My Huffington Post Interview & Why My Readers Will Soon Be Richer Than Me

Check it out HERE–it’s definitely a solid interview and it’s great when a reporter actually takes the time to make sure the facts are correct (yeah suck on that Randall Lane, I’ve got an article coming about you tomorrow!)

PS Even though I screwed up today’s perfect PennyStocking plays rather royally–although controlled losses well–my analysis was dead on, so I’m pretty damn proud and happy that many of you readers banked. Here’s a quick and dirty rundown:

PennyStocking student Davey and Mark shorted VRML around $4.60, Davey covering conservatively at $4.33, Mark still waiting to cover (as of the last comment saw). Ryan shorted some at $4.65 and $5, covering all at $3.70, posting a great comment “With more than $3500 made in a single day today, I am up 72.86% up in 4 months. All this credit goes to our number one Tim!!”

But the gains weren’t limited to VRML alone. Tony Ellis banked $1,200 on COIN, Shthappns banked on UFPT…any others, I can’t even keep track of all the comments today—so please comment about your winners–and losers–in this post so we can see how everyone’s doing! Last one to $1 million is a dirty Jew!

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Just Who The Hell Do I Think I Am And Why Should You Care?

It’s astounding how many lazy people refuse to click the ABOUT tab on this site when they want to know more about me. Instead I get anywhere from one to three dozen daily emails asking me—since I have an answer every email policy, I’m beyond tired of this. Guys, chicos, if you want to know how I got started, what kinds of stocks I trade, how I made so much $ so quickly, my life is an open book—literally–An American Hedge Fund. Hopefully this post can save me a few emails so here’s a quick rundown of my journey and how I’m gonna help you:

-My obsession to become the best tennis player led to a career-ending injury senior year of high school in 1999. Since I’d already gotten in to college early and the doctors orders were to rest, I had nothing to do so my parents gave me control of my $12,415 in Bar Mitzvah gift money to play around with and I opened a discount online brokerage account.

-My parents thought I’d lose everything, but after concluding all the most popular stocks were too expensive / random for me, I became a penny stock day trader and turned my little account into $2 million by the end of 2004 (no leverage used). The first $1 million was pretty much all buying breakouts (I focused on chart patterns, little did I know why the charts were so perfect), the second $1 million was pretty much all short selling (when I discovered their charts were perfect for a reason, manipulation!). (Trades, strategies used and lessons learned are all detailed in my instructional DVD PennyStocking)  

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5 Penny Stock Trading Misconceptions

Thanks to my talent for self-promotion, I’ve been exposed to a crazy number of investors, traders and market theories. Here are a few misconceptions that keep popping up and are in desperate need of correcting:

1.You can’t short sell stocks under $5, you’re a liar and a fraud!

Ridiculous, of course you can! There’s no SEC rule against it, many crappy brokers just don’t allow it—hence their “crappy” title. If you want to learn PennyStocking, shorting low priced stocks is essential—that’s why I use Thinkorswim, I’m proud to do all my trading there—they rock!

2. Smallcap and microcap trading is a joke, if you want to prove yourself as a trader, trade large stocks, currencies or futures. Also, what kind of a trader is afraid to use leverage?

Thanks in no small part to the misguided, and ultimately harmful, teachings of yet another entertainment outlet masquerading as journalists, Traitor Monthly, many people think trading is about making the most, being the best and getting to the top the quickest. Screw that! Focus on long-term earning and learning—this isn’t a sport as your career doesn’t end when you’re 35-40 (it’s usually just beginning)—and look for high percentage profits wherever they might be. Yes, my niche will always be looked down upon cuz it’s unscalable and that’s just the way I like it.

All the smartest people ignore it so it’s an easier playing field—advantage me. I guess I’ll just have to console myself with annual profit potential of a few hundred thousand to a few million/year. Boo hoo.

And no, I’ll never use leverage—as these street peddlers are learning, yes, it can inflate profits, but it risks disaster. I’ll never advocate any strategy that risks disaster—short selling is risky enough as it is. Learn from the mistakes of the past—nothing is ever guaranteed…besides, if a strategy is worthwhile, the profits will be there and they’ll be hard earned and natural.  

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Why SmallCap Stocks Rock: Logarithmic vs. Linear Charts

Commenting on this post, I asked The Chairman why pros seem to prefer logarithmic—or log—charts over linear charts since they distort my precious chart patterns. His answer: it’s the linear charts that distort.

