As we all recover from tryptophan-induced comas due to our Thanksgiving turkey, the market seems to be waking up as well.

Yesterday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell gave a speech which seemed to confirm the emerging “lower, but higher” consensus about interest rates.

In his remarks, Powell said it made sense to “moderate the pace of our rate increases” to a level sufficient to bring inflation down. In other words, December’s anticipated rate hike will likely be 0.5% rather than the recent trend of 0.75%.

That was enough to spark a relief rally in afternoon trading, sending the S&P 500 higher by more than 3%. The Nasdaq, meanwhile, leapt by 4.4%.

As we prepare for the end of the year, we’ll certainly stay on top of things. And who knows, we may even have a couple of surprises in store for our loyal readers…

In the meantime, I want to turn to one of our friends over at Investing Daily, Jim Fink.

For some of you, the interview below will be a reintroduction. But for those of you getting to know him for the first time, Jim is an impressive guy who has a ton of credentials and isn’t afraid to tell you what he thinks. Not only is he an incredibly successful trader, but I also like that he’s a teacher to his followers. My questions are in bold…

Jim, thanks for joining me. Can you tell our readers a little about your background?

Well, I grew up in Massachusetts. I spent my time hanging out at Smith College, where my dad worked. (My mother was also a teacher.) I took full advantage. As I kid, I used all the athletic facilities, attended college lectures, was a batboy for the faculty softball team, and worked as a janitor in the science buildings over the summer.

Looking back, this environment definitely had an influence on me. Education was always important. I earned a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in History from Yale, a Master’s from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, an M.B.A. from the University of Virginia, and finally, a law degree from Columbia. I’m also a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). You might say I’m hopelessly overeducated…

I also learned that you walked away from a promising law career to trade full-time. What happened?

Well, here’s the short story… I discovered that I could make more money trading for myself than burning the midnight oil for the firm’s clients. It’s that simple.

When I was practicing law, I spent most of my time traveling back and forth to DC to the Federal Communications Commission. I spoke several times with then-FCC Chairman Reed Hundt about the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which opened the doors to competition in this heavily regulated industry. It was an exciting time because this helped spur the development of the Internet. All the big Internet companies were involved in FCC regulatory proceedings in the mid-1990s. Most of them would later become 10-20 baggers.

Meanwhile, I spent a lot of time at the Chicago Board of Options Exchange learning options trading. Early exposure to this massive technological trend helped me understand the industry and make money with options trades. One of my biggest scores was buying call options on Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM), which made some of the first high-speed cable modems.

A lot of individual investors may think options are like gambling. But that isn’t necessarily the case. What do you tell investors about options and their so-called risk?

Well, it’s funny because I actually love going to Las Vegas every year to play craps and blackjack. They’re the two casino games with the best odds (i.e., lowest house edge). Learning gaming probabilities in Vegas is the best education for learning how to trade options. And any good professional gambler will tell you that minimizing losses is more important than maximizing gains.

Most regular investors think options are complicated, a fast way to lose money, and that the odds are against you. But none of this is true. At least not the way I trade options…

I’m extremely sensitive to risk. I get it. In fact, if there’s one thing my long-time readers will tell you, it’s that while I really like making money, I hate losing it even more.

This is where options can really come in handy. I designed my system to focus on high-probability trades, making options more affordable, more predictable, and, best of all, more profitable.

As Warren Buffett says: “Rule No. 1 is don’t lose money. Rule No. 2 is don’t forget Rule No. 1.”

What else should they know about your system before checking it out?

There’s no need to take a bunch of crazy risks to get what you think you’ll need to be financially secure.

The truth is, the Wall Street bandits want you to be scared of options. They don’t want to spend the time and money to train their people how to do what I do. It’s a lot easier to just have you pour massive amounts of money into a buy-and-hold approach. Because it sets the stage for them to charge you astronomical fees.

What we do over at Velocity Trader represents my life’s work, frankly, and I’m proud of the results we have had with it. I think what I’m most proud of is that we’ve had amazing streaks without booking a single loss over the past eight years. Again, I know how much it stings to lose money – and I hate it too, just like our readers.

The other thing is that I’ve made enough money with this system to retire decades ago. I walked away from the rat race at 37. I have enough to travel the world, provide my family with anything they could ever need or want, and live the rest of my life in comfort.

I don’t say all of this to brag, but just to say that I’ve achieved what I want with life. So at this point, I do what I do because I enjoy it. My goal is simply to help other people build their own fortunes. And I’m convinced that when you consider what most regular folks are up against, they’re going to need a lot more than “buy and hold” to get what they need.

Editor’s Note: Over at Velocity Trader, Jim and his followers have been using his techniques to trade every single week for the past eight years. That’s 647 closed trades in total, with 626 winners…

A 97% win-rate.

We’d stack this track record of success against anyone out there. And that’s why Jim recently sat down with our publisher to discuss how his strategy works — and how you can use it to turn every Friday into payday.

Go here to check it out now.