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My Larry King Interview (Amazing 25-Minute Video)

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Written by Timothy Sykes
Updated 1/12/2023 29 min read

What an INCREDIBLE honor it was to be interviewed by the legend himself, Larry King…I hope you enjoy the video below and come away with a better sense of who I am and my goal in life…to create more millionaire trading challenge students and get more people changing their lives/growing their account exponentially instead of the standard thought that 20%/year is best case scenario.

We’ve transcribed the interview below the video too for my valued deaf newsletter subscribers

This video interview is paid promotional material

Larry: My guest is Timothy Sykes, the multimillionaire stock trader and entrepreneur. Timothy invested his $12,000 Bar Mitzvah money, which is about $11,500 more than I got, in penny stocks, making his first million in his college dorm. In addition to coaching students online and in seminars, his high-roller lifestyle on social media has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers. Less than a year ago, he kicked off his nonprofit, The Timothy Sykes Foundation, which aims to raise more than $2 million in 2015, for what?

Timothy: Everything. To help people change their lives just like my life has been changed.

Larry: I give you $5 or $10 or $100, where does that go to?

Timothy: Well, we partner with other charities. So far, we’ve done Make a Wish Foundation. This child, his name was Ewan, could not communicate with his parents. He was born with some unfortunate circumstances. We donated, or I donated $20,000 to a device so that he could talk and flew down to Miami, met with him and his Mom. And through this device, he said, “Hello, Mother,” and it was a beautiful moment.

Larry: Tell me about your upbringing?

Timothy: I’m from a small town, Orange, Connecticut. We weren’t rich, we weren’t poor. It’s just middle class.

Larry: Did you have early business instincts?

Timothy: Yeah. I was a tennis player. I really wanted to go pro, but I actually got injured. I had surgery on my arm, and that’s what led me to get into stock trading. My dad calls it “The million dollar injury.”

Larry: Why stocks? You could have done anything. You could have been a lawyer, a doctor, anything.

Timothy: This was 1999, the stock market was going crazy. My parents, in their wisdom, gave me control of the Bar Mitzvah gift money. They thought I would lose it all. They thought it would be a good lesson to me, like tough love, let the kid learn the value of a dollar. And instead, by the end of my senior year of high school, I turned it into over a hundred thousand. And then by the end of freshman year, I was at nearly a million.

Larry: You were doing this in high school?

Timothy: Senior year of high school. I was already into college early because of tennis, but I had the injury, so I couldn’t play tennis.

Larry: You’ve been called perhaps the most famous penny stock trader in the country. First, what is a penny stock?

Timothy: So these are low priced stocks, stocks trading under $5 a share. A lot of very sketchy companies; a lot of just very developmental companies that might have one or two projects, so not Microsoft.

Larry: Give us an example of a penny stock?

Timothy: Liquidmetal, they have this new-age plastic technology that they signed a deal with Apple. And we’re still waiting, three years after the agreement, to see what Apple is using with this new-age plastic. So it’s a 20 cent or 15 cent a share stock.

Larry: Why didn’t you trade Minnesota Mining? Why didn’t you trade American Airlines? Why penny stocks?

Timothy: So I actually did try, but my account wasn’t going anywhere. I was, at the time, trading Netscape and Yahoo, which were two of the biggest companies. And my account would go from $12,100 to 11,900, so I gravitated towards these lower-priced stocks, which no one is talking about on CNBC, but they’re very volatile, and my account grew very quickly.

Larry: Where do you look them up?

Timothy: I always look at the biggest percent gainers every single day, whatever stock is hot. The way that I found Liquidmetal, they had a deal with Apple. It was announced in an SEC filing, and the message boards started talking about it. There’s a group of traders that get these small companies riled up.

Larry: Where do I look up penny stocks? I don’t see it in the Wall Street Journal.

Timothy: Just biggest percent gainers. Every financial website has it. They’re just not talked about on the major media, which is why I think there’s an opportunity there.

Larry: What’s the secret of trading them?

Timothy: Not believing a word that they say and understanding that most of them will fail, but at the same time, understanding that momentum can push them up dramatically for a few hours or days.

Larry: Didn’t the Wolf of Wall Street do that?

Timothy: Well, he was actually the one pumping and dumping. I’m just trying to piggy back moves that are already existing. I’m trying to predict based on patters and historical price action. I’m not a broker, I’m not a financial adviser. I just try and show what patterns are working.

Larry: Do they have a shady impression?

