Yes, my godparents gifted me my first stock as a toddler. When I reached the ripe old age of 6 years old, I came to understand that owning stock meant I owned some of Disney. I reveled in telling my friends I was one of the owners of Disney World.

I always knew that the stock markets were my future. So, I followed the obvious tracks at all educational levels, earning a Bachelors of Science in Finance from Rider University in 1986... before getting special certifications from Stanford and Yale. I also studied to become a Charter Market Technician (CMT).

All of this foundational knowledge is at the root of what I do today- many decades later- particularly my great appreciation for the EDUCATIONAL side of trading. Many people want hand-picked trade recommendations but if I can also help them learn to pick some great trades themselves too, that benefit will pay them back for a lifetime. I’m happy to share my trade selections with my subscribers, but it’s all the better when my team & I can grow their skills to levels where they keep me... NOT because they need me but only because they want my trades & insights in addition to their own.

Just about everyone has traded stocks in some form- even if relatively indirectly by making a change to investments in a 401K or similar. However, where every single trade actually gets done is on exchange floors. All that “daily volume” that is reported on the news is a count of total transactions of shares done on those floors. Most people see or hear a huge number like that but don’t really think about what it means. However, down on the floor- especially in the days I was on the AMEX floor, it was an epicenter of buying & selling… and not with so much computerized optimization as they’ve become today but the “old fashioned,” HUMAN labor-intensive way. My first job there was what is called a “runner” and that’s an apt title: there was lots of running from trader to trader with paper trade tickets in hand to get them to where they needed to go. Runners had to physically deliver trade orders to the right people to get them executed.

In my opinion, the ultimate path to understand investing is having some meaningful time (at least a few years) at the epicenter where all trades are made. It could seem like chaos times 20 on the craziest of days. Other times, the orderly flow of buy & sell orders ran like clockwork. I’ve been in situations much like in the movies where people were screaming orders at each other and fully hoarse by the end of the day. I was there for the devastation of the Black Monday, a 508-point crash in ONE day… which may sound almost “normal” today but back then, that had the Dow dropping almost 23% in one day. Imagine the panic & fear if the Dow lost 23% in one day today! I’ve seen panicked selling in bear events and irrational buying in bull extremes… NOT from far outside looking in- such as via news reports like how most people get a bit of news about such things- but from as inside of the eye of such hurricanes as one can be, where it all actually happens. And unlike actual hurricanes, the eye of that storm is not oddly calm & cool.

Nevertheless, much of my roles there involved having to keep a cool head in all of that. The challenge was always to get all trades filled, to make the heart of the entire machine beat as smoothly & effectively as possible at all times. There's no other investing education like that one. All the fluff and opinion and prognostications are all stripped away, leaving only the most naked of naked trading where sellers & buyers actually exchange shares… and I was there- through bull, bear and flat markets working as hard as I could to make that happen over and over again… through anything that could come up at any given time to send shockwaves through the markets.

I took the job at AMEX in 1986, which means I was stepping into what had been a pretty strong bull market over the prior 4 years. Even in the center of the trading universe like on the exchange floors, people get pretty accustomed to the rising tide if it has been rising for a long time. This particular tide began back in 1982 with the DJIA at an ‘astounding” level of 776- which probably seems like it must have been a million years ago now- and rose to over 2700 by the big day. From when I started to Black Friday, pretty much all I was experiencing too was “strong bull market”- like a surfer catching a perfect wave that can be ridden on and on and on. Some of my older colleagues has been riding this overall market wave for up to all 5 years, enjoying gains of towards 290%. I joined them on that wave for the last approx. fifth of that ride. As a new floor trader right out of school, it was all of the ‘real world’ I had known up to the day.

Most people believe Black Monday was just one terrible day- and make no mistake- if was a pretty terrible day… but meaningfully down days has already been running for a few days going into the weekend before it. Black Monday was just the climactic fall after a series of smaller falls. From about the prior Wednesday, a bear trend began, falling nearly 4% on Wednesday, over 2% on Thursday, then well over 4% on Friday. In points terms, those were about 95 points, then 57 points and then 108 points… which sound like a typical hour gyration in today’s market but those were relatively BIG moves when the DOW was at only about 2700. We were all happy when the bell rang that Friday, hoping that sour end to the week was the end of it.

