ROTE 003: How Timothy Sykes Turned $12,415 Into $3 Million Trading Penny Stocks

For many of us the stock market is a world of potential, riches and dreams. The thought of hitting the next Microsoft or Google stock in it’s infancy would be a dream come true… but for many of us, that’s all it is — a dream!

While big name investors and business news stations want us to believe trading and investing in the stock market is the best way to put our money to work, others will argue about their ulterior motive. News stations and publications gets paid big money to push “breaking news” and “stock alerts” and are making millions off their advertisers who tell you where to invest, trade stocks and spend your money, but at the end they offer little advice as to why, how and what to buy.

This is exactly what we are going to be talking about in the latest episode of the Rise of the Entrepreneur.

Rise of the Entrepreneur – Episode 3 with Tim Sykes

Tim Sykes

For Timothy Sykes, buying and selling stocks isn’t just about investing in his future, it’s a way of life.

While many investors in the stock market are picking and choosing stocks that look like they have a future headed for success, Tim Sykes is eating, sleeping and breathing the future of stocks. Not only is Sykes a master at stock picking, but he also has a 70% success rate and is not only buying stocks, but he’s shorting them as well.

The best part of all of this is that Tim isn’t keeping his passion and gift of stock picking to himself… he’s sharing it with others and making new millionaires along the way.

Talking Points Discussed in this Episode:

  • Tim takes us back to school, where he invests his bar mitzvah money in his future
  • Why Tim believes being honest on Wall Street is a revolutionary concept
  • How Tim is creating new millionaires through his coaching program
  • Discover how Tim is using social media and arrogance to grow his brand
  • Spike Lee and Tim have some fun court side at an NBA Knicks Game
  • Why Shaquille O’Neal and Justin Beiber both
  • Three great Q&A questions for Tim in the Pit of Fire

-> Download this episode to your computer.

Mentioned URLs and Resources:

How Timothy Sykes Turned $12,415 Into $3 Million Trading Penny Stocks Transcription

