about us
The son of an engineer, Tommy Brown learned early in life to analyze situations and consider both sides of an issue. While still in college, he worked with his father to teach engineering graphics and with other professors as a teacher’s aide.
He initially followed his father’s footsteps by entering the Army following graduation from college. He was initially stationed in Fairbanks, Alaska. He also had duty stations in Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, and Germany. During this time, he met the love of his life, Suzie. It wasn’t long after the wedding that her father (Jesse) started teaching him about buying and selling stock. Jesse’s approach was to buy good companies that you knew and used their products.
After military service, Tommy took up a career as a consulting engineer. He ultimately became licensed in Virginia, California, Georgia and Florida. He helped spearhead an internal “University” to teach the basics of project management and consulting engineering. He also wrote professional papers and presented at numerous technical conferences. After several years of minor trading, Jesse started showing Tommy how to do covered call writing. Jesse seemed to intuitively know which calls to sell. Tommy was searching for the logic behind his decisions.
During a 2002 conference in Marco Island, Tommy discovered Ron Groenke’s first book, “The Money Tree“. The book used a ‘Magic Chart’ to help determine the optimum combination of strike price, calendar date, and percent increase if the option expired or was exercised. It was precisely the ‘logic’ that Tommy had been searching to find. The Magic Chart was validated with the trades that Jesse was doing. Almost every call Jesse was selling, the Magic Chart was also showing it to be the best one.
In late 2011, Tommy began contemplating retirement. He knew that generating cash on a monthly basis would be critical to success. He bought Ron’s fourth book, “Show Me The Trade”, and began a serious pursuit to follow Ron’s concepts. In 2012, Tommy acquired and began using Ron’s VISIONS software. Seeing the techniques work, he retired in August 2012 and became fully focused on generating cash by selling covered calls and naked puts.
Recognizing there was a need for training and wanting to share his enthusiasm, Tommy formed MoneyTreeVISIONS, LLC to help others use the VISIONS software. Ron has granted MoneyTreeVISIONS, LLC an exclusive license to provide seminars and other training products. Tommy drew upon his teaching skills and experiences and reworked the training materials to have a user orientation and a logical workflow process. During the COVID crises, the approach was to utilize virtual meetings for training sessions. Our current focus is holding a monthly user meeting that includes tips for using VISIONS, working one-on-one with users providing answers for their questions, and publishing a weekly Trade Alert.
A passion for life and a willingness to work hard were early traits for Ron Groenke, the youngest son of the late Anna and Robert Groenke, who lived on a farm outside of New Germany, Minnesota. Up early and busy with farm chores seven days a week instilled strong character and personal values.
His ninth grade algebra teacher told him, “Learn all you can about computers, it’s the wave of the future.” That advice set him on a path, obtaining a degree in mathematics with distinction from the University of Minnesota, and specializing in data communications and software engineering.
That background enabled Ron to work at General Mills as a computer programmer, and then at Sperry Univac, where he worked on communications software for NASA for the tracking of Apollo spacecraft. He is well known for developing the communications software for Apollo 7 and 8. You will recall that Apollo 7 was the first crewed mission to launch and provided the first live television broadcast from space. Apollo 8 was the first lunar flight, containing 8 orbits around the moon.
In 1969 Groenke took a risk and joined a start-up data communications company, Comten, in St. Paul, where he worked for 25 years, eventually becoming vice president of development and engineering.
It was on a business trip in 1986, that a colleague introduced Ron to options trading. “A colleague and I were on a plane going to a meeting, and I noticed how busy he was with the Wall Street Journal and his calculator. I asked what he was up to, and then it was revealed to me. He was looking at the premiums he could get by selling calls on his NCR stock. The next day, I investigated what was required to sell these calls, and found out how easy it was.”
In 1981, Comten was purchased by NCR, and in 1991, by AT&T. AT&T wanted to change the direction of the communications group, and basically dismantled Comten. In 1993, as part of the front end executive team, Ron was offered a retirement and severance package at the age of 49. He researched the opportunities available and took the investment Series 62 and Series 7 exams in preparation to becoming a broker. His wife suggested that he could do it alone and need not work for anyone anymore. He took the early out package and started option trading, with less stress than that of corporate life, and hasn’t looked back since.
After moving to Marco Island, Ron undertook a series of books about covered-calls and naked puts for income. All total, he authored five books: “The Money Tree: Risk Free Options Trading“; “Covered Calls and Naked Puts”; “Cash for Life”; “Show Me the Money”; and lastly, “Show Me The Trade”
In addition to his books, Ron realized the need for a strong software program to facilitate an investors use of his highly successful investment strategy. His proprietary software programs have continued to improve with suggestions from users. The current version of VISIONS is available on an monthly license fee from MoneyTreeVISIONS, LLC. With this powerful program investors can search the entire stock market for just those special stocks that fit their criteria for investing, selling calls and selling puts.