I was hiking in the mountains with some of my boys years ago and we could see in the distance a storm coming towards us. In the mountains during the summer there is often afternoon rain storms. We noticed the storm was approaching fast, and we had no ponchos, nor umbrellas, and we still had a long way to go before we got to something to cover us up well.

As the storm got closer we noticed that it got dark very fast, and it started to rain hard. Suddenly the rain turned to hail; then it turned to golf ball sized hail. Pretty soon it got at large as baseballs. Dads and kids were screaming and people were trying to find anything to get under.

Recently I was talking with a budget and savings expert. He's got this ability to set financial goals and a cool system to help him reach those financial goals with very simple techniques.

He is now in a position where he's asking himself...where should I invest my money? How can I grow my capital without getting too far out on risk.

The power of his story is that he worked with a very simple, very consistent system that he developed. I have known him a long time and have watched him apply this system. Recently I was talking with him he shared an idea about how he created a financial shelter applying this system.

This is something that protects him from the financial storms. So, I have asked him to come talk with us on this podcast and he has agreed. So, he will be coming to talk about how he went from $300 to $70,000 applying this one simple technique.

It has put him on the side of having his money start working for him. He has started working with me in my Facebook group, called: Profitable Wealth Strategies. So come join us in the group, and stay tuned for when he joins me in this podcast.

On a related note, one of the professional traders that I work with has developed a key technique to help you have the discipline to apply ANY method or investment strategy.

How many times have you known what the right thing is that you should do, but don't do it!!??

Well this trader has discovered the ability to train our mindsets to be able to overcome that.

And she has graciously agreed to come speak on this podcast as well.

What I find amazing is how many awesome stories are out there that people have to share.

So, here are the two calls to action: 1. Come join my Facebook group: Profitable Wealth Strategies 2. If you'd like to be interviewed on this podcast, send me a request to [email protected]

Thanks for joining!

Until next time, get some financial shelter!!

Mr Steven Sweet, Zaner VP / Broker / Trader...developer of Pathfinder...overcoming Trading and Investing Mindset challenges.

Who can benefit with Pathfinder and what makes it unique, different from other opportunities?

Pathfinder IS different than most trader education available. Unique, because it is focused on personal development, not teaching a specific trading system.

I personally worked with a student that said to me that he felt that I really listened and understood him as he discussed his trading, and his trading demons… things that he felt had held him back from trading success. While Pathfinder is not psychoanalysis and of course no one here is qualified in that field…lol, this type of dialogue is encouraged and important in the Pathfinder mission of achieving “clarity of market condition” and becoming the confident trader, something that, in my experience, is missing in a typical limited contact educator/ student relationship.

Another aspect of good confident trading is understanding the tools you are using to analyze. Interestingly, we have discovered that many newer traders do not fully understand what each indicator they are using actually reveals about the marketplace. They were just told to apply an indicator as instructed. Nor are they coached on how to balance the weight or importance of each indicator they analyze relative to the others. 

In our first meetings with a Pathfinder student, researching the meaning of each of their indicators is their first homework assignment. In the quest for clearly understanding a market’s condition you must be able to measure participation that will drive momentum (that can be measured) that ultimately drives price.

Can a better trader be developed? Can I really do this?

1. Anxieties: A) Losing money.    B)  Being wrong (ego) (too early, too late)
2. Self-doubt. Under educated. Don’t have the skills
3. Expectations too high
4. Confidence lacking

I can refer back to my own experience with trading for the first time on the trading floor, in the pit. Had been around the trading floors and the markets for 8 years prior. I was very confident. Yet that confidence was shaken when I stood in the pit the very first day. I experienced the anxiety of risk, the self-doubt about skill, and lack of confidence emotions. It was a tidal wave of emotion. But with the daily intercession of fellow traders I became more at ease and much better able to apply myself in the pit sans the overwhelming deer –in- the- headlights emotion.

Pathfinder coaching/ mentoring one on-one plus a screen share can really bring focus to a meeting. While coaching I was personally reminded of my wife’s quest to fly an airplane and how confident she felt when she first took off, in the pilot’s seat, with her instructor in the co-pilot seat. She was confident of her skills. And if she overlooked something, the instructor would point it out and sometimes override if necessary. She felt more relaxed and alert under these circumstances, able to focus her attention without a cloud of anxiety. She successfully took off and landed the plane on her own that day.

What kind of effort, time commitment, and skill set do I need to be successful?

Learning to trade or invest and do it successfully does take time and commitment. Like anything else we strive for in our lives we allot the time.   If you don’t have the time, save this for a time when you do.

I am reminded of a student with whom I worked with during the early hours of trading, daily. He was a great student. Smart, open-minded, diligent with his studies. He had a passion for trading. But he was literally squeezing in trading very early in the morning for a couple of hours before he went to work. Needless to say he was very rushed in his trading and in my opinion overcome by the quest to make quick money in the time he had allotted. Not successful.  We helped him carve out a slice of his day where he could commit his focus and time, uninterrupted.  In this manner when he had his trading job to do it was uninterrupted by other things or deadlines.