Zac Johnson: Hello my friends we were not meant to be slaves to the nine to five. And in this episode we have a good friend of mine who not only slaps the idea of working a traditional job right in the face but is also been building out his own personal army of students and millionaires in the process. I am talking about none other than Timothy Sykes who’s made millions of dollars from buying and selling stocks.
To make his story even more impressive this all started when he turned his bar mitzvah money into over a million dollars by day trading in between classes at his college university. However, Tim Sykes isn’t your traditional investor and stock trader. Instead of holding on to stocks and hoping for the best, Tim eats, sleeps and breathe the stock market. And he studies every single company that he puts his money into.
I first had the chance to meet up with Tim Sykes back in 2009. And over the past five years he’s mastered the art of not only making money for himself in the stock market but also teaching others how to do the same.
In this interview, Tim will walk us through his amazing story of how he made his first million dollars, created an online business empire and helps some of his students become millionaires in the process. We’re also going to talk about Tim went head to head with Shaquille O’Neal and Justin Bieber.
This is an exciting one my friends so be sure to stick around until the end of the episode when Tim is thrown into the pit of fire and shares his mighty words of wisdom.
Zac: Hello Tim and welcome to the show. How’s everything going with you?
Tim Sykes: Very well, thank you for having me.
Zac: All right Tim, you’ve got an awesome story to share. You have a ton of passion that go along with it. So I’m very excited to have you on the show today to share your story.
First thing is I’d read about you years ago. And then I have the chance to meet up with you personally at Blog World back in 2009 in Las Vegas which is crazy in itself because that was five years ago. Since then I’ve had the chance to watch first-hand this mass of transformation from a successful stock trader to a full-blown authority figure who’s dominating the stock market industry and helping others learn from your success and do the same. Why don’t we jump back in time and tell us how all of these started?
Tim: It’s kind of been a crazy adventure. My parents gave me my bar mitzvah gift money senior year of high school which is roughly $12,000 and they thought I’d lose it all. They thought I would burn the value of a dollar. And instead by the end of the senior year of high school I was up to 120,000 and then at the end of freshman year in college I was up to over 800,000 just trading stocks and that was a lot of money for me as a middle class kid from Connecticut. And that was what? Thirteen years ago.
I started a hedge fund out of college because I wanted to grow my money even faster. I’ve taken the 12,000 and within four years it was 1.65 million but I wanted to get even bigger and the hedge fund wasn’t necessarily the right route for me I was the number one ranked trader for three years but it just wasn’t growing fast enough. I tried investing. I lost the third of my money and I lost all of my credibility but then I got back on the horse and said, “You know what I only lost due to trying something new I should get back to my trading rules.”
And then over the next few years I became a teacher and verified all my trades on Profit.ly focusing on my rules that had made me so much money. And then, now I’m up to over $4 million in profits. And I have thousands of students all over the world. And most importantly in the past few months I’ve been kind of very successful in teaching my methods to others. And now I have two students who have crossed over a million dollars in profits with my teaching so we’re on Fox and CNN.
And right now everything’s kind of crazy because everybody wants to make a million dollars after my top student started with $1500 and now he’s up to 1.73 million in three years. Showing that this kind of growth and extraordinary trajectory in your little trading account is possible.
Zac: Well that’s really amazing and being able to see those results over the years and actually happened in students that just speaks volumes. Now the average person when they think of the stock market, they buy stocks and then they think that they’ll sell maybe 10-15 years and make a good amount of money at it but you’ve actually become more famous for shorting stocks. Can you explain to the average person the difference between owning a stock that people usually do versus shorting a stock?
Tim: Everybody wants to just buy the next Microsoft in whole good and do no work and then it’s kind of cool after like five, 10, 20 years passing you, some people have become millionaires. Unfortunately, we’ve had a very successful century and I don’t think that we’re necessarily going to create the next Microsoft very soon even if you would’ve been in Facebook over the past few years which is technically the fastest growing giant company out there the stock is barely doubled.
Meanwhile, my accounts are surging I’m already up a hundred percent in just four months in 2014 and it’s accomplished by understanding that most companies fail and most stocks go to zero.
A lot of people think that stock market is all the best companies, “Oh you get to invest in the best.” No! Companies become publicly traded stocks because they need to raise money and if you need to raise money your company isn’t doing that well. Some of the most successful companies in the world like the Subway franchise of sandwiches and subs, they’re not public. They don’t need money. They’re very, very successful.
