Laurens Bensdorp

I love sharing what I’ve learned over the last 20 years, but sometimes it’s frustrating. You see, I’ve discovered that just giving someone the knowledge they need isn’t enough; they have to have the discipline to follow the rules. For example, a lot of traders lack the discipline to subordinate their emotions to the rules.  They understand intellectual the ‘why’ and the ‘how’, but they lack the ability to stay out of the way.  They buy too early or too late or not at all, or they sell too early or too late or not at all.   They’re really gamblers, not traders, because the gambler is in it for the thrill that comes from participating in the event in a financially meaningful way. Other traders have no problem following the rules, but they’re ‘married’ to a single strategy.  They’re all in on that one strategy as if it was a divinely revealed commandment.   They follow it wherever it leads them...often to ruin.   Successful traders utili...

If you’ve done any trading at all you’re probably familiar with fundamental analysis.  This is the favorite strategy of guys who think they can predict the market based on their analysis.  I’m not kidding; fundamental analysis is a crystal ball technique with sub-optimal returns . I know what you’re thinking...Warren Buffett is the greatest investor alive and he’s a ‘fundamental’ type, so that proves that analysis is the ‘end all, be all’ of trading.  Right? Wrong . Buffett has been extraordinarily successful for a very long time, but most other traders who practice those strategies have underperformed the market.  In fact, even the top 1% of traders who follow those strategies underperform the markets (those are the guys running mutual funds)! Picking stocks is incredibly difficult; this is why a monkey can pick stocks at random and beat most investors. When I was studying the most successful traders in the world, I realized they didn’t pre...

Imagine for a moment you’re in a luxury condo in Malaga, Spain, looking out the window at the Mediterranean Sea, letting the warm breeze mess with your hair and listening to the gentle crash of the waves below. On the desk beside you there’s a cup of the world’s best coffee waiting for you, and now a gentle beep from your laptop reminds you….it’s 9:30am and time to put in your 30 minutes of work for the day. That’s right...for the next 30 minutes you’re going to have to put the beautiful, sensual and alluring Mediterranean on hold while you finish up the day’s work.  That’s not a typo; automated trading strategies like those I’ve taught in two best-selling books will enable you to finally enjoy life while spending just 30 minutes a day (or less), managing your portfolio. So what will you do with the rest of the day, now that it’s 10am and you’re done “working”? The automated trading strategies that I’ve taught for the last decade and rely upon personally to man...

typical investment advisors use the crystal-ball technique called fundamental analysis, which is risky and suboptimal for long-term profit. Fundamental traders guess the future. These traders analyze earnings reports and other company numbers, and predict where the price will go based on their analysis. They have a conceptual idea of where the market will go, and then they make predictions. For example, they might say, “The economy is slowing down, so stock prices will probably go down.” Basically, it’s the Warren Buffett model of investing. That sounds great, except that it’s highly skill based. Buffett is the master in picking the right stocks, and few people are able to learn that skill. They think they can, but when they actually try to pick stocks, they fail. Using Buffett’s strategy to pick stocks would be like using LeBron James’s strategy to play basketball. Sure, slam dunking every play sounds like a nice strategy in theory, but if the average guy tried it, he would fal...