You must commit time to this. If it is something that you have to squeeze into, obviously it is not going to fit correctly. You will most likely split at the seams and fail to enjoy results you had hoped for.

1. What is your backstory...how did you get involved in investing and trading? 2. How long did you manage the hedge fund? 3. What do you most like about trading? 4. What do you least like about trading? 5. What do you trade? 6. How would you characterize your approach to trading? 7. Do you consider yourself a short term or a long term trader? 8. What are some key lessons learned over the years that you can share? 9. How can people best get started with trading? 10. What's your advice on controlling risk? 11. What was a painful trading experience you had, what did you learn from it?

Steven Sweet, Zaner VP, is back introducing the Pathfinder solution.

Review some of the challenges that you had identified in the previous podcast - inconsistency - not using indicators - over-trading - not sticking with plans - emotional decision making

Question: given those problems, what did you do to overcome those problems?

Question: who is this for? Question: how is this different from other offers out there? Question: how long does it take to go through Pathfinder? Question: do you address trader psychology? Question: do you help traders deal with risk management? Question: what impact have you seen Pathfinder provide for traders which have gone through this?

One time while driving my family in the car we were going a long distance. It was about a 12 hour drive. We were about 11 1/2 hours into the drive and from the back of the car our youngest child spoke up and said, "Dad, do you know where you are going?" To her it seemed like we were driving aimlessly around for hours and she was letting me know she couldn't take it any more.

I tried to convince her that I knew the direction and where we were going.

When I started trading options I was focusing on direction, but found it to be a struggle.

I then started trading without direction; I was trading theta. If you are not familiar with what that means, it means you sell the options and take the money from the sell, hoping that the price will never hit your option strike, or price area.

You can actually make some money; however, if your option strike price gets hit then the loss can be much larger than many months of profits.

Here's how it works. You sell the option way out away from the current price in an area where you think the price cannot come in a reasonable time. You want the option to expire and you pocket the money.

However, one time when I was trading options that way, with 10 minutes left before the market closed on a Friday, and the option was about to expire, the price came way up into my area and suddenly it looked like I was going to lose thousands of dollars.

I jumped out of my chair and started bouncing around the room. I was watching the clock like I could hardly wait to be let out of a containment cell. What was going to happen?

I learned early on from one of my mentors to BUY the probable and SELL the IMPROBABLE. Which is what I had done. But the cost of being wrong was so high.

It was now 30 seconds before the market was going to close and I was going to lose thousands of dollars.

20 seconds 15 10 5...and then suddenly the price dropped very fast and came below my option strike level and I earned my $200 while risking thousands of dollars to get that.

I LOVE to sell options...however...it was a very risky trade at that moment.

After my heart slowed down I committed myself to working on picking direction and to focus on risk management.

Ringing in my ears was the comment from my daughter..."Dad, do you know where you are going".

It is a challenge to pick the right direction...do we really know where the market it is going.

Nope.

But, what we do know is how to invest and trade in highly probable locations with controlled risk.

It is about recognizing when price has moved away from value...kind of like a sale at a clothing store. You know, where that $200 dress is now selling for $68...price has moved away from value.

So, get to know the markets you are trading, understand their structure and behavior, pick the direction and control your risk.

Thanks for joining, and until next time...learn to identify your direction.

Vice President Zaner Futures Group, Been a Professional Trader, Member of the Exchange, Trading Systems Author; Steven Sweet identifies patterns or trader and investor problems across decades of working in the markets.

- When did you get started with the markets? - Why did you get started? - What markets have you traded? - Did you trade in the pits? - What have you noticed different between floor trading and electronic trading? - What problems have you seen traders deal with, regardless of which market? - What patterns of self-destructive behavior have you observed? - What have been good behaviors you have observed?

One time in England, many years ago, I was boarding a train and was loading my luggage and my bike into the luggage car. I had placed my bike there and turned around to get my luggage and the train took off. I chased the train with my luggage in my hand and jumped onto it. However, I could not keep my balance and fell off the train, taking a serious roll on the platform.

That is called trading with profit potential, not trading with risk potential in mind. I was clearly thinking, oh yeah, I can make this train...that is called profit potential. In reality, the profit potential did not work out.

If I would have traded in that situation with the risk potential I would not have tried to jump on the train and would have lost my bike, but would have protected my capital, in this case my body and potentially it could have been my life.

That experience taught me a lot about the markets.

We trade RISK POTENTIAL, NOT PROFIT POTENTIAL.

The skill that needs to be learned is how to calculate RISK POTENTIAL.

Consider the following things to help you with this...

