ivorytowergroup - ivorytowergroup.net
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http://www.ivorytowergroup.net
Ivory Tower Group
Please read the following information very carefully, and you should really read it several times. It's that important.
A LITTLE HISTORY
Back in 1996, two friends from college and I got together for dinner. We were discussing what we were doing with our lives. I was working for a high-tech firm in Berkeley, California, and my other two friends had similar jobs. None of us were very happy with our work, so we got into a conversation about what it was we really wanted to do. We were all pretty good with computers. Tommy had some good financial know-how. Steve could play guitar and wrote killer songs. And I had a good photographic eye. So, we decided to have weekly meetings and come up with an idea to make money so none of us would have to work ever again. In the end, none of our existing talents played out. I couldn't make money in photography and Steve wasn't going to be publishing any number one songs anytime soon. Tommy was the only one whose talent we could really take advantage of. We researched all the get rich quick schemes on the Internet, and we also scoured magazines, newspapers, and any other source we could think of. We even asked friends and family. But nothing really stood out. Until Tommy mentioned something called sport arbitrage. I had no idea what he was talking about, and neither did Steve. So, he explained it to us.
Basically, he said it was the idea of placing two bets with two different online bookies that gave slightly different odds on the outcome of the race or event or whatever. If you placed your bets right, it would not matter who won, as you would make a slight profit in any case. Sounded great to me. So, we tried it out for a while, and while it did work, it didn't work fast enough. We weren't going to make the millions that we needed in order to retire from the work force. So, after a few months, we decided to go back to the drawing board.
We made it a point to have monthly dinners to discuss our ideas, and we kept meeting, but nothing new was tried until 2000. Yes, it took that long. This time, it was me who brought the idea to the table. I had just heard of something called Forex, the buying and selling of foreign currency. You could make money by buying and selling at the right time, and you didn't have to have much upfront money to get started. We were all excited at the prospect, and so we decided to spend the next three month researching Forex, reading everything we could about it. We set up test accounts, and got as much material as we possibly could. We even went to seminars. And then, we decided in June of 2000, to give it a shot with a live account. In less than a week, we ended up with a margin call on our account, which meant we loss more than half the value of the account. It was a disaster. The system that we tried looked so good on paper, that we were all in disbelief. How could it happen? So, we decided to take a break and look for other ventures.
FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
During the summer of 2002, I took a trip to Kansas to visit a friend there. I knew her from our high school days and she and her husband lived on a farm there, raising chickens, or something like that. I asked her if she enjoyed the farm life. And she said she liked it a whole lot, but there was no living to be made from it. She did it because she liked it. Getting up a five in the morning, doing all sorts of chores, getting the kids ready for school, making breakfast, etc. And then selling eggs by the side of the road. I thought about it for a while and decided that it was definitely not the life for me, but I was glad she enjoyed it. My question to her was, how were they making a living? I noticed her husband had no job he went to, so where were they getting their money?
She said that her husband discovered a way of making money that supported them and allowed them to buy the farm outright. Outright? You mean, no mortgage? No mortgage, she said. And over a million in savings, she added. A million in savings? What did they do? Rob banks? No, she said. It was even better than robbing banks. It was perfectly legal, and anyone could do it, if they put enough effort into it. Did it involve selling or telephoning or anything like that? Nope. It was Forex. Ah. I told her my experience with Forex, and she laughed and said that the same thing happened to her and her husband, three times. They burned through their trading account three times before they finally got it right. And they've been making money at it ever since. And it's at a point where he only trades a few times a week, and only when he feels like it. I was impressed and wanted to know more. I asked if her husband would teach me. She said she'd asked him when he returned from a trip he was on to visit his sister in Georgia. That would be in two days. But I had to leave for home the following day, so I'd miss him. That's OK, she said. He could explain things over the phone. OK, I thought. Whatever works.
Two days later, I got my call from him. In less than a half hour, he explained what he did to make money in the Forex market. It sounded too easy, but I decided then and there to open up another test account and give it a try. No, he said. Don't use a test account. Use a live account, but only fund it with about $500. You'll get lot more out of it with a live account, he explained. And it will make you a better trader. He discovered that whenever he used a test account, he'd do things like deviate from his plan or do stupid things, because he knew it wasn't real money. Always use a real account with real money, no matter what you are doing. Just do it in small drips and drabs. You'll get much better results than if you use a test account. OK, I said. So, I decided to reactivate our real trading account, the one that we margin called earlier.
