Timothy Sykes

Timothy Sykes
Born April 15, 1981
Orange, Connecticut, U.S.
Residence Miami Beach, Florida, U.S.
Alma mater Tulane University
Website http://www.timothysykes.com/

Timothy Sykes (born April 16, 1981) is an American penny stock trader and entrepreneur.[1][2] He is best known for earning $1.65 million by day trading while attending Tulane University.[3][4]

Career

In 1999, while attending high school, Sykes used $12,415 of his bar mitzvah gift money and began day trading penny stocks.[5] The investment would grant him about $1.65 million when he was around the age of 21.[6]

Sykes graduated from Tulane University in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a minor in business.[7] While at Tulane, Sykes routinely cut class to day trade.[8] In 2003, during his senior year, he founded Cilantro Fund Management, a short bias hedge fund,[9][10] using $1 million mostly from Sykes' friends and family.[11]

In 2006, Sykes was included on Trader Monthly's "30 Under 30" list of up-and-coming traders in the market,[12] a selection which editor Randall Lane later called "our worst pick" among the chosen honorees.[11] Sykes claimed that the Cilantro Fund was "the number one long-short microstock hedge fund in the country, according to Barclays";[11] Lane later discovered that the rating came from "the Barclay Group," a small research company based in Fairfield, Iowa, and not the well-known Barclay's British bank.[13][14]

In 2008 Sykes decided to recreate his initial investing success by again starting with $12,415.[15][16] He named the attempt Transparent Investment Management (TIM).[3][17] After two years, Sykes turned the sum into $90,368 and was the top ranked trader on Covestor.[18][19]

Sykes self-published An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund in 2007.[20] The book documented Sykes' experiences from day-trading in college to becoming a wealthy hedge fund manager.[21]

In 2012, Sykes created "Miss Penny Stock," a financial beauty pageant among the female representatives for his brand and company.[22][23]

Teaching and other projects

Sykes currently works as a financial activist and educator.[24]

In 2009, Sykes launched Investimonials.com, a website devoted to collecting user reviews of financial services, videos, and books, as well as financial brokers.[25]

Sykes co-founded Profit.ly in 2011, a social service with about 20,000 users that provides stock trade information online.[26] Sykes said the service serves two purposes: "creating public track records for gurus, newsletter writers and students and allowing everyone to learn from both the wins and losses of other traders to benefit the entire industry."[27]

In December 2013, CNN Money wrote an article on Sykes and his student Tim Grittani.[1] Under Sykes's guidance and coaching, Grittani turned $1,500 into over $1 million in 3 years.[28] Grittani was Sykes's second student to earn over $1 million following Sykes's strategies.[1][28]

Sykes founded the Timothy Sykes Foundation, which has raised $600,000 and has partnered with Make-a-Wish Foundation and the Boys and Girls Club.[29]

In February 2017, Sykes donated $1 million to Pencils of Promise to help build 20 new primary schools across Ghana, Guatemala and Laos, to be completed between 2017 and 2018.[30]

Controversy

Sykes is a registered investment adviser, and has declined to provide the necessary brokerage statements and related documents to validate many of his claims.[31]

