Recent Posts

I'm 54 years old and have not had a full time job since 1997. I have made over 2 million dollars trading in options and I started with twenty thousand dollars my Uncle left me. As far as my losses are concerned they have been minimal. The one thing that I learned very quickly was this strive to be among the ten percent of the people that actually make money in the stock market, not the other 90% which us ten percent call the helpers.

There is a certain truth to your blog about losing money (The 90%) but if you stay away from all the late night get rich quick scams, the hundreds of books that tell you to quit your job and watch the millions roll in and just stick to basics you can make a tremendous amount of money. One last bit of info, I don't think I ever traded more then twenty companies in my whole life, I just keep playing them over and over again.

[RIDICULOUS, IGNORANT, AND FALSE ARTICLE]

RIDICULOUS, IGNORANT, AND FALSE ARTICLE

Here is some logic when your own post was devoid of it in so many places. Keep in mind that besides being a day trader, I have worked in the legal industry for over 16 years. And telling by your post, I am smarter than you.

Your statements in that article are subjective and one sided. Thus, they are bias. One major aspect that you failed to address is whether you conducted the proper FUNDAMENTAL and TECHNICAL research on the stocks you purchased options on. 95% of companies have poor fundamentals. Nor have you identified how you would research such stocks before investing. If you failed to conduct the proper fundamental research before you purchased the option, you are almost guaranteed to lose money. You didn't even address the fact that the PREMIUM paid for the option is less than actually owning the stock, which can save an investor a lot of money if the stock goes against them. What would be better? To buy a stock and see its price decline or buying an option and seeing the stock price decline? Buying the option has less risk. Plus, if you are going to exercise the option, you can hold on to the right to buy the stock while watching it perform. Personally, I have been making profits in the stock market as a day trader on almost a daily basis. Disclaimers are on stocks too. As for the fall of Long Term Capital Management company, your statements are so distorted and false. The company went out of business because of the Russian financial crisis (a/k/a Ruble crisis) that took their investments down because the Russian government devalued their currency and defaulted on its debts. It was their choice in investing in risky Russian BONDS NOT OPTIONS dummy that took them down. It was NOT the investments in individual company stock via options. The mere fact that you couldn't even make this obvious distinction shows that you are NOT as smart as you think you are. Nevertheless, it goes back to the fundamentals of your research. Many investors would never have invested in Russia; but many good investors invest in strong fundamentals and technicals instead. Unfortunately, you are NOT one of them. And telling by your writing, you will never be a successful trader.

Furthermore, the SEC requires stock brokers to warn investors of potential risks in the stock market because there is risk in the market NOT because Option trading carries more risk than stock trading. Another distinction you failed to make; but instead you distorted it. In fact, option trading has less risk than buying the stock outright. A smart child would know this. With options, you only lose your fee and NO MORE. But owning the stock, you can lose a lot more.

Here are some successful option traders that you did not speak to: Trader's Hall of Fame Larry McMillan,  Tom Sosnoff, Price Headley, voted worlds number one market timer David "FirstWave" Elliott, Ron Ianieri, Bill Johnson of Charles Chab. These investors were successful in options trading. Thus, when you infer that the options market is flawed because you couldn't succeed in it, you are applying your own failure to the options market and calling it broken when it is you who is broken.

As for losing money, of course you lose money in the stock market no matter if you are trading stocks or options. Only an idiot thinks you can make profits all the time. The issue is not about losing money, it is about cutting your loses fast and letting your wins ride. The more wins than loses you have can make you millions. Thus, your attitude about people losing money in the stock market as being a shocking revelation is the thinking of an ignorant amateur and a bad investor. Which your writing has proven you to be.

Therefore, I disagree with your amateur and ignorant outlook on the options market.


The bottom line is that you are a BAD INVESTOR like the majority of investors.


I CHALLENGE YOU

I challenge you to post the ticker of the stocks you purchased and the date here and I will conduct the fundamental and technical research. I will then post an in depth analysis of your stock picks.  I bet you selected stocks that have poor fundamentals and technicals. In fact, you never even mentioned anything about fundamentals or technicals when it is the first thing a good investor thinks about. You only mentioned reading books and practicing stock trading. This alone does NOT make you a successful trader. It just upsets me to see amateurs and ignorant people like you who think they know how to trade make foolish posts like this that scare people from a possible good path for them.

Those other people may be smarter than you in a way that would make them successful traders that you could never be. It amazes me how you judge other people on your own failing standards like the World only revolves around you...

I just think you're a fool who became a bitter loser because you were not good enough to make good profits in the market. So you wrote this ignorant and foolish post to turn people away from the market to make yourself feel better for being a loser.


Suggested reading: Avoiding Option Trading Traps with Larry McMillan What To Look For and Strategies for Success

Can't having both of the OS installed on my computer slow my computer down? i would wish to try it out.

As the article describes, setting it up can be somewhat complicated, but it won't slow your computer down because only one operating system runs at a time. You choose the one you want to use when you boot the computer, and only that one starts up. The other one just sits on the disk unused. You cannot run both at the same time.

Can't having both of the OS installed on my computer slow my computer down? i would wish to try it out.

I thought i knew what a blog was, but basing on steve's description, i really didn't know what a blog was, thanks to him, am now well informed.

hello stevew, thanks for the great help you offer, i always get my problems solved whenever i read your answers on this forum, what i can tell you is to go on and help the world, rewards await you from God. thanx

Unfortunately, it's not a simple task. I cannot think of any way to make it simpler than this script does. 

If you're familiar with operating system utilities, there is an alternative method using grep described at http://25yearsofprogramming.com/blog/2010/20100315.htm, but for the average user, the grep method is more complicated, harder to understand, and more difficult to customize.

  thanks for such a technical help, i am wondering, isn't there any other simpler way to eliminate bad guy php scrpts, this looks so technical for an ordinary person.  .. thanks for the support again.

Stevew, that's really a technical advice, you have helped thousands of people with the solution you posted.
Am greatly helped, cause i have a victim of such malware for long.
thanx

Hello,

The first time you run the script (with the default settings), it shows you the snippets it thinks might be suspicious, and in what files it found them. You need to use your own judgment about the text that is displayed (combined with your knowledge of what text your pages normally contain) to decide whether each snippet actually is malicious or not. 

For each snippet that actually is malicious, open each file in a text editor and remove the code that the hacker put there. Use "code view" (HTML) to do that. Don't use a WYSIWYG editor.

There are some other things that are worth searching for in your files. They aren't included in the script's default settings because the things to search for are different for every site:

In the page at http://25yearsofprogramming.com/blog/2009/20091124.htm are instructions for how to get the Google Safe Browsing Diagnostic Report for your website. If your site is flagged there for malware and the report mentions malicious domains (websites) or IP addresses, create some new regular expression entries in the lookforbadguys script (in the $SuspiciousSnippets array) so the script can search your site for references to those domains or IP addresses. 

Then, even if your site is not flagged for malware, you can go to http://www.unmaskparasites.com/ and get a report of the websites from which your pages get external content. If any of those are suspicious (that is, you don't think your website should be pulling content from those sites, so the hacker probably put those references there), add regular expression entries in the $SuspiciousSnippets array for those, too, so the script can search for them, as well. 

That's basically it. The lookforbadguys script helps you find text that shouldn't be in your files, but it can't know for sure exactly what is suspicious and what's not. For you to make that decision, it usually requires you to examine the snippet and think about it.