Steven Dux is Timothy Sykes’ greatest student success story for turning $27,000 into over $5 million in just 4 years. Amazingly when he started day trading volatile penny stocks, he was still completing his environmental engineering degree. It’s crazy how he managed to finish his degree and have enough time in the day to trade. His trading journey started when he discovered Tim Sykes from his controversial Instagram account. At first, he was skeptical but decided to sign up for Pennystocking Silver. After a few months, he took the plunge and paid $5500 to join the millionaire challenge program.

Dux is now one of Tim Sykes most successful students along with Roland Wolf and Tim Grittani. Due to his unique story, Sykes likes to promote him at every opportunity because he is someone who has implemented his strategies to become a millionaire. It’s similar to how companies use case studies to attract more customers. Sykes interviewed Dux on his Youtube channel to share his story and inspire new traders. Once the interview was uploaded, young aspiring traders bombarded Dux with messages hoping to discover his secrets. Asking everything from what penny stock broker he recommends to what he eats for breakfast.

The main reason for Steven’s rapid progression is his extreme dedication and willingness to invest time and money. Although he started off studying Timothy Sykes, he later learned a great deal from Michael Goode, Mark Croock and Tim Grittani, all mentors within the millionaire challenge program. He follows the teachings of Tim Grittani in particular and cites Trading Tickers DVD as a huge inspiration. Similarly to Grittani, Dux is very analytical and claims to have thousands of excel spreadsheets tracking dozens of chart patterns. This gives him the ability to discover what patterns work the best in a specific time frame. Basing all of his trading decisions on data allows him to stack the odds in favor. From the picture above of his trading desk, his attention to detail is immaculate. Steven stuck his notes and drawings of charts on his wall to drill these charts into his brain.

He mainly follows three simple chart patterns that have an insane 85% success rate. All of these patterns feature in Tim’s Penny Stocking Framework DVD.

• First red day – when a penny stock goes parabolic based on a big news event such as FDA approval, a stock can spike 200% in just a matter of days. You wait until the stock’s momentum slows down and short sell the company on the first day it turns red. This is a significant shift in momentum where those who are long will exit their position causing the price to drop.
• Dip buying huge morning panics – whether it’s an overall market or sector panic, there are always great opportunities to dip buy intraday panics. If a stock drops significantly in the morning and is oversold, it could bounce back strongly so you can capture a quick 20-30% gain. When dip buying panics you should prepare to cut losses short if the trade goes against you. Otherwise, it’s like catching a falling knife.
• Shorting spikes – this pattern is slightly riskier than the first two patterns so it requires more experience.

Since these three simple patterns have an 85% success ratio, Steven places big money into trades that meet his criteria and banks huge profits. This approach to trading is the polar opposite of conventional wisdom on Wall Street. Financial advisers tell people never risk more than 10% on any investment while this guy during the early stages was putting 80% of his account on one trade. Patience also plays a big part in his success, he waits like a sniper until a setup meets all of his criteria and then places the trade. If the trade goes against him, he cuts his losses early and avoids blowing up his account. Hence this is why his winning percentage on Profit.ly is approximately 70% with an average gain of $3,354.

Due to the large following Dux has attracted in recent times, there has been strong demand for him to create his own DVD and newsletter. Steven listened to his followers and decided to release his own DVD – Trader Checklist Part Deux sometime in February 2018. It will cost between $300 – $600 to purchase if he launches his service on Profit.ly. Starting an educational business is the next logical step to make easy money outside of trading. Despite the vast amount of money he has made, Dux remains a cool, humble dude. He recently achieved his dream and bought himself a McLaren 570S.

Steven Dux’s story continues to serve as a huge inspiration for up and coming traders but it’s improbable anyone will achieve similar profits. While it’s likely some will have success, the average person won’t be able to become a millionaire within one year without an obsessive tendency towards learning. He even jokes that he reads and takes notes on the toilet. In addition, he re-watches DVD’s multiple times to absorb all the information fully. A typical subscriber will watch it once or twice max. This level of dedication is difficult to maintain for the average person works a full-time job or attends college. In the meantime, if you’re interested in learning from Steven Dux, check out his webinars and free videos on Youtube.

Ricky Gutierrez is a 22-year-old online entrepreneur and CEO of Techbud Solutions. I first came across Ricky on YouTube from the recommended videos list. The title had a clickbait headline – “How I made $200,000 by the age of 21” and an eye-catching thumbnail. After watching that video, I learned that not all of the $200,000 was earned from day trading stocks. He made the money through various entrepreneurial ventures and real estate, buying his first property at 20!