Unfortunately, those of us that were deeply involved knew there was still plenty of selling pressure to potentially play out on Monday, so it was stressful weekend. Even though markets were closed all weekend, desires to buy & sell never really take a break at any time. We knew Monday had great potential to be another downer too. The bear was probably not finished yet. I recall that there was accumulated selling pressure BEFORE the markets opened, so it was clear it would be at least the beginning of a down day even before any trades could be filled.

Much could be shared about the catalysts but that’s all well covered in the history books. I’ll simply paraphrase an old cliche about war: (black) Monday was hell. Stock exchanges, futures exchanges, options exchanges all crashed together. To that point in time, it was the steepest one-day percentage plunge in the history of the Dow and all-time records like that are not exactly something for which anyone can prepare. When one could grab a moment to have a thought about anything other than processing sell-sell-SELL! orders... a perception of "Great Depression II” began to grow… that this would mark the moment that began the second Great Depression. It was bleak!

If you’ve ever seen the Dan Akyroyd & Eddie Murphy movie- "Trading Places"- where they engineer a crash of the Orange Juice market, that chaos & devastation represented there is not so far from what Black Monday on the exchange floors looked like. Basically, everyone seemed to want to sell everything and there were nearly no buyers wanting to take the other side. Liquidity was a disaster. Margin calls were hot & heavy. Rumors were circulating that big banks could fall. Brokerages needing more credit to cover trades quickly reached and then began exceeding credit limits. Basically, it all got so far out of hand that all of the normal modes of response were strained… then more strained… then beyond strained… and then in apparent jeopardy… like crucial cables holding up sky trams rapidly fraying but still barely hanging on.

Ultimately, it took the might of the Government- particularly the FED- to step in and use its great power as what is called ‘lender of last resort’ to basically create the immense liquidity needed in an attempt to reel in the mess and restore some order to mass chaos. This was no modern day, “fat finger” event that “bounced back” in the next day or two. Instead, the market tangibly lost a lot of value... and it took a LONG time to get back to old highs. Ultimately, the FED had to simply shoot a TON of money at the overall system to help the markets re-discover some footing and resurrect confidence.

For me, that period of time was a dramatic- maybe even traumatic???- moment that left me with a bear market scar I’ve never forgotten. It’s one of the main drivers that makes me so passionate about not only focusing on upside trading gains- which, of course, are very important to success- but also on limiting downside risk. There’s an old saying about a 50% fall in the market then needing a 100% gain to get back to where you started. That’s a cleverly simple but powerful concept. Losing half in an investment is not so hard. But doubling one tends to be quite difficult. A simple variation of the same would say it’s harder to recover from losses than it is to make some good gains. So smart investing has to BALANCE the pursuit of profit with the watchful eye on catalysts for losses.

From Black Monday to now, a part of my work has always been about attempting to detect similar surprises, so that I can help my followers get out of harm’s way. That kind of crash is a devastating one that I hope nobody ever has to experience themselves. My team & I are always at work watching for such setups in hopes of taking the right actions at the right time to avoid the great pain of another Black Monday. If you want a reason to choose us vs. other options, this should be one. We have a great focus on this very concept.

In 1994, I went to work at a hedge fund which mostly involved working in long & short stock, futures, and option positions. As the name implies, a hedge fund is usually focused on hedging big bets to one side or the other, often towards reducing risk that would have someone over-exposed. At both the exchange and at the hedge fund I had mentors that taught me charting: not just the basic chart reading that is taught in books, but the deep, nitty-gritty used by the top 1%. These secrets are NOT known by the vast majority of investors and traders. That opened my eyes and enhanced my bank account immensely!

We lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. We had a deck as big as a backyard with grass, potted trees, and a barbeque. We threw parties, rode in limos and ate at fancy restaurants. Having a $500 caviar and champagne meal at Petrossian or a more intimate meal at The Carlyle Hotel watching Bobby Short perform with the likes of the great jazz singer Eartha Kitt and movie star Matthew Modine sitting at the tables next to us was NOT unusual.

The senseless madness of the 9/11 tragedy literally destroyed my workplace and my employer. Obviously, I hadn't arrived at work that morning when the first plane hit- which is a story in and of itself- and most everyone knows the terrible rest of THAT morning.

