Did you know that by discovering and applying seven simple skills, you could quickly and easily build a fortress of financial security?

As an investor and an entrepreneur I have spent the last twenty years researching numerous ways to achieve passive income, wealth and security.

During this twenty year quest I have had the unique opportunity to study under some of the greatest investment minds this country has ever produced. Many of these great investors I never had the opportunity to shake hands with personally, however, I can always continue to hope.

One of the most important things that I have learned about investing and wealth creation is that one needs a proven and successful system that can be easily learned, applied and managed.

This is what I set out to create almost 3 years ago. During the last 3 years I have spent an inordinate amount of time talking, polling, questioning and studying individual investors across the country and I learned some valuable information that I would like to share with you.

Of the people I surveyed…

71% shared with me that they had spent more money on education than the education had made them.

92% shared with me that they were tired of the “Sales Seminars - Pitch Fests”

73% said they want a “pay as you go” educational program

88% said they would like to choose from a list of strategies.

79% said they would like to learn specific skills from multiple instructors

74% said they would like to learn 1-3 investing strategies per month.

14% said they would like to have someone just do it for them.

Now a lot can be concluded from this, however, I will try to narrow it down to a couple of obvious conclusions:

1. Investors want to be educated and they want the education on their terms.
2. Investors would prefer to “do the work” themselves.

It is because of this information that I wrote the now published (and best selling) book:

MERCATO: The Underground Art of Wealth Creation.

MERCATO is actually an acronym for

1. Master Mind Groups (surround yourself with people who are smarter, faster and richer)
2. Entity Structures (which is right for you)
3. REO investing (The most lucrative real estate there is)
4. Credit (both personal and business)
5. Auctions (Not Ebay or any equivalent)
6. Trading (specific setups and assets)
7. Outsourcing (Getting others to do what you can’t or won’t)

To better help you understand each of the above steps role in achieving your investment goals allow me to briefly elaborate on each one.

Master Mind Groups – In the MERCATO program I teach you how to not only create a mastermind group, but more specifically how to get paid to do so. Surrounding yourself with accountability partners enables you to exponentially explode your efforts and results.

Entity Structures – Each available entity structure was created for a purpose. It is imperative that you use the proper entity for the proper purpose.

REO investing – With the flood of foreclosures that have already occurred and the thousands expected each month, this has created the most profitable and simple real estate investing opportunity we have seen in generations.

Credit – In our society cash used to be king, however, as we become a more global economy credit is becoming the currency of choice. Getting, keeping and using credit as an investing resource is more important today than any time in our nations history.

Auctions – When most people think of auctions, they think of Ebay, and rightly so. Ebay has taught us that the auction process can be simple and fun. Ebay has also brought the auction process to the masses and taught us that it is a viable avenue to selling and acquiring various goods and services. MERCATO teaches you how to use the auction process to quickly and easily flip your REO properties and other real estate for profit.

Trading – When most non-traders hear this word they begin to run for the exit. MERCATO has taken the mystery out of trading by teaching the “what you need to know” information as opposed to hours and hours of frivolous theory.

Outsourcing – We can never achieve greatness on our own, no one ever has or ever will. It is this truth that quickly needs to be accepted and acted upon. MERCATO teaches that each of us has natural talents, strengths and abilities; it is how we use our strengths and the strengths of others around us that could determine how far and quickly we will rise.

Combining the power of these seven simple skill sets can enable anyone to achieve a life of promise, fulfillment, wealth, security and success.

The MERCATO training program is set to be unleashed onto the financial world on April 20th 2009.  In anticipation and celebration of this occasion we are looking to find 6 MERCATO Millionaire recipients.

The contest is going to be quite simple and there is no cost to participate.

We will choose 6 nominees on or after April 20, 2009.  Each selected nominee will be trained in MERCATO: The underground art of wealth creation.  They will be given full access to all the tools and education the MERCATO program contains.