He seems like an honest, likeable guy and understands a lot about investing for someone who’s only 22 years old. His latest course, Learn Plan Profit is perfect for beginners interested in learning the basics of stock trading within an interactive community. In addition to following Ricky, Steven Dux is another trader worth watching, Dux has over $1 million in verified profits.

YouTube Channel

Over the last year, in particular, his YouTube channel has grown in popularity and has built a large following. He teaches newbies the basics and fundamentals of trading penny stocks along with some real estate investing advice. His channel appeals mostly to young millennials, new to the stock market. Gutierrez uploads free helpful lessons teaching others how to build watchlists, read stock charts and answers questions related to penny stocks. Ricky is currently mentoring his younger sister, taking someone with zero knowledge of the stock market, giving her a simple framework to follow and teaching strategies to grow her Robinhood account. It’s funny how he avoids revealing her name to avoid creepy guys stalking her!

Techbud Solutions

During his videos, he continually advertises his Facebook group, Techbud Solutions. It’s a group of like-minded individual who share ideas and learn together. Techbud Solutions has attracted a staggering 267,072 members, that’s an impressive feat! The Facebook group isn’t very active, but the discord groups are busy. There are separate groups for different financial assets such as cryptocurrency, stocks and real estate. While the groups are free to join, Ricky does have a premium course on the Teachable platform for people looking to taking their education to the next level.

Learn Plan Profit

After years of producing free content, Ricky finally decided to monetize to his video lessons. Learn Plan Profit provides a solid framework for beginners traders to learn the basic of stock trading.

The course covers:

• Strategies to find hot stocks worth trading.
• Risk management and technical analysis.
• Best indicators and chart patterns to follow.
• Mindset lessons with a strong focus consistency and personal growth.
• How to scan for swing trades and top the six golden rules which indicate the best time to buy.
• How to trade ETFs – talks about building watch-lists, chart patterns and futures.
• Quizzes to help members learn and retention information.
• Bonus content offers advice on real estate investing and reselling exotic cars for hefty profits.

Some people think if they sign up they’ll be driving around in a Lamborghini within six months. To get to Ricky’s level, it will take years of dedication to learning. Ricky’s success didn’t happen overnight, he revealed before in an interview he traded penny stocks for five years without making money.

Is Ricky a Scam?

My initial review of Ricky was negative mainly because I’m a sceptical person. I saw this young guy driving around in a McLaren, talking about real estate/day trading and immediately thought scam artist! Selling trading courses is a lucrative niche, day traders such as Jason Bond and Cameron Fous make millions every year through selling education to newbies. Low-priced stocks are prone to manipulation so I presumed Ricky’s plan was to build up a large following to sell alerts or pump worthless penny stocks.

Ricky is a savvy online marketer and understands how to build an audience using the power of YouTube. His channel has 780,000 followers approximately and his videos have attracted millions of views. He creates eye-catching thumbnails, with a headline to attract views – “how to make $100 a day in the stock market.” Recently he uploaded a video where he picked up a random stranger in his McLaren supercar. The video is a clever viral marketing tactic to advertise his service and appeal to a wider audience outside of his normal viewers. More than likely this video will receive well over 100,000 views.

Although I dislike the way he drives around in super cars, advertising this cool lifestyle, the videos serve as motivation for his students. Too many people within the finance industry are so formal and boring, learning about technical analysis isn’t fun. Ricky is an exception, he likes to create videos to make trading more entertaining. Listening to some online educators talk about resistance and support levels in a dull, monotone voice turns beginners away from the industry.

Conclusion

There are hundreds of people online selling day trading courses purely to make money off young naive millennials and I hate seeing people getting scammed. I think Ricky is a great teacher for new traders without any experience. In my opinion, charging $300 is too expensive for the average person. It would be more reasonable to charge a smaller fee of $150 or offer membership for $50 per month.

Tim Grittani is a day trading superstar infamous for turning $1,500 into $6 million within eight years. Tim only began trading penny stocks in 2010 after discovering Timothy Sykes while searching for information about trading online. At the time, Grittani was studying finance and was keen to use his degree after graduation. He spent the following months studying Sykes’ strategies hoping to learn from his success.

Despite a rocky start, the modest twenty-seven-year-old went on to become Tim Sykes’ second millionaire challenge student, hitting the million dollar mark at the end of January 2014. Fast forward to 2018 and Grittani is now regarded as one of the best penny stock traders. Despite the vast amounts of money he’s made, he remains a cool, humble guy. It’s estimated Tim Grittani has a net worth of $6 million in 2020. Most of this fortune came from day trading and about 10% has come from selling online courses such as Trading Tickers.

