You don’t need Nigel Farage or any guru’s fancy trading techniques to make a mint on the markets

I’m going to tell you the secret of how to make a bunch of money on the stock market. You don’t need whoever it is on that YouTube ad telling you to use their service to put all your cash into Amazon and then start counting the profits because it won't always work out like that. Sometimes shares fall. Even Amazon’s. 

You don’t need Nigel Farage,  who’s promising gaudy returns for those who sign up for his latest venture because it’s “100 per cent possible” (think about that statement for a moment) for you to do really really well with them. 

I have the key. And it's 100 per cent possible to do really well with me.

But first a bit about background. I promise not to bang on (and on and on) as Nige does in his video and those other blokes (they’re always blokes) do in theirs when they say no, no, no listen to us, we have the secret!

Their stuff is all over the internet right now and I think it's partly because of GameStop and the Reddit driven bubble in the beleaguered games retailer’s shares. It’s because some people made a mint from GameStop if they got in early enough and cashed out quickly enough and their stories are all over the media.

The stock was at one point trading at a little over $3 only to be chased up to $482. The bellyaching on Wall Street could be heard around the world as an army of small investors inflicted some serious wounds on some seriously wealthy hedge funds and their managers, who had been betting heavily on the share price falling.

The ads don't talk about the latter. But they do say you could make pots of cash. Or maybe you just want to trade. If so, come on in, the water's lovely and warm.

Thing is, with the GameStop now well below $100, some of those who bought in too late will also be nursing burns. 

If they are among those who joined in as a means of tweaking the nose of Wall Street, and are fine with the cost, then more power to them. They’ve made a lot of people happy (including me). 

But here’s the thing: the best way of viewing short term trading is not as a form of investment but as a form of gambling. As with horses, or football betting, or whatever, if you don’t bet more than you can afford to lose you’ll be fine. 

Latch on to a winner early enough, and beat Wall Street, as I beat the bookies one glorious day at Ascot when I relieved them of several thousand pounds through having exhaustively studied the form and picked the right horses, then congratulations. 

If you don’t, well them’s the breaks. 

Want to look after your money actively, and play around with gold and real estate investment trusts and suchlike? Forget the likes of Farage and co. Buy a good personal finance publication. Maybe take some advice. 

For everyone else? Follow my secret. Put your money in cheap stock market index tracking fund and forget about it. 

Doing this isn’t risk free. Investors in Japan’s Nikkei have been on quite the rollercoaster over the past few decades. Past performance isn’t a guide to future performance, a warning the City watchdog insists anyone flogging investment advice displays prominently (it’s on Nigel’s vid).  

But if the FTSE continues to outperform other assets (cash bonds, and suchlike) and, say, chugs along at maybe 6-8 per cent a year over 10 years you’ll end up very happy. A compound return of just 7 per cent will double your investment in that time. If you’re lucky enough to come into some cash and want something more exotic? Find a professional and let them look after it for you. Which is what a surprising number of city folk actually do. 

Thing is, I’ve written columns like this before. And if you’re reading it, you probably already know that and you'll have done the same.