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Success Stories

From Gym Teacher to Millionaire Trader

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Written by Timothy Sykes
Updated 3/11/2026 6 min read

A few years ago, Strati worked as a gym teacher earning $50,000 a year.

He felt fulfilled, but wanted a side hustle to sweeten his income.

After turning to the stock market, he eventually found Jack Kellogg, my most successful millionaire student.

That’s when he started to learn my patterns.

Today, he’s a verified millionaire trader with over $1.2 million in profits.*

No finance degree. No Wall Street connections. No trust fund. Just a gym teacher putting in the reps.

I sat down with Strati recently, and he walked me through his entire journey:

  • The wins.
  • The losses.
  • The mistakes.
  • The ugly years.
  • And the moment it finally clicked…

Anyone can do this.

You don’t need to be a Wall Street fat cat.

His Mindset in the Beginning

This is the part people get wrong about Strati’s story.

He wasn’t desperate. He wasn’t drowning in debt or hating his life. He actually enjoyed teaching.

But he knew a $50,000 salary working 180 days a year left time on the table. So he started to look for something to do.

He Googled “cheap penny stocks to buy.”

After picking a six-cent stock at random, it ran 400% in a week. Strati turned his initial $300 into nearly $2,000!

He thought he was a genius. But when he went back the next week, he lost nearly all of it.

That’s how most stories start. The dangerous part isn’t the first loss. It’s the first win.

It convinces traders that they know the market inside and out, when really they just got lucky.

But Strati didn’t quit. He kept going.

The Years Nobody Talks About

For every millionaire trader, there’s a timeline that most people never see.

Society only notices a trader’s success once they’re already consistently winning.

But the most interesting parts of the journey (and the most valuable for other traders) are the years of struggle.

Strati made $50,000 in year one. But the market was insane in 2020. You didn’t have to know much to make money by following alerts.

Then he made $20,000 in year two as things cooled down.

And in year three, 2022, he made just $5,000 from trading.

But Strati calls 2022 the best year of his life…

Slow markets are a gift.

When the market quiets down and the easy trades dry up, the best traders stop swinging and start studying.

In 2022, Strati watched every webinar and every video lesson. From 7 A.M. to 10 P.M., his days were 80% studying and 20% trading.

You probably feel the urge to disappear during slow markets.

But the traders who CRUSH use those months to build a foundation for what comes next…

In 2023, Strati made $130,000. In 2024, he made $360,000. In 2025, he made over $600,000.*

Stay disciplined through the slow markets.

More Breaking News

You’ll make it over the hill eventually.

The $53,000 Trade

Strati’s biggest single trade came from a multi-day breakout pattern. It’s one of the most basic setups that I teach.

The stock was LiveWire Group Inc. (NYSE: LVWR).

It spiked 794% starting May 27, 2025:

LVWR chart multi-month, 1-day candles Source: StocksToTrade
LVWR chart multi-month, 1-day candles Source: StocksToTrade

Strati studied this exact setup for years, going all the way back to Tim Grittani’s legendary videos from 2016. Gritanni was one of my first millionaire students.

When LVWR set up perfectly, he knew exactly what to do… and he banked $53,000 in roughly two hours on that trade.*

That’s the same annual salary he used to make as a gym teacher.

What Separates the Traders Who Make It

I asked Strati directly: “What separates the students who make it from those who don’t?”

His answer was simple:

“The ones who make it don’t care about what they made or lost that day. When they lose, they journal it and fix it. When they win, they ask how they could have done better…

And the ones who don’t make it get emotional and happy when they win. They blow it because they never understood how they made the money in the first place.”

That’s the difference…

Strati studied kinesiology, I was a philosophy major, and Jack Kellogg was a valet driver.

We didn’t need fancy finance degrees to make millions. Trust me, the market doesn’t care about your diploma.

It’s all about discipline, consistency, and execution.

You’re Not Far Behind

Look at Strati’s numbers again.

  • Year one: hot market, he made some money but didn’t fully earn it.
  • Year two: he made less.
  • Year three: he was barely green.
  • Then in years four, five, and six: Over $100k in profits each year.*

The process works, but it works on its own timeline, NOT YOURS.

