18.12.2012

Timothy Sykes was born in 1981 in Orange, Connecticut, USA. Graduated from Tulane University. In 1999, he began trading shares of American companies, and in 2003 he founded his own hedge fund, which existed for about three years.

Trader, teacher, businessman, founder of Internet projects timothysykes.com, investimonials.com, profit.ly Author of the book “An American Hedge Fund: How I Made 2 Million Dollars” (“An American Hedge Fund”). Currently lives in New York, actively trades on the stock exchange, is engaged in teaching, and travels a lot.

Back in early 1999, when Timothy Sykes was in high school, the stock market was soaring and an injury prevented him from actively participating in sports, so he plunged headlong into trading the financial markets. His parents gave him $12,000 to manage, confident that he would lose it, and this would be a good lesson for him. But instead, Sykes turned $12,000 into $123,000 by the beginning of 2000 and then into $800,000 by the end of 2000. As he wrote in the first part of his book, his strategy of buying penny stocks on price breakouts was ideal for that market environment.

A $12,000 gift from my parents turned into $2 million in three years. During my senior year of college, I started my own hedge fund, which was ranked #1 in Barclay Hedge's ranking of short-selling funds for three years. Timothy Sykes was named one of TraderMonthly's top 30 traders under 30 in 2006. In 2003-2006, Timothy was ranked first among Barclays hedge fund managers.

According to Sykes, the key to success - both in trading and in public speaking - is to be open and honest. It's unlikely that anyone would have imagined that absolute honesty would be such a revolutionary concept in a business like stock trading.

Key Factors Before Selecting Any Potential Timothy Sykes Trading Opportunity:

1. Makes sure that the stocks he is trading are "in play" because he wants to see many traders involved, as their participation opens the door to strong price action on which Sykes can profit. This means that it is looking for liquidity in the market, and mass mailings are a great indicator of how many traders are involved in a given market action.

2. Tries to treat every transaction as if it were the last. In this case, Timothy Sykes waits until the very last second for that price at which he simply cannot refuse the trade because the trade setup looks so perfect. There are so many fakes and false moves with penny stocks - which is why patience and discipline are key to successful trading.

3. He trades only penny stocks, primarily on the Nasdaq, but occasionally on the AMEX, NYSE and OTCBB. Sykes believes there is a great advantage here for small-account traders, and he keeps saying that small-cap traders have better odds and can use their small account to their advantage when trading $2-$3 stocks instead of wildly popular stocks , which cost $300 or $500.

Timothy Sykes believes that what allows him to succeed is understanding what he is trading. He understands what is happening in the market and what it leads to when he opens a position. Secondly, his opponents in this game are American housewives and their not very insightful husbands; Sykes does not play against banks and financial corporations, which have incomparably greater capabilities in comparison with him. Their field is liquid shares and other traded markets; they are not interested in “penny” securities; there is too little money here.

Becoming a millionaire is not an easy task. If it were that easy, everyone would become millionaires. However, every day more and more people achieve their dreams and become millionaires solely through their own efforts. This is not to say that in order to become a millionaire, you need to spend some time. I learned this back in college, when I had much less knowledge and experience than I do now. Today you can see a variety of millionaires. And although they came to this in different ways, there are several secrets that are common to all of them. Knowing these secrets can be the first step to joining their ranks. Use these secrets to your advantage to build your empire. They can greatly help in achieving your financial goals.

Plan for the long term, not the short. Big things start small

If you want to become a millionaire, you need to set big, long-term financial goals. Remember that you don't become a millionaire overnight. This may take much longer than you would like. With this in mind, determine what financial goal you will be working towards in the long term, rather than just setting goals for short periods of time. You may not have made $50,000 this month, but you're still slowly on track to reach that coveted $1 million mark. One of my best students who managed to become a millionaire, Tim Gritani turned $1500 in his trading account into 1 million by...

17:10 21.01.2014

Timothy Sykes is one of America's most successful young traders; he earned his first million dollars before he turned 20.

When Tim began his journey as a trader, many considered him to be a daring boy, an upstart who makes “show-offs”. But if we start the story from the beginning, we will see a boy who achieved success in a short period of time.

Sykes born in 1981 in Orange, Connecticut, USA. He graduated from Tulane University, where he studied philosophy.

He started trading stocks in 1999 at the age of 18 with $12,000 given to him by his parents. Tim invested it in penny stocks - cheap stocks costing less than $1, which have high growth potential and are considered very risky. His parents were sure that he would lose money, and this would be a lesson for him. But by the beginning of 2000, Timothy had turned $12,000 into $123,000, and by the end of 2000, into $800,000. In just 3 years, he earned $2 million.

