Chris’ Note: In today’s choppy market environment, it’s more important than ever to have a strategy that works. And for that, we turn to master trader Jeff Clark. Jeff has been trading for almost 30 years. He’s seen every kind of market… and even booked some of his best years when stocks were at their worst.

Below, Jeff shows how one mistake early in his career changed the way he trades forever… and taught him a valuable lesson about making money in the markets…

I was only 19 years old when I made my first options trade.

I had a gut feeling the market was going to go higher… so I bought four S&P 100 call options at $1.50 – a total investment of $600. A few hours later, the options were trading at $4.50. I sold and took the $1,200 profit – a 200% gain. And I was hooked on options forever.

My next trade was in IBM. I bought 10 calls for $1. This time, it took a couple days to double my money. Next, I bought Digital Equipment put options… which nearly tripled in just a few days.

I made 17 trades during my first six weeks as a trader. Every single one was a winner.

Going 17 for 17 was a remarkable feat for a rookie trader – especially since I wasn’t using any sort of fundamental or technical analysis. I was just going with my gut. But I was careful not to put more than $1,000 or $2,000 into any single trade. And I still managed to turn my $5,000 brokerage account into $50,000 in just six weeks…

And then I decided it was time to get serious. No more tiny trades. I was too good for the small stuff. For whatever reason, I had figured out a way to beat the market. Heck, I had just rattled off 17 straight triple-digit winners. So I decided to take the $50,000 in my account, add to it my $25,000 in savings, and put it into a handful of options trades.

You can probably guess what happened next.

The stock market has a habit of humbling folks who think they’ve figured it out. For me, the humbling started right away.

At first, the positions started slightly moving against me. It was nothing to be concerned about. One good day would put everything back in the profit column.

But then, one by one, each position blew up on me. It was too painful to watch. I kept the television off and avoided reading the newspaper for fear I’d see something bad about the stock market and my positions. When I finally got up enough courage to call the branch manager and check on the status of my account, I learned all the gains I had built up over the previous six weeks were gone.

“Just sell everything,” I said.

That was an expensive lesson to learn. But it’s one every options trader learns at some point. I was just fortunate it happened to me early in my career.

You see, that experience changed how I looked at trading. Instead of using options as vehicles for speculation – a way to juice my returns and get more bang for my buck – I started using them the way they were intended to be used: as a way to reduce risk.

Today, I still do my fair share of speculating. But I’m not focused on how much money I can make. I’m focused on how little I can lose.

That’s a huge difference. It has allowed me to trade options successfully for nearly three decades. And it allowed me to retire at 42.

Best regards and good trading,

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Jeff Clark
Editor, Delta Report

Chris’ Note: As Jeff showed above, if you want to make serious money in the investment world, you have to start by looking for what’s risky… and then minimize your risks, while maximizing your gains.

For almost 30 years, Jeff has been honing a strategy that helps him do just that. It’s in a section of the market that a lot of folks consider risky. But with Jeff’s strategy, you can turn that risk into 100%-500% potential gains… over and over again. Learn more from Jeff right here.

READER MAILBAG

Today, your fellow readers turn back to socialism, and whether it’s a threat to American society…

Perpetuation and strengthening of the Deep State will inevitably turn the U.S. into a fascist oligarchy. I do not see any danger that we will become anywhere close to the same degree of socialism as the previous Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact countries. There is too much competing private enterprise and powerful big industry.

– Robert G.

The reason for the outlandish medical expenses in the USA is that we have decided to have our health system, in effect, administered by a large number of for-profit insurance companies. They compete with each other and spend millions of dollars advertising to attract our business and, even more, are lobbying government to prevent such plans as “Medicare for All.” No sensible country would adopt such an arrangement.

All other developed economies have found that health for all with minimum paperwork is the best way forward. In the panic to avoid socialism, we have neglected the chance to provide health for all at a reasonable cost.

– Elizabeth M.

Meanwhile, not everyone agrees with your fellow reader who said we should stay out of politics…

The reader who implored you to stay out of politics clearly does not understand the intrinsic relationship between economics and politics. Were it so that the government was not so intertwined into the daily fabric of our economies, then there would be no need to discuss but alas, governments, and the ‘politics’ that go along with them are sadly inseparable at this point in history.

Economic policies that determine how, when, and where you can earn, invest, and spend are quite often the direct result of the aspirations of politicians. Free market economies are under attack because there are enough people who simply do not understand the difference between good policy and bad policy. Thus, they listen to their political ‘heart,’ instead of seeking the truth, because it may just conflict with their ‘politics.’

– Greg L.

Are you worried about socialism taking hold in America? Do you agree we should shut up about politics? Write us at [email protected].