Like many Wall Street professionals, 9/11 changed EVERYTHING. Suddenly being in the vicinity of the trading epicenter of the world seemed VERY UNIMPORTANT. Some quit the industry entirely. Some moved far from NYC. I decided to professionally trade for many years, relatively distant from Wall Street. I would volume trade sometimes as many as 500 transactions per day in some day-trading models I had developed. Over time, I evolved those to significantly reduce the volume of trades- and their commissions- while growing profit-per-trade. One of my favorite systems- and least active- but derived from those, only does about 5-6 trades each YEAR now. We will eventually launch that as its own service comparable to the Swinging SPY Futures Express... but for now, we include it as a very-high-value bonus in Sal's Private Trades.

By that time, I had already seen big market plunges in events like Black Monday, Iraqi War, Black Wednesday, the Asian economic crisis, Russian economic crisis, Dot com bubble and 9/11, so I was hyper-sensitive to “what’s next?” and thus working equally hard to protect my investments from big falls. No trader is immune to losses- we all will get some wrong sometimes. If anyone ever pitches a lossless trading record that involves more than a few trades, RUN the other way as fast you can! Or duck before their rapidly-growing nose smacks you right in the face.

I believe the name of the “investing winners” game is to minimize those losses while trading well. If one can beat the index funds by even a few points but not take the sometimes-huge hits when markets fall, the result will be much stronger growth than any other option I know. That’s at the heart of what we do at InvestingWinners.com.

In 2007, I started what was a contract job with Online Trading Academy for the next few years. This was mostly a training job… mostly live seminars and classes teaching individual investors how to be more successful in the markets. By this time, I had about 20 years of professional experience- and WOW!!! had I been through a lot!!!- but I didn’t know if I would enjoy training like I enjoy trading. I soon found that it is tremendously fun to see those ‘I understand’ light bulbs lighting up as I covered material with students. They got all kinds of insights from my experience... and I got a unique form of immediate gratification in helping them take big strides forward in trading knowledge.

Soon, I owned a training franchise and became a traveling instructor doing live events in European countries and Canada. This experience just grew & grew. Accolades from students were always so positive that I was soon branded “master instructor” and had junior instructors training under me... to teach investing "the Sal way."

Eventually, one of the biggest of big companies reached out and that was Fidelity Investments. They wanted me to teach Fidelity systems to individual investors covering topics like stocks and options. These were called lectures but were very much classic training, “show & tell” and always ready to answer questions to help students really figure out whatever they didn’t quite understand. One could probably attend investing classes for 50 years and not know everything. In fact, I still learn something new myself ever so often and I’ve been around the block MANY times now.

My trading systems just kept getting better and better and students would always ask me about starting some kind of ongoing thing, where the education and some of my trades could be shared more regularly than only at an occasional seminar or lecture. Eventually, that led me to starting InvestingWinners.com as a way to have a subscription-based relationship with people within a publishing model. It seems like the perfect culmination of all that has come before… dual channels of education and trading that can help individual investors do much better than they will probably ever do trusting Wall Street players and/or fully on their own.

Yes, it was a normal workday, just like any other. We had moved to the NJ suburbs a couple years earlier and started a family. As I had MANY times before, I expected to catch the Hoboken PATH train to work. Where was work? On the 89th floor at the World Trade Center. If I had caught my usual train at the usual time that morning, I seriously doubt I’d be here today.

I bought my PATH (Port Authority of NY and NJ) ticket and stepped out to smoke a cigarette (a terrible-but-typical habit back then, that I have since quit). I heard a boom and saw what- from that vantage point- looked like a small puff of smoke. The first plane had crashed. Not realizing the gravity of the situation, I assumed that it was a little tour plane- which were always flying around WTC- and that I should hurry to get to work before they shut down the train service: a typical NYC attitude. I ran down the stairs to catch the PATH train but Fate stepped in... or shall I say tripped? A little old man was weaving back and forth and fell down. I stopped to help him up and be sure he was ok. By the time I finished helping him, my train to WTC was departing.

Now, missing a train is no big deal in NYC. There’s always another one coming soon. The wait is never very long as there’s millions of people that need to get to other places every day. In the morning like that, there are tons of people needing to get to work in other parts of town. However,THIS morning had a unique announcement that blared over the loudspeaker: “NO MORE TRAINS TO WORLD TRADE CENTER!”