So what I like to do is find the worst of the worst. The worst publicly traded companies which are penny stocks, stocks trading under $5 a share kind of like these long shots; if you would ever go to a race track and these are like the horses that are like 50-1. And what I like to do is bet against them.
And people say, “Why would you bet against this stock trading at a dollar or five dollars?” And the answer is because just like the 50-1 long shot there’s actually it’s probably more like a thousand to one long shot that they’re going to succeed so they’re going to go to zero. If I’m betting against the stock at one, two, three, four, five dollars a share and it’s going to go down to zero, most likely, given the historical norms then I make money by betting on failure.
And I know that sounds weird but have you ever heard of the phrase, “Don’t sell yourself short.”? Well you shouldn’t sell yourself short because you shouldn’t underestimate yourself but some of these companies that are just outright scams that are the kinds of companies featured in the movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, you should bet against them. And I’m playing the odds and that’s why I win 75% at a time.
Zac: Great. That was an excellent which explained everything which leads into our discussion about TimothySykes.com and Profit.ly where you actually teach people the same methods. How about you tell us a little about that?
Tim: I’ve made several millions of dollars, my top students have now made several millions of dollars but it’s not just about the money it’s about teaching people what is short selling like how do you actually bet against these companies? Why are they scams? How do you spot these scams? What are the red flags and their SEC filings and press releases? And how do you keep away from them?
A lot of my students are just thankful just to be like, “Oh my god I was invested in this company and I didn’t know it was a scam.” And then they see my blog post where they see a video that I do and I try and just show people exactly how to research and how to spot this stuff so that people can become more self-sufficient.
My top student made $200,000 in a day while I was sleeping in Japan due to the time difference. And I woke up and I got an IM saying this guy’s up six figures in one day of the exact patterns and teachings that I have in my DVD.
I have video lessons, blog posts, DVDs, webinars. I do live trades, I do daily Watchlist. I do intraday commentary. I work my butt off just trying to show people how I make money day in day out. Today for example I made about $12,000 in the market.
Zac: Awesome. Now you would like to think that you’re born being able to do everything but nobody wants to be the Jack of all trades and the master of none. You’re clearly the master of stock market and trading but you’ve also been able to be amazing at blogging and launching your own training sites and having a huge following online so how did all of these come together?
Tim: I worked from home. You might be able to hear my dog in the background, she’s barking for some reason. I’ve always just profited in the markets but I trade these small penny stocks; it’s not really scalable. I can never make 12 million in a day like many of the top traders at Wall Street. So what I’ve kind of transition to realizing and sadly or fortunately, no matter how you look at it, it’s better for me to teach others.
I’m in a unique position because my strategy works for people with like a thousand or $5,000 or $50,000 to their name not like these multimillionaires or billionaires because I’m training such small companies. And I only realized this the hard way because I had a hedge fund. I tried to grow my strategy into the tens of millions, these companies are just too small.
And I was on this TV show called Wall Street Warriors and it was a hit now in over 20 countries where it’s just basically like a documentary, reality show of my life. And people could see that I was turning a few thousand into a few million and working from home in my pyjamas. So if you ever see my ads online like it says, “Oh learn how to make a million dollars from your home and your pyjamas.” And that’s what I do.
So it’s truly a home-based business but it’s kind of cool because there’s so many frauds out there in the stock market and especially penny stocks where they claimed to make you rich.
And all I have to do is basically show all of my trades, all of my teachings. Now I’ll show my students and businesses booming because I’m real and that’s kind of a cool job just to teach exactly what you’ve learned.
Zac: And at what point did you decide that you actually wanted to be a teacher and share the wealth instead of just keeping it for yourself and making a ton of money?
Tim: When I first started getting emails from people it was just like I felt bad because they were confused and they had like kind of like the wrong trading rules and they were losing on under picks and most traders lose. First I was just kind of like, “I got to help these guys like this is sad.”
Then as I started helping more and more people I was like, “Wait a minute there’s a lot of people who were confused they just need guidance.” They’re not bad people they don’t deserve to lose money they just didn’t have any rules. I was totally self-taught and I’m just trying to be the mentor to people that I never had.
