Today I bit the bullet and subscribed to 3 months of FastTrack. I’m hoping that I can spend the next three months completing at least a preliminary learning curve and backtesting some of the simpler strategies so that I can then start doing some real trades. First, I have to complete my little mini-course on finance so that I can describe in more detail last month’s FastTrack seminar in Auburn Hills. But tonight I am officially a FastTrack user.
But before I talk about my little adventure starting up the path of conquering Wall Street, it’s appropriate at this time to once again remind everyone of George’s one-hour program on Contact Radio on October 11th in which he was Brenda Owens’ guest on her series, "Live An Inspired Life." One thing neither George nor I mentioned when I first posted this on 10-20 was that there is an archive on Contact Radio so if you missed the broadcast on October 23rd, it’s still there waiting to be downloaded as a podcast. So go back to the 10/20 post and you’ll see the link. George spends the first part of the program talking about his business philosophy and how he integrates that with his personal values system as proscribed by his Greek Orthodox Christian background. The second part of the program is devoted to his personal journey to finding happiness and peace and how his second life as a deacon in his church and as a teacher, imparting both financial skills and ethical values to his students, has helped him find his true worth in life. It is an inspiring tale, and there is a gem of a story at the end about the little guinea pig friend of his childhood. Anyway, the weekly show is on podcast. They keep eight back programs in the archive so it should be good for another six weeks.
I’ve had a journey of my own the last few days. I’ve been making do with this old Compaq laptop for ten years now and I’ve been meaning for at least a couple years now to get a new one. I saw my first Toshiba twenty years ago and fell in love with the brand, have been wanting to have a Toshiba all these years. My hand was finally forced this last month taking the FastTrack class. The Compaq was fine for writing, which was mostly what I used it for. Not so fine for just about anything else, certainly not enough power to run this financial software efficiently. My instructor told me before I even started the class that I’d be wise to upgrade. He sent me to ComputerWorks in Keego to get a used one a couple years old for a couple hundred dollars. But I got a big surprise at CW. When I showed the specs to Todd on both the new and used laptops they had, he said the used ones at $300 and $400 were way overpriced, but their top of line Toshiba at $700 was a good value. So I went in there Friday to buy the Toshiba for $700, only to be told it couldn’t be used as a portable video monitor for doing my shoots. That’s one of the reasons I wanted a new one. And Todd pretty much convinced me that I’d be much happier with a new one. The difference was only a few hundred dollars and it was ten times better.
But I had to think hard about the video capability. The first FastTrack User Group meeting in Troy post-class was Monday night. I wanted the new laptop in time for that class. So I went to Best Buy Sunday night just to see if I could buy a video card for the old Compaq. If the Compaq could be converted to a video monitor, I’d go to CW on Monday morning and get the Toshiba. CW had insisted no such card existed. But Best Buy informed after a 30 second search that not only did the card exist - they actually had one right in the store – for just $20! Okay, so much for CW! Best Buy also had an $800 Toshiba on clearance for only $430 that was even more powerful that the $700 one at CW. It was a deal I couldn’t pass up. Plus they confirmed my suspicions that the guys at CW didn’t know what they were talking about re: the Toshiba’s video capability. They had a card for $50 that would fit the new Toshiba and allow me to use it as a monitor too. So I walked out of Best Buy Sunday night with a new laptop for about $100 more than the used ones were at CW.
They configured it Monday morning, I picked it up ready to go at 2 pm, called FastTrack at 3 pm, did leaves until 6 pm, got to the class meeting in Troy at 7 pm. It was quite a day. New computer, new subscription, new group of friends. These guys in the user group are really quite serious, and wholly enthusiastic about the revolutionary powers of the FastTrack system and the strategies that are available for them. This is an investing tool that can be as simple as a couple hours of work per year or, at the other extreme, the 100 hour weeks that the instructor puts in studying and using the most advanced strategies. Most of the advanced users have been in the group for anywhere from five to fifteen years and say they are still learning new and more effective ways to use the program every week.
So Monday, I signed up for a whole year of this class, which meets formally once a month at the Troy Community Center but also once and sometimes twice a month in addition to that at one of the member’s homes just to have an in-depth discussion on some small aspect of the program. Monday, the members of the October class formed their own study group which I became the head of. There is a $150 DVD that teaches some elementary strategy to get us started which Bert, the instructor, gave me Monday night. That’s our first study assignment, to watch this 3 hour DVD together and discuss it. For $30, I get to be in this group for a year. So this $350 seminar I took last month that ordinarily goes for $700 has already paid the dividend of a free $150 DVD course. Plus, for the next six weeks, we get free access to the Michael Price newsletter web site, the only newsletter Bert feels is worth buying and considers a bargain even at the annual subscription fee of $1200. We now get it free for six weeks, and that includes access to his entire archive so, at $1200/year, I’m going to download the last five years during the next six weeks.
That’s $6,000 worth of the Michael Price OnTrack Report for free. I would think that would also make the tuition for this seminar quite worthwhile. I’m planning to read them all and use them as part of my backtesting. This should make quite a good textbook in itself. During the last five years, we have had both one of the biggest bull and certainly one of the most historic bear markets in history. In fact, the last five years has been a pretty good microcosm of just about every scenario that Wall Street has experienced in the last 150 years. It should be quite educational.
I was surprised to find out that there are some newsletters that go for tens of thousands of dollars every year and that all the big endowments happily buy them and strictly follow their advice and that is how they keep their endowments growing. So at $1200, Bert is saying that the Michael Price letter is not only the best on Wall Street, it is also the biggest bargain. I suppose I’ll have a much better idea of this once I’ve studied five years of free back issues.
So my journey has begun. I’ve jumped ahead and talked about the ending first. I’ll soon be publishing posts talking about the beginning and middle.
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