My husband read Phil Town’s book and is sure he can make a lot of $ fast by investing in the stock market.

Get it Together: My husband read Phil Town’s book and is sure he can make a lot of $ fast by investing in the stock market.
I remain skeptical. I wonder, “why isn’t everyone rich if all it took was a few formulas and playing the stock market.” Anyone with personal experience?

Answers and Views:

Answer by hawkthree
You ain’t going to be able to win this argument. Why not take the upper hand? Agree that your husband can have a certain amount — say $ 200 — and if he doubles that, then he’ll have $ 400 to play with. Then when he doubles that he’ll have $ 800. And so on. If he doubles his money each week, in 52 weeks, he’ll have
$ 450,359,962,737,050,000.00

And all you risked was $ 200.

I agree with you, but you and your husband are having an emotional argument, so try to cool it down with a bit of logic.

Answer by M O
There are almost as many wall street losers who got cleaned out as there are people who struck it rich.

There is no formula in the world that can account for out of the ordinary events, which are largely what influences stock prices.

Answer by Bad Mother Clucker
I’m not sure who Phil Town is but I’d be skeptical. It’s more than a few formulas. Not all stock traders are rich. And most stocks take time to make you money. I’ve made money on the stock market, but it certainly isn’t fast. You have to ask yourself, if Phil Town is so rich on the stock market, why does he have to sell books? If you have some money to spare, like a couple of hundred, he could try that. But put a cap on how much he can invest. Don’t give your husband free range on the life savings or retirement fund for God’s sake.

Answer by morlock825
You should be skeptical. You should also be invested in the stock market (some of your assets, anyway). The pros are the only ones with a good lock on the ‘fast money’- the little guys usually get clobbered when they try that game. If a book were a magic bullet, it’d be the most expensive book in history. Take it slow and easy, and gain experience.

Answer by personal_finance_101
Your hubby is about to lose a lot of money. Tell him to read more than just some marketing guy’s book. It’s statistically proven that most people who invest in individual stocks perform worse than their corresponding index after taxes and fees.

If he’s set on trying this, he realistically needs $ 25k in cash to start. Do NOT let him invest all of your money in individual stocks unless you want to work for the rest of your life. You should both read the Automatic Millionaire and Smart Couples Finish Rich.

Be worried, be very, very worried.

PS: my cousin once thought this and took out a $ 100k HELOC to invest with. He lost it all.

Good luck!

Answer by Rabbit
You are exactly right–except not everyone follows directions. Have you ever been on a diet and thought the diet didn’t work?

You might want to make sure that he is doing this new program in a manageable way. Make certain that he’s not going to ‘bet the farm’ on it. If he doesn’t want to talk, pay a lawyer a few bucks to invite him to a divorce consultation (the lawyer call, not you telling)–let the lawyer say “Since you are wanting to go whole hog with this trading thing, my client (your wife) is wanting to figure out how to ‘split the sheets’ before you lose everything and there are no sheets to split.” It is radical, but you’ve got to get him to discuss some reasonable limits if he won’t otherwise.

Hopefully, it will start with “Look, it is just like at Las Vegas, you have $ x to work with, period. Is that crystal clear and carved in stone?” If not, well, pay your lawyer a couple of bucks.

Answer by Thin Kaboudit
Your husband has been fooled twice, then! Once into buying a book claiming he can “get rich quick”, and twice because he read the bbook and still believed it was true. There are only two ways to get rich through stock trading; one is through pure dumb luck, the other is to right plausible sounding “get-rich-quick” books.

Investing and trading are two completely different things. Picking sound companies and investing in a group of them with a 5+ year horizon is a guaranteed way to get rich. (The only way this can lose is if the entire economy collapses, in which case a million dollars in cash will be worthless!)

Trying to short-term trade stocks is essentially no different that betting on horses; if you always bet on the favorite, you will probably come out ahead after enough races, but not far; the ONLY way to get rich is to put money on the right “long-shot”, and the only way to know which one is the right one is illegal!

Tell your husband you’ll give him $ 1000 to trade with, when it’s gone you will leave him, if he can double it in one year, you’ll stay!

Answer by digdowndeepnseattle
Hawk is absolutely right but you need more than 200 to start If that’s all you have available then NO scheme will work.

This is what I would do…tell him that if the scheme works now then it will work in a year. So have him use his knowledge for 1 year. But instead of investing real money he simply simulates his buys and sells on an online stock tracking service. At the same time that he starts, you buy 3 newspapers and tack the financial pages on the wall so that you can see all of the stocks available for purchase. You then stand 10 feet away and close your eyes. Throw 5 darts. You track the 5 stocks that you land on and he tracks his….guess who will end up with the highest gain. That will help him see his folly. Remember, monkeys beat professional stock traders.

or

If you’ve got the cash to support it…tell him that he gets 5k to support his theories in the following year. If he loses it then he continues on with sensible investing and quits wasting money on get rich quick books. Then, for every year he turns a profit that exceeds the S&P for that year he gets another 5k to trade. For every year he doesn’t beat the S&P he loses 5k.

Answer by vegas_iwish
27 yrs of it. Almost all ‘systems’ fail in the long run. You can make money in the market (will if not greedy) but takes consistent work & diligence.

Answer by Frank Castle
For exactly the same reason most people smoke despite the fact they will die of cancer and most people don’t exercise despite the fact they will live longer and healthier and most people eat at McDonald’s at least two times a week despite the fact they will die of a heart attack.

Not everybody is as smart as your husband.

Top 4 Answerer.

Answer by Ryan W
I make 30% of my income on the stock market. But I had to lose a lot to learn. There are many techniques to learn, however, you have to try a few and find what works with your financial, risk, and emotional situation. It is a learning process.

Answer by Katherine W
Here’s a quick expression about the stock market: “Bulls get fat. Bears get fat. Pigs get slaughtered.” It means that people who bet that the market is going up (Bulls) will do well, as will Bears (people who bet the market is going down). However, greedy people (pigs) get killed. You can make money in the stock market, but it’s generally not fast.

Let him either take some money you don’t need and use it, or use the system with “fake” money, that is, just do it on paper and see how it turns out.