• Section II takes you from the mindset of the millionaire-to-be to the system that will get you there. Here we learn the benefits of a systematic approach and how the system helps us overcome the biases that can trip up traders. That’s followed by the nuts and bolts of how to Find the Extreme, Frame the Trade, and Book the Profit.
• And, finally, Section III reinforces the lessons we’ve learned by presenting sample trades that show the system at work and reiterating key terms you’ll need to keep in mind. We bolster the importance of being systematic by presenting a customized worksheet that will let you record the key elements of your trades, and we complete your training by highlighting the key points one final time.
I believe you’ll enjoy the simplicity, time efficiency, and comprehensive nature of the 10-Minute Millionaire method. In fact, I hope this book serves as the life-changer I’ve intended it to be.. that it allows you to look down from a higher vantage point.. and picture a future that’s financed by wealth and marked by great personal fulfillment.
After all, you deserve it.
My personal goal here is as powerful as it is simple. I want the work we do here together to give you the money and free time you need to do the things you love and help those who need you the most.
If today serves as the starting point for that new journey, that new direction in your life.. then I’ll know I succeeded.
Because you’ll have succeeded, too.
SECTION I
It’s Time to Think Like a Millionaire (aka “The Path to Wealth Is a Lot Shorter Than You Think”)
INTRODUCTION
The Huck Stops Here
Study the past if you would define the future.
One of the most powerful lessons I learned during my career as an entrepreneur, chemical engineer, futures trader, hedge fund risk management officer, best-selling author, and TV stock analyst is also one of the simplest.
The lesson: there’s nothing better than a good story to get your audience engaged.
And I’ve got a great tale to share with you.
The story is about the American Revolution.
And 10 minutes that changed the world.
As anecdotes go, this one’s a stunner.
The lesson we learn will serve as the cornerstone for this book.. and will end up being your ticket to a much wealthier, more fulfilling life.
So let’s get started.
Flying South
It was 1780, and the War of Independence was in its fifth year.
Great Britain’s inability to bring the rebel colonists to heel – coupled with the Redcoat defeat at Saratoga and worries that the French would throw in with the colonists – caused the Crown to shift its strategy.
To the south.
When British strategists looked at those southern colonies, they saw Loyalist strongholds and envisioned a postwar future in which agricultural products like tobacco, rice, and indigo would let them line their pockets.
At first, the southern strategy went well for the Crown.
Indeed, it went very well.
The British captured Savannah, giving them the Georgia coast. On May 12, 1780 – after laying siege to Charleston, South Carolina, for about six weeks – that port city fell. And 5,00 °Continental Army troops under the command of Major General Benjamin Lincoln had to surrender. It was a humiliating defeat – indeed, the worst loss the Americans would suffer during the whole war.
Further defeats followed: damaging losses at the Waxhaws, Camden, and Fishing Creek obliterated most of the Continental Army – leaving Great Britain with almost total control of both Georgia and South Carolina.
But instead of just holding and policing this territory, these victories emboldened the Redcoats: certain regiments of the British Army decided to inflict as much suffering as possible. Colonial morale was about as low as could be, so these particular Redcoats figured they’d rub out any remaining Patriot dissent – and maybe even get the colonists to switch sides to the soon-to-be victorious Crown.
Raids, murders, and reprisals became standard fare. Plantations were leveled, crops destroyed, and businesses wiped away. If you ever saw the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot, you can picture the very kind of brutality I’m talking about here.
In a rural area just outside of what’s now York County, South Carolina, a man named William Hill experienced this onslaught in a very personal way.
Today, we’d refer to Hill as an entrepreneur or a self-made man. Back then, however, Hill was a pioneering “iron master.” He and his partner, Isaac Hayne, constructed a massive metal works along Allison’s Creek in York County. The venture made farm implements, blacksmith tools, kitchenware, cannons, and cannonballs.
In fact, most of the cannonballs used in the siege of Charleston came from Hill’s furnaces – which the colonists, not surprisingly, tried very hard to protect.
Unsuccessfully.
In June 1780, the British burned the ironworks. Hill lost his house, grain mills, saw mills, tenant houses, and 90 tenants.
Hill also lost his partner. Not long after, the British decreed that Hayne had “broken parole” – and hanged him.1
Force 10 from Brattonsville
The perpetrators of much of this mayhem were a troop of British light cavalry commanded by Captain Christian Huck. Huck was a Pennsylvania Loyalist and Philadelphia lawyer whose property had been confiscated after the British evacuation of that city. He was actually banished from the Keystone State, and made his way to New York, where he joined the British Army.2
Now Huck was operating in South Carolina. And historians like biographer Michael C. Scoggins say he had a particular hatred for the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who made up a lot of the populace in that region’s backcountry.3 Most of those colonists were Whigs – what the British contemptuously referred to as “rebels” – and Captain Huck took great pleasure in the abuse, destruction, and death his troops engaged in. Indeed, it was his group that leveled Hill’s ironworks – and burned his home.
On the night of July 11, 1780, near what is now the town of Brattonsville, South Carolina, the same William Hill we’ve been talking about found himself spending the night out in the open.. under the stars.
It was hot. And muggy. And Hill was worried – scared even – wondering what the morning would bring.
At least, he thought, his family was safe. After losing his home, Hill stashed his family in the nearby log hut of a friendly neighbor.
And waited for dawn.
Just before first light, Captain William Hill and his ragtag band of local militia heard the first rustlings of Christian Huck’s New York Volunteers stirring from their overnight encampment. Surrounding the enemy with the stealth of practiced deer stalkers, Hill and his band of guerrilla warriors waited patiently. When the sun finally appeared over a nearby plantation, the Patriots opened fire.
And unleashed havoc.
The Redcoats – trained to fight in regimented,