To all of you based in the United States, I hope you all had a happy and safe Independence Day.
As we move through this shortened trading week, I want to take a moment to tell you a story.
You see, my wife and I really enjoy the movies, and try to hit the theaters as often as we can. But we really enjoy settling in at home, uncorking a bottle of wine, and unwinding to a cinematic classic or new release.
My lifelong interest in history has made me especially fond of classic historical fiction or period productions.
I remember some classics from growing up. My dad took me to watch "Tora! Tora! Tora!" - the dramatic retelling if the Pearl Harbor attack staring actors like Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotton, and more.
Outside of being an incredible film, there is another reason why I remember seeing this movie in theaters that day.
I was amazed that the showing actually had an intermission (which, for a young movie-goer like me meant there was time to grab a popcorn and a soda...).
In fact, over the holiday weekend, I was recalling fond childhood memories with my dad-and we recounted the day we saw that famous war flick.
And he, too, remembered the intermission.
So I did some digging into the history of performance arts (plays, musicals, film screenings, and operas) - and the origin of the intermission.
Now, you might be wondering how all of this applies to your journey here.
Well, my discovery about intermissions has more to do with our work together here than you might think.
And I want to share it with you now...
A Look Back...
Intermissions - in any kind of performance - exist for a bunch of reasons.
They're a recess of sorts - a kind of break between important sections of a production.
Obviously, these breaks are needed so the stagehands can change the sets, the wardrobe folks can help change costumes, and the performers themselves can catch a breather.
As for the viewers... the audience... the folks being played to: for them the intermission serves as a dramatic pause.
That gives the spectators a chance to think about what they've just seen and heard... and to refocus in a manner that gets them ready for the acts scheduled to follow.
But as I found during my reading, this wasn't always the case.
Many years ago - back in the 1700s, in fact - the intermission was very different. Even though there was a break in the main performance, the action didn't stop... but rather continued offstage.
Indeed, as French writer and historian Jean-Francois Marmontel wrote back in 1763, "The interval is a rest for the spectators; not for the action. The characters are deemed to continue acting during the interval from one act to another."
I found that to be a scintillating bit of insight because of how it relates to what I do - which is to teach folks how to be better traders and better investors.
That's my goal when I conduct trading seminars, when I share my latest market views with my newsletter subscribers, and when I'm interviewed on TV shows.
That obviously goes triple for the work we're doing together here.
And that brings me back to the history of intermissions - and The 10-Minute Millionaire.
I grant you... we're not on stage here. We're not performing.
But we are learning.
And we're learning about a topic (investing, trading, and wealth creation) that demands the same kind of immersive concentration we'd devote to a high-quality theatrical production.
With a play, the performers we're watching are the actors.
We watch as the story unfolds.
We have to think about what's happening, have to think about what it all means, and have to think about the overarching lessons... in addition to considering how these lessons might be applied.
As investors, we do the very same things.
In this venue, of course, the performances we're concerned with are financial, not human.
We watch the markets, watch individual stocks, and watch as the story they're telling us unfolds.
We derive lessons from those tales, and apply what we've learned to our individual trades, and to our overarching investment strategies.
As the creator of The 10-Minute Millionaire, I'm not performing.
But I am making a presentation - complete with stories, lessons, and strategies that I want you to apply to your everyday life.
And there's a lot to absorb, I know.
Indeed, an intellectual exercise of this magnitude certainly requires an intermission... a break... to allow you to fully absorb the lessons we've already talked about.
And I can aid that process by including a summary or review of what's happened so far.
But while we take this break... while we enjoy this intermission... the "action is deemed to continue" - just as Marmontel, the theater historian, wrote so many years ago.
And he's right.
Just think about it.
We've spent a fair bit of time here already talking about market extremes, about the perils of emotion-driven trading, and about the advantages of The 10-Minute Millionaire.
But while we take this break, the "action is deemed to continue."
In this case, however, the action that continues offstage is the trading that takes place in the financial markets all around the world... here in the United States... in Europe... and in Asia.
It's the craziness that causes stocks to overrun to the upside... and to be oversold to the downside.
It's the miscues that most investors repeat - over and over and over again - so that they never achieve meaningful wealth.
I love that creative way of looking at what we're doing together here.
So let's take this intermission... review what we've learned to this point... and look ahead at what's to come...
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10-Minute Millionaire Investor Lesson No. 1 - Time Is Your Biggest Ally
As 10-Minute Millionaires learned last week, time can either be your biggest ally... or your worst enemy.
In all of my years in this business, the importance of time is one of the key elements to trading that everyone underestimates.
And as a result, I've watched that misused time leaves hundreds of investors in financial ruin.
That's why time is a central element of our system.
You see, if we properly direct and focus our time - even as little as 10 minutes per day - we can add hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars to our net worth.
Indeed, over time, those ticks of the clock could add millions.
That's the true power of our 10-Minute Millionaire system.
With my strategy, those 10 minutes - employed at regular intervals, can and will:
- Halt your financial bleeding
- Thwart the financial "enemies" - Wall Street, the taxman, and the "regulatory cesspool" we know as Washington - that threaten the well-being of your family
- Neutralize the external geopolitical, economic, and financial market events that have obliterated lifetimes of hard work, sacrifice, and disciplined saving that so many Americans have engaged in
- Restore your financial confidence so that you again feel compelled to pursue your personal dreams
- And put you on a path that will end with your becoming a superpower - a financial superpower... a millionaire... a 10-Minute Millionaire
And with the easy-to-use tools and strategies we're going to look at during our journey together, you can do all of this... in increments as small as 10 minutes a day.