Until the age of 17, Sykes did not even think about a career as a trader. His main passion was tennis. He was even the amateur champion in his state. But a hand injury put an end to his tennis career, and he began to look for an activity that would truly inspire. So his gaze fell on financial markets.

In 2003 (his senior year of college), Timothy opened his own Hedge Fund, which was ranked #1 in Barclay Hedge's ranking of short-selling funds for three years.

Timothy Sykes made the list in 2006 30 best traders under 30 according to TraderMonthly magazine.

In addition, Sykes is the author of the acclaimed book “American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million,” the star of the TV show “Wall Street Wars,” and the founder of the Internet projects timothysykes.com, investimonials.com, profit.ly. It is interesting that Timothy shows on his website the transactions that he made (which, you see, is very rare among traders): what volume he entered and what profit he made.

According to Sykes, the key to success, both in trading and in public speaking, is to be open and honest. It's unlikely that anyone would have imagined that absolute honesty would be such a revolutionary concept in a business like stock trading.

Timothy currently trades with a net worth of $750 thousand, and also travels the world and teaches. Thanks to the flexibility of his strategy, he trades from anywhere there is an Internet connection. Timothy is successful and makes a profit every month. More and more people who have completed his training course are becoming successful traders, trading according to his strategy.

“This business is full of crazed gamblers, no different from those who bet their last money in a casino. They probably weren't even involved in trading in the full sense of the word because they didn't have the proper discipline, intention and diligence to understand that successful trading is like running a real business - you have to be meticulous or you'll fail .

Too many people enter the trading business hoping to make quick money, which is the surest road to destruction. Instead, concentrate onstudying , since this is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Key Factors Before Selecting Any Potential Timothy Sykes Trading Opportunity:

1. Sykes makes sure that the stocks he is trading are "in play" because he wants to see many traders engaged, as their participation opens the door to strong price action on which to profit. This means he is looking liquidity in the market, and mass mailings are a great indicator of how many traders are involved in a given market action.

2. Tries to view each transaction as last. In this case, Timothy Sykes waits until the very last second for that price at which he simply cannot refuse the trade because the trade setup looks so perfect. There are so many fakes and false moves with penny stocks, so patience and discipline are key components of successful trading.

3. He only trades cheap shares, primarily on Nasdaq, but sometimes on AMEX, NYSE and OTCBB. Sykes believes there is a great advantage here for small-account traders, and he keeps saying that small-cap traders have better odds and can use their small account to their advantage when trading $2-$3 stocks instead of wildly popular stocks , which cost $300 or $500.

Timothy Sykes believes that what allows him to succeed is understanding what he is trading. He understands what is happening in the market and what it leads to when he opens a position. Secondly, his opponents in this game are American housewives and their not-so-astute husbands, Sykes does not play against banks and financial corporations, which have incomparably greater capabilities in comparison with him.

Becoming a millionaire is not an easy task. If it were that easy, everyone would become millionaires. However, every day more and more people achieve their dreams and become millionaires solely through their own efforts. This is not to say that in order to become a millionaire, you need to spend some time. I learned this back in college, when I had much less knowledge and experience than I do now. Today you can see a variety of millionaires. And although they came to this in different ways, there are several secrets that are common to all of them. Knowing these secrets can be the first step to joining their ranks. Use these secrets to your advantage to build your empire. They can greatly help in achieving your financial goals.

Plan for the long term, not the short. Big things start small

If you want to become a millionaire, you need to set big, long-term financial goals. Remember that you don't become a millionaire overnight. This may take much longer than you would like. With this in mind, determine what financial goal you will be working towards in the long term, rather than just setting goals for short periods of time. You may not have made $50,000 this month, but you're still slowly on track to reach that coveted $1 million mark. One of my best students who managed to become a millionaire - Tim Gritani turned $1500 on his1 million by slowly accumulating profits. Concentrating too much on the short term leads to fatigue and underestimation of your capabilities. Never forget your big goal.

Dream big. Big goals encourage you to do more and improve your results every day.

If your goal doesn't scare you at least a little, then your dream probably isn't big enough. If you really want to achieve big things, you need to start by setting a big goal. The right goal can motivate you to do more and improve your results every day. You need to set goals that will motivate you to work harder than you did before. The harder you push yourself, the more you can achieve.

