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Conrad Alvin Lim’s Journey: How A Former Bankrupt Now
Consistently Makes
Up To US$22,368.60 A Month Trading in the US Markets!
 In 2001, I took the last big hit of my life when I
became a bankrupt. It was the result of a string of
events that led me to that point in my life. Looking
back, I believe that all those events happened for a
reason and that reason was to lead me to the point in my
life in which I now stand.
I had decided to go into business for myself. The
business was a resounding success and I had to cope with
this growth. So I hired more staff and expanded within a
year in anticipation of more business. I spent money I
had not collected and didn’t have. I became more
ambitious and grew ever more careless. I turned an
ignorant eye to the basic rule of business (which I felt
was someone else’s responsibility) and neglected my cash
flow.
By the end of 1999, recession was evident again. My
company’s debts ran high and I compounded my impending
fate by personally guaranteeing on several large debts.
By the year 2000, I could not afford to pay out salaries
and my staffs walked out. I could not collect on some of
the outstanding invoices owed to my company as these
companies were also in dire straits and were about to
wind up.
The realization of my failure brought on my first and
only nervous breakdown and I had become suicidal. All
my so-called friends were nowhere to be found. It was
the most traumatic experience I would never want to
re-live.
Biting the Bullet & Declaring Bankruptcy
Finally, after listening to my wife’s advice, I
decided to put my pride aside and took the painful
decision to bite the bullet and to (gasp!) downgrade. We
sold the car and took the bus. We squeezed into a three
room flat and sold off our precious things that we
didn’t have space for. We adjusted our lifestyle and
prepared for a life of poverty.
Finally, she advised me to take bankruptcy as an
option as opposed to a life in debt. It was the worst
thing I could do but the best advise I ever had. Looking
back, I would not be where I am today had I not been
forced by my wife to swallow my pride and grovel for a
living. And that is just what I did.
Picking up the Pieces and Starting
All Over Again
I went back to my roots and picked up several books on
design and taught myself how to edit video and
audio. As I learnt this new skill, several old clients
from the past kept faith in my abilities and kept a
constant flow of work coming to help me out. I churned
out the work from my humble home and ran my small
freelance business with low or no cost. The wife,
needless to say, became the breadwinner and sole
motivation for my comeback.
One of the clients to bring a steady flow of work in
for me was none other than my co-writer, Adam Khoo. I
soon learnt, by producing a lot of Adam’s materials, the
importance of self-belief and the power of a positive
mindset. I learnt that while I could not change the
past, my destiny was within my control. I thought very
hard about my future and started to set the goal of not
only paying back my debts & getting discharged from
bankruptcy, but to become a millionaire.
The idea of being an
investor grabbed my imagination. I spoke to my wife,
Lucy, about it. I showed her the material I was working
on and how easy and affordable it could be to become a
full time trader. The promise of becoming a millionaire
and improving the life of our family and our future
generations, the dream of having a financially free
lifestyle and the simplistic approach to the method was
just too good to resist.
Experiencing Initial Failure…
After attending our first trading workshop in an
intensive, mind-crunching four days, Lucy and I quickly
funded our first account with US$5,000 and began
trading. As luck would have it, profits came fast and
easy and our account grew by 20% in our first week of
trading. We then hit our first few losses and told
ourselves that this
was normal in trading.
The losses accumulated and still we lived in denial.
Ignorance became a reality check when we wiped out
almost all of our capital and whatever profits we had
made. So we re-funded our account with another US$5,000
and tried again. I attended several more trading
workshops and picked up more strategies. Still, the
losses kept mounting.
We couldn’t figure out why, after paying so much for
these workshops and working so hard to stick to the
rules, we were still losing money. I began to wonder if
the claims of making money from investing were nothing
but a big pipe dream.
Our savings were running thin, my media work was
getting affected and the workflow had slowed to
accommodate my trading workshops and trading at night.
My health took a dip because of the late trading hours.
My marriage was strained and my family was getting
affected by my mood swings and short-tempered flares.
This was not how I dreamt it would be. Things had taken
a turn for the worse and the dream was becoming a
nightmare.
Learning from Mistakes & Changing My Strategy
After four months and over US$10,000 in losses, I
stopped trading and took some time away from the market.
A friend suggested that I read Alexander Elder’s books
“Trading for a Living” and “Come Into My Trading Room”.
That led me to pick up more books on investing and
trading.
After reading these books and learning the true ins
and outs of investing, I finally realized why I was
losing money. It was not that making consistent profits
from the stock market was not possible. It was that the
investing workshops I had attended had not adequately
equipped us with the essential basics that were so
necessary to an investor’s success.
The workshops did
not teach us how to thoroughly analyze a company’s
profitability and financial stability (known as
fundamental analysis) as well as the essentials of
understanding market psychology towards a stock (known
as technical analysis).
Basically, the workshops run by many of these
self-professed gurus gave just enough information for
you to get all excited and kill yourself in the market.
How on earth did I expect to pick up something in
four days and believe that it would be so easy to
accomplish something that others have taken years to
build?
