1. Program Selection



2. Portfolio Management

3. Money Management

In Part III, let's examine one of the more difficult areas of self-discipline, money management.

3. Money Management

There is no doubt that practicing good money management will lead you to more success, or at least insure that you avoid devastating failures.

Always remember that a primary goal of any investor should always be "Capital Preservation".

One of the main ideas behind money management is to preserve capital so as to enable one to live to trade another day. Before you ever enter a trade, the first thing you should ask yourself is, "How much money am I risking here and can I afford to lose it?"

Good money managers in the stock market never risk more than 2% of their total equity in any one transaction. You could probably do well in the HYIP arena by risking no more than 5%. You'll be more indifferent to any individual spend that way. Keeping your risk small and constant is absolutely critical. The idea here is that no one transaction is going to significantly affect you if it results in a loss. If a program goes under, you're not going to go broke, or have to sell your house, car, art and jewelry in order to go on. If you really want to succeed in the treacherous waters of HYIP programs, then remember this: "Keep your losses small, and the profits will take care of themselves."

You must never fall in love with your programs. Expect all of them to fail at some point and you won't be so surprised when they do. That's not being pessimistic. It's being realistic. Your goal is to consistently make a profit while minimizing your risk. Nothing more.

The Optimal Use of Your Capital

You should first determine how much money in total you're willing to devote to making profits with HYIPs. Let's say you have $1000 of mad money that you feel you can risk losing without any significant damage to you or your family's lifestyle. You'll want to create a portfolio of let's say 10 programs putting no more than 5% ($50) into each one. If you want to put all your money to work, then you'll have to find 20 programs for your portfolio, putting 5% into each.

Some will ask, "Should I put the same amount in each program?" Well, this is a personal choice, but it's our opinion that it's very difficult to predict which programs will fail and which will survive. Generally, we suggest you spread your money evenly across programs, but if you want to put a little more into programs you feel have lower risk, then fine. You should still place no more than 10% of your money at the very most into any one program.

Most people will tell you to get your original money back as soon as possible and only play with your profits. That really doesn't make any sense if you think about it. If you're that worried about losing your starting bankroll that you feel you have to get it back ASAP and tuck it back into your bank account, then you shouldn't have risked it in the first place and you shouldn't be playing this game.

If I start with $1000 that I can afford to lose, I am certainly not going to stop using that capital just because I made a $200 profit from my portfolio. On the contrary, with $1200 of capital, I can now put $60 (still 5%) into each program instead of $50. Either increase the amount of your spend evenly across programs or increase the number of programs you have in your portfolio.

Conservately speaking, you should be able to earn at least 20% net ROI per month on your capital. This even takes into consideration the program failures you'll encounter.

Let's think in terms of what it would take for you to actually make a living doing this. How much do you need every month to live on? Let's say it's $4000. OK, then you need to build your portfolio until your monthly ROI of 20% equals $4000. Starting with $1000 and making 20% per month, it would take you about 17 months to build your portfolio up to $20,000. At that point, your 20% ROI will yield you $4000 every month. Of course, if you could start off with $2000 instead of $1000, it would only take you 13 months.

Don't be impatient. Don't be greedy. Keep your emotions out of it and stick to the plan. Follow the guidelines above and you will most likely achieve financial success through HYIP and Surf programs.