The Traditional markets are all in decline, carry high risk, and most of us don’t know where to put our money nowadays.

* Money markets, CDs, T Bills, and Savings account rates are less than 2% annually.
* Real estate is in a huge slump and many fortunes have been lost during this recession.
* The Stock Market is at the same level it was ten years ago (actually it’s down about 4% between 8/1/2000 and 8/1/2010 – after TEN YEARS!).
* Factor in an inflation rate of about 3% every year since 2000, and you might as well put your money under the bed.
* All that risk and very little gain!

Are there any markets that can even hedge inflation these days?
Actually there is. The Commodity, Futures, and Forex (currencies) trading markets are providing higher returns than the stock market was ever capable of, even during this latest financial meltdown. And this can occur during years that the traditional markets had substantial declines! However, since very few people know about these “alternative” markets, you might be thinking: “Commodities, Futures, and Forex? Those are risky markets that only gamblers deal with, aren’t they? Why would I even consider dealing with those dangerous markets?”

Let’s start by telling you a little bit about my background? I am a former certified financial planner who owned a financial planning practice with a fortune 500 company for 20 years. I had numerous licenses to offer most financial products available and also earned my Masters degree in Financial Planning. Towards the end of this career, I had about $30 million under management consisting of 350 household groups. Why did I never even learn about or consider these market opportunities for my clients during my career? And why am I so interested in them now?

Commodities, Futures, and Forex markets are minimally regulated compared to the Stock Market and Securities. This separates these markets substantially in the following ways and creates a number of differences between them and traditional financial vehicles.

1. Most financial planners and stock brokers cannot offer or receive a fee selling these products. Guess why then that these products are discouraged, never provided training for, and generally looked down upon in my profession.

2. Being minimally regulated gives these products a huge advantage over traditional products. The startup and ongoing costs in setting up traditional financial services are immense (a mutual fund, insurance product, stock advisory service, …). Regulatory as well as management and reporting fees eat away daily at the returns from these products. Consider also that fund managers and their teams all get paid whether their services have profitable months or months of losses, further eroding the value of your investment over time.

3. Trading in the “alternative” markets allows an expert trader to make substantial gains in both up and down markets. When the stock market goes up or down, most individual stocks go up or down with it. You can’t count on Microsoft to go up when Oracle goes down. A good Forex trader can have gains when the yen goes up or down. So if a stock has a 25% gain one month and a 15% loss the next month, the net return is 10%. Trading in the “alternative” markets, that could have been a 25% gain the first month and a 15% gain the next month for a net 40% gain overall!

“But being minimally regulated is a bad thing – isn’t it? Wasn’t that what caused the latest financial crisis?” A big reason these markets aren’t regulated is that there isn’t as much of a need for it.

With traditional securities, the underlying value of the companies you are buying stock from can be manipulated, inflated, and faked (remember Enron, Worldcom, Madoff, …). Poor and fraudulent accounting, embezzlement, waste, all erode a company’s worth, and there’s a huge incentive to inflate the perceived value of your company to more than it really is (to raise your company’s stock value, receive higher pay for your role with that company, …).

But with commodities, futures, and Forex, you can’t deceive or fake the true value of the product that is being bought or sold. Corn will buy or sell at what someone wants to sell or buy it for. It’s the same with currencies. Eventually it comes down to what we as consumers are willing to pay for a product to assess it’s true value. Therefore, the numbers are harder to manipulate and there’s less of a need for government oversight.

These is a perception too that commodities and currencies are sort of shady products sold at the fringe in unscrupulous ways. These markets actually trade in the trillions of dollars daily. Yes, that’s how much is traded daily. And you can’t really call the supplies we eat and need daily as something “shady”: flour, sugar, coffee, beef, … The market is older than the stock market and has a distinguished reputation among those who deal with it.

What can I make in these markets? Our goal is to target trading systems that earn us 100% annually. For a balanced portfolio we include certain traders that net 50% but with far less risk, but have other systems that often profit more than 100% annually.

What’s the catch? Only 1 out of 1000 people that trade in these markets are capable of delivering these positive results consistently. To achieve these results you need to be an Expert Trader. However, it is an easy arena to scam and there are many out there. One of the easiest scams to perpetrate in these markets is to start ten different trading accounts. Wait for one of those accounts to have a string of maybe three months in a row of superlative returns. This isn’t that hard to do in these markets – string together a couple of months with a 50% – 100% return. We’ll just forget about those nine other accounts which are by now deep in the hole. You then tout your successful account as proof of your amazing skill as a trader. You bring in as many investors as you can, as quickly as you can, based on your verifiably superlative results. But you want to do this quickly before your one profitable account starts to look like your nine other losing accounts.

So, the key is to locate, test, and verify which traders are consistently returning in the range and risk level that you are interested in. You can fake the system for a couple of months, but we work with a due diligence company that vets our traders. They must pass background checks, must have successful trading results for a minimum of 5 years (many have been trading successfully for over 20-25 years), and continue to provide positive results for our clients month after month.

Author Bio: The author, Rachel Victoria, is a former CFP with an MSFS in Financial Planning. Passive Income Opportunities Credit 2 Cashflow Copyright © 2010 passiveincomeopportunities.net, All Rights Reserved This article may be freely used and transmitted, but only in it’s entirety, without any changes to it’s content or linking.

Category: Finances
Keywords: investment, high yield, forex, commodities, futures, options, trading service, verified, passive in