Recently I have been looking through my brokerage looking for good investment opportunities.

I came across the

options desk at Schwab and started looking through. I looked up some videos on Youtube on options trading and
slowly started to piece together how I could easily become rich.

The thing about options is that they provide leverage. An options contract gives you the right, not the obligation to
buy or sell 100 shares of a stock, usually for a much lower dollar figure than the underlying stock. That provides the
chance for massive amounts of gains on your trades. You aren’t trading the actual stocks but instead you are trading
the contracts to buy the stock. This is what makes it a derivative. It derives its value form the underlying stock but
investors have a way of tacking on extra value.

That night as I drifted to sleep watching a video on trading options I applied for options trading through Schwab.
They sent me an email that they needed to talk to me to clarify some information before proceeding with allowing
me to trade options. You see, up to that point I was already imagining myself making great trades and making lots of
money. I was falling prey to my brain. I was rationalizing a decision I had already made.

I called the options desk to clarify the information they needed. I was put in contact with a guy at their help desk
who asked me the reason for wanting to trade options and how much I actually understood. I’ll tell you I didn’t
understand much.

Breaking one of the number one rules in investing. Always understand what you are investing in. That way if it goes
against you, you know if you were being foolish or if the market is being stupid. Otherwise you get caught in the
wrong place thinking you’re the one that’s wrong.

The one most important character trait of a great investor is emotional intelligence. All great investors are willing to
look past uncertainty, greed, ego, and pride and look at their investments in a rational and objective way. The
moment they strayed away from that was when they lost a big chunk of their money.

One of the funny things about humans is their ability to justify just about any decision within their subconscious.
They may be one of the smartest people but once heir subconscious takes over all of their intuition and smarts leave
and suddenly they justify something obviously dumb and incredibly stupid.

I came across this quote from Warren Buffett, perhaps my greatest hero in the field of investing and rightfully a lot
of other’s. “Why would you risk losing what you have and need for something that you don’t have and don’t need”.
Why? Because I’m young and can afford to take risks. As easily as that I justified potentially blowing up my entire
brokerage account and wasting the years I had spent on building it up.

I think investing has a tendency to make you think that it’s going to be the one thing that will make you rich. The
fact is there are no get rich quick schemes in the world of investing. Perhaps in other fields such as selling snake oil,
or day trading courses there is but investing is a long-term game. Not in the sense that it takes a long time but that it
requires patience to wait for the right pitch to swing. You’ve got to sit on your ass and wait for a good pitch to
swing. You shouldn’t be yelling at the pitcher to throw or he’s likely to pitch it right into your eye if you yell hard
enough.

Investing is a simple game. Look for smart ideas to put your money into. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated
than that. The market is there to serve you. The market isn’t there to tell you what to do. It’s there to give you
opportunities to put your money into smart places.