I wrote down everything I could remember from our conversation on the phone, and when I was done, I was surprised that it all fit on a single piece of paper. Would this system really work? It certainly worked for them. But could it work for me? I discussed it with Steve and Tommy, and they both agreed we should give it a try, but keep the values low. Now, that was the good thing about this system, as it forced you to only put a certain percentage of your account in action at any one time, so it was really safeguarded against total implosion. The banner day was to be September 9, 2002. I put everything into place and waited. I didn't have to wait for long. By October 9, 2002, only a month later, the account was up by 20%. It was totally amazing. But could it last? I kept going, and sure enough, every month, I made at least 20 to 30 percent gains. By December 9, 2002, the account more than doubled. I started with exactly $500 in the account and ended up with $1022.47. I taught the system to my two friends, and we took turns managing the account. Exactly one year later, on September 9, 2003, we had a little over $7500 in the account. And that was from our measly $500 investment! Not bad. Not bad at all.
Instead of putting more into the account, we all agreed that we would just use what was there and leave it put until it reached the 3 million mark. On September 9, 2004, we had over $100K.
On July 5, 2005, after watching a particularly spectacular fireworks display, I decided to register the domain name ivorytowergroup.net. I would have registered the dot com, but that was already taken. I told my group that I wanted to help others make the kind of money we were making, but that wouldn't happen until later.
On September 9, 2005, we had over $1.5 million. And on December 9, 2005, we reached the $3 million mark!
CASHING OUT
What happened next surprised us and will probably also surprise you. Yes, we decided to take some money out, but only part of it. We decided we would each take out $100K and leave the rest in place, and we were going to continue to grow the account. So, we had a little less than $2.8 million in the account, and we kept with the same system month after month. We decided each one of us would take charge of the account for a month at a time. That would give the others two months off. And we also decided that we would pay ourselves $100K every three months. So, there we were. No jobs, but lots of money and lots of free time. We travelled, bought stuff, went in and out of relationships, and otherwise had pretty normal lives. Until Tommy discovered he had a deadly disease. He was getting increasingly bad headaches, and the diagnosis was a brain tumor. And it was the type they could do nothing about.
Freakishly, he passed away on September 9, 2006, the anniversary of us setting up this system. No wife or kids, but he had family that he took care of. They had all emigrated from Vietnam back in the late 70s when he was just a little kid, and they scraped by best they could. Once the money flowed, he was able to do a really good job providing for his family. Steve and I both agreed that his family was entitled to a third of the account, so we offered it to them. At that point, his share of the account was worth a little over $7 million. I was elected the one to visit his mom and tell her the news.
Tommy's mom was a small woman. They lived in a nice house that Tommy had bought for them. No mortgage, just yearly property tax. Tommy had three sisters, and they all lived at home, but were now thinking about the possibility of going to college or doing something different than working a regular job. I told Tommy's mom about the $7 million. I didn't know what her reaction would be. She seemed unfazed. Yes, she knew that there was a lot of money involved, but she didn't seem particularly interested in it. She explained that Tommy contributed to the family on a monthly basis, and that she had saved most of the money he gave. And they had quite enough to live on. She didn't need the money. Well, that surprised me. What was I going to do with it then? She said I should keep it in the account and that some sort of foundation or something should be set up in Tommy's name. That's what she would like. I agreed. On one condition. We would all donate part of our profit to that foundation. What I didn't tell her was, I would be putting aside $100K a month from Tommy's part of the earnings and it would go into a trust for her and her family.
CHANGES
The next year brought a lot of change, but it was all for the better. Steve met a woman and they ended up getting married. He was still heavily involved in our project, what we ended up calling the Ivory Tower Group for lack of a better name. I took some of my profit and invested in a few things, like a fast food franchise, but I just didn't like the idea of owning a business like that, so I ended up selling it at a loss. I travelled a lot and decided to see if I could go to every state. Then, I got sick. Thankfully, it wasn't life threatening, but it was enough to make me do an assessment of my life. What did I want to do? What would my mark be? I had no clue. I had lots of money, but no clue.
Earlier, I had the idea of teaching other people how to do what we were doing. So, I decided to give it a go. Maybe run some classes or something like that. So, that's what our group ended up doing. And it was an abysmal failure. Not one of the people we taught was successful at trading. Not a single one! We did a postmortem and found that every single one ended up not following the plan strictly. How was that possible? The three of us were able to do it. We didn't even fudge ever! So, why couldn't we train even one other person to do the same thing? It just didn't make sense. We immediately stopped the classes and refunded everyone whatever they ended up losing. It didn't cost us much, except maybe some embarrassment.