Timothy: Yeah. Most people lose money on trading in penny stocks, so there’s a very negative stigma attached to them. But if you actually look at why they’re moving, a lot of these penny stocks drop 50% in a day because of companies like the Wolf of Wall Street. They’re promoting them. When they stop promoting them, they fall out of bed, but most people don’t see that. They just see the stock drop, no news, and they’re like, “Oh, penny stocks, they’re random.” If you actually look at the promotions, you can see when the promotional mailers or the telemarketing phone calls stop. So it’s very logical and predictable, people just aren’t looking at the right things. Most people want to look at revenues, profits, earnings per share. Those indicators don’t matter with penny stocks.

Larry: Is there a famous company that was a penny stock?

Timothy: Yeah. True Religion Jeans was a penny stock.

Larry: Really? I just got a pair.

Timothy: You got a pair. So they were a pump located in Vancouver, and the jeans actually took off. So it doesn’t happen very often where a penny stock actually turns into something real, but there’s one example right there.

Larry: If it doesn’t happen very often, how have you made a lot of money?

Timothy: So I actually mainly short sell penny stocks, which sounds crazy. You bet on stock going lower because they’re only a dollar of two dollars a share. But if a company is actually fundamentally worthless, then when it’s at one or two dollars a share, it drops 90%, and that’s how I collect my money.

Larry: So you’re rooting against the people you’re interested in. This is weird.

Timothy: I don’t necessarily root for anybody. I look at historical statistics, and I say, “Logically, this company will fail,” like Liquidmetal. They announced their deal with Apple three years ago, and the stock went from 12 cents to over $2 a share, nearly $2 a share. I bought it at 55, sold it at 80 cents. I made my 50% return in a few hours, and I was done with it. Since then, I’ve been shorting it a lot, because the deal hasn’t materialized and the stock has dropped 90%.

Larry: Did any stock ever go from 50 cents to $100?

Timothy: Not quite that high, but there are stocks that go up. There’s a famous company called Sponge Tech, which I was warning about. It went from a third of a penny up to 30 cents a share, so 90 times their money in a few months. They were a big sponsor and advertiser at U.S. Open and Madison Square Garden. They eventually defaulted on their advertising deals, and I was warning against it because they had 19 separate stock promoters pumping the stock up, and everyone believed in this. They had sponges with soap already in it, so it’s a cool product.

Larry: Not bad.

Timothy: But they had the ticker on the sponge. So what are they selling? Are they really selling the sponges, or are they selling their stock? And in reality, they were selling their stock. There were 500 million shares that the insiders theoretically sold.

Larry: Do you do it every day?

Timothy: Yeah, I look every day. I’m not always trading every day. Today, I haven’t made a trade. Because with penny stocks, you have to wait for something that’s hot and moving. I don’t believe in these stocks. Most of them, they don’t trade very actively, so I’m not interested in an illiquid penny stock.

Larry: Did you ever get tips on a bigger stock?

Timothy: I’ve tried them, I just haven’t’ grown my account that way. The way I’ve grown my account, and now my top students have grown their accounts, is trading active penny stocks, because they’re so volatile. My top student has turned $1500 into now $2.7 million in four years. You can’t do that with big stocks.

Larry: How do you get students?

Timothy: They hear about my success. I show everything online through social media. I share all my picks. I share all my launch lists.

Larry: They pay you?

Timothy: Yeah, but I have a lot of free stuff. I have 400 free videos on YouTube, so they can see that I’m not BS-ing, that I’m actually real. So you don’t have to.

Larry: Why do you give away things?

Timothy: I want people to learn. The reason why I got into teaching is because there was so much misinformation out there. People don’t even think that you can actually short sell penny stocks. People are like, “Oh, that’s illegal.” No, it’s not illegal. You just have to find a broker that has shares to short. And a lot of brokers, because they don’t have shares to short, just made up the lie that you can’t short sell penny stocks, so I hate misinformation.

Larry: You’ve said that penny stock traders are degenerates, and you’re trying to give structure to junkies.

Timothy: Correct.

Larry: Like the racetrack Monzas that hang around every day.

Timothy: Or casinos, the people who play Keno, except that the odds can actually be in your favor if you do enough research, and you have the indicators. With sports betting or Keno or casinos, you can’t really get 70%, 75% winning percentages like my top students and I have. This is a very logical game if you do enough research.

Larry: Is it easy to fall victim to a penny stock fraud?

