Thursday, June 24, 2010

"How A Former BANKRUPT Discovered The Breakthrough Strategies To Successful Options Trading And Now Makes Up To US$22,368.60 A Month From The Comfort Of His Own Home!"



Conrad Alvin Lim’s Journey: How A Former Bankrupt Now Consistently Makes Up To US$22,368.60 A Month Trading in the US Markets!

In 2001, I took the last big hit of my life when I became a bankrupt. It was the result of a string of events that led me to that point in my life. Looking back, I believe that all those events happened for a reason and that reason was to lead me to the point in my life in which I now stand.

I had decided to go into business for myself. The business was a resounding success and I had to cope with this growth. So I hired more staff and expanded within a year in anticipation of more business. I spent money I had not collected and didn’t have. I became more ambitious and grew ever more careless. I turned an ignorant eye to the basic rule of business (which I felt was someone else’s responsibility) and neglected my cash flow.

By the end of 1999, recession was evident again. My company’s debts ran high and I compounded my impending fate by personally guaranteeing on several large debts. By the year 2000, I could not afford to pay out salaries and my staffs walked out. I could not collect on some of the outstanding invoices owed to my company as these companies were also in dire straits and were about to wind up.

The realization of my failure brought on my first and only nervous breakdown and I had become suicidal. All  my so-called friends were nowhere to be found. It was the most traumatic experience I would never want to re-live.


Biting the Bullet & Declaring Bankruptcy

Finally, after listening to my wife’s advice, I decided to put my pride aside and took the painful decision to bite the bullet and to (gasp!) downgrade. We sold the car and took the bus. We squeezed into a three room flat and sold off our precious things that we didn’t have space for. We adjusted our lifestyle and prepared for a life of poverty.

Finally, she advised me to take bankruptcy as an option as opposed to a life in debt. It was the worst thing I could do but the best advise I ever had. Looking back, I would not be where I am today had I not been forced by my wife to swallow my pride and grovel for a living. And that is just what I did.


Picking up the Pieces and Starting All Over Again

I went back to my roots and picked up several books on design and taught myself how to edit video and audio. As I learnt this new skill, several old clients from the past kept faith in my abilities and kept a constant flow of work coming to help me out. I churned out the work from my humble home and ran my small freelance business with low or no cost. The wife, needless to say, became the breadwinner and sole motivation for my comeback.

One of the clients to bring a steady flow of work in for me was none other than my co-writer, Adam Khoo. I soon learnt, by producing a lot of Adam’s materials, the importance of self-belief and the power of a positive mindset. I learnt that while I could not change the past, my destiny was within my control. I thought very hard about my future and started to set the goal of not only paying back my debts & getting discharged from bankruptcy, but to become a millionaire.

The idea of being an investor grabbed my imagination. I spoke to my wife, Lucy, about it. I showed her the material I was working on and how easy and affordable it could be to become a full time trader. The promise of becoming a millionaire and improving the life of our family and our future generations, the dream of having a financially free lifestyle and the simplistic approach to the method was just too good to resist.


Experiencing Initial Failure…

After attending our first trading workshop in an intensive, mind-crunching four days, Lucy and I quickly funded our first account with US$5,000 and began trading. As luck would have it, profits came fast and easy and our account grew by 20% in our first week of trading. We then hit our first few losses and told ourselves that this was normal in trading.

The losses accumulated and still we lived in denial. Ignorance became a reality check when we wiped out almost all of our capital and whatever profits we had made. So we re-funded our account with another US$5,000 and tried again. I attended several more trading workshops and picked up more strategies. Still, the losses kept mounting.

We couldn’t figure out why, after paying so much for these workshops and working so hard to stick to the rules, we were still losing money. I began to wonder if the claims of making money from investing were nothing but a big pipe dream.

Our savings were running thin, my media work was getting affected and the workflow had slowed to accommodate my trading workshops and trading at night. My health took a dip because of the late trading hours. My marriage was strained and my family was getting affected by my mood swings and short-tempered flares. This was not how I dreamt it would be.  

Things had taken a turn for the worse and the dream was becoming a nightmare.


Learning from Mistakes & Changing My Strategy

After four months and over US$10,000 in losses, I stopped trading and took some time away from the market. A friend suggested that I read Alexander Elder’s books “Trading for a Living” and “Come Into My Trading Room”. That led me to pick up more books on investing and trading.


After reading these books and learning the true ins and outs of investing, I finally realized why I was losing money.

It was not that making consistent profits from the stock market was not possible. It was that the investing workshops I had attended had not adequately equipped us with the essential basics that were so necessary to an investor’s success.

The workshops did not teach us how to thoroughly analyze a company’s profitability and financial stability (known as fundamental analysis) as well as the essentials of understanding market psychology towards a stock (known as technical analysis).

Basically, the workshops run by many of these self-professed gurus gave just enough information for you to get all excited and kill yourself in the market.  

How on earth did I expect to pick up something in four days and believe that it would be so easy to accomplish something that others have taken years to build?


Getting Back to Investing Basics & Doing Whatever it Takes to Succeed

So I decided that I would do whatever it took to master the art of investing. I would first build a solid foundation by learning everything that needed to be learnt about investing in the stock market.

I hit the libraries, bookstores and Internet to suck out as much information as I could gather. I studied the finer points of Technical Analysis, Pattern Trading, Momentum Trading, Sector Investing and even Japanese Candlestick Analysis.

I got to know and modeled some real traders who gave valuable insights into the world of online trading. I started working out and running again and got my physical fitness back. With that, I got my self-esteem back up on the high.


US$50 a Day… Small but Consistent Profits

After three months of hard work and self-study, I was able to formulate a simple and affordable trading strategy which allowed me to consistently earn US$50 on single Options for every trade in less than five days. Soon enough, I was averaging US$300 a week with success in five out of every six trades. This first strategy that I had developed is known as the 5-Day Pre-Earnings Game.

This small but initial success gave me the confidence and motivation to learn even more and to work even harder. I began to learn and test more advanced strategies such as ‘Sector Rotation’, ‘Intra-Day Scalping’ and ‘Momentum Trading’, which you will learn in the chapters that follow.


Making US$5,000 – US$7,000 of Consistent Profits a Month

After more than a year of extremely hard work, I began consistently earning between US$5,000-US$7,000 a month in trading profits. And my earnings keep increasing as time goes by and my experience builds. In fact, I made US$7,000 within the first six trading days of the year (2007). By the end of January 2007, I took back a total of US$15,000 in profits.

After being a bankrupt for more than FIVE years (since 2001), I finally made enough money to pay off all my debts and applied to my official assignee to be discharged from bankruptcy. That moment was one of the sweetest memories in my mind.

Making US$22,368.60 In One Month!


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