10-Minute Millionaire Investor Lesson No. 2 - It Pays to Be Extreme
Since the onset of our journey together, I showed you the true power of targeting "extremes" in the market.
You see, markets are made up of people... meaning they're also a compilation of emotions... of fear... of greed... of predispositions... of likes and dislikes.
Markets are like big, global auction houses. But instead of antiques, old books or china, the objects being sold include stocks, bonds, bars of gold, shipments of pork bellies, or contracts to buy oil at some date in the future.
The fact that the "bidders" are situated all around the world - and aren't congregated in one room - doesn't matter. They're all connected by a computer, so there's a "virtual" auction house.
And we're still talking about a group of bidders who are susceptible to biases and who are ruled by their innate likes... and by emotions like greed... and fear.
Thanks to those emotions, financial markets (and the individual securities in them) get "out of whack" from all the time. Emotions cause entire markets to overrun at "tops" and overrun at "bottoms."
At market tops, investors are "irrationally exuberant" - and they willingly overpay. At market bottoms, investors become indifferent, or downright depressed, and you can't give the stuff away.
As investors, the real benefit to these extremes is that you can exploit them for hefty profits... often at risk levels that are well below normal.
Like I mentioned, market extremes aren't just once-in-a-while opportunities that come along when the prices of individual stocks, business sectors, geographic economies, or entire asset classes get out of whack.
You can find these extremes everywhere in the market.
They show up in broad indices...
They show up in specific market sectors...
They show up in stocks and bonds...
We can profit from those extremes and beat the markets if we learn the ways of the 10-Minute Millionaire.
That's why, as we continue on our journey together, we will continue to come back to extremes time and time again.
10-Minute Millionaire Investor Lesson No. 3 - Gain the Right "Edge"
To be a successful investor, you need to understand the odds.
Identifying out-of-whack extremes - and setting up trades that profit from those opportunities - are the end game.
But that's not the entire strategy.
And there are other moves you need to make to generate the opportunity for a steady string of winning trades and a steady stream of profits over time.
You don't want to think like a riverboat gambler who's looking for the big kill.
Nor do you want to view yourself as a trader who's trying to beat the house in a game of chance.
You want to beat the house by shrewdly turning probability into an ally.
And you do that by establishing a true "edge," which you achieve by combining the extreme profit opportunities with ironclad risk controls.
When you do this, you'll win consistently and will sometimes even hit big. But even when you miss, you'll miss small.
In the long run, that's a combination that allows you to survive and thrive - and keeps you on the millionaire's thruway.
10-Minute Millionaire Investor Lesson No. 4 - Emotion Is Public Enemy No. 1
For investors, even the best-laid plans can be short-circuited by emotion.
When it comes to investing, we really are our own worst enemies. Our emotions get in the way and cause us to make highly irrational choices that are disastrous to our wealth.
The ugly truth is that human beings just aren't "wired" to be good traders.
It doesn't come naturally.
Even in our most cogent, most logical moments, our brains simply can't process the massive number of "inputs" required to make completely informed, emotion-free decisions. So we rely on shortcuts, rules of thumb, or "heuristics" (some of which we'll illustrate shortly).
These are not shameful "crutches." Just the opposite, in fact. While they are mandated by our all-too-human limitations, they also illustrate our ingenuity - our ability to adapt and innovate.
In the world of trading, with its ever-increasing complexity, "systems" play that role. They acknowledge our profit-crimping, loss-enhancing emotions. But systems are also innovative adaptations - powerful enablers that help us achieve far more than we ever could with our limited corporeal capacities.
In short, in the world of trading, a system can...
- Act as a so-called "force multiplier" - serving as a proxy for an employee you can trust to "mind the store" while you're doing other things (one reason we can legitimately call this a "10-Minute Millionaire" system... since it keeps functioning even when you're not standing right there)
- Help us make sense during periods of market confusion and force aside emotions that keep us from making logical, rational trading decisions
- And act as a safety net by telling us when we need to cut our losses short
A Look Ahead...
There's a reason I selected these lessons in particular to share with you today.
It's because these four lessons form the basic framework of the 10-Minute Millionaire.
They are the foundation of everything we do there.
And they are concepts that we will come back to over and over again as we continue our journey together.
Over the next few weeks, I'll show you how to use this framework to flesh out our actual strategy... to show you how to put it into action.
I'll show you the steps to take to invest and trade like a 10-Minute Millionaire.
And I'll show you new "extreme" trades that will put you firmly on your path to millionaire status.
And before long, you'll find that our 10-Minute Millionaire system has become second nature to you.
With these revelations, intermission is over.
Let's get back to the action.
And if you haven't joined in yet, don't worry. It's not too late. Just click here to get every The 10-Minute Millionaire update delivered straight to your inbox twice-weekly. It's absolutely free.
This "Secret" Helped Transform Two Teachers into Millionaires: Donna and Dave R. were both teachers in Boston. But today they're retired millionaires who are also earning $10,000 a month in income. Their secret? Much of their wealth is due to a Great Depression-era "program" most have no idea exists. Learn more…
About the Author
D.R. Barton, Jr., Technical Trading Specialist for Money Map Press, is a world-renowned authority on technical trading with 25 years of experience. He spent the first part of his career as a chemical engineer with DuPont. During this time, he researched and developed the trading secrets that led to his first successful research service. Thanks to the wealth he was able to create for himself and his followers, D.R. retired early to pursue his passion for investing and showing fellow investors how to build toward financial freedom.