This is just a background about what started my journey. I highly doubt there will be any information here that will be useful to anyone, I just want to document what got me started. I wanted to add this at the top so I could prevent anyone from wasting their time if they are not interested in getting to know a little bit more about me. It is long winded and documented specifically for my purposes. If you do read it all and find anything useful I will be extremely grateful that I was able to assist you, however, that is not my intent. Please know that this is for my purposes and I think it could be useful to me in the future. With that in mind, good luck on your journey.

I just got done reviewing the video lesson that included Trader Checklist, ironically Trader Checklist is the first guide that I started with after I watched Tim's interview on the Steve Harvey show. At that time, I was just looking for something more. I have always been the type that looks for ways of trying to better my situation if I am not happy with the way things are going. I can't say that I was unhappy at the time, but I was tired. You see, I'm from your typical middle class family and like most that come from that background I watched as my parents and most of my friends' parents struggled just to get by. Stresses of money and trying to raise children forced them to stay in jobs that they hated and made it hard for them to get up for the daily grind. I would often hear them say they were going to do this or that when they win the lottery. Over and over and over again, it was always the same thing. As I got older I started to think it sounded ridiculous because I knew the odds were 1 out of 292+million. Who would hang their hopes and dreams on something with such horrible odds? It just never made sense to me.

Years later, I found myself in a similar situation. Anyone that knows me personally would think I'm crazy because I honestly have a great job. I helped start the company I work for, and I only answer to the owners. I make fairly good money, more than most of my friends that racked up student debt while getting a piece of paper that they don't even utilize for their current job. However, there were some issues that came up between the two owners and I started to feel like there could be a chance that everything was starting to crumble. When these issues started to arise, it made me realize that there is no way I can make the money I am accustomed to if everything fell apart. On top of all of that, I noticed that I had started saying the same shit I heard all the adults say when I was a kid. When I win the lottery I'm going to do this and that. I had fallen into the same "trap" all of them had. I now found myself having a hard time getting up to go to a job that I now felt like there was no future with and I honestly hated it.

The weekend after I had this moment of clarity about my current situation, I was visiting my uncle and he and my aunt were talking about.... you guessed it.... WHEN THEY WIN THE LOTTERY THEY ARE GOING TO DO THIS AND THAT. Why do people dream about something that has such bad odds? I know it's not going to happen, why don't they know that too? It's passed down, generation after generation after generation. Where does it stop? It doesn't until someone steps up and ends the cycle. I don't want my daughters growing up talking about what they are going to do when they win the lottery. It's ridiculous, really, dreaming about what you are going to do with money that you will never see. I get disgusted now every time someone talks about it. 

This happened a little over a year ago now. I decided that I needed to figure out a way to break this cycle for my family and find a way to create my own "lottery" so I can make my hopes and dreams a reality on far better odds. If I can figure out how to break this cycle, I might be able to prevent generations of my family from falling into this trap. Of course, there is no guarantee that they won't fall back into it after me, but it is guaranteed they will if I do nothing. I should at least give them a shot, right? So I started poking around on the internet. I wasn't really sure what I was looking for, but I had always had a curiosity with trading. When I was in high school I actually would say that I wanted to be a stock broker, not really sure where I got that from but that was what I wanted to do when I graduated. While poking around, I found the Steve Harvey interview with Tim, Michael Goode, and the other student who's name escapes me at the moment. It was a great interview! I decided to look into Tim more and ended up on Trader Checklist on Tim's Student Portal.

I studied the Checklist and of course it showed me that this was not going to be as easy as everyone seems to think it is. I'm not sure what my expectations were going in, but I didn't feel like I had the time to make it work for me. I was still interested though, and I started watching videos on Tim's YouTube channel. I was just watching some here and there and wasn't really getting serious about anything, it was almost like a hobby for me when I felt like I had time. Then November 2019 came and what I had felt was a possibility was shoved in my face. I can't talk about the specifics of what happened then due to non disclosure agreements that I signed, but I needed to get a little more serious about trading if that was my outlet. So, I bought the Complete Penny Stock Course book and read it all and then went through nearly the entire book a 2nd time.

