An old friend of mine stopped by the office a few weeks ago and he unwittingly reinforced my complete confidence that you can still do very well in the markets. This is saying quite a bit given the frustrating state of the markets where government decree drives nearly all of daily trading activity.

Now, he wasn't overly bullish or bearish. He wasn't betting big on a rally with banks. And he didn't just make a huge score on some triple-leverage ETF or anything like that. He's simply running his business and, in the midst of the worst economic downturn decades, it's doing exceptionally well.