I live nowhere near Wall Street—my husband and I live in Asheville, North Carolina, where we used to operate a gift shop in historic Biltmore Village.
Our gift store was successful, and we always envisioned it as our retirement plan… until one day, disaster struck.
A heavy storm hit our area, and our shop was completely flooded—everything lost, and we had no flood insurance.
We were in trouble.
So while I began looking for new ways to make money—a friend introduced me to options trading.
Somehow, it just made sense to me, and I got really into it.
Actually, more than that… I became obsessed! And I started reading books, watching financial news, taking courses…
Most surprising of all, I got really good. I was beginning to make more money trading than we had ever made in our gift store, so I decided to pursue it full time.
In 2009, after successfully trading options for 5 years, I wrote Options Trading in Your Spare Time. And
I’ve written 6 more books since then. Because I LOVE that my books have helped so many people achieve financial independence through trading, just like I had.
Then, in 2012 I had one of those “duh!” forehead slapping moments. Why? Because I couldn’t believe I missed seeing something so obvious—something that was right under my nose since I first began trading.
My Accidental Discovery
Let me explain. Back in my beginning option trading studies, I learned about three trading vehicles… Stocks, Indexes, and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs).
Stocks are obvious; Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google, Pfizer and thousands of others fall into this category. This is where I focused most of my attention during those early trading years.
Indexes are a ‘derivative’ based on a collection of stocks… i.e. S&P 100 Index (OEX) which is based on only 100 of the top S&P stocks or Volatility Index (VIX) which is a summary Index of the S&P 500.
ETFs, on the other hand, are a basket of actual stocks that possessing a common theme… i.e. a medical ETF might incorporate stocks from cancer research, medical supply and billing, hospitals, nursing and hospice care companies. Other ETFs might be sector or industry related.
The first ETFs I learned about in those early years were the SPY, DIA, and QQQs. The QQQs is a type of ETF that is essentially a collection of stocks based on a major index, the NASDAQ.
Embarrassingly, I’d see the scrawl of the QQQs run across the TV screen as I watched the tickers and think, okay, so the QQQs closed up .06 cents for the day. So what! A volatile stock like Apple offers daily moves up or down that can range anywhere from $1‐10… with huge profit potential.
So, for 7 years I focused my attention almost exclusively on high-flying stocks. Then one day, as I was back-testing the P3 Squeeze on stocks and ETFs in various time frames, I made a huge yet accidental discovery…
As it turns out, the QQQ ETF has a combination of special elements that make it more lucrative and more consistent than most other forms of options trading. Why not see for yourself?
I appreciate your time and as always, I wish you the best,
