What’s your backstory?
When I was in high school I would watch CNBC and read Forbes 500. It got me thinking, how did these millionaires and billionaires make their money? Being a young entrepreneur, I wanted to mirror people who had great success, and the easiest way people were making their money was through the stock market. At around 14 years old is when I got really interested and saved up $500 from my first business of mowing lawns.
I had to give it to my dad to open up a brokerage account for me. I ended up using that money to buy Conference International ticker symbol $CFRI at 28 cents and it went all the way up to $1.34 before crashing back down. That’s when I started getting into trading. Then in high school we had a stock market contest and I won that with a prize of $100. At this time CNBC was having a universal simulated contest where I had also beat 99.98% of the people participating.
2008 is when I actively started buying and selling “trading stocks”, I started off by just reading messaging blogs and then moved into options trading with $1,000 and traded my way up to $5,000. Without knowing anything about trading I ended up losing the $5,000. I soon started to get into futures trading then entered a trading combine at a trading firm that would back you with capital if you performed well enough, which I did.
After I was brought on as a trader I taught my friend my strategies and he entered a combine and beat out over 300 traders. That’s when I knew that I could not only trade but also teach people to trade stocks.
In 2012 I was able to meet Tom Sosnoff who started TastyTrade at ThinkorSwim where I got my own trading show in 2012-2013. I was teaching over 40,000 people how to trade futures and options. From there I was hired by a prop firm and received my series 56. After teaching on TastyTrade I was getting tons of messages every single day from people asking me questions about the market. So in 2014 I started Major League Trading.
Now in 2018 I have over 2,500 student’s traders across the world who trade Futures, Nadex, options and Forex. One of my students is from Tanzania and has made over $500,000 in his first year. Another had left the military and went from $2k-$40k in a month and now has done at least $300k. Stories like these are why I started Major League Trading.
I know this is not an easy job. What drives you?
A couple things drive me. The first, you can’t just love to win; you have to hate to lose too. I love to prove people wrong and just like many people, having money to be able to do what I want when I want also drives me. The success of my students and myself drive me too. I always want to be my own boss and never have to go work for someone else.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? What lesson did you learn from them?
I’m grateful for my business partner Eric for pushing me to make what I do into a company. He has taught me that perseverance pays and that setting goals and working to achieve them is important. I’m also grateful for my mom too because she always had my back and knew I would make it somehow, she just always had faith in me when no one else did.
How do you push through your worst times?
Trading can be mentally exhausted so having close relationships is important to take your mind off the market. It’s easy to get screen paralyses, so I make sure to have a schedule outside of trading. I also make sure to have hobbies like reading self-help books and hanging out with friends. I believe that pain is subjective and that no matter how bad your day is someone else has it worse. Comparison is the killer of happiness so I like to make every day the best day possible.