Book of Wise Investors

Every now and then, one can see advertisements in local newspapers on get rich quick, or least quicker than what a normal job pays you, seminars on a variety of “career options”, from options trading, forex, stocks, make money online to even motivational seminars.

Recently still got a Rich Mum business school by a famous author.

Are those seminars really worth the buck?

Preview seminars are usually free but of course don’t expect the few days course to follow to be free also. Placing ads in newspapers cost money, renting places at 5 stars hotel also cost money.

Let me first say something, in my opinion, I feel that these sorts of “get rich quicker than a normal job” belong to some sort of semi-scams.

I defined semi-scams as not a total scam like Sunshine Empire but those that oversells and under delivered significantly.

A total scam is something that takes your money without giving you anything in returns.

A semi-scam is something that takes your money giving you something that really worth far less than the money.

Let us look at options trading, forex trading and stocks trading,

To make money from these 3 types of trading can be summed up in the following 4 sentences.

In any statistical game of chance,

1. Gain a deep intellectual understanding of the game involved.

2. Follow some strategies so that the odds are largely in your favour.

3. The odds must be large enough to be statistically meaningful.

4. Stay in the game long enough to reap its rewards.

I personally don’t play with options and forex, as a result, all I can say is that you don’t pay $4000 only to find out the following things,

1. More than half of the course and/or course materials teaches something for you to gain intellectual understanding of the basic concepts regarding the statistical game involved.

You can buy related textbooks and books on the subject matter concerned for under $100 and study on your own.

No matter got “an expensive teacher” or not, one has to gain “enlightenment” and insights on the subject on your own.

2. The strategies that they teach you only give you a 50% odds of winning in the long run. (or slightly more than 50%)

If the odds of winning is only 50% after putting in so much effort and time to learn what options are and how to trade.

I think one is better off guessing big or small for the dice game in casinos since you just bet either big or small consistently for each game and in the long run, you neither win nor loss. But it is better, one does not need to expend too much time and mental effort in thinking and learning about forex and options.

In conclusion, this is not to say that these 3 types of trading games cannot get rich quick, there are people who make millions from either of these 3 types of trading, it is just that when everyone follows the same strategies that result in high odds of winning in the long run, the same strategies no longer works.

For example, if particular technique is that shares of a company A will drop within 3 days after it announces earnings drop. Everyone follows this piece of knowledge when trading, then what do you think will happen?

Let us now look at make money online,

An example is a company call shops online that helps people set up e-commerce stores online.

But you have to determine and decide on what products to sell.

Be it business online or offline, you cannot do what every Tom, Dick and Harry is doing and expects to earn high economic profits.

If the make money online seminar at the end of the day only teaches you using some standard Internet Marketing techniques that one can find for free on Google, or even better, spend more than half of the time telling you how great make money online is when you are paying $3000 for a 3 days course. Then you know that you ended up as a jack ass being screwed already.

Or that you buy a make money online ebook claiming that can make $1000 per week online with very little work, only to find out that it rehashes some general stuffs on make money online where you can find free on blogs when you type “make money online” in Google.

Honestly speaking, the articles from the following websites sum up all,

http://www.badguruscams.com/articles.php

Let us now look at Rich Mum business school,

If one can spend less than $100 on 2 textbooks, one is on financial accounting, another is on finance to learn how to read financial statements and figure out how to calculate using financial calculators, interest rates, modern portfolio theory etc, what is teach in a 3 days $3000 course.

I think one will also be better off spending that thousands as initial capital for investments in stock market.

Let us now look at motivational seminars,

There is no doubt that your career progression, business results, academic achievements and subsequently financial freedom depended very much on your motivations.

As a result, motivating yourself in whatever you do is very important.

But if the motivational seminars are just repeating what are written in self help books and you indeed feel high and have the confidence to conquer the world after hearing the speakers who himself also feels high when giving the talks, only to find that the feeling is back to before a few days after, with the usual procrastinations or other problems, just like after reading a self help book.

Is it really worth to spend thousands on it?

The reason why self help often fail is because words only appeal to your verbal self and not behaviours.

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