Timothy: One hundred percent. If you don’t have the right mentor. If you don’t have the right rules. If you’re not financially proficient. If you don’t read the SEC filings. Companies issue press releases that are all filled with hype. But then if you read the legal filings, there’s not so much hype. So there are two separate sets of data. But if you’re only looking at the press releases, you’re not getting the full equation.

Larry: I did a video for a penny stock company, which is doing well in Canada, that does holograms.

Timothy: There are a lot of good products that have potential. But if you look into the financials and the red flags, these companies don’t have enough cash, they’re always trying to raise money. The number one problem with penny stocks is that they’re trying to increase their stock price so they can raise money, so they can actually try and thrive. And it does happen like True Religion and a few other companies. A lot of oil and gold companies in the past have actually struck it rich, and the stocks have gone from a dollar.

Larry: But I’m not fooling people. They asked me to do this, they’re friends of mine, and I said, “Look at the holograms,” and we showed the holograms. I don’t know anything else.

Timothy: Listen. There is technology, and there are stocks. I invested in this company called Cygnus eTransaction. It turned out to be my biggest loss. I lost over $500,000. They basically invented printed home ticketing. The technology was great. I was there at Six Flags when Mark Shapiro, the CEO of Six Flags said, “Your machine is going to change things.” I was a young kid at the time. He thought I was one of the engineers. And I was like, “Oh my God, this company is going to revolutionize it. Printed home ticketing became a standard, Cygnus went bankrupt. The CEO later bought the company in bankruptcy, changed the name. I was already out because I’m wiped out from the bankruptcy. Later it got sold for $22 million, and I was in when the company was worth $3 million.

Larry: Mark Shapiro now runs IMG.

Timothy: Yeah. So the technology can be huge, but don’t ever believe the stock price will necessarily reflect the technology.

Larry: You write exposés on celebrities who promote bad penny stocks; Justin Bieber, Shaquille O’Neal, Tiger Woods. How do people like this, genuine people who don’t need a lot of money, why do they get involved with this?

Timothy: Kathy Ireland, right now, is promoting a penny stock, NUGN. Celebrities, again, they believe in the technology and the product. They don’t look at the financials. They don’t look at the red flags. They’re not understanding that there are promotional mailers using their faces. Shaquille O’Neal, he had a whole program out with a big picture of him saying, “Shaq is going to pump up our sales.” Well, he pumped up the stock price, and then the stock dropped 99%. In Shaq’s deal, though, in the SEC filing, he had an out clause. So if the stock dropped below a dollar, he was done. But that still didn’t save all the people who believed in him, thinking Shaquille O’Neal is an investor.

Larry: But he wasn’t knowledgeably committing a fraud.

Timothy: No, no. I don’t think any of the celebrities are. They just haven’t been educated. They haven’t watched my DVDs yet. I’m trying to get the word out.

Larry: You got cease and desist letters from whom?

Timothy: I was very scared. From Shaquille O’Neal. It was my first cease and desist letter. I felt a little better when one of the words was agregious, and there’s no ‘A’ in the word egregious. It was one of his junior lawyers who sent it out. They saw my blog post.

Larry: Your Instagram is filled with pictures of you besides your Lamborghini, on vacation, holding rolled up hundreds of dollars to your ear like a phone. Why? Why this kind of promotion?

Timothy: So what I’ve learned is that because I teach finance, because I teach penny stocks, no one really wants to study this. They just want hot stock picks. So I have to do my utmost to get them studying my video lessons and DVDs. I now have 3000 video lessons. But they don’t want to put in the time to study unless they see the reward at the end. So I show off big piles of cash. I try and inspire them visually. If you look up landmark studies from psychologist– What is his name?– Latham and Locke, performance has been increased 15% to 25% if you have a big goal. So I’m always trying to show them the big goal. If you make enough successful trades, you can get the Lamborghini.

It makes me nauseous. I don’t even like my Lamborghini. I drive too fast. I need to take Dramamine. I’m Jewish. I’m not cut out for that kind of stuff. So I don’t necessarily love it. But what I do love, I took a picture of this beautiful painting at one of my favorite museums in Venice, Italy. No one liked it on social media. That’s what I love. So you have to find what inspires people to study. And for them, they want the cash, they want the Lamborghini. And the cool thing is that, my millionaire students, once they make enough money, they understand, “Okay, you don’t really need a Lamborghini.” Once you have a million dollars in your account, you can have any car you want. So I show visualizations just to get people to study, and it’s been working well. I’m the only one with millionaire students.