Sykes has publicly criticized various businesses and celebrities, including Shaquille O'Neal[32] and Justin Bieber,[33][34] for promoting "pump and dump" schemes,[33][35][36][37] in which an investor purchases stock, hypes others into buying that stock to inflate its price, then sells the shares at a higher price and shorts the profit from the resulting decline.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Yousuf, Hibah. "Trader turns $1,500 to $1 million in 3 years". CNN Money.
  2. ↑ de la Merced, Michael (December 8, 2006). "Culturally, Hedge Funds Go Public". New York Times.
  3. 1 2 "Timothy Sykes Will Not Be Stopped, Gosh Darn It". New York Magazine. November 1, 2007.
  4. ↑ Neal, Jeff (March 13, 2009). "Interview Central: Timothy Sykes, Part 1". Forbes.com.
  5. ↑ "Wanted: Fund Manager, No Experience Necessary". Business Week. March 5, 2006.
  6. ↑ "Young Manager Profile" (PDF). Alternative Universe. March 27, 2007.
  7. ↑ "Timothy Sykes' LinkedIn Profile". LinkedIn.
  8. ↑ Toren, Adam (October 25, 2011). "Young Entrepreneurs: "Quit being such babies!" Tim Sykes Tells it Like it Is". YoungEntrepreneur.com.
  9. ↑ "US magazine toasts star traders aged 30 or younger" (PDF). Reuters. July 27, 2006.
  10. ↑ Joe, Michael (May 8, 2012). "Two students win Sykes Award recognizing nontraditional abilities and interests". Tulane.edu.
  11. 1 2 3 Randall Lane (2010). The Zeroes. page 56: Penguin Group. ISBN 978-1-59184-329-0.
  12. ↑ Barber, Andrew (August 2006). "30 under 30" (PDF). Trader Monthly.
  13. ↑ Thomassen, Lucilla. "5 Things You Should Know about Tim Sykes". TopTenPK.com.
  14. ↑ Randall Lane (2010). The Zeroes. pages 151-153: Penguin Group. ISBN 978-1-59184-329-0.
  15. ↑ "Wunderkid is Back". Investment News. November 12, 2007.
  16. ↑ "'Wall Street Warriors' TV Star Timothy Sykes Sets Up New & Transparent Challenge". PR Web. November 1, 2007.
  17. ↑ Kuhn, Eric (May 6, 2008). "From Bar Mitzvah Thousands to Bar Mitzvah Millions: Tim Sykes Launches New Site". Huffington Post.
  18. ↑ Sykes, Timothy (November 2, 2009). "How To Turn $12,415 Into $90,368 In 2 Years [A BLUEPRINT]". TimothySykes.com.
  19. ↑ Goode, Michael (December 10, 2009). "A first look at auto-trading Tim Sykes using Covestor Investment Management". GoodeTrades.com.
  20. ↑ Sykes, Timothy (2007). An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund. BullShip Press. p. 235. ISBN 0979549701.
  21. ↑ Chatzky, Jean. "An American Hedge Fund". Oprah.com.
  22. ↑ "Stock up on girls". The New York Post.
  23. ↑ La Roche, Julia. "Penny Stock King Tim Sykes Is Hosting A Beauty Pageant Where Girls Will Parade Around In Bikinis And Cocktail Outfits". Business Insider.
  24. ↑ "Party's Over for Hedge King". New York Post. September 21, 2007.
  25. ↑ Kincaid, Jason (November 25, 2009). "Investimonials Wants To Be Your Guide To Quality Financial Products". Tech Crunch.
  26. ↑ "Best Advice I Ever Got: Timothy Sykes". Inc. June 1, 2011.
  27. ↑ Anderson, Tom (September 15, 2011). "Profit.ly Mines The Masses For Stock-Trading Gold". Forbes.
  28. 1 2 "Veteran Trader Timothy Sykes Creates Two Millionaire Students, Proving the Average Joe Can Outperform Wall Street's Big Boys". Reuters.
  29. ↑ Rampton, John The Man Who Wants Everyone to Be a Millionaire Inc. September 24, 2015
  30. ↑ "Make Money and Make an Impact with Tim Sykes". Lewis Howes.
  31. ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-solin/learning-from-timothy-syk_b_4998799.html
  32. ↑ Veneziani, Vince (March 3, 2010). "Tim Sykes: I Dare Shaq To Take Me To Court!". Business Insider. Retrieved 7 January 2013.
  33. 1 2 Cunningham, Brandon. "The Curious Case of Justin Bieber and Options Media Group (aka PhoneGuard)". Motley Fool.
  34. ↑ Peterson, Kim. "Justin Bieber's penny-stock trouble". MSN Money.
  35. ↑ "Not Spongeworthy". New York Post.
  36. ↑ "SpongeTech CEO Arrested For Fraud A Week After Suing Short-Seller". Business Insider.
  37. ↑ "Bill for Spongetech fraud: $52 million". Crain's New York.
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