by Frederick Mann
(Excerpt from WealthBooster Magazine - Issue #53 - November 25, 2001)
Message (edited) from my archives:
"Well - I am totally broke. X has wiped me out! I am now a member of an investment group with no funds to invest.
But wait, I can hear the crowd scream, "It's your own fault. You shouldn't have invested all your money. You know the risk. Don't invest what you are not prepared to lose."
And that is fair enough!
But I invested what I did because X's programs came with a guarantee, further endorsed by the group chairman. I trusted the group chairman had done his homework on X.
I find it hard to believe that this could have happened. I thought private investment groups protected their members from unscrupulous individuals...
Hell, we may as well be taking our chances out in the open - the same thing happens out there.
Everything I have set aside for investing is gone. I joined this group because I thought my funds would be a little safer - and that the founders and powers that be would have done their homework...
Has anyone made a profit in this group?
It is going to be a very bleak Xmas in my house this year!
If you want to kick me out of the group, go ahead - I have nothing left to invest anyway."
When it comes to making money over the internet (and everywhere else), some people deceive themselves.
As an example, someone makes a million on the stock market. He then writes a book about his "system." The problem is that his "system" may have worked during a particular period for a certain number of specific shares. In other words, the "system" worked for a particular set of data. The millionaire deceives himself into believing that his "system" will work more generally.
Thousands of people may buy his book and use it as a guide, but on average they make no more money than they would have if they had used a dart board to select their shares. The "system" is actually worthless and only occasionally seems to "work" in the same way that if a few thousand monkeys were to throw darts to select shares, one might (at least briefly) become a Wall Street Guru!
Of course, some people lose their money in the stock market. (An offshore bank I have an account with stupidly invested much of their assets on NASDAQ. When the dotcom bubble burst, the bank went bankrupt. It looks like I'll get about 25% of my account balance back.)
It's very easy to deceive yourself and deny the risk related to whatever "vehicle" you're trying to make money with. It's very easy to get a false sense of security and risk more than you should on any specific "vehicle" or venture.
When you have initial success with any particular program, it's very easy to get greedy and try to "make a killing" with that program.
There are many more ways of losing money than there are of making money.
It's much easier to lose money than it is to make money.
No wonder more than 90% of new businesses fail within a few years.
If you've been trying to make money on the internet for some time without success, you might ask yourself, "what have i been denying?"
It could be that you haven't invested the study time to acquire the necessary money skills - see Basic Money Skills.
Maybe you've been making emotional rather than rational decisions - you've lacked emotional maturity - see #TL12: HOW TO ACHIEVE EMOTIONAL CONTROL.
The author of the message I started this article with, may have denied his own responsibility. He may not know about "gambler's ruin" and risk management. He also blames others for his poor decisions.
The future isn't perfectly predictable.
A program that has been superb for months or even years can suddenly fail - without any warning signs.
A principal who has been honest for years can suddenly decide to run with the money. An honest principal can die and be replaced by someone who steals the money.
Banks can freeze accounts on false pretexts.
In many cases, the probability of things going wrong is higher than the probability that they will go right. (A variation of Murphy's law.)
Some people fall in love and identify with their favorite programs. When things start going wrong and warning signals appear, they deny them.
Program promoters can easily fall into this trap. They've been making hundreds or thousands a month in referral fees from a particular program. If they notice a warning signal and issue an alert, their referral fees drop or dry up.
Program owners (who may deny even to themselves that their programs are beginning to go wrong) usually don't like it when a promoter issues an alert. They may even kick the promoter out of the program, so she loses her downline.
A promoter's subscribers may complain viciously if she issues an alert, accusing her of sabotaging the program.
So there are strong pressures on promoters to deny that things might be going wrong with any particular program.
Be prepared for the possibility that every "vehicle" you use to make money with will fail sooner or later.
To deny this possibility - as the author of the message at the beginning of this article apparently did - can be expensive and even devastating.
There's a great deal of information on our Private Page and its links on how to deal with risk.
The book 'States of Denial' by Stanley Cohen has been recommended to me. I haven't read it yet.
Disclaimer - Copyright - Contact
Online: buildfreedom.org | terrorcrat.com / terroristbureaucrat.com