Larry: Are you driven by money?

Timothy: In the beginning, I was. I didn’t know any better. But once you become a millionaire– I was a millionaire at 22– I was bored. I was living in Spain. I was just drinking and eating with my friends and really doing nothing with my life, and that’s unfulfilling. So you have to get to a place where you see that you want more out of life. I don’t bound out of bed, because I’m like, “Let’s see how much money I can spend today.” Now, I bound out of bed, “Let’s see how many people I can teach and how fast I can grow my charity.” So your priorities change, but you don’t see that when you don’t have money.

Larry: How old are you now?

Timothy: I’m 34.

Larry: Married?

Timothy: No, single. Oh, I’m engaged. I’m actually going to Europe next week to look for wedding locations.

Larry: Living where?

Timothy: I’m in Miami and Beverly Hills. I’m back and forth. Mostly, Miami.

Larry: That’s not bad. You explained your image by saying, “Let’s say you meet a homeless guy on the street and offer him the choice of a bottle of Jack Daniels or green juice kale drink. He’s going to take the Jack Daniels. So what I do is show pictures of my Lamborghini, the mansion I used to have, my trips, my model girlfriend, the life they want, the Jack Daniels. But inside, I teach them the rules. I’m tricking the bum. I’m on a mission to take bums off the street and put them in Armani suits.

Timothy: That’s pretty much true.

Larry: Why are you driven by that?

Timothy: Because I see what education can do. I see, in the entire world of trading, in stock trading, in financial trading, there aren’t that many self-made millionaires who show every trade. I show every trade, my students show every trade. But to get there, you need to be inspired to study. You don’t get to millionaire status without studying. You might have a few lucky picks here or there. But to become an actual millionaire from a few thousand dollars, this is quite an incredible feat. The way to do it is study in spreadsheets and more spreadsheets.

Larry: And does that work?

Timothy: It’s worked. And you don’t want to do that until you see what you can get out of it. So a lot of people who have $1000, $5000, $20,000 to their name, they’re working the 9:00 to 5:00 jobs. That’s not going to get them rich ever. And they’re watching CNBC. They’re diversifying into GE and IBM, and they’re turning $5000 into $6000 over the course of the year. You have to try and take weird strategies like mine, alternative strategies, to try and grow it. And that’s what I’ve done.

Larry: You have more male students than female?

Timothy: Yeah, more male. But that’s changing too. I want my first female millionaire student. They’re actually better traders, statistically.

Larry: Do you equate wealth with happiness?

Timothy: No. I equate freedom with happiness, and wealth allows you to have freedom.

Larry: Your Mom says that all your marketing makes you look like a jerk. Do your parents understand what you’re doing? Bloomberg had that.

Timothy: Yeah. Yeah, my parents both work for me. My mom ships out the DVDs. My dad helps new students get oriented with the video lessons and DVDs. So we understand that the marketing looks jerky, but we understand what it takes to inspire people to study. So if I wish I could just…again, like with the bum, if you give him kale juice, he’ll drink it. He won’t. He wants the alcohol. And my students want the orange Lamborghini at first. Once they get wealthy enough, it all changes though. Because then they realize and they’re enlightened. I was a philosophy major, so this is like the allegory of the cave. That’s my business model.

Larry: You donated that equipment, you said, to that child in Florida, yet that was one of your least liked photos on Instagram. Why?

Timothy: Yeah, sadly. Again, this comes with what inspires people; Lamborghini, cash, exotic trips, beaches.

Larry: They don’t want to see a little boy.

Timothy: They don’t. Even though, it was one of the best moments of my life. My parents were there. We all started crying. The little boy spoke electronically for the first time. It was incredible, and I can’t really pass that down through social media. We have it on video. It just didn’t translate, unfortunately.

Larry: You think we all are selfish by nature?

Timothy: I think in the beginning, maybe. Especially when you see what our society has become and what we put our values on, like the Kardashians and stuff like that. I think that we definitely need a change in focus. But to get there, you need education. I wish math teachers had Lamborghini’s. Think about how good you’d be at math if your high school math teacher had a Lamborghini. You’d be like, “I want to study this stuff.”

Larry: You also started a scholarship at Tulane where you went to school. Great school in New Orleans.

Timothy: Yeah.

Larry: You call it The Timothy Sykes Daytrading Award for the Talented.

Timothy: Yes.

