[bovverd]

An interesting subject -

The thing is if he had pretty much perfected this investment method, paper traded for a good length of time very successfully and was entirely confident of reducing the risk down to zero ie to not lose any money what would have been stopping PT getting a fair sized bank loan to get himself going?

This could possibly explain the gains he mentions but at the same time it might not be something he would want to be seeming to officially endorse in his book as the correct approach for us amateurs.

For me personally If I can double 5k or 10k and become skilled enough at this to not lose any money ie spotting the signs when to jump off of a stock and wait etc I will have no hesitation in scrapping my plans to spend 30k on an ever depreciating new car and will instead use the money to invest with.

In the UK if you purchase a 30k car it would be worth on average after one year around 20k. An insane waste of money. If I were to borrow the same 30k for investing my loan repayments would remain the same but I would have at least a chance of making the sum grow.

My theory is PT probably practised and perfected this investment method with $1000 and then once he'd mastered the art of not losing money and racking up 20% gains probably went out and borrowed a sizeable chunk to really get the markets working for him, hence the leap from $1000 to £1000,000.