Investing in the stock market doesn’t need to be your passion in order for it to work. It’s just a vehicle to make your money grow and to give you freedom. That’s it. And the great thing is that it’s open to everybody, regardless of their background, intelligence, skillset, experience or knowledge. 

This vehicle if understood correctly and respected, is the fastest and most reliable vehicle to give you back the time and freedom which then gives you the ability to follow the real passions in your life. 

When all said and done and it’s time to rest our weary head on our pillow for that very last time before we exit this beautiful world, we should be grateful that we had the heart and courage to follow our dreams. And I hope that this book will give you at least the foundations for your next steps.

And by the way, I’m not selling anything here. I have no product or service to sell, there is no course for you to buy, no papers for you to sign, no bank account for you to transfer money to. But then why should there be? 

There is no exchange of money but an exchange of ideas. My new ideas are being exchanged for your old ideas. The ideas that are holding you back. It’s my job to give you the confidence to know that you’ve got this, and I’ll help you as much as I can to get there.

Every person should know that it’s absolutely possible to become financially free in a capitalist world. 

We should all feel that we can follow our dreams, whatever they may be, but first we need to free ourselves from the grind, from the daily chores, from the monotony. 

How do you that? Well, you learn the skills about money that nobody teaches you, you gain experience, and you execute. You make some mistakes, you learn some more, you make a few more mistakes and slowly you become better.  Soon you see the clouds clearing and you get to see the sunlight shine through. At that point it all becomes clear. 

So, if you really want to learn then I really want to help you. Whether you are just starting out or retired, the most important thing is to be free and having enough money to make choices is a big part of that. This book is not for you to go out and become a millionaire trader, although many millionaires have used the principals in this book to do exactly that. It’s just to make sure you do more than just okay. 

That’s not really you talking – that’s cynicism and doubt and neither of those two chums are your friends.

But don’t worry it’s quite common especially over time we have enough negative experiences to condition into this way of thinking. Now I’m going to need you to flick your internal switch and start believing again.

So that’s the first thing we need to fix. Your mindset. 

You have to believe that you are capable of more than what you are doing right now because that’s going to push you take action – don’t wait, don’t procrastinate – in fact don’t even think about it. 

After all of these years passed, I still sometimes put myself back into the shoes of that 22year old kid on his first day at Coopers and Lybrand. I now realise that taking action, however scary it was at the time, was the most important thing that I can do. Action is never without risk, but inaction can often involve more risk.

Not trying to follow your dreams is infinitely riskier than trying to follow your dreams and failing. 

When it comes to money and investing it’s the same thing. Think about the risk of not investing – think about the risk of living a less fulfilled life because you never learned about the simple principles surrounding money.  

And if you’re still sceptical about whether you have what it takes to make money in the stock market or even believe that you can make money in the stock market, then that’s ok. Just take it one step at a time.

You need to find your own ‘Why’ – and if your why is big enough – you will find a way to make it happen. The risk of not taking a chance and learning about the stock market is far greater than taking a small risk and seeing if you can really do it. And besides take it from me, I’m telling you right now that you can do it. Everybody can make the stock market work for them. 

Some traders are professionals and will always make more money in the stock market than you and that’s fine because this isn’t a competition. You just need to worry about yourself and even if you can follow just half of the principles outlined in this book, you’ll be a lot closer to living a life that’s better than the one that you currently have today.

And another thing – don’t feel bad about making money. Along with love and good health, making money is one of the best things in the world. Money buys you freedom and money buys you the ability to help others. In fact, helping others to live a better life will be your greatest legacy and so in a way I hope that this book could be part of mine.

Helping others is important – the money around the world is concentrated with just a few people and that’s not right.

In fact, a few years ago, my girlfriend gave me an idea to give money away to homeless people. “I already do”, I replied. “I always give my spare change whenever I see somebody out on the streets”. But she didn’t mean a pound coin here or there, she meant a thousand pounds. Wow I thought – I wasn’t expecting that. But after a few minutes it made sense to me – so that’s exactly what I did.

The next day I withdrew a thousand pounds from the bank in fifty-pound notes and I placed a single £50 note in 20 bright red and yellow envelopes with a small message inside each one of hope. Then I travelled with my girlfriend across London and handed out these envelopes to random strangers, all homeless people. Each person choose their envelope and each one had a word written on it. 

Words like “honesty, loyalty, freedom, love, change the world” and many more just like that. Then my girlfriend and I gave them out. The look on the people’s faces when they opened those envelopes were worth more than the £1,000. Some of the people were happy to be filmed and so we captured some beautiful moments where these people who had such a hard time suddenly found hope in their hearts for a moment. They found somebody who cared for them and believed in them. There were tears of joy and smiles of happiness that I had never seen before.

But do you know what the strangest thing was? Whilst I was out for several days during those weeks and I was busy travelling from one borough to the next and walking the streets of London in search of homeless people, I wasn’t the slightest bit interested about my business. I resigned myself to having a poor month in terms of revenue and sales. I cancelled meetings, I wasn’t spending time managing the trading floor, I wasn’t making any business decisions to drive the business forward – I was just happy handing out these envelopes of joy to random stranger. I was on a permanent holiday for those weeks.

But yet at the end of the year when I looked back at my numbers, I was shocked to see that during this period, which should have been the worst month for revenue, actually turned out to be a record month, in fact the most profitable month of the year. 

Karma is a funny thing, isn’t it? 

So now let me share with you something that might just change your life. It changed mine. I’m going to explain why in the stock market it’s (almost) impossible to lose. 

I will show you why the market is so rigged in your favour that you would be insane not to invest in it. I wish I had learned this years ago because it would have given me the confidence to go ‘all-in’ twenty years ago instead of skirting around the edges like I did for so long.