Humble Beginnings

Tim was a finance major at Marquette University and was drawn to stocks from his background in sports betting and online poker. He opened up a $500 account with Sharebuilder but lost 50% within two weeks because he wasn’t cutting losses quickly. After this, he took some time off and wanted to get a better trading education before risking any more money. In February 2011 he found Timothy Sykes and Investors Underground, this gave more structure and guidance to his trading style.

Grittani followed Sykes for three months and joined Pennystocking Silver. While still in college he studied video lessons and participated in the chat room from time-to-time. Once he regained his confidence back, he started trading again in May 2011 with $3,000 in a ThinkorSwim brokerage account. To help overcome the pattern day trader rule, he borrowed $11,000 from his parents and opened multiple trading accounts. Back then the PDT rule was a significant obstacle to get around and didn’t have suitable brokers early on, so he was unable to get the best borrows. He also used Suretrader but no longer recommends and now mainly uses CenterPoint Securities, a broker for net worth individuals.

Early Struggles

By August of 2011, Tim Grittani was day trading penny stocks full time. Despite all the video lessons and advice from guru’s like Michael Goode and Nate Michaud, he was at $3,500 by October. He foolishly tried following Tim Sykes’ alerts. Like so many of Tim Sykes’ students, he thought copying his trades was a good idea. Grittani wasn’t able to match his entries or exits on the alerts because penny stocks are too volatile and hundreds of other students were copying trades. He soon realized this wasn’t working and had to begin thinking for himself. SOLUTION: learn from Sykes’ alerts instead of blindly following picks. He would review Tim’s video lessons later that day to understand his reasoning behind trades, why he bought and sold at a certain price. Let’s not forget Investors Underground also served as a huge inspiration, helping develop his trading style along the way.

Strategy

After losing thousands in the beginning, he soon realized it was time to develop a strategy to make consistent profits. Grittani made his first million focusing on momentum OTC stocks & pump and dumps. He made easy money short selling over-hyped stocks pumped by scumbag stock promoters. Tim doesn’t care about the fundamentals of companies or what the press releases say because hype is meaningless. He trades stocks purely from the technical side, using basic support and resistance to follow the price action. In addition, level 2 and charts are used to time trades to increase the likelihood of profits. It’s well-known Tim is very analytical and doesn’t place trades based on instinct. He has thousands of excel spreadsheets, tracking setups and chart patterns to gain a statistical edge. For example afternoon breakouts is a pattern he loves to trade. To find suitable setups Grittani will track specific criteria, for afternoon breakouts he will look at stocks up at least 10%, trading above average volume, breaking out after 2:30 pm and no upcoming major resistance levels ahead.

Despite early losses, Tim Grittani recovered and built an impressive track record on Profit.ly. Due to his success in the millionaire challenge program, Tim Sykes heavily promotes him to prove that day trading penny stocks can be a lucrative way to make consistent profits. CNN Money and Fox News even featured him in an article detailing his journey from beginner to penny stock millionaire. This sparked a wave of attention on social media, with thousands of young wannabe traders wanting to learn how he achieved this milestone.  With all the attention Tim Grittani received from the media coverage, he decided to release an educational DVD to share his knowledge on day trading.

Trading Tickers

Trading Tickers was released in 2015, perfect for rookie traders starting off with zero stock market experience. The first four chapters cover preparation and the last eight chapters detail the exact strategies that helped him make millions. The course is quite dense with 16 hours worth of content showing you how to perform technical analysis, build watchlists and how to prepare for the market every day. Each chapter covers the different setups he follows to make consistent trading profits. These include – buying and selling OTC promotions, buying breakouts, swing trading and shorting overextended chart patterns. More importantly, he shows 35 live trading examples applying these strategies in real-time and the reasoning behind each trade. Since the DVD is now three years, some of the content has become irrelevant, however, it’s still worth watching. Steven Dux cites Trading Tickers as an excellent starting point having viewed the DVD multiple times.

It’s unlikely you’ll come close to achieving this level of success but he will give you every possible advantage possible, but it’s up to you to put that knowledge to work. It took seven months to create the DVD course, detailing every facet of his strategy. Basically revealing everything he wishes he knew before starting. This gives you the chance to learn from his mistakes and drastically speed up your learning curve. Trading Tickers is currently one of the highest rated products on Investimonials so it’s not a scam and you can use the discount code NEXT100 to save $800. Trading Tickers is also available to purchase on eBay for a fraction of the price and some people illegally download the course from file sharing websites.

