I once met a woman who said that in her 40 years of live she had never left Washington State. After moving to Asia, I began to hear similar statements about the local town/county/country. I’ve never been able to wrap my head around this mindset, as I’ve been moving from place to place since childhood.
I was born in Orange County, spent my late childhood in Plano, and became an adult in a small boating village in Washington. My university years were spent in a big city: Seattle. Shortly afterward, I moved to Taiwan to learn Chinese and pursue grad school (as a final test of my Chinese ability).
I also took a “sabbatical” in China to learn “real” Chinese. After grad school, I moved to Japan, which I still consider the most livable country in the world, assuming you speak the language. Now, I live in Guam, an international island, where from my house I can walk to clean beaches with azure waters and coral reefs in fewer than five minutes.
Being a frequent mover requires a sink-or-swim mindset; you must adapt quickly to survive. Through my experiences, I learned two languages, met people from nearly every background, and became financially self-sufficient through entrepreneurship and trading. But it is in China in 2008 where my story really began.
To many people, I might seem boring. I don’t watch TV; I don’t read fiction; I don’t like the standard conversation topics. If I ran for president, I wouldn’t be the guy you could have a beer with, because I prefer talking about economics, statistics, evolutionary psychology, and most importantly – “secrets.”
What I mean by “secrets” are those areas in life where everyone else seems to be on the wrong track. For example, the modern person has a love affair with multitasking, which has been shown to scientifically reduce productivity, which is one reason I avoid social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Every area in life has secrets, but discussing these secrets and – God forbid – actually acting upon them induces scorn in those following the mainstream methods.
Every once in a while I meet a person who, like me, knows secrets. Those are the people I really click with. I met such a person in China, in 2008.
He was a German man who was studying Chinese in the tiny city of Wuhu, China – a city even most Chinese people aren’t familiar with. We were the only two white people in the city. I figured he was in the same situation I was: You see, moving to Wuhu wasn’t my choice.
I received a scholarship from the Chinese government to study Chinese. The catch was that I had no say in where I went: I was deployed in a small, Westerner-free city for the sake of “internationalizing” the local university. I figured this German man was walking the same path I was.
I was wrong. He chose to live in Wuhu. My immediate question wasn’t “why” because Wuhu is, after all, a beautiful town. No, my immediate question was, “If you’re not on a scholarship, how are you supporting yourself?”
His answer changed my life and set me on a new career path. This man had become rich cleverly shorting the stock market prior to and during the 2008 market crash. He was an options trader.
He taught me about put options, something I had actually already learned about in the highest level undergraduate statistics class in my university – Stochastic Calculus for Option Pricing. However, as most university graduates and dropouts already know, few actually use what they learn in university. But now I had a reason: This man got rich while everyone else was going broke – he had a secret.
I spent my free time researching stock options and the stock market. When I returned to teaching calculus in Taiwan, I started to put my money to work. But knowledge of stock options does not ensure riches, especially when the method my mentor had taught me no longer worked – the market was no longer in free fall.
I was convinced that I had to develop a method that could allow profitability in any market. I started searching for secrets. While most traders get started the standard ways – using technical buy/sell signals or speculating on upcoming company events – I was looking for something different.
I came across something that many traders mention but no one actually systemized into a trading approach: price gaps. I put my statistics to work and indeed found some secrets on stock price patterns after price gaps. Around those secrets, I developed a trading method, which I tested through paper trading before putting money down.
The system worked, both with paper and with real money. I had a winner. The fruits of my labor were high probability, high profitability trades and a small group of trading peers who wanted to know how to trade price gaps.
I began teaching the method via private coaching and eventually turned the method into a course, The Gap Gameplan. I’ve expanded my gap trading to be more agile and adaptive in a new system, The Gap Gameplan 2.0. Currently, I’m working on an even harder task: Trading before the price gap – that is, predicting a price gap’s direction before it occurs.
With options, my trading system is not only viable but low-risk. Advanced options strategies coupled with statistical facts about price gaps allows for high-volume daytrading profits without the necessary capital or time expense typical in day trading. After switching from “investing” to trading and from stocks to options, I cannot see myself ever turning back.
I invite any inspiring technical or event trader to give my method a chance.
I invite any stock trader to give my options strategies a chance.
I invite anyone with only a few thousand in the bank to see how quickly they can grow that account to $10,000 or $100,000.
Come join me in trading in this “contrarian” method. Learn secrets. Grow alongside me as I myself test and learn even more secrets.
