Читать книгу The 10-Minute Millionaire - D. R. Barton Jr. - Страница 7

One of the most powerful lessons I learned during my career as an entrepreneur, chemical engineer, futures trader, hedge fund risk management officer, best-selling author, and TV stock analyst is also one of the simplest.

The lesson: there’s nothing better than a good story to get your audience engaged.

And I’ve got a great tale to share with you.

The story is about the American Revolution.

And 10 minutes that changed the world.

As anecdotes go, this one’s a stunner.

The lesson we learn will serve as the cornerstone for this book.. and will end up being your ticket to a much wealthier, more fulfilling life.

So let’s get started.

Flying South

It was 1780, and the War of Independence was in its fifth year.

Great Britain’s inability to bring the rebel colonists to heel – coupled with the Redcoat defeat at Saratoga and worries that the French would throw in with the colonists – caused the Crown to shift its strategy.

To the south.

When British strategists looked at those southern colonies, they saw Loyalist strongholds and envisioned a postwar future in which agricultural products like tobacco, rice, and indigo would let them line their pockets.

At first, the southern strategy went well for the Crown.

Indeed, it went very well.

The British captured Savannah, giving them the Georgia coast. On May 12, 1780 – after laying siege to Charleston, South Carolina, for about six weeks – that port city fell. And 5,00 °Continental Army troops under the command of Major General Benjamin Lincoln had to surrender. It was a humiliating defeat – indeed, the worst loss the Americans would suffer during the whole war.

Further defeats followed: damaging losses at the Waxhaws, Camden, and Fishing Creek obliterated most of the Continental Army – leaving Great Britain with almost total control of both Georgia and South Carolina.

But instead of just holding and policing this territory, these victories emboldened the Redcoats: certain regiments of the British Army decided to inflict as much suffering as possible. Colonial morale was about as low as could be, so these particular Redcoats figured they’d rub out any remaining Patriot dissent – and maybe even get the colonists to switch sides to the soon-to-be victorious Crown.

Raids, murders, and reprisals became standard fare. Plantations were leveled, crops destroyed, and businesses wiped away. If you ever saw the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot, you can picture the very kind of brutality I’m talking about here.

In a rural area just outside of what’s now York County, South Carolina, a man named William Hill experienced this onslaught in a very personal way.

Today, we’d refer to Hill as an entrepreneur or a self-made man. Back then, however, Hill was a pioneering “iron master.” He and his partner, Isaac Hayne, constructed a massive metal works along Allison’s Creek in York County. The venture made farm implements, blacksmith tools, kitchenware, cannons, and cannonballs.

In fact, most of the cannonballs used in the siege of Charleston came from Hill’s furnaces – which the colonists, not surprisingly, tried very hard to protect.

Unsuccessfully.

In June 1780, the British burned the ironworks. Hill lost his house, grain mills, saw mills, tenant houses, and 90 tenants.

Hill also lost his partner. Not long after, the British decreed that Hayne had “broken parole” – and hanged him.1

Force 10 from Brattonsville

The perpetrators of much of this mayhem were a troop of British light cavalry commanded by Captain Christian Huck. Huck was a Pennsylvania Loyalist and Philadelphia lawyer whose property had been confiscated after the British evacuation of that city. He was actually banished from the Keystone State, and made his way to New York, where he joined the British Army.2

Now Huck was operating in South Carolina. And historians like biographer Michael C. Scoggins say he had a particular hatred for the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who made up a lot of the populace in that region’s backcountry.3 Most of those colonists were Whigs – what the British contemptuously referred to as “rebels” – and Captain Huck took great pleasure in the abuse, destruction, and death his troops engaged in. Indeed, it was his group that leveled Hill’s ironworks – and burned his home.

On the night of July 11, 1780, near what is now the town of Brattonsville, South Carolina, the same William Hill we’ve been talking about found himself spending the night out in the open.. under the stars.

It was hot. And muggy. And Hill was worried – scared even – wondering what the morning would bring.

At least, he thought, his family was safe. After losing his home, Hill stashed his family in the nearby log hut of a friendly neighbor.

And waited for dawn.

Just before first light, Captain William Hill and his ragtag band of local militia heard the first rustlings of Christian Huck’s New York Volunteers stirring from their overnight encampment. Surrounding the enemy with the stealth of practiced deer stalkers, Hill and his band of guerrilla warriors waited patiently. When the sun finally appeared over a nearby plantation, the Patriots opened fire.

And unleashed havoc.

The Redcoats – trained to fight in regimented, disciplined formations and to shoot in massed volleys – fell into chaos. Their clumsy smoothbore muskets were no match for the colonists’ frontier rifles. Firing with pinpoint accuracy from behind fence cover, these Colonial farmers and woodsmen rejected the order of eighteenth-century warfare and chopped their well-trained adversaries to pieces.

For the Revolutionaries, the gains were enormous and losses slight. Dozens of enemy soldiers lay dead on the field. That included their sadistic leader, Captain Huck, who’d been felled by a headshot as he was mounting his horse to rally his troops. The Redcoats who weren’t killed or wounded either surrendered or tried to flee.

Of Huck’s troopers – roughly 35 dragoons, 20 New York Volunteers, and 60 Loyalist militiamen – only 24 escaped.