I decided to figure out what went wrong and spent the next few months doing just that. At the end of that time, I decided that we did absolutely nothing wrong, that it wasn't our fault. So, what happened then? What caused all these people to blow through their trading accounts and not follow simple instructions?
I called my friend in Kansas and asked to speak with her husband. I asked him if he ever taught the system to anyone else, and if so, how they did with it. He said yes, he taught people. Then he said, the funny thing was, they all did perfectly fine with it, but when those people tried to teach others, not one of them was able to make it work. I was stunned. What kind of mumbo jumbo was this? Only people he directly taught could do the system? Instead of thinking about it any longer, I decided the only thing to do was, do the trading ourselves and leave it at that. And then I came upon a startling realization. Didn't I just teach Tommy and Steve the system? Didn't they do just as well as me? Now, nothing was making sense. I had a mystery and no way to solve it. Until Emily came into the picture.
Emily would become the love of my life. We met at a park near my house. I was out for fresh air and she was out with her 2 year old son. She asked if she could sit on the seat next to me on the park bench, and I said yes. She then glanced at my ******** and asked me what all those figures meant. I almost always took a ******** with me wherever I went, and on this particular page, I was doodling. But it was interesting looking doodle. I decided to be smart and say I was trying to work out something really complicated and my doodling helped clear my mind. She said she could use something like that herself, as her husband of only three years had just become the latest victim of the war we were fighting overseas. I said I was sorry for her loss and we started talking. One thing led to another, and one day, I ended up inviting her and her son to my house for lunch. Although my house well well decorated, it had a distinctly bachelor feel to it. I had a living room with the hugest flat screen ********** that Circuit City had to offer. I also had what amounted to a supercomputer in my den with a huge flat screen display and all sorts of forex trading charts on the screen. I didn't use any of that, but it looked rather impressive.
We had lunch, and I asked if she could stay and talk for a while longer. She put her son Alex down in a portacrib she brought, and we retired to the den, where she immediately asked me about the Forex information on my screen. She knew what Forex was. I was impressed. I explained to the best of my ability, without knowing much about all the indicators I had on the screen. Really, I had them up to make things look interesting, but our system used none of it.
We talked Forex until Alex woke up, and I have to admit that it was nice to have a conversation with someone that sort of knew what I did for a living. Then, I did it. I asked her if she wanted to take a stab at the system we used. She said OK, and I gave her a copy of that one sheet of notes I originally made. She thanked me and took Alex home.
I didn't hear back from Emily until three days later. She called me and said she tried my system, but it just didn't seem to work. I asked her if she followed it to the letter, and she said yes, but she decided to tweak this and tweak that, and I told her no, you can't tweak anything. You can't make the system your own. It is what it is. She said she'd try it without making any changes and asked if we could see a movie together. I heartily agreed, and with babysitter on the ready, we dropped Alex off and went to see something truly forgettable. But what wasn't forgettable was the conversation we had after the movie. It quickly turned to Forex, and to my system in particular. She said it looked like it couldn't possibly work, which is why she ended up making some slight changes. Everything she said made perfect sense to me, and I agreed with her. And then it hit me. What I had said to her earlier was absolutely correct. It was what it was. If you didn't understand Forex, you were better off with the system than if you did. However, I did understand Forex, to a degree. So, why didn't I want to make it better? I guess the thought never occurred to me. And when I gave the system to Tommy and Steve, they probably figured it worked, so why mess with it? How about the people we were trying to teach? Before the start of each class, we had asked them each to fill out a questionnaire, and one of the questions was, do you have any prior Forex experience? Every single one of them had said yes. After all, we had advertised the class to Forex traders that were looking for a new system. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Each one of those people probably fell into the same trap as Emily. Having enough knowledge to shoot themselves in the foot, they probably all tweaked the system. And having done that, they set themselves up for complete and total failure.
I was right. Emily tried the system for a week without any sort of tweak, and sure enough, it worked for her. She was amazed. But she also gave me some advice, because she had seen this kind of thing before. She told me that we shouldn't ever attempt to teach anyone else the system, especially in a classroom setting. People being people, they would try to make it their own, have bad luck at it, and then blame us for promoting something defective. I heartily agreed with her. But I wanted to make something available to people, so that's where the various versions of this web site have come into play.