While he’s absolutely right that log charts like this:

are more accurate than the linear version:  

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Q&A With Timothy Sykes: Righting Some Wrongs

1. I love answering questions, any and all questions, but if you guys have questions about stuff like my strategy, my book An American Hedge Fund, my instructional DVD PennyStocking, basically anything whatsoever, please, please please post your questions in the FORUMS. Right now, I’m about a week and a half behind on emails and I get too many asking the same damn questions! (want more real-time updates, follow me on Twitter…my book is only sold online…no, I’m not gonna give you free copies just cuz you’re poor…yes, I am available to speak (that you can email me about)…no, I haven’t lost everything, I’m down 30% or 35% off my highs…yes, you can short stocks under $5, read the past 400 blog posts or so!) Forums make it much easier and I like getting all the info out there for everyone to see and debate. So keep ‘em comin’, gratzie.

2. As of April 1, 2008, Covestor shows me up 150% during the five months since TIM inception in November 2007. This is inaccurate. I’m really up 40% since then. Not too shabby, but I get too many emails about this. Covestor is a great great platform that the industry needs, but they only track people’s trades and investments, not their cash positions. Since I only trade 1-2 stocks at a time, leaving the rest in cash—as compared to the popular diversification route/scam involving dozens of positions and very little, if any, cash—my Covestor returns represent what would happen if I used 50-100% of my portfolio each time, instead of the actual 20-40%.

Considering how small dollar-wise my positions currently are and how much better my returns would be if I did go all in—maybe I should??! Nooooooooooooooo—that would be setting a bad example to all the newbies and kids out there. I’m trying to preach conservative (somewhat) short selling / penny stock trading!

So, please recognize the difference, understand how awesome my strategy is, how not-so-great I am at taking full advantage of it and that my publishing business model is based on brutal honesty. I’m never gonna cheat at ANYTHING because even if it did get me ahead, a.) it’d be wrong and b.) I’d be risking my entire biz model! Get used to me making plenty of mistakes…they make make me just happy because not only can I write about them to help others avoid them later, contrary to the joke that is financial wisdom propagated by generations of snake oil salesman, frauds, liars, marketers and untalented and unintelligent bastards, mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of, the problem is not learning from them!

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37 Key Points Of My Successful Trading Philosophy

Since the vast majority of emails I’ve gotten recently have come from people who are unwilling to read through all my blog posts, too poor/cheap to afford my DVD or too lazy to pick up my book to better understand my strategies, this is the post that’s gonna make everything real simple-like. Learning and profiting over the past decade, here’s what I’ve come to believe (in no specific order)

1. I love, use and recommend Thinkorswim as my broker. Yes, I get compensated for referring people, but I’d never endorse a product I didn’t use myself—best customer service, great tools, negligible commissions and great borrows on hard-to-borrow stocks I love shorting—all the way down to the $1-2 range, yes you CAN short under $5 (there’s no SEC rule against it, some brokers just suck)

2. The vast majority of investments and trends are unpredictable, be choosy

3. So, I stay fully liquid the vast majority of the time, constantly stalking potential prey

4. Every day it’s just random market noise, the best plays come about rarely, anywhere from 1-5 per month, focus on these and your odds of success go waaaaaaaay up

5. I don’t care whether the stock market goes up or down, as long as there’s volatility

6. Since Wall Street is so full of idiots and many companies will fail, short selling , or betting a stock will drop in price, is a very useful strategy and my specialty

7. Diversified long-term investing might work, but it can NEVER lead to my kind of gains—even with all my mistakes, 60 times my original investment, after 40%-taxes and hella fun spending a few hundred grand, in 9 years  

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Young Or Old, Rich Or Poor, You Will Give In To TIM

It’s interesting to see how different people react to me. My TV appearances, trading strategy, big mouth, book, DVD, blog, etc all seem to stir up a wide range of emotions. Young people love my story—it’s inspirational, trading seems fun and easy, no bosses, wear a bathrobe, don’t wear a bathrobe, whatever. They also appreciate how I’m trying to open this game up to everyone, young or old, rich or poor. People around my age are always polite to my face, but I can tell they’re somewhat to very annoyed by my non-stop TIM promotion, especially on my Facebook profile.

As for older folks—the kind of people who use the word folks—they can’t understand why a trader would ever go back to trading less than 2% of his accumulated assets over the years, unless he’s lost it all.  

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Some Saturday Morning Link Love & 5 More Questions Answered

Ever get that FreeCreditReport.com jingle stuck in your head? I do, that and the Hotwire.com one. Great, great advertising, they should be commended and linked to often. I even used Hotwire a few weeks back, they really were cheap. Anybody use FreeCreditReport?

Check out my new website’s first official sponsor…If you’re interested in getting your brand seen by 3,000 daily visitors, click here!

WallSt.net launches a new half-hour TV program, guess who’s in it?

A-Train Finance interviews me, you know you wanna click it!

More financial transparency? A good start, but not nearly enough

A SPAM-free search engine for financial blogs

Jason Leavitt of Leavitt Brothers does a really thorough book review of my book
Powerpoint Presentation and all! Among other things he says, “It’s a good book, it’s a fun read, it’s a light read”  

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