I want to share a story with you that can show you how to learn anything. That’s right I said anything. I promise you after reading this you will have the tools to learn how to do anything your heart desires.
Two years ago I cashed out of one of my successful businesses, and had a lot of extra money lying around. My goal for the summer was to figure out how to put that money to work and how to create a sizable return on my idle cash. I’ve always been interested in the stock market and I decided to learn all about it and figure out how stocks work.
The problem was I had absolutely no idea what compound interest was, much less how our global economy works. Also what made it worse was my parents didn’t believe in this journey I wanted to partake in. My dad invested a lot of his retirement money right at the end of 1998, and after the 1999 crash he didn’t have a lot of good things to say about the stock market. Throughout my whole life I was always told that the stock market was evil and to stay away from it.
But for some reason I was fascinated by the stock market, the exchange of small pieces of paper representing companies (now mostly electronic pieces of companies), the excitement of watching your money grow, and the volatility market participants caused making valuations fluctuate wildly. I was hooked.
So with no one to turn to and no support from my family where did I turn to, what secrets did I use, what did I do?! I simply read books. The first book I read was Riding the Bear by Sy Harding but after I finished I was hungry for more, so I would read anything I could get my hands on. I ordered a bunch of books on Amazon.com and I would read during the day, I would read at night, I would even read while I should have been working (Which I do not recommend). I was captivated by the traders I studied, the strategies they used, and the philosophies people had. The more information and knowledge I collected the more I wanted to read, and that’s what I did. I didn’t stop reading until I read over 90 books during a 2 month period.
Now I know that seems crazy, but I was so mesmerized by all the knowledge I was gaining it didn’t seem so insane at the time. I had learned more about the stock market during my two month period than most people could learn in a lifetime. The hardest part was converting my knowledge into my own personal trading philosophy and style, but that’s a whole other story.
My point is you can literally learn anything in the world if you’re interested. Pick up a book, read a magazine, use Wikipedia, we live in such a digitally connected age with so much information anything is possible. The challenging part is finding what you’re truly passionate about and what you want to learn during your lifetime. However once you figure that out, the sky’s the limit…
P.S. I have created a group on YSN called Mastering the Stock Market you can go check it out at ysn.com/group/MasteringtheStockMarket