Originally, starting September 9, 2005, the three year anniversary of the system, I had this web site up offering 10 percent per month to anyone who wanted to get in on it. We had people sign contracts and mail them to us with a check. We'd deposit the check, transfer the funds to the forex account, and then send them a monthly check of 10 percent of their deposit. It was a lot of paperwork and time consuming, especially when we hit the 100 mark in people who were involved. It basically meant one of us had to take an entire day to go through a spreadsheet and issue checks. Plus deposit checks as they came in.
After six months of taking checks and mailing checks, we decided to make a switch. First thing we did was mail everyone a final check for their principal. Then, we updated the site to offer payment via PayPal. That was Steve's idea. He used PayPal a lot because he bought stuff on eBay all the time. And sometimes he sold stuff, and with PayPal, they sent him a check card that gave him access to his PayPal balance to use anywhere where MasterCard was accepted. OK, no more checks in the mail. We could simply have people send a PayPal payment to us. Then, we'd just send PayPal payments to them of 10 percent each month. We've been doing just that since March 2006.
So, if you want to give this a try, all you have to do is send a PayPal payment to ivorytowergroup at gmail.com. Remember to change the "at" to an @ sign. It should be at least $100 or else we'll just send it back. And you should mark the payment as being for "Services". Then, once a month, usually on the first of the month or the first day of the month that doesn't fall on a weekend or holiday, we send PayPal payments of 10% out to everyone. We've got a somewhat automated system for that, so it doesn't take that much effort, and I personally like it a lot better than mailing out checks.
The first few months we used PayPal, everything went smooth, but then catastrophe struck. We got our account frozen! Fortunately, it was unfrozen fairly quickly, but it gave us a real scare. We're not even exactly sure how it happened, but it appears to have been the work of one person who complained to them about us. Funny thing was, it doesn't even appear to have been anyone who participated in our group, so your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, since then, PayPal has worked exceptionally well. We've had a few people request refunds, which we do gladly. You get your entire principal back at any time, no questions asked. But when people do say why they want their money back, it's usually because they need a lump sum to pay something or they've had a family emergency. Whatever the reason, if you ask for your money back, you get it.
Take a look at the title of this page and you'll see a number. That number represents the total number of people who are currently involved in our group. Once it hits 1000, we won't take any more people, unless people drop out. We've decided that 1000 is what we can handle before the work of making and taking payments gets too far out of hand.
SOUNDS LIKE A PONZI
Of all the emails we get, probably the one that stands out is the one claiming this has to be a ponzi scheme of some sort. No one could possibly guarantee 10 percent returns per year let alone per month! Well, you know what? What we always say is, we do at least that each and every month. As a matter of fact, our worst month in the history of doing this was November 2007. We only hit a gain of 4.47% in our trading account that month. And I take full responsibility for that one. It was my turn to handle the account, and I was sick that month and let things slide a bit too much. By the time I regained consciousness, we ended up with only that gain. Let me tell you something that you won't hear on the financial news networks. It's possible to make gains of 10 or 20 percent every month doing Forex. It's also possible to lose your shirt if you don't know what you are doing. But if you remain true to your trading plan, you will not go wrong. And if we were a ponzi, we would have died a horrible death a long time ago. We don't get enough people interested every month to use their money to pay off earlier people. A ponzi scheme would fail much too quickly with us.
If you want to play it safe, go in with a small amount, and then when you feel more comfortable, after seeing the payments hit your PayPal account, you can always add. Whatever gets sent to us from a particular email address will get added to any other payments at that email address. For example, you can start with $500 and then three month later add another $1000. After that, your account total will be $1500, and you'll get $150 PayPal payments each month.
CONCLUSION
I post updates here if there are any.
Emily and I got married in June 2008. We took Alex with us on the honeymoon, and I know that probably sounds like a drag to a lot of people, but we had great fun! We hit Disneyland, Seaworld, and a bunch of other places. The nice thing about what I do is, no matter where I am I can do it. If it's my turn to trade the account and make the monthly payments, as long as I have a computer, I can do it from anywhere.
If you have any questions, please use that PayPal email address listed above. Make sure you form it into a real email address first. It's the way it is right now because we don't want spam harvesters to grab it and then inundate us with spam. Naturally, we're all on the road a lot now, but someone will definitely reply to you, usually, within 24 hours.
David
For more information, visit
http://www.ivorytowergroup.net
Added for discussion
rajhere
Note:
Please do your DD before investing in any program.
