I'm 38 and born and raised in Canada.

I decided at the age of 14 that my path would involve reading and interpreting financial statements. I started at that age reading books by Peter Lynch, Robert Hagstrom, Timothy Vick, Ben Graham, Phil Fisher, etc.

After graduating from university I tried being an entrepreneur and found that it wasn't for me. To be an entrepreneur it is a prerequisite to want to work hard and have a passion to overcome any obstacle of any type. That wasn't me.

I went back to the idea of being an investor - that fit my personality best. I'm lazy and would rather exploit market crashes. Being able to read and interpret financial statements I found stocks and real estate to be the easiest for me to understand.

The biggest advantage I had was age and timing. I was 26 years old and was lucky enough to experience a number of market crashes; which is the best environment for someone with a personality like me.

I looked at Toronto real estate because Toronto was coming out of a real estate crash (1991-1996). I also looked at the U.S. stock market because there was 100x more free information than the Canadian stock market.

Unfortunately for me, in the mid-late 90s the U.S. stock market was in a frenzy (earnings, no earnings, it didn't matter, prices went up). I had a hard time finding anything. I would find 1 stock to buy a year. Maybe.

I avoided everything except asset plays. Asset plays involve buying companies that have assets that make up a huge portion of a company's market capitalization or price. An example would be King World Production (the company that sells shows like Oprah, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy to television stations/networks) that had a market cap (price) of $1.5B, had cash assets of $1B, and no debt on their balance sheet.

Since the U.S. market was in a frenzy I wanted to focus on prices that were backed very heavily by cash assets. Why? Because it is very unlikely (although not impossible) for a company priced at $1.5B to fall below $1B if they had $1B in cash simply sitting in the bank (and making $100M a year to boot). I was looking to minimize my exposure. Bull markets make me very nervous. I hate them.

After awhile even these companies were targeted and taken over by bigger companies and eventually I couldn't find anything. CBS bought King World and eventually Viacom bought CBS. It was a feeding frenzy. Internet stocks were all the rage and all I could find were 8% dividend yield utilities. It was terrible.

As I mentioned before Toronto was going through a real estate crash in the mid-90s so it was easier for me to find something reasonable so saved everything I could and started buying Toronto condos.

I quickly realized that my tenanted Toronto condos didn't offer a very good return because of their high per unit cost, but since the city was coming out of a real estate crash appreciation would be most of my return. I decided that this would be the first and last time I invested in real estate based on appreciation. I would focus on return from that point on. I made negligible rental income, but prices were jumping 7-8% a year because we were coming out of a crash scenario. 7-8% doesn't sound like a lot, but when you only have 25% down, it's significant.

Just for clarification, if I purchased a condo for $100,000 in cash, at the end of a 7% year I would have $107,000. If I put $25,000 down and had a mortgage of $75,000 (and the rent covered my costs) I would make the same $7,000 but the return would be 28% ($7,000/$25,000).

Also to be clear, this is not a way that I am comfortable investing. It was a learning experience and investing during a crash helped mitigate the damage of this 'mistake'.

In 2000-2002 the U.S. stock market blew up. Again, this was great news for me.

I went back to the U.S. stock market. This time instead of buying asset plays, I bought companies that had 10 years of increasing profit, no debt, high returns on equity and heavy insider ownership and buying. In short, I started buying stocks for real - as going concerns; to keep forever.

The market recovered again and I went back to finding nothing. I literally went into hibernation from 2003-2007. It was very hard to do nothing.

I became a millionaire around the age of 33 as the assets I had bought in the previous Toronto real estate crash and U.S. stock market crash recovered and continued to compound tax-deferred.

In the summer of 2006 the U.S. real estate market started cracking. Unlike stocks, real estate takes a while to hit bottom so I didn't do anything. Fortunately (again) for me, the U.S. stock market tanked in 2008 so now I had an opportunity to buy (again). I awoke from hibernation.

I started buying stock in the fall of 2008. I bought companies that I researched during the long (long) years between 2002 and 2008. I saw company stock drop 50%, 60%, and 70% for no reason. It was pure unadulterated fear. I separated the wheat from the chaff and bought the ones that would survive. I saw ridiculous earning yields - yields that I hadn't seen since 2002. I saw 15%, 17%, even 20% earning yields. It was like free money.

The market corrected very quickly and I found that I had to stop buying U.S. stock in 2009 as prices normalized. I continued to watch the U.S. real estate crash.

In 2010, almost 4 years into the U.S. real estate crash I started looking at property in Phoenix, AZ (I also looked at Nevada, California, Hawaii and Florida). I started buying a few condos that have gross rental yields of 20%. The cash flow is so strong that I continue to buy them. I'm closing on another as I type this. I'm currently in the process of negotiating the Buyer Inspection and Seller Response form for an 830 sq ft, 2 bed 2 bath condo for $38K that already has a tenant paying $700 per month (new lease ending September 2011). Once I close, I just throw all the keys (home, mail, clubhouse, pool, etc.) to my property manager.

This is my (long) story. I am an investor that takes advantage of market crashes. I am not an entrepreneur nor do I wish to become one. The cornerstone of any success has been the intersection of my ability to read and interpret financial statements and being lucky to have experienced 2 U.S. stock market crashes and 2 real estate crashes (1 in Canada and 1 in the U.S.) at a relatively early age.

Again, I only speak for myself and I believe that if I had no ability to read and interpret financial statements or if I experienced no market crashes I would definitely not have done as well.

I look forward to contributing whatever I can on this forum.

Best regards.