The Online Investing AI Blog

PBA World Championship

Last Christmas, Tom Smallwood found himself in a position that millions of Americans are now facing.

After years of loyalty and hard work, he was laid off from the General Motors plant. That was bad enough, but the layoffs timing–right before Christmas–was just salt in the wound. He quickly applied for conventional jobs, but never heard back from the companies.

Tom, his wife, and his young daughter faced an uncertain future.

But Tom had a  secret weapon: bowling.

Tom believed he was a good bowler; he even won a few local tournaments. With his wife’s blessing, he tried out for the Pro Bowler’s tour. And made it!

Then he won a major tournament. Tom pocketed $50,000 during a championship match–making more in a single event than he ever earned in a year working at a conventional job.

So, if you’re laid-off, or worried that you will be laid-off, just remember: you can always bowl. At least in the allegorical sense. Maybe you can’t bowl, but, like Tom, you have talents and knowledge that can generate new careers and new sources of income.

You can even follow Tom’s method:

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Dreams Come True, Money, Online Investing AI, Success, US Economy bowling, dreams, financial freedom, hobbies, job, jobless, part-time, unemployment

They say money can’t buy you happiness; but it can put a nice down payment on it.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned this week, it’s that trying to seek true happiness and fulfillment without financial freedom is nearly impossible and is more likely a result of chance, rather than strategy.

Spending and saving, investing, and mental attitude are integral to financial freedom.  Fortunately, we live in times where that information is free, readily accessed, and is almost continually updated and debated.

In this edition of Weekly Wisdom, we’ll pass on links that will help you on your way to financial freedom.

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Accelerating Technology, Automated Trading, Business Strategy, Dreams Come True, Internet, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success, US Economy blogs, financial freedom, fiscal, independence, Links, Money, roundup, saving, spending, wealth

Things aren’t the same. And things will never be the same.

If anyone noticed how a default in Dubai can cause the yen to crash and the dollar to fall and lead to a international stock market swoon, you can get the idea that the economy is not the slow, deliberative market that it used to be.

It’s fast. As fast as the speed of light, or, at least as fast as CNBC, Fox Business, and the internet can report it.

That can be scary. But it can mean that the future economy will be vibrant and full of opportunities, as well as dangers.

The speed of macro-economic fluctuations also changes our future personal financial picture, a financial picture that will be equally elastic and equally dynamic.

Here are some links to great posts and stories that may influence your future financial freedom.

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Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success, US Economy financial freedom, future, futurist, Money, roundup, weekly wisdom

The sudden collapse of the debt market and it’s catastrophic ricochet into the stock market has a lot of people saying that they “lost everything” in the recession.

Other people have lost their homes and their cars.

Then there are those who lost their jobs.

I was talking to a friend who did the trifecta: He lost his job. He lost his home. And he lost most of his retirement. (He actually lost his girlfriend, too, but his story sounded too much like a country and western song. Plus, I never heard of a “four-fecta” before. Or is it quadfecta?)

You’d guess that after this devastating string of bad luck, he would tell you that he had no more assets. But, that’s not how he looks at things. Despite the heavy loss of material possessions, my friend said his most valuable assets are continuing to produce high returns.

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Online Investing AI assets, depression, financial freedom, Money, recession, wealth

Personal Financial Freedom doesn’t have to be all about skimping on food and skipping baths (not recommended) to save money. It can be about learning how to be a rock star, or finding resources for passive income. It’s also about getting advice on the future financial picture out there: recovery, recession, depression?

Those are just some of the tidbits of info I found during my scouring of the web to find articles and posts that can help us become financially free.

Here’s this week’s collection:

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Accelerating Technology, Business Strategy, Internet, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, US Economy advice, articles, blogs, financial freedom, Money, posts, wealth

In case you don't get the reference. This is The Proclaimers... who wrote (I'm Gonna Be) 500 Miles.

This is our 500th post.

We originally conceived the idea of our blog to be something beyond the same old acronym-encrusted, buzzword-bloated company blog. You know the:  “We have Product X in beta. We are hoping to improve synergies among R and D and marketing to output a product that meets customer criteria.”

That kind of crap.

We wanted our blog to start a conversation with people while we worked on our Automated Trading systems. And while we’d love to make everyone a client, we don’t care if you eventually decide to become a customer or not.

Because our real mission is to help people become financially free. There’s a lot of ways to get there. But education is the most important. We’d like to create Automated Trading systems that makes everyone rich, but they still can’t make people wealthy. That’s up to the individual.

