continue to trade and grow my account, I am confident in my trading abilities as I have gone through a 15-20 year learning curve and have seen a lot and know how when reacts when something happens.
What are some of the things I know?

1) If you do what everyone else does you aren't going to make money. Most people that try the stock market dont do well. You have to go against the crowd. The way you go against the crowd is use fear and greed. Fear and greed will make everyone run away from something and run towards something. Fear and Greed are irrational emotions and when the crowd swings one way or the other there is always mistakes in valuation. This is when a contrarian trader steps in, goes against the crowd and steps in and picks up something that is improperly flattened. When the crowd comes to its senses the next day and the valuation returns to the level it should be at, the flattened price that the contrarian trader got in at during the panic suddenly swells up and the contrarian trader makes a big profit.

2) The reason everyone doesn't trade that way is because its very hard to. Imagine the stock market tanking and the 30 grand you have in it is starting to evaporate. You have bills, a family to support. That vacation you were going to spend it on this summer. You cant lose that money. So you freak out and sell. Just like 90%+ of everybody else that day and you take a loss. Would you really be able to go against your screaming get out instincts and buy instead of sell? That's what Contrarians do. As a matter of fact, we have our money to the side waiting for situations just like this

3) The Housing Bubble. How hard was it for people in 2004-2005 not to get in and get some of the free money from rapidly appreciating homes? Very hard not to. You have a family to support, you see on the news how quick houses are appreciating in price and you just cant leave money on the table so you buy in. Then the market crashes and you lose everything in 2009 because you accepted shady slide rule financing terms. Contrarians never get in when everything is screaming green light hitting daily highs and in the news. That's a sucker play. We wait. When things crash, and there is blood in the streets THATS when we get in. With flattened bottom basement prices. We hold and a few years later when prices bounce back we make 50-60% then sell ourselves.

4) If you are watching a stock in the morning and it came to your attn from the "most up" lists because its rising fast don't buy in. As soon as you do within a half hour it will start going down. Thats because the pros are then selling. Pros have access to information that you don't. That will be addressed in point #6 below

5) The proper window to trade is approx 1-3 days. If you try tick by tick day-trading you will be mugged by the market makers. It doesn't work. Its like playing tennis where your opponent in addition to being top seed, can also control the ball. Anything beyond a week is pure speculation. Remember hearing 15 years ago how people were losing their life savings day trading?

6) You cant sit there on yahoo finance or Reuters and try to trade on the news. If you try this you will notice as soon as you buy anything it will start going down in price. This is because pros have access to advance information systems before the public gets hold of information on web based finance browsers.

7) Throw out any pamphlet you get in the mail pushing any stock. This is a pump and dump scheme. The pamphlet will be slick and multi-page with quotes from supposed experts with slick graphics and charts with exclamations on how you need to act now before the big jump. You'll get in right as the schemers are selling and the stock will go back to pennies.

8) Dont trade on recommendations from the WSJ, Investors Business Daily or a talking head financial network. What kind of edge is this where everyone has the same information the same time you do? Plus any information that you receive from any of these sources is end stage information. The pros knew about it a week ago and already acted on it.

9) Rolling stocks: Everyone else can see the top and the bottom of the roll. So everyone will want to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. That wont work as there has to by buyers at the top and sellers at the bottom.

11) Save money in interest bearing account: Inflation will eat you alive
12) Give your money to someone else like a Fund or a trader at Schwab. Unless you have millions your account wont be given priority. Its best to trade your own money.
13) Buy a stock and park the money for 30 years. I found 3 old watch lists on my Yahoo finance page that I set up in the late 90's. I then forgot about them for 18 years then I just found them a few months ago. I was shocked at what I found. About half of the stocks were gone, changed ticker symbols, went out of business or were bought out. The rest of them basically did nothing over the last 18 years with the exception of 2 of them. Out of the two, one pulled a Microsoft and went from 1.20 a share to 297 dollars a share. That was one out of about 45 stocks I had on the watchlist. You can see that it is not common. I would have had to put a few g on each one of the 45 stocks in 1998 and put them away like a time capsule and wait to see what shook out over the next 20 years. My Uncle bought Walgreen's in the early 70's and held it for 30 years and made some coin. Whatever.
14. Study something for 15 minutes for a year and you become an expert. I have decided that I can make money from the market if I applied myself and stood out from the rest of the noise. And I succeeded.

So here is what: Simply watch me. You don't know me so get to know me though how I operate and trade on this site. I seriously want to help people succeed in life and in the market and the best way I know how is to trade against the crowd. After you observe me for a while you may decide to piggy back my trading. I won't win every trade, but I show a profit overall.
In the meantime I will post a video of myself every now and then so you can see who is running this site and get to know me. Any questions? tradinginsider@yahoo.com