Make sure to check out his blog at tradetheticker.blogspot.com for free watchlists, spreadsheets, and video lessons.

Little Known Story of a Penny Stock Billionaire

Sir John Templeton is one of the greatest ever investors not many people know about. Templeton was born in 1914 into a working class family in Tennessee. A young, bright student, he received a scholarship to attend Yale University, graduating in 1934 with a degree in economics. Two years he studied for a masters degree in law at Oxford University, England. When he returned to the United States, he worked in New York City for a brokerage firm, Fenner & Beane, which later became known as Merrill Lynch.

In March 1939, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, causing the outbreak of World War II. During the war, Templeton borrowed $10,400 to setup his portfolio. Borrowing money to invest wasn’t the most prudent approach to investing but paid off handsomely in the long run. Templeton used the loan to purchase hundred shares of in 104 companies trading under $1 per share on the NYSE. By the end of the war, his portfolio was up 400%, despite 34 of the companies going bankrupt. This capital acted as a catalyst that later helped him become a billionaire!

During the Great Depression he co-founded an investment firm, Templeton, Dobbrow & Vance. The firm was incredibly successful and grew to $300 million in assets with eight mutual funds under management. In 1954, Templton moved to the Bahamas and started the Templeton Growth Fund as a hobby. He multiplied its value by twenty fold in as many years using a contrarian approach, he was one of the first individuals to invest in Japan in the mid 1960s.

Back then if you invested $100,000 into his fund, it would have been worth $55 million in 1999. From 1954 to 1992, the fund had an impressive annual return of 14.5%. In 1962, he sold his stake in the Templeton, Dobbrow & Vance firm and retired.

Achievements

Over the next 25 years, Templeton created some of the most successful international investment funds. In 1999 Money Magazine named him one of the “greatest stock pickers of all time.” In 2007, he was listed in Time’s Magazine 100 most influential people due to his generosity. During his retirement he setup the “John Templeton Foundation” and gave significant donations to scientific and spiritual research.

10 Investment Rules he Followed

• Be an eternal optimist.
• Be a global investor – he made a fortune investing in undervalued Japanese stocks.
• Crisis investing – Templeton’s timing was always perfect, investing at the start of the second World War was a strange tactic that led to him being labelled as the “penny stock billionaire.”
• Invest like a contrarian – Templeton was the ultimate contrarian and took advantage of crises to purchase shares at bargain prices.
• Understand how to find bargains – be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy!
• Be patient, invest for the long term – there will be cycles of bull and bear markets but Templeton believed common stocks would perform well in the long-run, despite temporary downturns.
• Recession is a happy hunting ground.
• The four most dangerous words in investing is “this time its different.”
• It pays to be a great student.
• Always be humble.

Tony Ivanov is an online entrepreneur and day trader from Sacramento, California. Like everyone else, I first discovered him on YouTube, an intelligent kid who looks about 16 but is actually 21 years old. He uploads videos “educating” people on how to make money trading penny stocks and cryptocurrencies. His target market is mainly young inexperienced millennials, looking to gamble during their spare time. Although I respect Ivanov’s hustle, he’s not qualified to be mentoring others about the stock market. Thousands of people watching his videos means there’s a big chance subscribers could blow up their accounts following his advice.

Ivanov’s YouTube channel has grown significantly to 37,000 subscribers in the past year due to the crypto mania. Thousands of adolescent teens hungry for advice on how to day trade risky financial instruments. I would estimate his net worth to be $50,000, if the growth of his YouTube channel continues, it won’t be long until he’s worth $250,000. Aside from trading, he’s probably making around $5,000 per month from his educational business and through affiliate programs, he promotes in videos. Stock scanners like Trade Ideas pay out hefty affiliate commissions for referring members.

Penny Stock Mastery

Despite his lack of experience and youth, Ivanov released a trading course on the Teachable platform, which costs a staggering $597 or two monthly payments of $397. From browsing through the course outline, it looks like he teaches similar video lessons to Ricky Gutierrez. Penny Stock Mastery teaches basic stock market terms, explains how to get started trading, technical analysis and two chart patterns + strategies he’s used to make consistent profits.

It’s insane how someone who’s only traded for two years is expecting people to spend that kind of money. According to his old Profit.ly page, Tony’s made profits of $5,759.44 out of 99 trades with a 63.64% win ratio. The guy is still learning how to trade himself, he’s even posted questions asking for help on Profit.ly. This question was asked less than 12 months ago!