Getting Back to Investing Basics & Doing Whatever it
Takes to Succeed
So I decided that I would do whatever it took to
master the art of investing. I would first build a solid
foundation by learning everything that needed to be
learnt about investing in the stock market.
I hit the libraries, bookstores and
Internet to suck out as much information as I could
gather. I studied the finer points of Technical
Analysis, Pattern Trading, Momentum Trading, Sector
Investing and even Japanese Candlestick Analysis.
I got
to know and modeled some real traders who gave valuable
insights into the world of online trading. I started
working out and running again and got my physical
fitness back. With that, I got my self-esteem back up on
the high.
US$50 a Day… Small but Consistent Profits
After three months of hard work and self-study, I was
able to formulate a simple and affordable trading
strategy which allowed me to consistently earn US$50 on
single Options for every trade in less than five days.
Soon enough, I was averaging US$300 a week with
success in five out of every six trades. This first
strategy that I had developed is known as the 5-Day
Pre-Earnings Game.
This small but initial success gave me the confidence
and motivation to learn even more and to work even
harder. I began to learn and test more advanced
strategies such as ‘Sector Rotation’, ‘Intra-Day
Scalping’ and ‘Momentum Trading’, which you will learn
in the chapters that follow.
Making US$5,000 – US$7,000 of Consistent Profits a
Month
After more than a year of extremely hard work, I
began consistently earning between US$5,000-US$7,000 a
month in trading profits. And my earnings keep
increasing as time goes by and my experience builds. In
fact, I made US$7,000 within the first six trading days
of the year (2007).
By the end of January
2007, I
took back a total of US$15,000 in profits.
After being a bankrupt for more than FIVE years
(since 2001), I finally made enough money to pay off all
my debts and applied to my official assignee to be
discharged from bankruptcy. That moment was one of the
sweetest memories in my mind.
Making US$22,368.60 In One Month!
January and February 2008 were blow out months for
me. I performed very few trades but still managed a
hefty profit to set a new personal record (in
consecutive months).
Conrad's Winning Trades
For Jan And Feb 2008
So, to celebrate a great start to 2008, I went out
and bought myself a car … my first car in over 8
years, since before my bankruptcy.
Conrad With His New Car.
Working With Adam Khoo Learning Technologies Group
Its been 14 months since I started teaching at Adam
Khoo Learning Technologies Group and 11 months since my
discharge from bankruptcy.
Since
then, more than 500 people have been through the Pattern
Trader Tutorials’s doors. In that time, the
Pattern Trader Tutorial has become the most sought after
Basic Trading program and still remains the most
affordable and most value-for-money program available in
South East Asia. So much so, its demand in Kuala
Lumpur and Jakarta has seen its classes fill out
effortlessly with little or no advertising and media
attention.
A Full House Pattern
Trader Tutorial Workshop.
In late June 2007, the Tutorial in Singapore was
already fully booked till January of 2008 and we had to
open up two extra classes in November and December to
accommodate the demand. Now the pattern is repeating
itself in Malaysia and Indonesia and 2008 is already
looking to be a hectic year. But I’m not complaining.
#1
Bestselling Launch Of 'Secrets Of Millionaire
Investors'!
 2007
also saw me become a published author and a #1
bestselling author at that.
The launch of 'Secrets of Millionaire Investors'
saw the book enter the Best-Sellers Top 10 at #4. It
peaked at #1 for 3 weeks and stayed above its debut
entry level for 10 weeks. That was a truly
phenomenal experience for me.
To add to that sweet feeling were the
constant
feedback from readers that claimed that it was easily
the most comprehensible book ever written on investing.
I am truly proud of that.
Practicing What I Preach...
Lastly, my trades have seen an exponential growth
in consistency and profits. This is something I
credit to being a teacher and a coach. I truly believe
that one can only get better when one shares, teaches
and grows in a group. Putting myself on the line has
exposed my every weakness for which I have no way out
but to improve and practice what I preach.
Everything is real and achievable and the students
appreciate that.
My students have made me proud to know that what I
teach is applicable to what they want to trade, be it
equities, currencies or options. They are also able
to trade in any market anywhere in the world using any
instrument they’re comfortable with. But I am most proud
of the fact that they are flexible enough to trade
several instruments and are able to stretch the
parameters of what they have learned.
Conrad Being Featured In
Share Investor Magazine
Nothing Is Impossible!
2007 was a year of growth and a recovery from
bankruptcy. This recovery, I am told, is remarkable
and to some, almost miraculous. I still have no idea
what the big deal is because I simply did what I had to
do.
Still, I maintain that it’s nothing to crow about
because in order to have succeeded, I had to fail
several times before. It is so humiliating yet
humbling to have groveled amongst the poor and desperate
but having come back, I only have one focus … to help to
prevent others from taking that path to 'down-there'.
So if someone
tells me that I have done the impossible, my only
response will be that there are more impossible things
to accomplish - like helping others to do what I have
done. I have done and will continue to do
whatever it takes to change and make people’s lives
better because I know no better way to give back what I
have gained.
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