The Americans – 150 strong at the outset – lost just one man.

But here’s the best part of all.

The total time of the battle – from first shot to decisive victory – was a mere 10 minutes.4

Ten minutes.

And that 10-minute span changed the world.

That’s not hyperbole.

Historians now refer to this 10-minute skirmish as “The Battle of Huck’s Defeat.” South Carolina historian Walter Edgar wrote that Huck’s Defeat was “a major turning point in the American Revolution in South Carolina.”5 It was the first of more than 35 key battles in that state that took place in late 1780 and early 1781 – all but five of which were Patriot victories.

This streak of victories in smaller battles ended up being a critical contributor to later American successes at King’s Mountain and Cowpens.

Edgar said that “the entire backcountry seemed to take heart. Frontier militia had defeated soldiers of the feared British Legion.” One key result: the militia brigade of American General Thomas Sumter enjoyed a stream of badly needed volunteers.

Our friend William Hill – a key figure in this world-changing 10-minute event who survived the battle and went on to become a man of importance in the years after the American Revolution – said this short, tiny engagement “was the first check the enemy had received after the fall of Charleston, and was of greater consequence than can well be supposed from an affair of [so] small a magnitude – as it had the tendency to inspire the Americans with courage and fortitude [and] teach them that the enemy was not invincible.”6

That’s a pretty impressive statement.

But I’ll say it even more clearly for you..

This single 10-minute span stopped the British juggernaut cold.. and ended a dark, dark stretch for this very young nation. Those 10 minutes infused the colonists with a new energy, a new confidence, and a new belief that victory was possible.. even probable. It put the Patriots back in the victory column, and kicked off a string of victories that led to America’s victory in the War of Independence. And it placed this country on a trajectory that would eventually lead to the United States’ emergence as a global superpower.

Ten Minutes Can Change Your World

Here’s the takeaway.

If a mere 10 minutes can change world history, it can certainly do the same for you.. changing your history.. your future.. and transforming you from wannabe to winner.

Just as that short span of time ultimately allowed an agrarian upstart to steamroll the most powerful country in the world, those same 10 minutes – properly applied – will let today’s individual investors wrest their financial freedom back from that seemingly invincible monolith we know as Wall Street.

To explain what I mean, let me give you some important context.

If you’ve been in this business for as long as I have.. talk to as many people as I have.. and navigated as many unique market situations as I have.. you’ll make a bewildering discovery.

There are a whole lot of different trading strategies that private wealth managers, mutual fund managers, hedge fund players, activist investors, and TV pundits talk about, make references to, write about, and claim to use with great success.

And when I say “a whole lot,” I’m talking about a truly mind-numbing array of supposedly successful ways of making money in stocks, bonds, options, currencies, futures, commodities – and lots of more arcane financial instruments.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: a lot of those strategies really do work.

They really do let you make money.

And here in The 10-Minute Millionaire, I’m not saying otherwise.

Indeed, during my trading days, I’ve used many of these other strategies myself.

So I’m not telling you all that there’s only one way to make money. I’m not claiming that the 10-Minute Millionaire system is the only way to achieve meaningful wealth.

But what I am saying is that – out of all these systems.. out of all these strategies – the approach I’m about to teach you here is the simplest, the easiest to understand and execute, and is the one that you’re most likely to stick with.

And that means it’s the system that’s the most likely of all succeed by making you wealthy.

Because once you learn it, set it up, practice it, and allow it to run, you’ll be able to maintain it in 10-minute increments.

With my strategy, those 10 minutes – employed at regular intervals, can and will:

• Halt your financial bleeding..

• Thwart the financial “enemies” – Wall Street, the taxman, and the “regulatory cesspool” we know as Washington – that threaten the well-being of your family.

• Neutralize the external geopolitical, economic, and financial market events that have obliterated lifetimes of hard work, sacrifice, and disciplined saving that so many Americans have engaged in.

• Restore your financial confidence so that you again feel compelled to pursue your personal dreams.

• And put you on a path that will end with your becoming a superpower – a financial superpower.. a millionaire.. a 10-Minute Millionaire.

To achieve this, you need to be like the colonists – and embrace a strategy that’s guerrilla-like in both focus and execution. Indeed, the parallels between then and now are truly striking.

Wall Street is so much like the British Army of Revolutionary War vintage – almost rigid in its discipline and unable to deviate from its long-held practices. Indeed, some of Wall Street is very much like Huck’s band of Loyalist raiders – gleefully targeting Main Street investors.. to strip them of their hard-earned savings.

All of this leaves Wall Street open for attack by investors who are willing to think and act independently.. just as the colonists successfully did. These realities create opportunities – some small and fleeting, others large and resolute.. all of them profitable – that you can exploit.

And with the easy-to-use tools and strategies I’m going to share, you can do all of this.. in increments as small as 10 minutes a day.

That’s what The 10-Minute Millionaire is all about.. taking and using that time.. and combining it with a trading strategy that positions you for one decisive investment victory after another – with overall victory as the goal.

In this case, I’m defining victory as financial independence – millionaire status.

And with this book, I’m going to show you just how get there.

I’m going to show you a system that will let you become a true market millionaire.

And you can achieve this goal by employing my simple-to-use system in a series of 10-minute increments.