Zac: Now let’s talk about your two millionaire students; I was able to see you do several interviews with them on TV. What is it been like for them to have a complete change in lifestyle? I know both of them started with around a thousand dollars and now they’re over a million so what type of progression happened for them while also yourself being able to see these results as a result of yourself?
Tim: It’s kind of crazy, Tim Grittani I actually flew out and visited him in Ohio when he was going to cross a million dollars in profits. And he didn’t even understand that the whole perspective of what was happening because my strategy and how he makes his money is like 5,000 a day, 10,000, 20,000. Every now and then you have a hundred or 200,000 and sometimes there’s no money. So it’s a very slow kind of grind even though he’s grew from 1500 to 1.7 million now it so happened all within three years.
They haven’t really changed their lifestyle that much because it’s happened so quickly it takes a while getting used to it just feeling that it’s real. I can tell you since I turned 12,000 into 1.65 million in four years, I didn’t really spend money at first either because I didn’t know if it was going to be last or anything. But the cool thing about teaching a strategy rather than just giving someone money is that as the years passed and they keep making six figures, Tim Grittani’s up like 700 grand this year already in four months. I’m up 550 grand. Michael Goode is up a few hundred grand.
It starts sinking in after a few years. And so only after a time do you get like I bought my Lamborghini, when I got a mansion, when I got my Jet skis and I got a Porsche and I travelled all over the world but that’s after years and years of compounding growth and realizing that this is going to keep going. For them, it’s still kind of new but to see in the look in their eyes when they’re truly self-sufficient, it’s beautiful.
Zac: That’s amazing. And you already have two millionaires but we know that there’s a lot more people that you’re coaching behind the scenes. So how many people do you actually have that you’re coaching through your other websites and how many are close to that million dollar mark?
Tim: We’re up to about 4,000 students. I don’t know exactly everybody who’s becoming millionaire. I can tell you actually they’re two people who have crossed the million dollars but they don’t want me using their name and information publicly so I say I have two official millionaires, two unofficial which is annoying I want to like talk about it and brag about it but I understand the need for privacy. And some people don’t want everyone to know how much money they have. But I do have over a dozen students who were getting closer to a million. They’re each over like three or 400,000; one guy is up to like 600,000.
So they’re getting there but it’s not even just about the money like I said it’s about time and just understanding there are scams so you have to avoid the scams and you have to wait for the good place. And then, right now the markets are down today so you have to avoid the down days. It’s a marathon.
But in the coming years the question has changed from, “Can I create a millionaire?” to “How many millionaires can I create?” And I don’t know. I’ll keep teaching and just all I do is basically teach rules that I’ve learned over 15 years. You can’t do worse with somebody else’s rules that are been time-tested already.
Zac: That’s great and the more success your students have the more that’s in keep flowing back to you. And basically you are not only making money but you’re having a ton of fun along the way. And I’m a huge fan of basketball so I’m watching NBA TV about a week or two ago and I see highlights of you sitting there next to Spike Lee at the basketball game why don’t you tell us about that?
Tim: I like basketball too and I like big sporting events. I took my dad to a Front Row World Series Tickets. I take my students every now and then. If you see that shot by Ray Allen in game six of the NBA finals there’s a freeze-frame shot of like the ball in the air and it’s actually blocking my head even though I have my Knicks Jersey’s on. I’m a Knicks fan even though it’s at the Miami Heat game.
So I love seeing these classic sporting events and I was fortunate enough to get a courtside seat with Spike Lee so I went to the game with him and his daughter and it was a great, great experience to not just sit courtside but to be in the game. The players and the rest are talking with Spike and I and I know a little bit about basketball. Spike was a little impressed so we’re talking to the rest and say, “Hey that was a bad call it’s a travel.” And he kind of looked at me like we we’re saying this, “Hey biggie”, was just like crazy experience. So I want more people to have these crazy experiences up here in the basketball or hockey or skiing or boating, whatever, if you have money you can do whatever you want and it’s a great feeling.
Zac: That is awesome and while we’re talking about basketball we have to bring up the Shaq incident and I remember seeing these videos online of you screaming at Shaq during the Heat finals about his involvement in stocks and Justin Bieber was another one so I’ll let you go right into that as well.
Tim: I exposed scams and unfortunately a lot of celebrities, their financial advisers just aren’t that smart and they do deals with these scams. I don’t think these celebrities know themselves. They’re just seeing a company’s products so like Shaq was promoting this kind of Splenda wannabe product. And I was pointing out why this product NXT nutritionals is such a scam. They’re actually paying grocery stores to stock their little Splenda wannabes and then putting out press releases saying, “Look this grocery store is stalking us.”