In addition to an online course, Tony runs a day trading chatroom at tradebuddy.net. Within the chatroom, Ivanov shares alerts to members so they can study entry and exit points. More than likely, members join to copy his trades which won’t be successful because penny stocks and low float stocks are too volatile. The chatroom costs $37 per month but there are discounts if you purchase a quarterly or annual subscription.

There’s nothing wrong with monetizing your knowledge but charging suckers nearly $600 is crazy. In reality, the training is probably worth $20 max because 80% of the content could be found for free online. The rise in the number of 21 years old trying to teach trading online is getting out of hand. All these youngsters see teaching as an easy way to make money with very little effort. They all probably sign up for Timothy Sykes’ courses and copy his video lessons, teaching the same chart patterns, etc. Sykes makes millions every year from mentoring students but has a decade of experience and $4.7 million in verified profits.

Find a mentor with a reliable track record and has made at least $500,000 in profits. Mentors such as Steven Dux, Tim Sykes, Tim Grittani and Investors Underground are all good choices.

Quants: The Alchemists of Wall Street

The documentary offers a great insight into “what a quant is” and the role they play in the global finance markets. The quant’s featured in the documentary were Paul Wilmott, Mike Osinski, Matthew Goldstein and Emanuel Derman. These math geeks were involved in the creation of software programs and complicated algorithms that were involved in a financial crisis. The short film also explores the moral aspects of their job and its impact on society.

BBC Million Dollar Traders

Former Goldman Sachs trader Lex Van Dam risked £1 million of his money to prove it’s possible to take people with no previous trading experience and turn them into a successful city trader. Van Dam enlists the help of old GS buddy Anton Kreil to manage and advise the novice traders. Anton Kreil was an interesting character, (seemed a bit up his own arse) you can checkout some of his videos on YouTube. In total there were 8 traders that came from all walks of life. There’s a shopkeeper, fight promoter, retired engineer, retired army officer, single mother and a student but as the pressure mounted very few make it to the end. The diverse background of the individuals create an interesting dynamic that was both entertaining and at times frustrating to watch (old Simon in particular). The most fascinating insight from the program was the psychological effect it had on some of the participants, some thrived others buckled. It’s important to note that the markets were extremely volatile during filming in 2009.

BBC Traders – Millions by the Minute

Due to the success of Million Dollar Traders the BBC financed another trading related program. Its definitely worth a watch but nowhere near as good as MDT. Millions by the Minute is a two-part series, in part one it follows two women Karen Finerman, who runs a $200 million hedge fund and Virginia McGathey a commodity futures broker. Other financial traders interviewed were Scott Redler a prop trader in New York and Forex traders Piers Curran + Will De Lucy of Amplify trading.

Part two is more interesting and concentrates on retail traders who trade from home. The scary thing is how new trading technology allows anyone to trade the markets. Some of it is hard to watch especially Jane, the nurse who trades forex on a demo account and Rene a retired antiques dealer that has only broke even after 7 years. Justin and Akil from Birmingham run a hedge fund from a small bedroom. They supposedly manage over £1 million which seems like pure bullshit. Charlie Burton also seems a bit sketchy, claims to be a millionaire from Forex trading. It’s more likely he makes the majority of his money selling expensive trading education.

Wall Street Warriors

WSW is a classic that pretty much everyone has seen by this stage. All three seasons can be viewed online, it took over five years for the third season to finally be released but was definitely worth the wait! I wrote a blog post (click here) covering what has happened to some of the characters featured in the series since the show aired. Surprisingly one of them ended up in jail.

Floored: Into the Pit

2 hour film describing how the shift to electronic trading negatively impacted Chicago Floor traders, whose jobs would eventually be replaced by computers. Upcoming young traders who can leverage new trading technology will replace the old pit traders who refuse to adopt. One trader who lost his job during that time, proclaimed that computers were “evil”, now ironically trades (using a computer) for a prop firm. Adrenaline junkie with a passion for hunting, Mike Wash is strongly opposed to e-trading. Former hot-shot Jeff Ansani lost nearly everything on one trade in 1994, now only works as clerk on the floor. Greg Riba was the most entertaining in his two minute cameo and was clearly intoxicated while being interviewed.

The Wall Street Code

Goes into great detail explaining how algorithmic trading and super computers are taking over Wall Street. Former Goldman Sachs quant, Haim Bodek’s high frequency trading company went bust in 2011 due to exchanges not executing his order types correctly. High-frequency trading firms fight over every tick of a stock. They send millions of orders through the exchanges, taking tiny profits but done over an extended period of time, results in substantial gains.