The long version!
When I was a kid all I wanted to do was retire early, travel, and live off my built up wealth. My personal dream job would have been to be a Youth Minister, but the pay wasn’t enough to achieve my goals. A few of the guys I looked up to in my youth were stock brokers. They had the money, they had the cars, they had the girls, and most important, they had the time to enjoy all of these things. Even more than that, they had the ability to take their friends or families with them. They had learned the means, and found a way to enjoy something that always intrigued me: ADVENTURE.
During a study abroad in 1998 I studied in Italy, and traveled through 13 different countries, and saw some really cool things. I saw a live concert in Munich, Germany. I went “canyoning” (an activity illegal in the United States) and bungee jumped from over 600 feet in Interlaken, Switzerland. I was almost pulled off a train in Herzegovina at gunpoint on my way to Budapest, Hungary. I visited Stonehenge, went to Wimbledon, and had a picnic under the Eiffel Tower at 4:00 a.m. The main thought that went through my head at each of these stops, and the many others, were I wish my best friends and loved ones could be here to share this with me.
Now my friends are pretty exceptional people. Several are much smarter than me. I have learned loyalty, trust, friendship, and fidelity from them. We’ve been there for each other through life, love, divorces, addictions, and death. However, as much as each one of these people had been my angels at one point or another, I knew there was no way most of them could ever come “play”. Jobs, mortgage, kids, tuition, etc… had consumed them, as it does almost everyone!!
I had always wanted to be a stock broker, and I knew there was some way to get there…but I hadn’t seen it. Day trading was too risky, and too many people had lost too much money for me to ever trust it. Mutual funds were sold on the idea of “buy and hold” but even the best ones would only top out at 5-8% when the final story was told! That’s not enough to retire on (especially if you can’t start big)! There are literally over 12,000 stocks to choose from, everyone has a buddy with “inside advice”, and yet no one was making any money or headway. I know, you did once, but were you disciplined enough to take your profit?? No…that’s why you are reading this!
Then the first half of the answer came to me. Those who know me well know that I read everything I can get my hands on. On a whim, I picked up a book that I thought would be “entertainment” reading about the stock market. I sat back and prepared to blow open every “get rich quick scheme” this book had to offer. The problem was that this book taught all of the basic fundamentals that I had been taught!! Things such as:
- Only invest what you can lose
- Take profits! (No one was ever called a fool for taking profits)
- Buying less than 100 shares is okay, if that’s all you can afford
- Being conservative is not a bad thing, but be smart! Protect your money!
- Day trading is BAD!
- Buy (more shares) Low, Sell (some shares) High!
- Don’t ever go overboard in any direction.
- And the most important rule: Take emotion out of the equation! Have a rigid formula that is smarter than yourself!
There is an old saying: When something seems too good to be true, it probably is!! I spent weeks running “hypothetical” numbers and charts. My head swam with Alpha’s, Beta’s, Delta’s. P/E ratio’s, Dividend Yield’s, Earnings per Share…everything I could think of to “bust the system”. Unfortunately, it didn’t bust, it performed better the wilder I got with it, always kept the money safe, never busted, and once it hit $10,000.00 went crazy like a punch drunk cash machine, and often produced phenomenal results!! WAAAAAAYYYYYYYY beyond my expectations. Over the next few years, I would occasionally pull out my book… run the numbers again… be amazed, get scared, and put the book away! After all, this was paper, not money…RIGHT?
So 2 major financial events happened while the book was in storage:
I went to work for a major brokerage company. They used me to pawn off a very bad stock to my clients (please read: friends and family)! This is a great stock at 49 and it’s going to 100!! When the stock dropped to 37, the company line became “we liked it at 49, we love it at 37!”. As the stock continued to plummet to 24, a meeting was held that we needed to double up all of our clients that were in the stock, and get everyone else into it!! The stock dove to 12, and never fully recovered. Some of those friends never spoke to me again. The ones that did have secretly vowed to never trust me with their money again. Strike #1.
I left stocks, but stayed in the financial world. Stocks remained a hobby, and the book would occasionally call to me. Same Results! Run the numbers, backwards and forwards. In “up/bull” markets the machine kicked off cash like crazy, becoming more and more conservative as the markets neared their tops!! In “down/bear” markets, the fistfuls of cash were eased slowly back into the markets, and ensured optimal buying at the very lows. The system didn’t need the very top of the market to sell, or the very tip bottom to buy. It kept lots of my money safe in cash, and protected me. Again, within a few years it built huge numbers, and then began to grow exponentially!!
Finally, after more than 4 years of telling my friends, I did it. I called my broker, cashed out my investment account, opened an account on Scottrade, and began trading my own money!! Nerves of steel or stupidity? Still not 100% sure! One of my friends (whose account I had at the big brokerage firm) said, “I’ll give you one more shot!”. So he opened his own account! I have no access to his account or his money. I don’t take a commission!! I just ran his money on the same system that I did mine.
One night less than 1 year later, we sat celebrating crossing the 50% mark!! We had crossed a 50% return in less than 1 year, and we were heavy in cash! He had run the numbers, and couldn’t believe the results…just as I had done for years. He saw the ability that one day, we would be able to pack up our families and spend a month in Australia, diving the Great Barrier Reef, visiting friends, and exploring New Zealand. All while living off the interest!
That is where ET65 was born. The final actualization of a childhood dream, that only needed to be named. EVERYONE TOGETHER AT 65! I had found the way to pay off my friend’s mortgages, send their kids (all of which I dearly love) to college, buy them the cars and homes of their dreams, and ensure that they would never outlive their money! Now I can realize my dream…all of my friends, and all of their families, will be able to finally “come play”!
“Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world!” – Archimedes