Meanwhile, if you dig through the SEC filings they’re paying to be there. They’re not making any money. They were just trying to get this stock up so that for whatever reason insiders could dump or insiders could get an employee salary. So I took on Shaq I took on Justin Bieber. They both send me cease and desist letters basically asking me to remove my blog post.
I responded publicly to both of them saying, “No”, because all I’m doing is quoting publicly available sources and sure enough both stocks tanked 99% and nothing happened.
You still see celebrities endorsing penny stocks. A few people recognized, “Oh wait Tim was actually right about this,” but it’s a long process to getting people to understand how to spot scams and I need to teach more celebrities.
Zac: Nice, and that also segue ways into the next topic which is social media and engagement. And you’re putting videos out there and you’re targeting people that obviously other people are following. So how about you tell us about how much of a difference it’s been for your brand by actually selling the dream and showing the mansions that you have, the Lamborghinis?
Because back when you first started, it was more about the blog and the numbers but now it’s more about showing what’s possible by pretty much buying or experiencing things that you won’t be able to do if you weren’t in business for yourself or making successful money with stock trading.
Tim: I want to teach a strategy. I want to teach my technical staff but finance is boring. I used to just not care about presentation then I got my Lamborghini and people started really engaging based on this car. I just got it for fun for myself because I was like, “Hey I got money why not get this Lamborghini. It’s obnoxious like me and I like that.”
And then literally engagement numbers just took off. People are watching video lessons more of them longer. More people wanted this lifestyle and so I was like, “Oh my god I just need to show off my life more.” And some people don’t like it because I show off the mansions and the Lamborghinis and I took my girlfriend on like a $50,000 trip to Capri and Centurini and [0:19:05.8] I showed pictures but I don’t do it just to brag like I don’t care about bragging that was me maybe a decade ago.
Now it’s more just to serve as inspiration because everywhere we go I made a trade from a Lamborghini, I made a thousand bucks from a little MiFi trade just a few weeks ago because I just thought it was funny to trade from a Lambo. I’m going to the Maldives and I just want people to see what’s possible with the internet because a lot of people are stuck in cubicles. They’re stuck in jobs they don’t like. They’re stuck in cities they don’t like and they think that they have to be geographically tied down.
And with the internet and the stock market being so hot and people like me who have specific strategies to teach that are proven not just like scams, we can change a lot of people’s lives. And I think more people need to understand how hugely important the internet and education on the internet is.
Zac: That’s amazing and there’s so much stuff out there that’s in your face trying to buy and sell things but you’re actually leading with examples and showing what you do and then backing it up with numbers, that’s quite amazing. And you’ve mentioned in one of your websites that you’ve been to 80 different countries around the world. So, what’s your favorite place to visit?
Tim: Actually I got to update that I’m over 90 now. I love travelling, Capri, anywhere in Italy it’s amazing. I lived in Rome for a few months. I lived in Madrid for a few months but I really love Tokyo and the Maldives, Thailand, Malaysia, these crazy Eastern Asia countries.
It’s fascinating to me even though the time zone sucks for trading. I’m actually going to London this summer which is nice so when I’m trading the US stock market I don’t have to wake up until like noon or 1pm which is cool. I love exploring and I’ve been very fortunate to see the world and be in contact with all sorts of different people everywhere.
Zac: Nice, it sounds like it’s all fun and games now. How about you take us through an average day in the life of Tim Sykes?
Tim: There’s a lot of work it’s very rewarding but for me the work never stops because there’s so many people to educate. I have a few thousand students, I think I can teach a few million people these rules and I think it could help everybody. I’m up at like six in the morning, I’m writing my daily Watchlist. I’m reading through my news. I’m going over my overnight emails.
I get about 3,000 emails a day I’m so far behind on emails. I have 72,000 unread emails. I’m trying to whittle it down but I keep kind of losing because of my trips. And then the stock market is open and I’m trying to usually trade between 9:30am and like 11am Eastern.
And then in the middle of the day I’m writing blog posts, tweets, taking Instagram photos, putting up YouTube videos. I like to do one video lesson every day for my subscribers. And then more trading until 4pm Eastern and then I do a lot of press interviews. Sometimes I work out after the market closes then I have a usually a nice dinner or go somewhere nice with my girlfriend.
And then I do a little more work at night just writing more blog post and working on new DVDs and answering more emails at night and go to bed usually around like 10 or 11pm. I don’t stay out like I used to. I used to like party and just stay up but I used to be a lot more fun. Now I’m too much on a mission so the fun has dropped a little bit but I love it. I’ve evolved. I’ve matured.
