Someone posted the following comment on my last post
The same people who complain about the rothchields and the fed are the people who think bush created 911 so he could go to kill people. its all consipiracy theories. yeah bankers lobbied to get the fed created, whats the news here?history of governments are filled lobby and deals with money underneath the table. that doesnt mean that fed is trying to destroy the economy or that 'big corporations' wants to create a new holocaust with euthanasia facilities
I really grateful for that comment because it allowed me to realize that I do have a lot of conspiracy ideas in me but I also realized that my source was quite different from the source most people have. It comes from my modelling work.
And by the way, I agree with the person making the comment. Trillion dollar industries are interested in 1) preserving the status quo and 2) gaining power and money. What they do is not necessarily a deliberate intent to destroy anything. But if making things better meant getting rid of that industry, they are also not likely to do it. Futhermore, they are not likely to stop looking for ways to get more power and money at the expense of whatever, because they believe that power and money are important. However, the solution to a better world has nothing to do with fighting these large power and money sources.
I've been modeling trading success for some time. I first modeled the trading process and my peak performance course came out of that. My overall conclusion from that work was that MOST PEOPLE DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT IS REQUIRED FOR SUCCESS. That was the first ahah.
Next I looked at position sizing as an ongoing modeling project. That's culminated in the Definitive Guide to Position Sizing which will be published by this summer. My overall conclusion from that work was that most people have never heard of position sizing, including most professional traders. So here is this key variable that accounts for about 90% of performance variability and most people haven't heard about it, including most professionals. Portfolio managers cannot practice it because they have to be 90% invested at all times and bank traders can't practice it because they don't even know how much money they are trading. I also concluded that professionals are successful because they make their own rules for how the game is played and won. And when they get others to follow those rules, they win no matter what happens.
Some time during this process I also worked with about a have dozen or so very successful brokers who wanted to improve their trading. During the process of consulting with them I modeled what they were doing to produce success. And my conclusion was that it was the exact opposite of what brokerage companies spend a fortunate to train their brokers to do. I first thought I had a great business opportunity to train brokerage companies in what it took to be really successful and then I discovered that they were not interested. They had designed the rules so that they won... they got paid out of commissions and they even had rules adopted saying that it was a conflict of interest for them to be paid out of their clients profits. Hmm...so instead they win no matter what you do...even if you blow up. I also remembered that when I'd first lost $20,000 in the markets in about six months in 1974. At the end of that period, I took at look at what I'd spent in commissions and it was about $25,000. Hmm.
Dr. Scott Brown and I have recently looked at academic models of finance versus what is important for success. And we've both concluded that the Academic models are almost the antithesis of what it takes for success. We sort of concluded that perhaps Nobel prizes were given out for what might support the rules that Wall Street wants you to think is important for success. Hmm.
I've also modeled the process of developing a trading system that fits you. This is covered in our System Development Course and in Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom. My overall conclusion is that what is necessary for success is the exact opposite of what most people are taught or believe. Does this begin to sound like a common theme?
My next step was to take a look at wealth. What's important for success at wealth? Well, my conclusion from this was to decide that people had made up the idea that to win the wealth game you had to have all the money in the world. Being a millionaire didn't cut it any more and that's the top 1% of all Americans. Perhaps you had to be a billionaire to win.
And since some people can never win, a new rule was made up to give them hope. He or she who has the most toys wins or at least becomes happy (for a few minutes). And you can get the latest toy if the down payment is low enough and the monthly payments are low enough. Now this rule actually creates financial slavery in its worst form. I went to the Bahamas and started to teach school teachers these principles. What I discovered was that about 10 years earlier, credit cards had been introduced into the Bahamas. People went from being fine to suddenly having massive debt in a very short period of time. Doesn't this sound like a common theme? Most people do the exact opposite of what it takes for success. Only by now it’s pretty clear that it is because they are playing a game and someone else is making up all the rules. Hmm. And quite often there is a trillion dollar industry behind those rules. And they are quite likely to resist any change to those rules because it might affect their trillion dollar industry.
And of course, there is a different way of doing things, a different way of playing the money game. I've taught this as an infinite wealth course. But, of course, most people do he exact opposite of this and play a losing game.
When you model something you need to find the tasks that successful people have in common and the ingredients for each task. One of those ingredients is the beliefs involved. At the start of my modeling career I learned that beliefs are just are filters to reality. They have nothing to do with reality.
As a result, I've often said the following:
1) You cannot trade the markets. You can only trade your beliefs about the markets.
2) All beliefs are fiction, so just take a look at how useful your beliefs are.
And all of these statements were quite controversial when I first introduced them into this blog. However, by looking at my beliefs over the years and noticing what was useful and what wasn't, I've generally found that the more people accept a belief as being really true, the least useful it was. Hmm.
Now let's look at one more step...looking at what others have done with modeling. I became good friends with a man in Ireland who had developed an alternative health clinic. People who had been rejected by the system came to him as a last resort. And by rejected, I mean people came to him who were told 1) there is no cure or 2) you are going to die. My friend had achieved 90% success rates (assuming that people followed his program) with these failure cases. And if I could summarize this philosophy it was 1) that the body could heal itself if you just return the body to normal; 2) that his key job was to return the body to its normal state rather than treat symptoms; and 3) that most of our health problems was simply due to the food we eat.
Incidentally, my friend has pointed out that a Nobel Prize was awarded when it was shown that cancer cells occur when they cannot use oxygen any more and they start fermenting sugar instead. And another Nobel Prize was award by showing that this process can be reversed by giving the cells oxygen again. However, it's not labeled as the cause and cure for cancer. Instead we are spending billions on finding drugs to cure cancer.
I went on his program for over 9 months and discover that I had tremendous addictions to foods that were not good for me and that those addictions were as strong as the worst addictions you can imagine -- like to heroin. But in this case the addictions were to refined carbohydrates and to sugar. Hmm. By the way, watch the movie SUPER SIZE ME and you'll understand this process much better.
I also went to a health clinic in Switzerland and found that what they did produced immediate, tremendous health benefits. And I thought to myself, what if I could just get this sort of treatment once each year. I then learned of a doctor who was giving those treatments to patients in Maryland. He patients loved him but the medical profession didn't and it took away his license. Hmm
So here was another example from another field. Most people the exact opposite of what is require for success. Only in this example it became clear to me that in order to correct things you had to fight two different trillion dollar industries in the US. The first trillion dollar industry was the medical professional who believes that you must treat symptoms with very expensive drugs .. many of which are dangerous. And those who adopt other treatment methods tend to lose their license to practice medicine.
And the other trillion dollar industry was the processed food industry. What are the chances of getting them to produce healthier foods? I think the question is answered when you begin to learn that the industry that has best managed legal addictions, the tobacco industry, is now moving heavily into the processed food industry and buying out many of the largest companies.
So what's going on? Well, in every area in which I'm familiar, people do the exact opposite of what is required for success. And what seems to be behind that, in almost every instance, is a trillion dollar industry of some sort. And if people started doing what was necessary for success, the trillion dollar industry would suffer. And will they just say, "Okay, what we're doing isn't in the best interests of most people, so we'll stop." No, instead, they will do everything in their power, including spending lots of money and lobbying to Congress, to make sure that the system is not disrupted in any way.
So am I a conspiracy theorist? Probably I am for the reasons just outlined. But my solution is NOT to fight the trillion dollar industries. The solution is much different from that and it's much easier. But that's another story... and perhaps the topic for a book one day. However, I'll give you a brief insight into the solution in the next post.