Odds of being selected will depend based on number of nominations.
Here are the rules:

1.  Each contestant must be nominated. (You may nominate yourself).
2.  Nominations must be sent to millionaire@undergroundinvestorsnetwork.com or can be  posted on this blog.
3.  Winners will be chosen based on the reasons the candidate was nominated.
4.  To be nominated you must submit the candidates’ full name, phone number and email address.
5.  To be nominated you must submit the reasons why your nominee should be trained in the MERCATO program.
6.  You may nominate as many people as you desire, but only once.
7.  Winners will be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement and agree to have their story documented throughout the year.
8.  Each nominee must agree to abide by the training requirements (all of which will be detailed to the winners) upon being chosen.
9.  If any selected nominee can’t or won’t agree to the training conditions a new nominee will be selected.
10.  If you have any questions you may post them on this blog or send them to millionaire@undergroundinvestorsnetwork.com

I ran across this article today and I felt compelled to offer my comments on a paragraph by paragraph response. Even though this is taking time out of my day I felt it was that important. You can read the article here… Value Creation Vs. Value Destruction and post your own comments as well.

Capitalism 2.0: Value Creation vs. Value Destruction

“In the Creator vs. Speculator debate, there is also the need to deal with the issue of when speculation becomes a way of value destruction as opposed to value creation.”

MY RESPONSE: The first paragraph begins with the presupposition that speculators are somehow either responsible for or advocate value destruction. Truth is speculators are just as strong, if not stronger on the “value creation” side of the markets. There are far more “bullish” speculators than “bearish” speculators.

“One of the problems that we have with Wall Street compensation is that traders make money both as the market goes up and as the market goes down. And often, a tremendous amount of market manipulation is going on in the process, destroying many people’s honest, hard work.”

MY RESPONSE: Why is making money “both as the market goes up and as the market goes down” a problem? This avenue of profit is available to anyone who chooses to educate themselves in the markets behavior and compensation structures. Why should we only be able to profit if an asset appreciates in value? This would assume that assets never fall in value to do external events, market cycles, intra-company news releases and the hundreds of other reasons a company’s share price may fall in value. Just because one “speculates” that the price of an asset may fall, this does not mean that the speculator has any desire in the the devaluation of a companies true net worth.

How many companies became overinflated (in price) during the “dotcom” era? These price levels were not based on actual earnings, (”many people’s honest, hard work” - see above) and fundamental value, they were based on greed. The speculators (including many “average Joe” investors drove the stock prices up.

Based on the original article writers premise if speculators drive the price of an asset up, we shouldn’t be able to profit from that behavior either. If that is the case let’s just close the stock markets and price every company at $1.00 a share and call it “fair trade”.

Oh and by the way, the original author forgot to mention that traders can also profit if the price of the asset “stays the same” or trades in a range. This is the ultimate speculation.

“Jim Cramer has openly described mechanisms used by hedge fund managers to manipulate stock prices. He also points out that some hedge fund managers spread false rumors to drive a stock down. In his days as a hedge fund manager, he did it too.”

MY RESPONSE: You know what, this is true and it is shameful. However, the exact same process is done more on the Up side of the markets than the down side… still shameful, but true. So I guess the argument should be… no one can ever say positive or negative things about a publicly traded company as this may cause the stock price to rise or fall causing people to make or lose money.

Here is my question… Do stocks always rise on good news? Do they always fall on bad news? Hardly. Being able to profit from any market direction is CAPITALISM at its best. I say; “if you don’t like capitalism… MOVE.” In fact I will help you pack.

“I have been thinking about the short-selling issue for a while, and have pretty much come to the conclusion that short-selling needs to be banned. No one should be making money if a company’s stock is going down. And especially, no one should have the incentive or the tools to bring a company’s stock price down.”

MY RESPONSE: Are you serious? Ban Short-Selling? Then I guess we should also ban Long-Buying. If we can’t profit from the fall in price of a poorly run company (GM and others) then we shouldn’t be able to profit from one that is well run (GOOG and others).

And while we are at it why not let the fools run the country. You know, the ones that believe “Too each according to his needs and from each according to their ability.” - Karl Marx.

