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There is a common theme among our community that follows the mind-set that “there are no excuses”. I’m happy to report that we, once again, have another data point that proves this mindset is not unrealistic or impossible to put into action in real life. Our guest, Mike, was on a very… very… nice path, but then some “life evens” happened that set him back a bit. Speaking for myself, I was inspired by Mike’s story and how he never threw a pity party for himself, but adapted the attitude of “get-er-done” and started chipping away. There is little question in my mind on whether or not you’ll find any motivation in this interview… I’m confident you will!

Notes:

• Mike’s introduction to the market was in highschool when he would follow the quotes in the newspaper. During college, Mike always had a huge interest in historical figures especially in the realm of finance.
• While he maintained an interest in the market, he actually passed up a job to work for a very large broker. Knowing one of the higher ups there, he saw how awful he was to his employees and decided that wasn’t an environment he wanted to be subjected to.
• Once Mike had some capital to put into the market, he went the way of value investing. These were all very long, multi month-year holds. He did quite well investing this way and admits he may have stumbled into some fool’s gold but an unfortunate divorce wiped away his worth and actually left him in quite a bit of debt.
• After working hard for many years, Mike has cleared all the debt and problems in his life and has now been working toward rebuilding his trading account. He has been focusing on options so he can trade larger names with much less capital outlay (utilizing technical analysis). He will continue to focus on names and industries that he knows well blending in his older investment style criteria.

Quotes:

• “If Vanderbilt had enemies he wanted to do away with, he would manipulate his stocks to drive his competition bankrupt.”
• “I got interested in value investing. I’m the kind of person that does a ton of research on anything I’m interested in.”
• “I only invested in businesses that I understand. I really didn’t understand technology so I didn’t own any of them.”
• “Investing is like watching paint dry. I thought trading would be a good way to accumulate funds for investing.”
• “I’ll give you two words to sum up successful trading. Impulse control.”