A beautiful young lady who was standing next to me shared that she had an important interview at WTC, so she too was anxious to get there. I suggested we take the ferry (a quick ride from Hoboken to Manhattan). We both bought a ticket and expected to easily arrive at an acceptable time.

However, the ferry was just a little behind schedule itself and would ultimately NOT sail that day at all. The second plane hit. She exclaimed, “that's SOME coincidence!” I sighed and said, “That's nooooo coincidence.” as I started realizing this was no longer any kind of minor accident.

As I made my way home to the suburbs of NJ that day, I saw a burning WTC in the distance. I walked through my front door and was greeted by my 2 ½ year old daughter in a ballerina outfit. She said to me “Hi Daddy... they cancelled my dance class today... there was a fire.” I still tear up thinking about it.

We all know the tragedies that occurred that morning... and everyone there has SOME kind of story about it. Many people I knew well were already at work that morning and, among the losses that seem to affect everyone in some way, I personally lost many good friends that morning. I actually don’t like to talk about it much, so I’ll just leave it at that.

For me though… basically... that little old man’s clumsiness saved my life. I call him my guardian angel. Wherever he is today, I send my heartfelt ‘Thank You!’

Professional trading is much like starting a business: you go from the certainty of a paycheck from an employer to needing a solid level of performance to have any income at all. You switch from doing your best with varying outcomes in bull & bear markets to absolutely NEEDING to profit in ALL market types. In short: YOU MUST MAKE MONEY... year after year. It doesn’t matter if the markets crash or are flat, you must find the opportunities that are profitable even in difficult periods. You can’t have a bad year but get paid anyway.

I credit those years with thoroughly sharpening my own sword. It was a “successfully trade or bust” period and that kind of pressure makes one seek out every opportunity to find the right trades WHILE also avoiding much downside loss. Since that period and all the way to today, I’ve been a relentless student myself, finding the very best trades and carefully marginalizing downside risk. There’s plenty of guys who focus on the good trade side of things… but their followers usually get pounded by their failures to have equal focus on risk. That’s a big difference with me. Black Friday, various recessions, 9/11, the anthrax events, the 2008 market meltdowns, etc all scream that at least HALF of this battle is keeping control of downside losses as much as possible. I have great focus on that... and I suspect many of my followers stick with me because they detest losing as much as I do. Most others who do similar work seem to pretend that losses aren’t a part of trading and solely focus on wins. To me, that's missing a big piece of the picture.

Trading is more fun- and profitable- when one can get similarly big wins without also taking so much of the bear losses. And personally: trading is also more fun because it gave me freedom to watch my children grow up. The freedom and time to go to their T-ball games, their soccer games, their school plays and recitals.

During this time, I also further developed, refined and polished my trading models. I’d been working on them for many years but this period put them fully into action. Experience with real trading is the ultimate test of any trading methodology or system and real trading put many of my approaches fully to the test in bull, flat and bear periods. I refined and refined and refined them again & again… always trying to harvest a little more profit out of the wins while reducing the size of inevitable losses lower and lower.

The strength of these exclusive systems became the basis for creating Investing Winners, so that others could take advantage of the same great trades while minimizing their own losses too. The subscription services we offer are built on these long-term models I’ve developed throughout my life. They represent the very best I have to offer… so far.

InvestingWinners is my own vehicle… my own business. It is essentially the ultimate blending of the best of my entire history, rolled into one smart source of service to individual investors. I get to be the educator like I have been at Fidelity Investments and Online Trading Academy AND I'm able to share specific, actionable trades from my long-refined trading systems & methodologies with my subscribers.

It’s basically the best of all worlds as just about everything I love to do is under a SINGLE umbrella… and I can do these things for which I feel great passion to the fullest of my abilities.

My team & I have put a TON of work into making education and recommendation services on the website as rich and powerful as we can make them. There’s a LOT that can be learned here for those wanting to become better traders on their own and perhaps the easiest possible way to lean on my own experience in sourcing the very best trades I can recommend for those that simply seek profitable alerts.

Anyone interested in better trading should take a good look around the site. I think just about ALL investors can find something of value here. Nearly 40 years of my professional experience pours into everything we publish here. Anyone reading this is well advised to take a big bite of what we serve. It can't be had any other way.