Stick with it. Do the reps.

Strati proved that it’s possible. And my other 50+ millionaire students prove it’s repeatable.

Now it’s your turn.

Start right now. Make sure you’re following the strongest setups in the market every day:

Get my next watchlist alert.

Take notes and look for common price action in the chart. The more times you see these stocks, the quicker it will click.

Cheers

 

*Past performance does not indicate future results



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Author card Timothy Sykes picture

Timothy Sykes

Tim Sykes is a penny stock trader and teacher who became a self-made millionaire by the age of 22 by trading $12,415 of bar mitzvah money. After becoming disenchanted with the hedge fund world, he established the Tim Sykes Trading Challenge to teach aspiring traders how to follow his trading strategies. He’s been featured in a variety of media outlets including CNN, Larry King, Steve Harvey, Forbes, Men’s Journal, and more. He’s also an active philanthropist and environmental activist, a co-founder of Karmagawa, and has donated millions of dollars to charity.
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* Results are not typical and will vary from person to person. Making money trading stocks takes time, dedication, and hard work. There are inherent risks involved with investing in the stock market, including the loss of your investment. Past performance in the market is not indicative of future results. Any investment is at your own risk. See Terms of Service here

The available research on day trading suggests that most active traders lose money. Fees and overtrading are major contributors to these losses.

A 2000 study called “Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors” evaluated 66,465 U.S. households that held stocks from 1991 to 1996. The households that traded most averaged an 11.4% annual return during a period where the overall market gained 17.9%. These lower returns were attributed to overconfidence.

A 2014 paper (revised 2019) titled “Learning Fast or Slow?” analyzed the complete transaction history of the Taiwan Stock Exchange between 1992 and 2006. It looked at the ongoing performance of day traders in this sample, and found that 97% of day traders can expect to lose money from trading, and more than 90% of all day trading volume can be traced to investors who predictably lose money. Additionally, it tied the behavior of gamblers and drivers who get more speeding tickets to overtrading, and cited studies showing that legalized gambling has an inverse effect on trading volume.

A 2019 research study (revised 2020) called “Day Trading for a Living?” observed 19,646 Brazilian futures contract traders who started day trading from 2013 to 2015, and recorded two years of their trading activity. The study authors found that 97% of traders with more than 300 days actively trading lost money, and only 1.1% earned more than the Brazilian minimum wage ($16 USD per day). They hypothesized that the greater returns shown in previous studies did not differentiate between frequent day traders and those who traded rarely, and that more frequent trading activity decreases the chance of profitability.

These studies show the wide variance of the available data on day trading profitability. One thing that seems clear from the research is that most day traders lose money .

Millionaire Media 66 W Flagler St. Ste. 900 Miami, FL 33130 United States (888) 878-3621 This is for information purposes only as Millionaire Media LLC nor Timothy Sykes is registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser. No information herein is intended as securities brokerage, investment, tax, accounting or legal advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any company, security or fund. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes cannot and does not assess, verify or guarantee the adequacy, accuracy or completeness of any information, the suitability or profitability of any particular investment, or the potential value of any investment or informational source. The reader bears responsibility for his/her own investment research and decisions, should seek the advice of a qualified securities professional before making any investment, and investigate and fully understand any and all risks before investing. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes in no way warrants the solvency, financial condition, or investment advisability of any of the securities mentioned in communications or websites. In addition, Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes accepts no liability whatsoever for any direct or consequential loss arising from any use of this information. This information is not intended to be used as the sole basis of any investment decision, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the investment needs of any particular investor. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future returns.

Citations for Disclaimer

Barber, Brad M. and Odean, Terrance, Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors. Available at SSRN: “Day Trading for a Living?”

Barber, Brad M. and Lee, Yi-Tsung and Liu, Yu-Jane and Odean, Terrance and Zhang, Ke, Learning Fast or Slow? (May 28, 2019). Forthcoming: Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=2535636”

Chague, Fernando and De-Losso, Rodrigo and Giovannetti, Bruno, Day Trading for a Living? (June 11, 2020). Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=3423101”