Published: Friday, 5 Mar 2010 | 10:47 AM ET

By: Michael J. de la Merced
 

He calls himself “America’s Prophet,” a psychic, trained by Nepalese monks in the art of time travel, who can foretell the future of the stock market.

But to the authorities, Sean David Morton is simply a fraud — and a really, really bad psychic.

In a case that seems ripped from the pages of the satirical newspaper The Onion, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Mr. Morton for securities fraud on Thursday, claiming he swindled more than $6 million from investors by promising them “piles of money,” along with spiritual happiness.

Source: youtube.com
Sean David Morton

“I have called ALL the highs and lows of the market giving EXACT DATES for rises and crashes over the last 14 years,” Mr. Morton claimed at one point, according to the documents filed in connection with the case.

Next to the Ponzi scheme orchestrated by [...]

I frequently get asked which way I think the market is headed. Especially after the event of recent days where the markets have been on a sprint to the upside but with pull backs the last couple days.

I usually respond the same way every time.

“I don’t know.”

If I could predict the market I wouldn’t be here blogging, I would be out enjoying my billions.

Believe me, I have tried to learn how to predict the markets. That’s what technical and fundamental analysis is – an attempt to understand and predict market direction.  In the end, I gave up.

I cannot predict market direction. The pundits on TV and radio can’t do it, all the blogs and gurus online with their fancy explanations, charts, candles, lines, and waves can’t do it with any regularity and neither can the folks on Wall Street.

So why bother?

Why not trade in a way where it doesn’t matter which way the market moves?

Makes sense to me. And that is why I love option selling.  It does not matter what is going on in the market, what news comes out or doesn’t, the premium I sell loses value everyday, and I profit.

Let me give you an example. This month I have a McDonald’s (MCD) trade on. I want MCD to stay within a range. A couple days after I put the trade on, MCD moved higher and almost out of the range. So I adjusted the trade and made the range bigger.

That day a member emailed me with news that there is a rumor going around the MCD is going to raise its dividend. That might be why it went higher. And if the news about the dividend is correct, it might go higher still.

This member wanted me to know that this trade was not a good idea. He was warning me to what could happen. Thanks to this member, who had my best interests at heart, I began to worry about this position.

What if he was right and MCD shot up higher?

But after a while I calmed myself down and realized that it was not in my hands. If MCD went higher I would evaluate the position, adjust if possible or in the worst case scenario take a small loss. But the odds were on my side.

As it turned out, MCD has behaved fine since and the trade is right in the middle of the profit zone. Let’s hope it stays that way.

But my point is that it does not matter if the dollar is stronger or weaker. It does not matter what oil or gold do. The markets still move in ranges and if you play the ranges, 8 times out of 10 you will win. And those wins allow you to make much higher returns that you will in a savings account, a CD, a money market fund, or a mutual fund.