Always challenge yourself. Never stop, even after achieving success

No matter what successes and achievements you achieve, you should always challenge yourself, pushing you to do even better. Having achieved your goal and earned the coveted million, you should not stop working and dwell on what you have already achieved. Move forward by building on your success and setting new goals.

Ignore the naysayers and critics. Your success is the best answer to them

During your journey to the cherished million, you will probably face criticism from others. People don't like to hear about others' successes. There will be plenty of skeptics, but it is important not to let them unsettle you. Remember that the best answer to them is your success. Instead of wasting your time and energy explaining to these critics why you can become successful and why you have a bright future ahead of you, simply ignore what they say. Instead, focus your efforts on how exactly you are going to succeed and prove them wrong instead of just telling them so.

Focus on those market niches where there is less competition

If you really want to succeed in any market, it is important to focus your efforts on the right niche. Find a specific niche and try to occupy an area in it where there is less competition. This is one of the surest ways to become a millionaire in any business. I have always used it in my endeavors. I found my niche in penny stocks, not regular stocks. At that time, competition in this market was low. Using this approach, I was able to find what worked for me and brought me serious results when I developed my own strategy to become a millionaire.

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Tim Sykes was written about in magazines, he was shown on television; he, under the pseudonym "The Start-up", even starred in the well-known reality series "Wall Street Warriors", in the role of himself - a day trader, hedge fund owner, athlete, Komsomol member, and just a smart guy who turned into exchange his 12 thousand dollars from his “bar mitzvah savings” of more than one and a half million.

After finishing watching Wall Street Warriors, I wandered around Tim’s sites a little, read his story on Wikipedia, thought a little... And I got the impression that Tim’s “holy grail” is not so difficult to decipher.

A Brief Introduction to Thymology

Let's take Tim's most successful period, 2003-2006. The market is on the rise, stocks are rising, hedge funds are attracting money from inspired investors. Tim, like any genius, stands out noticeably in the general fund: on the one hand, he seemingly ignores the positive mood of the market - his specialization is short trades. Tim realizes that his approach is somewhat “unpatriotic” - each short trade implies that Tim believes that the condition of the shares of the company with which he works will worsen; but nevertheless, this is precisely the specialization of Tim's hedge fund. For what? Why does Tim choose to play short if it is more risky and potentially less profitable (after all, when playing long, the risk is limited by the value of the shares, and the potential profit is not limited; when playing short, the opposite is true)?

Moreover, Tim works not with “blue chips”, not with the “second tier”, but with the very “garbage” of American exchanges - penny stocks, shares with a price of one or several dollars per share, or less. This is also part of Tim's strategy; in the film he says that, on the one hand, too many illiterate investors are involved in such shares, and a person with intelligence will feel quite comfortable and safe in this field; on the other hand, such junk stocks, due to the small capitalization of firms, are especially susceptible to hype and manipulation due to news and rumors. And it is precisely this excitement that Tim wins back - when he believes that the shares are overvalued for biased reasons, he conducts a short trade in the hope that the excitement will subside and the value of the shares will fall. But how do you know whether a price increase is caused by a rush or an objective improvement in the company’s situation? What if the price of such a junk stock jumped, but won't fall again? After all, then you can be left with a bunch of shares that no one needs instead of money.

What other information do we have? You can, for example, remember that in the film Tim has problems with his strategy when the market is down, and things get better for him, on the contrary, when the market is up again. But it would seem that Tim’s technique is precisely to play for the fall!

So, let's repeat once again what we have:

1. Junk stocks are highly susceptible to hype.


2. There are too many unqualified investors in junk stocks. With these words, Tim implicitly acknowledges that it is precisely them that he will play up with his actions. Money from inexperienced players is Tim’s main goal.


3. The strategy works better in a rising market and worse in a falling market.


4. Selling (more precisely, playing short - selling shares even though you don’t have them) is at the peak of the hype. Although some sources say that Tim from time to time caught the wave of excitement while still on the rise and bought shares at a low price, then “turned over” at the top, went short at a high price, and then closed the deal again at a low price; but in the film the “short” essence of the strategy is clearly emphasized.

Is there anything that will complement the existing list into a coherent and complete picture, and close all the questions raised? According to Occam's rule, it should be as simple and compact as possible. Do you have any guesses other than the one I came up with?..

How to get to the Grail?

