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Success Stories

Stay-at-Home Mom or $196K Trader? She’s Both.

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Written by Timothy Sykes
Updated 4/26/2022 6 min read

So many people start trading because they want a better life for their family.

My Trading Challenge student Jenny — who’s a mother of four — actually made it happen. She went from knowing nothing about trading to over $196K in trading profits in about a year.

It wasn’t easy.

Jenny thought trading would help bring in more money for her family — but she lost at first and thought she’d have to quit. It didn’t click until she found one simple thing. She calls it her ‘secret weapon.’

It changed everything.

I want you to learn from Jenny’s story — and discover the ONE thing that completely transformed her family’s life.

Four Kids. Six People in the House. One Income.

© Millionaire Media, LLC

A decade ago, Jenny was living a very different life. She worked in HR at a huge defense contractor. She made a great salary. She had everything she needed.

Fast forward a few years and a few kids, one of whom had early health issues. She had to leave her career.

Her husband was supporting their family of six on his engineering income — money was tight. Jenny knew she had to do something … But she couldn’t get a regular 9-5 job and take care of four kids.

For her, the tipping point came in 2020, when she wanted to give her hardworking husband a nice Father’s Day gift … but had to ask him for money to buy it.

It was embarrassing. She wanted to start making money, but how? She’d been out of the workforce for a decade.

When a friend started trading and found success, Jenny was inspired — it seemed like a great work-from-home scenario.

Trade, make some money, and still have the afternoons and evenings to care for her kids. Her husband helped her fund her account, and she got started…

Early Losses + Painful Lessons

Jenny’s first attempts at trading weren’t so successful.

She was studying charts, she was reading books, but she was losing. She lost $3K right away — it was very scary.

It was all because she was following the wrong people.

She didn’t know it at the time, but she had fallen into a common newbie trap — following pumpers and promoters.

She was following fake gurus who had ‘hot tips’ — and getting burned when they cashed out.

Has this happened to you? If so, it’s not your fault. But it does mean you’re following the wrong people…

Jenny was about to quit…

Then she found me.

A New Approach to Trading

jenny's tesla on sunny day
Photo credit: Jenny

When Jenny first found me, she was understandably skeptical.

But she saw my students’ results and started studying. She realized I’m fully transparent and threw herself into her studies.

She became obsessed with my penny stock trading strategy, and she started to find success. Check out this tweet from early in her career:

But as it turns out, trading penny stocks wasn’t the end of her trading journey.

In fact, my Trading Challenge was only the gateway to the secret weapon that put her over $196K in trading profits.

Once she found it, her profits grew exponentially.

She had trades like this $15,600 profit trade on Zoom Video Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM)…

And this $9546 profit trade on SPRT (after a merger, now Greenidge Generation (NASDAQ:GREE)…)

By 2021, she had enough profits to make many dreams of her come true.

  • She got the car of her dreams.
  • She was able to show her appreciation for her husband by giving him a $20K check for Father’s Day — just a year after she’d asked HIM for a loan to buy him a present!
  • Best of all, she was able to buy an avocado farm and pay a caretaker.

Talk about living the dream!

And she credits it to one simple thing that changed her trading career.

I’m going to share it in just a minute, but first, Jenny asked me to share a few things she WISHES she knew when she was getting started…

Jenny’s Top Advice for New Traders

  1. Don’t rush into trading. New traders must take the time to develop their own strategy. Don’t follow alerts blindly. Study the patterns and take the time to develop your own rules.
  2. Trade with a small account. Jenny finds that she does better with a small account. Why? Because she tends to be more careful with her trades.
  3. Set a goal and have a plan. Jenny won’t enter a trade before she’s defined her goals and strategy. That way, she can stick to her own rules!

Whether or not you use Jenny’s secret weapon, those tips are pretty universal — all traders should follow them!

Jenny’s Secret Weapon

Like I said earlier … I love how traders take different paths to find their own success.

I’ve told you about Jenny’s trading story. I’ve told you her top advice.

Now, I’m ready to share her secret weapon.

It’s helped Jenny change her entire family’s existence.

It was game-changing for her … Now I want to share it with you. You won’t find this anywhere else…

Discover Jenny’s secret weapon here!

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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”