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Online Investing AI 500 posts, education, financial freedom, Investing, Online Investing AI, wealth, wealth building

The precarious economy has lots of people worried. They’re especially concerned that they’ll lose their jobs. It’s no wonder that you see more “How To Keep Your Job” articles on the web and in today’s newspapers and magazines.

If you can sum up the advice in these articles, like the one written by Martin Lindstrom, author of Buyology: Truth and Lies About What We Buy, in the prestigious Parade Magazine, it’s “become indispensable to your boss.”

Lindstrom proceeds to offer five pithy tips to make sure your neck is far from the chopping block when the ax falls. They include:

• Define what makes you different from your colleagues. (Maybe a lack of integrity?)
• Do one thing well. (How about: stroke your boss’s ego?)
• Communicate your brand. (Hmmm. How do you brand desperation?)
• Create a signature look. (Like a clown suit?)
• Leave a personal mark behind. (Like a lip mark on the behind?)

I have no doubt that these ideas might keep you on the job, but at what price? That’s the question.

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Business Strategy, Great Books, Success, US Economy buyology, employment, financial freedom, martin lindstrom, working, workplace

If it makes you fly... Photo from Creative Commons (Flickr) by notsogoodphotography.

Revolutions don’t happen in good times; they happen when times are desperate. We can safely say that times are about as dire as ever in recent memory, with no real signals that an economic reset is near.

Unemployment is soaring. The stock market is limping. Governments are in turmoil.

It’s time for a revolution. Except this revolution doesn’t need to include street riots or mass rallies. In fact, those are never really revolutions–they’re just changing of the guards. What I’m talking about is a personal revolution–an internal Bunker Hill or Bastille–that  produces the biggest, most positive change.

This revolution should be so complete, that we’ll never fall back on the behaviors and attitudes that got us in this situation in the first place. It will be guided by a manifesto governing this new way of approaching our lives and lifestyles, our wallets and our pocketbooks.

I’m talking about a manifesto for personal financial freedom.

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Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, US Economy economy, financial freedom, freedome, independence, Money, personal freedome, revolution, wealth

Did you have a great 4th of July weekend? Fireworks? BBQ? Nice cold beer? Living in LA, I saw a marked change in activity. Everyone seemed to take off on Friday morning, and even today (Monday) a lot of people are gone. Despite the constant bad economic news, there seems to be no shortage of money to get away for vacation.

And, I saw a similar phenomenon online. Many blogs stopped posting. One site that we use to track blogs, Tip’d, had virtually no usage whatsoever! This is a site that attracts 440,000 visitors a month. And on the Independence Day weekend almost nobody visited. Wow.

Where did they go?

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Dreams Come True, Internet, Money, Success 4th of July, america, financial freedom, independence, job, Money, Success, wage slavery

Automated Trading seems to be gaining popularity on a daily basis. One common question is,

Can Automated Trading be used to generate passive income?

The answer is a resounding yes. However, that does not mean that you can set it and forget it.

Many people meet with a financial advisor, buy some mutual funds, and then forget about their entire investment portfolio for months or years. This is not a good idea.

Millions of would-be retirees got an unpleasant surprise when they checked their retirement accounts three months ago. It’s true that the markets have come back quite a bit in the last few months, but it does not mean that an important lesson can be learned: we need to manage and keep track of our investments. They cannot be offloaded and forgotten about like housework.

I saw a news show that featured an middle aged woman crying because she had lost 50% of her life savings. She lamented, “I was afraid to check my statements so I didn’t open them. But then when I finally checked, they were down by half.”

This is not a good strategy for retirement. If we are going to be successful money managers and retire wealthy, we need to actively manage our finances, and our retirement accounts.

And Automated Trading systems require monitoring in the exact same way. It does not take a lot of time or effort. Just a few minutes per day is probably enough. The important part is to commit to managing our finances so that we can achieve the financial freedom that we have earned.

This is true of nearly all forms of passive income. Contrary to popular belief, most passive income is not 100% passive. It normally takes at least a few hours per month to manage most forms of passive income. This includes mutual and index funds, real estate and stocks. We need to monitor what is going on with our investment, and make sure that we are receiving the income that we are supposed to receive.

Automated Trading, Investing, Success Automated Trading, financial freedom, Investing, Money, passive income, real estate, retirement, stocks