If you really found a winning strategy for trading stock options, would you publish a newsletter about it? Would you do television interviews? Would you create a website to tell everyone about it? No. You would sit at your desk all day trading options and not stop until you'd made however much money you wanted to.
There is an entire industry dedicated to promoting the notion that you can become a good trader, but the people in that multi-billion dollar industry are not doing that for themselves. Why not? Because they can't.
Investment newsletter writers, book authors, market analysts, TV show hosts, brokers, websites, and others make their money by perpetuating the myth that you can consistently beat the markets if only you learn enough. If any of these people knew how to make money in the markets, they'd be making their money that way. The very fact that they choose to do anything other than invest for themselves is proof positive that they haven't got anything worth listening to.
There are many areas of life where asking someone, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" is not fair because success in that area may have nothing to do with making money. However, in the financial markets, the entire goal of which is to make money, this is the most fair and reasonable question that it is possible to ask. "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"
Every time you read a newsletter, every time you see a TV show, every time you visit a website telling you the latest great way to make money in the options market, ask them in your mind:
* "If this works so great, why aren't you doing it?"
* "If this works so great, why do you make your money writing this newsletter?"
* "If this works so great, why are you in this awful late night infomercial?"
* "If you're such a great trader, why do you manage other people's money but make your money from management fees?"