Larry: Where did you come up with that?

Timothy: I wanted to call it the award for students who learn good, based off the movie Zoolander, but they said that would make a mockery, so I came up with this awkward thing. But it rewards people for their talents, not just academic or athletic. There are enough athletic and academic scholarships. This is crazy awards. We had a guy who created a magazine, a karate champion, this other person who does special effects for movies. And so we give them some money to help them pursue their dreams.

Larry: How do you get more information on the Foundation?

Timothy: It’s all on timothysykes.com. And soon, we’ll have our own charity website. We just got 501c3 status the other day.

Larry: timothysykes.com

Timothy: Yeah, timothysykes.com. That’s where our webpage is.

Larry: You said, “Everyone in finance is boring.”

Timothy: Pretty much.

Larry: What do you mean?

Timothy: Again, most Wall Street people, they just want money, they want their power suits. I lived in New York for a little while. It’s a very superficial culture. They’re not giving back, they’re not sharing their education. I’m trying to change everything. I understand I’m a penny stock guy. I post pictures of the cash and stuff like that. But if you look at my lessons,– and the pictures initially get people in the door– they start to see what actually matters. And I’m gradually changing people’s lives.

The other day, I gave totally randomly, not part of my charity. I was just filming $20,000 away to random people out on the street, and I filmed it all. You’re going to love this video when we post it. But when I started giving it to random people, I was hearing their story. One man had been shot, and he was trying to make enough to support his family. Another lady, she’s trying to care for…

Larry: You went down the street with hundred dollar bills?

Timothy: Exactly. Exactly, a big pile of cash out in the Valley, and we went to this bar. I’ll send you the video when we have it all edited. But what happened towards the end is, everyone was drinking at this random bar so maybe alcohol played a little part. But people who I gave hundred dollar bills to, I gave this one lady $500, she started listening to another guy’s story. And she said, “You know what? You deserve this more,” and she gave $100 of the $500 that I gave her, to this other man. And I was like, “It’s spreading.”

And that is what I want. That is what social media should be used for. Where you can spread good messages, where it’s not just who can get the most followers, who can get the most likes. How do we start to change people’s focus and priorities? And it starts with education. And that is why I literately make a video lesson a day. I have a blog post a day. I’m in my chat room with nearly a thousand traders talking about different stocks. You need the education, and you need the financial freedom.

Larry: Do you want to be a billionaire?

Timothy: I don’t really care about that. I want to create more millionaires. That would be more impressive. If I could create a thousand millionaires or even a hundred millionaires. I already have several million. I live pretty much as good as can be expected.

Larry: Were you anywhere near wiped out in the economic downturn?

Timothy: No. I was near wiped out with that Cygnus eTransaction when I believed in that penny stock. I actually do better in bear markets, because I short sell. So during bull markets, I’m scared, because absolute crap companies are rising. And it’s scary, and I cut losses quickly. But in bear markets, these stocks drop like a rock. Because if you look at the red flags and the financials, they should drop like a rock.

Larry: What’s your assessment of the market now.

Timothy: It’s a guessing game as it always is. I stay away from the overall market. I think that the key that individual investors should be using is looking at specific stocks, trade them like a sniper when there’s an advantage. When there’s no advantage, don’t trade. You don’t have to be right all the time. You don’t have to know where the market is going all the time. Too many people trade like a mutual fund, and they think that they have to try and make 20% per year. I’m in this to make exponential returns. And with that, you have to be very specific and deliberate with your trades.

Larry: Do you call it gambling?

Timothy: Researched gambling. And again, the odds are on my side. I win roughly 74% of the time. You don’t find that with anywhere else.

Larry: You remember your first big thrill in trading?

Timothy: Freshman year in college, I bought this company. They were a penny stock, and they said they were going to be on TV showcasing their new technology that back in 2000, cell phone technology wasn’t very good, you had fuzziness. And they had this technology that could get rid of the fuzziness, and they were going to be on, I don’t know if it was CNBC or CNN.

Larry: Like HD?

Timothy: Yeah, something over the TV. I don’t even remember. The ticker symbol was ISCO. And I bought it. I invested nearly three quarters of my net worth as a freshman, and this was nearly $250,000, and I’d already made some money. But they were on TV that weekend, the next Monday the stock kept gaping up, and you couldn’t pre…there’s pre orders, pre-market orders now. So back then, there was no pre market trading. I was watching the stock go up. I’m trying to click sell, nothing’s getting taken. Right when the market opens, I put my sell orders in. For three minutes, there’s nothing getting executed, because it just keeps going up. I finally get my sell order in, I made a hundred thousand dollars in one day. I ran around my dorm room just screaming. This was crazy to me, and I took my whole dorm out to dinner. That was a beautiful moment.

