I was hooked on the stock market. I thought I couldn’t lose. What a learning experience I was in for! Borrowing money on everything I owned, including my home and cars, I bought shares in all the new stock issues of the midsixties. Margin accounts and undercollateralized loans enabled me to run $60,000 of borrowed capital into a stock fortune of $800,000 in just three years. I even considered a leisurely, full-time career as an investor. Then the roof fell in. Every morning, the newspaper would show my newly found fortune dwindling at an ever-increasing rate. Every afternoon, I was in contact with the holders of my notes and margin accounts, who wanted instant replacement for their disappearing collateral. My margin calls seemed to have margin calls! Companies in which I had invested heavily, such as Performance Systems (Minnie Pearl Fried Chicken) and Continental Strategics, went bankrupt, leaving me only memories and worthless stock certificates. I was forced to trade my new custom-designed Cadillac for a three-year-old Volkswagen Beetle, rather than have the car repossessed for lack of payments. My home was finally sold with barely enough equity to pay back most of the borrowed money. The entire fortune was gone. I had tasted both the bitter and the sweet of investing and vowed that I would never again risk my money until I knew how to win without the risk of losing.

The investment principles I discovered over the next few years were enough to build a lifetime investment fortune without investment mistakes, and these principles can do the same for you. Powerful investing is one of the easiest of all strategies to master, but the misinformation, lack of information, potential for loss, and outright fraud that exist in the arena of investing are enough to destroy any good financial plan. Traditional investing has become a mixture of storing money and legalized gambling. Players are the usual losers, financial institutions the winners.

Powerful investing is not like saving money. In America, savers die broke hoping for a pitiful 6% to 10% return that is instantly eaten up by taxes and inflation. Smart investors, on the other hand, have learned to earn 20% per year safely with no taxes and no commissions. How? By using the ten best and safest investments in America, those you won’t find at banks, brokerage firms, financial planners, or insurance agents. If the financial salesman’s office is your only source of information, not only are you dealing with second-class investments, you will more than likely lose.

The ten best investments and the average yearly returns you can expect are listed below. In this section, you will learn all the strategies for successfully using each of these great investments.
Your objective as an investor is to put your money to work safely and effectively, making yourself rich instead of making financial institutions rich. Through your choice of these investments you can enjoy income, tax shelter, and maximum growth or any combination you choose.