I finally have decided to take the plunge and open up my world of investing to others. Why? My performance in the market has beat my financial advisor up and down the block. So why am I trying to prove my financial advisor wrong? He told me that "you can't beat my performance." I accepted the challenge and took many an investing course to teach myself the world of investing and I want to share those thoughts.

The biggest point I can emphasize is that you have to rid yourself of emotions when investing. Get used to losing money and winning money.
The second point - you do NOT have to be a stockpicker. Any stock can make money if you play it right. I will admit that your hands are tied with retirement accounts more so than accounts with your own personal money.
The third point is patience. Rome wasn't built in a day and your money won't go from a hummingbird egg to an ostrich egg overnight.
Fourth point - pick a trading system and write down the directions on how to follow that system. In essence, you are creating a map to wealth. In order to get to the end point, you need a map to give you directions. Right?
Fifth point - do NOT listen to any person who can tell you the future direction of the market. Throughout the past few years I have listened to "gurus" and traded based upon their prediction and have gotten burned. So, turn off CNBC and Bloomberg TV.
My final point on investing - do you seriously think that an investment advisor has your personal interest in mind? All s/he wants is for you to fork over your automatic deduction from your paycheck each month and put it into her/his pot of gold. That's right. The more money s/he puts into a mutual fund, the more $$$ s/he gets from the mutual fund. Mutual funds turn into mutual loss due to the high broker fees. My other question to you is if you balance your checkbook every month and track all of your income/expenses, why are you forking your hard earned money over to someone who doesn't care and hoping for a wealthy retirement? Think about it.

I know that I was intimidated by my financial advisor (FA) into thinking that I couldn't beat his performance. That is the normal human response to have the fear of the unknown. How do you beat that fear? Knowledge. Many of my friends also told me "you will lose all of your money." My response, "I am out to prove you wrong, just like Aristotle provided observational evidence for a spherical Earth." As people, we have been bullied into believing that FAs know the market, know how to trade the stocks and know which ones to pick. I challenge you to ask your FA, "why did you choose to buy Microsoft when it has done nothing but move sideways for the past three years." See what response you are going to get.

As time goes by I am going to fill this blog with websites, software programs, books, etc. that I have utilized to get me where I am today. I'll even show you trades from my online broker. Do I profess to be a guru? Not by any stretch of the imagination, but I want to help those people who want to help themselves and cut the cord of reliance upon those who do not care. Do you have the motivation and guts to make the move to securing your own financial future?

So this blog is for my friends who have begged me for so long to finally put up a website. For now, this blog will have to do.