Acres of Diamonds

Acres of Diamonds

There are many successful trading educational enterprises. One of the sales pitches the often use is that trading without an education can be many times more costly and frustrating and time consuming than any course costing thousands of dollar. That of course is quite convincing. I have taken several of these courses in my quest for success, but you all would be curious to know that I don’t explain my success by any courses I have taken but to my own perseverance. Approaches to trading abound, but only you can determine if that approach will work for you, whether you payed $100 or $10,000 for the information that lead you to that approach.

A few years back I purchased one of the most valuable pieces of educational tapes I ever heard by a brilliant man named Earl Nightingale. One of the audiotapes was named “Acres of Diamonds” talking about a story often told by the famous founder of Temple University Russell Conwell. Please hear Conwell’s own voice telling the story, in this link: http://tinyurl.com/yh6eku and then come back to this article when you are done listening. Nightingale makes the point that one must first dig deep into the abound reserves within our souls to find the unique ideas that would make us successful. My experience since listening to this message is that indeed there are acres of diamonds within us, if only we were willing to do the work of digging them out.

I have been reading about stock fundamentals, technical analysis and options since 1991. During the 90’s I never attended a course on trading, I did it all through perseverance. Eventually, my approach ceased working, so I had to go on searching for more information to jump start my trading again. The irony is that the approach that has led me to yearly returns of 30%, 70% and 50% in the last 3 years, respectively, has not come from the multi-thousand of dollar courses I have taken, but from my own creativity. The reason is deceptively simple: In order to become successful you must first believe!

If you are frustrated because after taking a course you are not better able to deal with the markets, it is probably because you cannot envision yourself as successful using that system. Quite ironic because we are so willing to place so much credit in someone else’s system that we in essence relinquish control over our own destiny, forgetting to ask the question: would I be able to find an approach to trading that could far exceed what others are doing? If you look hard enough, if you persevere long enough, you will, you just need to believe that you will. Most people do not stay long enough to succeed.

Let’s say that you attend a seminar by a charismatic speaker that tells you that you need first to get educated in the markets and that he can teach you how to become a successful trader, that he has done it with hundreds of other traders, for the modest fee of $5,000, for a 5 day course. You immediately think of the easy way: Within a few days you will be making money consistently. I can almost guarantee that you will end up like the first owner of the farm that went prospecting for diamonds elsewhere. The reason is simple: your initial euphoria will lead to doubt, the doubt will lead to frustration and eventually to resignation, never exploring the true possibility that you have it within yourself to create a unique style of trading that would fit you like a glove. As superb as the trader/educator might be, you’d be soon inclined to believe that if he/she is so good, how come he is wasting his time teaching others? The business of “Trading Education” is a business, and the people working at it are focusing on their income from teaching, rather than their trading. I can tell you for myself, that I would not be willing to “teach” others in such a setting simply because I would lose my freedom, a freedom that I have spent 2 decades building.

Since 1999, I have always believed that there must be an approach to investing/trading using options. I wanted an approach that would free me from the computer and allow me to do my traveling confidently, without fear of losing my shirt while I was away. I found this approach with the PCCRC, but not before reading dozens of books in the subject of trading, and attending very expensive seminars. Invariably, the “instructors” lost credibility in my eyes, and I had to either modify or abandon their style of trading.

Nightingale talks about our willingness to assign more value to some one else’s skills than to our own. Very often we take the shortcut of a mentoring by someone we admire and respect, and try to emulate them. This is because we know ourselves so well, that we fail to assign the proper value to our ability to reach success. We often believe that we need crutches to walk and doing so we fail to run. Remember the moving Forrest Gump when the kid suddenly frees himself from his leg braces and begins to run? Be sure that you give your own ideas the value that day deserve before exploring someone else’s approach to trading.

You may find funny that I’d say that when I have a whole web site dedicated to share my approach to trading. However, I am hear to share my experiences as a trader, rather than to make a living at your expense. I derive my fulfillment our of sharing knowledge to others. Since my trading and investing give me what I need to live comfortably and travel the world, it makes sense to me to share my experiences. Among these experiences one of the most valuable ones is that I have found more power within my own creativity than in all the books or courses that I have taken. Thus I can pass along to you the idea that you too, have acres of diamonds deep within the reserves of your soul and brain. To tap into them, all you have to do is Believe!