1. for each market you invest in understand its timing and cycles - some markets are seasonal, like energy stocks move in certain directions at various times of the year - or if you are trading futures, the ES (S&P E-mini) contract moves more at certain times of the day

2. trade risk, not profit potential - this sounds counter intuitive, but before each investment or each trade examine the risk level - how do you do this? - there are many factors that calculate risk, some of those include - trend - market structure - timing - economic reports - key reference lines, support - range of movement - related market behavior (directly correlated, inversely correlated) - multiple timeframes of your market

3. determine your participation level, taking into consideration the amount of your portfolio you will commit to this particular opportunity - some say 1%, some say 5% - keep it small like that, protecting your capital

Thanks for joining, and until next time...KNOW YOUR RISK!!

Being able to execute on a plan is one of the main aspects of making investing and trading work effectively. It turns out this is easier said than done.

One time we were backpacking in the Rocky Mountains, we had been in the mountains for about one week, and we decided to take a day hike up to one of the nearby peaks. We mapped out the trail and the route to get there; which meant that a fast-moving, deep stream, filled with runoff from the melting snowpack, had to be crossed. About two miles away there was a bridge across this stream; it was too wide to jump, and too deep to cross.

However, this bridge was 2 miles back up the canyon from where we had come. After hiking about 1/2 of a mile we found a location where the stream was not as wide. Our hopes were that we could get a run at it and jump across 3/4ths of the stream, and then we would deal with swimming across the rest of it.

So - we abandoned our original plan and took a run at the stream. There are some things that you should never do, this is one of those. What we didn't realize at the time was the stream was much deeper on the far side, so when we landed in it, each of us went well under water. The water was very rough and moving very fast; and we were carried down stream a long ways, hitting rocks, protruding trees, and such.

It was a very foolish thing to do. Why did we do it? Why did we abandon our plan?

Is it emotion? Is it laziness or lack of patience? Perhaps we feel like we are getting more accomplished when we make such decisions. Gratefully no one died, but it could have turned out very poorly for us.

We often do similar things when making our investing or trading plans. Or when we are making a plan to save money, to get out of debt, or whatever our next financial goal is. And why do we abandon those plans at times? Sometimes we may have a justifiable reason; but at other times we are not justified.

I have a list of 10 things I have noticed over the years that we do that negatively affects our financial activities, or investing, or trading. Let's walk through each of these.

1. Not Maintaining a Trading Discipline 2. Trading without a Plan - don't know market context - no system or strategy 3. Keeping Trade Journal 4. Failing to Adapt to A Market / Don't want to be wrong Not focusing on overcoming one's weaknesses 5. Learning Through Trial and Error with your small capital 6. Unrealistic Expectations 7. Have no focus - having a lot of distractions 8. Poor Risk Management Focusing too much on potential money to be earned, rather than focusing on controlling their risk 9. Lack of awareness on how to manage emotions of fear and greed 10. Not having a good mentor

So, it turns out that a lot of our financial activities has less to do with finances and more to do with self mastery.

Thanks for joining, and until next time, stick with your good plan!

Use the Dow Jones Indexes rate of change to identify those indexes which have high probability stock opportunities.

This one tip will save you tons of time and will help you reduce the set of stocks to review.

Once you have found an index that is showing strong bullish or bearish moves, depending on your interest, then look at the stocks that comprise that index.

Be sure to look at the market structure, moving averages, and momentum on both the index as well as the individual stocks in that index.

Be mindful of recent or upcoming earnings reports and also other relevant market reference lines.

This one tip has saved me tons of time identifying high probability stock opportunities.

So to save time use indexes to get to the higher probable moves for your diversified portfolio.

How much time do you have to review your financial activity each day? Or rather, how much time do you want to spend doing that? The answer is likely to be minimal. What if you could have some simple steps to evaluate your financial basis; and it didn't require a PhD in investing?

I took some initial flying lessons once. The pilot was a former Navy F-14 pilot and we were in a Cessna 172. He made it seem so simple.

He did a pre-flight check; and I watched.

At first he managed all of the communication with the tower. When we were on the ground he spoke with the tower, when we were in the air he spoke with the tower.

He had me focus initially on the mechanics of take off, landing, and making turns in the air without slippage.

Making adjustments in our financial picture often requires a similar level of involvement. You need someone to manage the pre-flight, and to communicate with the tower.

Eventually you will need to take care of all those matters.

Important in this is the need to also understand related markets. For example, if you were investing in the SPY, an S&P 500 ETF, you will also want to understand how related markets are performing.

What is a related market to SPY?

You will also want to understand the current market context of economic reports.

In other words, create a pre-flight checklist and go through it on a regular basis.

One time while I was flying with a friend in his Piper we flew right over Lake Tahoe, in California. As soon as we got over the water the air got really bumpy because of the change in air temperature caused by the water.

I was glad to get past the lake for sure.

Even though you do a pre-flight check, there are times when your investment gets bumpy.

Be sure your rules include how and when to leave the investment.

Most of all, be sure to have a flight instructor to help you with a range of activities to help protect your hard-earned capital.

Thanks for joining, and until next time