A Response to a critic - Mike Swanson

You can’t really tell from this video, but when I made it I was thinking about some guy that has been attacking me in posts on some message board. He never subscribed my list or bought a product, but listed me in with a bunch of other financial guys saying basically, “why should anyone subscribe to a financial newsletter or website. If these guys are so smart then why are they charging people for their work? If their advice was worth anything then they would already be millionaires and don’t need the money. They must be scammers.”

Well I can’t speak for the other people, but I can speak for myself. The reason why I initially started the site was in fact due to financial reasons.

If you are having trouble loading this video you can watch a lower quality version here.

I visited a good friend of mine in Los Angeles a few months ago. He runs a financial website in which he interviews people, has an investment advisory business, has run hedge funds, and has great success over the years. I enjoy sharing ideas with him on the phone about the market. He has a big account and still charges people for his site and has customers he advises and manages. I believe he lives off that income and not from the capital gains he makes.

He told me that he most of the people he knew who got in the market and made a lot of money ended up blowing up, because they didn’t save the money or build off of their gains. They got a big score and expanded their lifestyle and then needed to make more big scores to maintain it. Those pressures ended up wiping them out in the market.

When I started the website I was already making money in the stock market. But I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to live off of the stock market, pay taxes, and survive and grow my account at the same time with those resources that I had. My account wasn’t big enough for that at the time .

I also knew that I wasn’t going to be able to work a regular nine to five job and spend the five or six hours a day necessary to study the market and find opportunities to profit. So I decided to start this site to create an income stream and to provide people value. They don’t have to spend the time I do looking at the market, because I do it for them. It was rewarding to know that you are helping people. Making money isn’t the only thing rewarding.

I’ve made mistakes along the way, but now both the site and the money I have in the stock market have grown. By leaps and bounds I could only have imagined when I started, but I have tried to only rarely take money out of my account and then it has been mainly been used to pay my taxes or to invest in another businesses. My goal for my investments right now is to build wealth. Maybe one day in the future that may change, but I think it will be a long-time from now.

As for the website not only does it help me sustain my living – and I’m a fairly frugal person – but it also has helped my own trading by disciplining me to write and think about the market – and has brought me into contact with lots of other traders and people. Who would want to do nothing but sit in a room by themselves all of the time? I share an office with Andy, have made many friends as a result of the website, and have people I communicate with all over the world through my writings. You can’t beat that.

It’s fun to be able to talk to the world and share your thoughts. It’s fun.

There are people on the site making big money.

But anyway, I don’t need to justify myself. This is enough of a rant. People who see the video on youtube can’t tell what spurred me on to make it and what I say in it is spot on. It might actually help someone out there who just made a big lick in the market and might now make a mistake.