Shortly after reading the book and reviewing more of Tim's free videos I saw the advertisement video for his Supernova Alerts. I thought it sounded like a great idea because I was still working full time and really didn't have the time I thought was needed to get serious about trading. Also, with the subscription I received How to Make Millions, Pennystocking Framework, Spikeability, and ShortStocking all of which I really wanted to review especially How to Make Millions. So I dove in and reviewed all the DVD's, I really loved all the knowledge I received and realized that I needed more but I didn't have enough extra money to apply for the challenge to get all the other DVD's so the next best option was to join Pennystocking Silver and gain access to the extensive video lesson library. So, that's what I did and I started reviewing some video lessons. After a small amount of video lessons I decided to start making a watchlist and watching when I could. After a couple of days of this I received a Supernova Alert on one of the stocks that I had on my watchlist. I jumped in and took a 12% gain and felt great about it because I had it on my watchlist before the alert.

Looking back, this was a horrible trade for me because it gave me the false thoughts that I could follow alerts when everything I had studied consistently said not to follow alerts. So I made that mistake a couple of times after that and gave all of my gains from that trade back before I stopped trading and decided to review all of the Price Action: Buying Dips/Panics video lessons before I attempted to trade again. After that I tried again but with all the craziness going on in the chat room and still not really knowing what I was doing, I gave back some more money and once again found myself chasing alerts. However, I noticed that things were starting to slow down for me some after reviewing all the dip/panic video lessons so I started reviewing the Price Action: Morning Panics video lessons. After that, I moved on to another category and another one and another one until I was around 50% done with the video lesson library. At this point I was at a crossroads. Did I want to try to trade again, or did I want to just start focusing on my knowledge account and disregard all the money being made in the absolutely insane market we are currently in? On the one hand, I might have just enough knowledge at this point to make some money in the current market. On the other hand, I might develop some bad habits in this market environment that could hurt me in the future. Then I heard it, Tim's voice in my head, "The money you make or lose in the beginning is irrelevant. Focus on your knowledge account in the beginning and it will eventually spill over to your trading account. It is more important to develop good habits in the beginning that will help you build your wealth in the future." 

So I made the commitment that I didn't care how crazy the market is now or how much money everyone else was making, I'm not trading again until I finish reviewing all of the remaining video lessons. While I was in the middle of studying the rest of the video lessons, the 30 day Bootcamp came out and that offer was way too good to pass up so I focused my efforts on that until I completed it and then moved back to the video lesson library. I also jumped in on the Market Mastery deal before the price went up because I felt that all it could do is help me. When I joined that I went back and reviewed all of the archived trading days before returning back to the video lesson library. So that brings us up to today, although there are 5 video lessons totaling 40 5 minute lessons or 3 and 1/3 hours remaining that the videos either weren't working or they were marked private. I emailed the support staff to see if I can get access to those lessons so I can complete this goal. I can say now that both times I attempted to trade I didn't have a clue of what I was doing. I also realize now that when I reviewed the DVD's months ago I didn't have enough knowledge to understand what I was being taught. So I am going to go back and review all of the DVD's that I have as well as all the content I have available to me on the Sykes Student Portal. I'm also going to start making watchlists and at the very least start watching the market during the first and last hour of the day to work on my pattern recognition skills in real time. I also plan on reviewing the entire video lesson library again, although this time I am just going to start with the first video published and work my way to the present. I know now that this is going to be a lot of work, way more than I thought in the beginning, but I also know now that I want this. The more I study, the more I want to study. I know that if I stick with this and continue to build my knowledge and adapt to the ever changing market, I can be successful and have a fighting chance of preventing the generations after me from saying, when I win the lottery I'm going to do this and that. This is just the beginning of my journey, and I'm excited to see where it takes me! #OTAAT