Hello. I’m G.C. Smith. “George” to my friends. Please call me that also. Whenever I read a book I’m always curious about the author. Where is he coming from? What can he teach me? What are his goals and motives in writing a book that may have taken countless hours of time.

I’m sure you can understand this as well. So, I’m going to bend your ear for a moment and tell you where I’m coming from.

You’re not going to believe this but I was a pilot for more than forty years. Ten years as a Navy pilot, then thirty as an airline pilot. If you’ve ever been to Hawaii perhaps you’ve been on one of my Aloha Airlines’ flights.

Here's a picture of the plane I flew, often making as many as twelve to fifteen landings in a day. It's also the plane that made the news many years ago when the top tore off one of our planes and an emergency landing was made at Maui.

Unfortunately, my company went out of business when the economy turned sour worldwide, hurting tourism.

So, what has all this got to do with trading? I've been told many times that pilots make good traders. I can't say that for sure, but pilots do have two things in common.

They are highly disciplined. They follow the rules.

Secondly, they use a checklist so they don't forget to put the wheels down, no matter how many landings they've made that day.

You do everything the same way, using the same procedures, every time. It’s the same strategy successful traders use in their daily trading.

When I was a teenager I read a book that fascinated me. It was about an individual who traveled around the world while trading the stock market using telegrams. I still remember the name: “How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market” by Nicolas Darvas. It started me on the road to stock market investing.

Over the years I studied everything I could about the investment business. I began charting all the popular stocks of the day using the methods described by Edwards and Magee in their investment classic, “Technical Analysis of Stock Trends.”

Later I began charting and trading commodity futures. As time passed, however, the markets became too wild for my style of trading. There was a time when silver plunged down the limit each day for about a month, wiping out even the Hunt brothers who, it was said, were intent on cornering the markets.

Like all airline pilots, forced to retire at age sixty by Federal law, (recently changed, but not retroactive), we moved to the Pacific Northwest, not only for a change of scenery, but to avoid the early morning trading hours dictated by the time zones.

Hawaii is six hours behind New York during daylight saving time and getting up at 3 a.m. each day was not my idea of retirement.

Nor was playing golf or taking cruises. I enjoy the challenge of internet trading and even wrote an ebook about my experiences, $500 Dollars per Trade

Happily settled with my wife Jo Ann, a former PanAm flight attendant, two cats, and a black Lab I believe we have the best of all retired life.