1. Spam.

As many owners of mailboxes of those years remember, at that time there was simply an incredible amount of so-called “stock spam” - spam with information about the shares of various small companies that “will soon receive a large government grant”, “are on the verge of opening new source of energy" and the like. And of course, according to the spam, in literally the next few days the price of shares of this company will skyrocket, and you need to urgently buy these shares before it’s too late, and then you will definitely get rich, and you will be happy. In full accordance with the description of the pump and dump scheme, an investor who listened to the good advice of an unknown expert will in the very near future lose a significant amount of money. The organizers of such spam, having bought the shares of this company at a cheap price even before sending it, will wait for the reaction of the believing mugs who invest their money in this company (but after the spammers), increasing the price of the shares... to the level until the spammers decide that the shares are worth already quite a lot; after this, the organizers will sell their large stake, receiving maximum profit from this far-fetched price increase, and again dropping the share price.

What role do trash stocks play in the pump and dump scheme? And simple. As Tim himself said, they are the most susceptible to hype. Several relatively large, even private buyers, running into the shares of a small company, can raise their value quite noticeably. And sellers have also dropped noticeably. On well-known, expensive shares with huge trading volumes, the influence of such individual buyers will be simply unnoticeable, insignificant compared to the flow of money from large banks, funds, and many traders.

What does unqualified investors have to do with it? Namely, at the same time. An experienced stock market player will not fall for such a scam from “unknown well-wishers.” An experienced player will conduct a thorough analysis of the company's state of affairs and evaluate its real state of affairs. An inexperienced person is inclined to recklessly trust the opinion of someone whom he considers more experienced.

What is the connection between this strategy and market growth or decline? Also quite obvious. It is during the period of market growth, when all channels advertise how quickly and vigorously stocks are growing, that many inexperienced people decide to start managing their finances on their own, play on the stock exchange, invest and speculate... And the advertising around them assents that these stocks have soared for a day by 50%, these by 30%... and if you had invested $10,000 in that company three years ago, you would now have a million.

But I want a million, and quickly, and, preferably, without going into boring technical analyzes and fundamental indicators. Stock spam hits the target, targeting newcomers to the stock exchange and promising them what they are looking for. And with the growth of the market, the number of such newcomers is increasing...

If you can't start, join us

No, I in no way believe that Tim organized such spam mailings and did pump and dump. He's too smart a boy to be exposed like that. Why organize something yourself if other scammers themselves send such spam? The market is open, and you can join any movement at any time.

The logic is incredibly simple. On stock spam make money organizers, buying stock before spam mailings and selling over time after. Most of the idiots who believed spam and who bought stock after reading the newsletter, will lose money. For reasons of symmetry, what should a person who is at least a little prudent and understands the market do after he learns about a stock spam scheme and receives a corresponding letter with advice to buy some stock?..

In my opinion, a higher economic education is not required to answer this question.

Life after one and a half million

Okay, let's get back to Tim. Meanwhile, events are happening in the world. They began to pay more and more attention to stock spam, and the SEC gradually got down to business. Several high-profile trials with the organizers of such spam gradually reduced its number in our mailboxes and, perhaps, saved hundreds and thousands of market newcomers from ruin. However, if Tim has a serious and fundamental base, this will not prevent him from continuing to grow and develop - after all, nothing else has changed, the market is still growing, there are plenty of penny stocks, they, as before, easily react to hype and gossip , and an experienced trader can easily distinguish an artificially inflated price from the real value of a stock, right?

In 2006 and 2007, Tim Sykes drained about a third of his capital, for some reason deciding to leave the proven path (shorts and junk stocks) and refocus on investments.

Can't join -...?

The years 2008 and 2009 are not only the years of a severe crisis and then an unexpected rebound and growth (which, as usual, attracted another “youth” to the markets, hoping to “buy at the bottom”). This is, as unexpected as it may be, a triumphant return for Tim Sykes. He's back in power, he's playing penny stocks again, he's into shorts again, he's already up over 500% since the end of 2007. It’s a miracle how this genius managed to rise so quickly - after all, even if we assume that Tim once joined the organizers of stock spam in transactions, now there is almost no such spam?...

Tim is now widely known as an experienced and highly effective trader. The $12,000 bar mitzvah savings is the stuff of legend, and he has many fans and students who would love to play the market as well as he does. Like any popular person, he has already written and is selling his book (“An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund”); released several DVDs with lessons (they can be purchased for only $749 - a pittance compared to his previous assets and income, but enough for bread and butter).

And to help inexperienced investors, he organized the TIMAlerts newsletter. For just $447 a year, you'll receive emails directly from Tim telling you which penny stocks he just now sold or bought, and what, accordingly, he recommends sell or buy to you, after how you receive such a letter.

See, getting 500% profit in 2 years is not that difficult.