Financial Investing Radio

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

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

  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

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

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

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 market

Introduction I have with me today a young lady who is not only my daughter but also is a professional podcaster and lives in the world of social media. Social Media Growth - Facebook - Instagram - Twitter - Spotify - YouTube - Tumblr - Twitch - Pintrest Today's youth trade on these platforms. But not typically with money but with time. They are trading their time. What is the ROI on trading your time with Social Media? Can anyone make money by publishing on Social Media? What examples can you share with me where people have made money through Social Media? You work with many clients to help them Podcast; do you consider podcasting a social media platform? Do any of your clients make money through podcasting? If you are going to trade not necessarily the markets but rather trade your sweat equity with Social Media; what are some tips you have for people to make money through social media?  

It is always amazing to me how powerful fear and greed are. One time I was up in the mountains with my brothers and my Dad. We were watching for Elk and Deer and so we had separated ourselves to see if we could widen our search area. It was still early morning and it was very quiet; and I was alone. I heard a noise above me. I looked up the mountain and could see bushes moving and I could hear running. Perhaps it was a bear? Or maybe an elk? Sometimes a moment in time can feel like forever. Finally the animal emerged from the trees and bushes. That is when I realized that it was a pack of 6 coyotes. They were running down the mountain fast and were coming right at me. I was struck with fear. They got closer and closer until they were about 10 yards away from me. I raised my hand to appear bigger and at that moment the front coyote saw me. I could tell from the look in its eye that it had not even seen me. It was shocked and the pack had so much momentum going that they couldn't stop. So they split right aroun

One night we were driving our family up through the mountains. It was snowing and blowing and very hard to see. Typically some sort of road grime starts to build up and you begin using the windshield wipers on the back windshield. In this case the more I sprayed washer fluid on it the more smudged and clouded the back windshield. Eventually we needed to pull over to get some gas for the car. As I was standing near the back of the car I took a moment to clean off the back windshield. At that moment I realized that it was not road grime or dirt, but it was oil. I got very worried at that moment, and, long story short, our transmission had begun leaking and was going out. Wow! There are many kinds of investment and trading indicators to use. But often we don't interpret them correctly...just like I didn't interpret the smudge on my window. What indicators do you use for making your investment and trading decisions? Generally you want something that helps you see the movement of price over time; these are often

Sometimes we make the dumbest decisions when our mental state is not right. I have plenty examples of doing that. One of the key lessons I have learned from investing and trading is that it really forces you to be self-aware...to know your personality and your current state. For example, one time I was in the frame of mind, or, a mental state, that said that our kids are going to each whatever their good mother had prepared. Now in general we still stick to this...but...we have toned this down a bit. One evening while eating dinner as a family one of our sons was not eating the artichoke heart that my wife had prepared. Eventually I asked him to eat it, to which he replied: "If I eat that I am going to throw up!" Well I stood my ground, that was the state of mind I was in...I just had to be right. He ate it out of respect, but not long after it came back up just as he promised! I learned an important lesson that night...it caused a change of mind. When we are trading, or making investment decisions we have to

When I was a kid I saw an advertisement for a ghost in a magazine. They wrote the sales copy so convincingly...it basically said that this ghost would fly. What really hooked me was that they stated that it would 'obey my every command'! Well, I couldn't get my younger brother to obey my every command, so this seemed pretty enticing to me. I had been saving and saving my money; my parents insured that would happen. Back then we couldn't just order on the Internet. I solicited the help of my parents. I showed them what a great deal this ghost was. It had a scary face, it had a long, draping body, it was white, and oboy, it would do what I told it to do. My mother looked at me in amazement...she could tell I had been hooked. Oh how I wanted that ghost. After some complaining on my part my mom finally agreed to let me learn my lesson. She helped me retrieve some money from my bank account and supervised me as I wrote out the order and put it in the mail, along with the money. It took an eternity...apparently gho

The news comes in many forms today. A couple times when I was young I delivered news papers in the morning. During one point of my life we lived in the midwest...there were many times of delivering papers in the snow and cold mornings. But there is one experience in particular that stands out. It was an early morning in the rocky mountain area on a Sunday morning. Back then the Sunday morning papers were quite large; there was the comic section, the coupon section, larger sports section, and other elements that made those papers large. My job was to get all the inserts into the already large paper and put a rubber band around them or put them in a plastic bag. From there I put the papers into a bag on my bike and off I went. As a delivery boy my goal was to get the paper into a location that would reduce the likelihood it would get run over by the car in the driveway, but also to avoid landing it in the flower bed and such. On this particular Sunday morning the paper was unusually larger than normal. This req

Many years ago one of our daughters was very much in love....it turns out she was in love with ice cream. Every effort was made to eat ice cream. Complex strategies were implemented by her to acquire more ice cream. This began to affect her eating at dinner time; as she would some times get access to ice cream before dinner. This all came to a head one evening as we had just finished dinner; and some people in the family decided to have some ice cream for dessert. One of those people was our ice cream-loving daughter. So, she began to fill up her ice cream bowl. As the family was eating the ice cream it became evident that this ice-cream loving daughter was not eating her ice cream. At that point I made a statement I never thought would come out of my mouth...I looked at her and said: "Young lady, if you are going to take all that ice cream, I am going to ask you to finish it." With tears in her eyes she cried out, "Daddy, I don't want to finish my ice cream." She had maxed out on ice cream...and has had it u

Part of my growing up included milking cows, hauling hay, and working the wheat fields. As a boy I recall watching my Dad milk cows by hand. The cats would gather around as he milked the cows. Occasionally he would direct the milk spray to the cats and they would lap up the milk, in sheer delight. He also had several buckets. One bucket was intended for family and other buckets would go into the large milk vat, that eventually would be sold. I watched this distribution of the milk regularly. At one point I read a book, called the The Richest Man in Babylon. It's a great book, I highly recommend it. In the book, authored by George Samuel Clason back in 1926, he teaches a principle about how the Richest Man gathered his wealth, and distributed his income. He gave 10% to God, then he paid himself 10% (through savings) and then he would live on the rest. Certainly we each have a level of resources to use and to distribute wisely. Just as important we should teach our children similar principles of thrift, giving,

Jefferson Starship sang a song many years ago called "Jane". Some of the words went..."Jane you're playing for fun, but I play for keeps!" I believe the market is like that. You cannot approach the market like it is for fun; at some point the market will play for keeps and our investment or our trade gets whacked. I do a stock report for a trading community called Tackle Trading... you ought to check them out. There are a set of criteria I walk through to evaluate stock opportunities. While there are many criteria one should look through, I will not list them all; but here are a few critical ones. 1. Establish well-used moving averages The reason why this is important is because you want to see common areas where other traders or investors are making decisions. That is key, on every investment or trade you make someone is taking the other side of that investment. What do they see that you don't? What else do you need to be considering to build your confidence in your position? Take a moment to evaluate the ot

As part of our journey with helping children to develop a healthy relationship with money my wife and I determined to give them opportunities to earn money in our home before they were ever able to work outside the home. I will share one such approach we did to help them learn how to plan, budget, hire, invoice, pay others, and pay themselves. I called it the YARD MANAGER. Each child has taken turns being the yard manager. They are given a budget for expenses like gas for the mower, fertilizer, and also a list of of chores and tasks that need to be done. Each task has a monetary value, such as pulling weeds would be worth $4 for a certain part of the yard. The idea is that the yard manager can hire their siblings or others to do the work. They need to sell them on the task, and the pay associated with it. Or if the yard manager wanted all the money then he/she could do it all themselves. If we needed to remind the yard manager more than once to get the work completed then there would be no pay. Some weeks whe