Zac: Awesome. Tim Sykes living the dream and helping others try to do the same. When we come back Tim Sykes is going into the hot seat in the pit of fire.
Alright Tim, we’re back in the pit of fire and we got three questions for you here we go. You had the attention of every individual investor in the world today. For only a few minutes, what would you want to tell them about financial news, media elites and financial advisers?
Tim: All of those businesses are very profitable businesses but they’re not to be trusted they’re not on your side. CNBC does not a give a crap about how you do they don’t care about making you rich. They want you to watch and feel that you need to see breaking news and watch them every single day so that they get their ratings so that they get their ad dollars and they make a million dollars a day in ad sales and that goes for Bloomberg and Fox Biz and all of the financial media.
And no different than if you’re reading Bloomberg or Wall Street Journal or MarketWatch or Businessweek. Everything is based on you as a reader not you as a student and I want you guys to focus more on your education. People like me who are actually make money based on your success like I don’t like ad dollars I don’t care about other people advertising I don’t want that.
I want to create more millionaires that’s what drives my business. Always try and see what of company is offering like why are they offering you a certain product? And focus on the companies such as mine where we have this similar interest and our interest are aligned.
Zac: Now, you’ve been able to turn your passion into a real business – if you could offer a first time entrepreneur only one piece of advice what would it be?
Tim: I would say prepare to work hard than you ever thought possible. Everybody wants success but not everyone can get it and you have higher odds of success if you work harder and you know every single angle. I’m basically still working on the same trading strategy that made my first million dollars but I’m coming out from a different angle. And I’m still making money I’m up 550,000 in four months so I’m usually doing exactly this for trading but I’ve taken my business to the next level because now I’m teaching and that has created all sorts of new opportunities.
When you’re coming up with some kind of business explore all angles and try and see what’s going to work best and then try everything. And when you try things see what is actually growing like I had an idea that my education business might be huge just based on the emails I was getting from the TV show Wall Street warriors. And so it’s like, “Yay! You know what? My hedge fund it’s a small fund it’s not doing much I’m making good money but let’s see what we can do with this education business.” And now I’m doing 20 times the business I was with the hedge fund when I was kind of about a dead end there.
Zac: Some great words of wisdom. Now at the end of the day after all the blog posts, the stock updates, the millionaire students, how would you like people to remember you and your brand?
Tim: I would want you guys to remember it as being brutally honest and something that’s kind of revolutionary in finance. Based on my success so far I want to create thousands if not tens of thousands of millionaires. Not everybody can be a millionaire.
A lot of people just aren’t willing to work hard enough to get there but if I can reach I don’t know how many people but I can say that a good percentage of them can change their lives and be self-sufficient and be truly and financially independent. And if I do that then I’ve lived a good life and I’ve helped others and I’ve had fun doing it.
Zac: Alright Tim that was amazing. Before we go why don’t you tell everybody what you’re currently working on now and how everybody can get in touch with you online?
Tim: I’m working on two books and a TV show nothing big but you can find everything on TimothySykes.com just my full name T-i-m-o-t-h-y-S-y-k-e-s.com and that is where I just show everything and that’s what I want you guys to visit.
Zac: Alright Tim it’s been a complete honour. Keep up the great work and we’ll all be in touch with you soon.
Tim: Thank you very much.
Zac: And there you have it an amazing story from yet another entrepreneur who is changing lives every day. Not only is Tim dominating the stock market and making money from it but is also building an amazing brand and business in the process. If you’ve ever invested in a stock market or did some form of day trading I’m sure you’re just waiting to see what Tim has to offer online.
Even if you don’t trade stocks just following Tim’s blogs, social media updates and videos is more than enough to keep you entertained. Whether you’re into the stock market or not you’ll likely never think of it the same way again. However, it’s not just the money that’s being made from the stock market that makes Tim special, what Tim has been able to accomplished to his online business and training courses is quite amazing. In short, he took what he was awesome at, packaged it up and made it life changing.
I want to thank you again for listening to the Rise of the Entrepreneur. As always let me know what you think by leaving your feedback and ratings within iTunes. Be sure to visit zacjohnson.com for show notes and more. Until next time this is Zac Johnson and don’t forget, “Launch is for wimps.”

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