Oh wait, it appears the fools are already in power and writing articles to ban capitalist profit streams like Short-Selling.

“The common counter-argument I have been hearing is that short-sellers keep the market in check, and prevent bubbles. My response: that is the job of analysts, to ensure that bad news, problems, concerns, etc. are reported.”

MY RESPONSE: Yes short-sellers do provide a hedge and do help to keep the markets in check. I, however, would like to spend more time on the argument of “analysts”. It is (in the words of the original author), “the job of analysts, to ensure that bad news, problems, concerns, etc. are reported.” Are you serious?

First, lets assume that analysts always tell the truth… (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and there has never been a case of impropriety. Second, lets assume that the companies that the analysts are tracking always tell the truth to the analysts and the public (Enron and others).

So the argument is… since the companies always tell the truth and the analysts always tell the truth then the only thing we would ever hear from either of them would be happy, joyful, sparkling news causing the stock prices to only go up and everyone to accumulate wealth beyond their wildest fantasy. Wow I can’t even believe I typed that. I must be going insane as well.

Reality Check: Companies, management and workers sometimes make mistakes causing bad things to happen (Merck and Erbitux 2006), this was bad news and quite harmful to Merck. This caused the stock price of Merck to gap down over night when the news was released. The original authors defense in this situation would be to just sell the stock (after the loss) with no way to recoup any of those overnight losses as the stock continued to sell off over the next days.

Short-sellers were able to profit from this news without speculating and causing any “value destruction” Merck brought this price action on themselves and educated capitalists profited.

“And finally, the P&L is a perfectly sound mechanism to gauge company performance, unless it is cooked. And since cooking books is illegal, I believe that we have all the mechanisms necessary to keep markets in check without short-selling. Without value destruction.

MY RESPONSE: Yes Virgina, “cooking the books” is illegal. So is writing a sign in any other language than English in Georgia or acknowledgment of a supreme being before being able to hold public office in Texas or taking more than three sips of beer while standing in Texas or the law that clearly states that sunshine is guaranteed to the masses in California… shall I go on?

Just because “cooking the books” is illegal doesn’t mean that companies won’t continue the practice and when they get discovered (as I hope they all do) I and thousands of other capitalists just like me want to continue to profit from it.

So, once again, I say; “if you don’t like capitalism… MOVE.” In fact I will help you pack.

“And, if we prevent value destroyers from making money by destroying value, Wall Street compensation - compensation of the speculators - will also fall in alignment with those of the creators.”

I know this is a controversial point of view, and I welcome debate on the topic.”

Well, my socialist leaning friend (my opinion only), here is my response to your request for “debate on the topic”.

- Rant Over. Back to your lives people.

Ok. So Newton didn’t really write a law about economic woe. He did, however, write the first law of motion which states: An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

How does that relate to our current financial crisis? Allow me to shed some light. There are approximately seven billion people on this planet. Now let’s assume that half of these people are either too old, too young, too lazy, too stupid or too high to work.

That still leaves almost three and a half billion people who still get up every morning and do something productive for somebody in exchange for marketable currency.

Now you can call me an optimist or anything else, but I sincerely believe that three and a half billion motivated worker bees is one fairly large “Object in Motion”.

Now the only thing working against this object is a hand-full of over-stimulated, greedy, liberal politicians and union leaders bent on taking our world over (the unbalanced force).

I am of the opinion (shared by many who will be attending “tea parties” in the U.S. and similar protests worldwide), that those over-stimulated, greedy, tree-hugging dirt-munchers who turn their lights off for an hour (thereby cooling off the planet and slowing global warming), will be over run by the object in motion (three and a half billion people with integrity) thus allowing the object in motion to continue its pursuit of excellence to move continuously forward and retake what rightfully belongs to the hands that toil until it is once again slowed down by other unbalanced forces.

So go to work in a relentless pursuit of excellence and we will once again be free… or we can allow the unbalanced force to scare us into believing that “we need them”, at which point we will be doomed.

It is OUR choice.