Larry: What do you think of the Shark Tank Show?

Timothy: It’s good. It gets people interested in business. I just ate at a cousins lobster truck the other day. It was a delicious lobster roll, and they got funded from that. So I think that’s good where you mix entertainment with education. I think we need more of that.

Larry: When did you know you made it?

Timothy: I don’t know if I’ve still made it. It’s not a game about increasing your net worth, it’s about achieving your goals. And I’ve created four millionaires so far, and I have a few dozen students who are earning six figures a year. But most people still don’t trade penny stocks. They still don’t care about education. I have a long way to go. I’m going to need to create many more millionaires and create many more video lessons to get there.

Larry: You get more a kick out of the creating of one?

Timothy: One hundred percent. I was there for my second millionaire, in Ohio, when he crossed a million dollars, and he only made $9000 on trade. It was a good trade. He’s 25 years old. His name is Tim Grittani. He was featured on CNN and Reuters. And he was like, “Yeah, it was a good trade, $9000.” And I’m like, “Three years ago, you had $1500 to you name. Do you realize how big this is?” And he doesn’t understand it. Now, he’s up to $2.7 million. But the fact that he can go from &1500; to $2.7 million in a few years, not from any one lucky pick, but from strategy.

And he has literately thousands of spreadsheets. He tracks every specific kind of strategy; if a company reports good earnings, if they report a contract, if it’s a pump and dump. And he looks at patterns, and he sees what patterns are working. He is much more methodical than me.

Larry: What do your parents think of you now?

Timothy: They love it. They’re part of the business. They see how fast it’s growing. We doubled educational revenues year over year each of the past three years, so they like it.

Larry: Wow. Any goals?

Timothy: More millionaires. Many more millionaires and many more people to help via my charity. I pledged to donate $2 million. So far this year, I think I’ve donated about $600,000. So I have a ways to go, but I’m going to keep helping and keep teaching, and we’ll see where it gets me.

Larry: What about your personal net worth?

Timothy: I have roughly $15 million in the bank. But again, whether I have 10, 14, 20 million, an extra few million, it’s not going to change my life one way or the other. Now, I want to help average people. That’s what’s really going to change; someone going from a thousand to a million or that kid getting a 20 thousand dollar machine. It’s using the money for the greater good.

I like having the security. I’m going on a trip in a few days. I’m going to have fun for a month. I love being able to donate, but the ultimate key is freedom. Most people are stuck in the rat race, 9:00 to 5:00 every single day for decade after decade, trying to pay down student loans, trying to pay down debt. There needs to be a change. And with the internet, I think that’s possible. With social media, you start to see other people’s lifestyles. I wish more millionaires shared a lot of their stuff. They don’t want to look like a jack ass on the internet, and I understand that. I don’t mind that. I’ve already been on a few reality shows. I have a big mouth. I look like a jack ass naturally, sometimes.

Larry: What do you worry about?

Timothy: Nothing, really. I see where all the trends are going. I see that I’m going to create more millionaires. When I first said, “I’m going to create a millionaire from scratch,” nobody believed me. They’re like, “Oh, just another internet douche bag.” Then I created one and two and three and four. So it’s not a question of if I’m going to create more, it’s a question of how many. Well, I worry about the Earth’s self-destruction. I think that we have a lot of problems with nuclear and energy and stuff like that. So can we increase education before we destroy ourselves? That would be my main concern.

Larry: You’re so young. You thinking about a legacy yet?

Timothy: Social media is so young. The internet is so young. The Internet is only 20 years old. The internet is going to change everything. People have not realized how many educational and societal-influencing tools the internet will create, so I’m very excited over the next few years and decades.

Larry: Great pleasure meeting you, Timothy.

Timothy: Thanks for having me.

Larry: You’re a special guy. I want to thank my guest, Timothy Sykes. Want more information? timothysykes.com. I don’t have to wish you luck. It ain’t luck.

Timothy: I appreciate it. You’re right. It’s not luck, but I appreciate it. I’ll take luck.

Larry: It’s 75% research.

Timothy: Exactly.

Larry: Timothy Sykes.


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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. Read More

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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”