What did you do with the 1st million you earned ?

gwb-trading · May 23, 2017

Baron said:
This is pretty interesting because I've never really told my story to anyone. But since it's been 20 years now, I might as well.

I messed around with trading while I had a full-time residential construction job back in 1995. After a few months of trading on the side, I started doing good at it, so I eventually quit my job and went all in. My living conditions at the time could best be described as a redneck fraternity because I lived in a single wide trailer with a bunch of roommates in North Carolina, just outside of Raleigh. There were 4 or 5 guys in that little shoebox at any given time, and we were all in our early to mid 20's.

I quickly learned that trading from your own home or office was very isolating and lonely. So to fix that problem, I taught myself a couple programming languages and set up a chat room on a new web site I created in the summer of 1997 as a way for myself to be able to communicate with other lonely souls who were trading every day like I was. I named it Elite Trader because that's exactly what every new trader dreams of becoming:

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The concept of the internet was brand new back then, which means that free little services like chat rooms that we take for granted today were actually big deals back then. I remember had to pay $4,500 just for the chat room software. But I didn't care. I desperately wanted to reach out to others who were just as passionate about trading as I was.

Sometimes people wanted to call me on the phone and ask a question about the course or the chat room. One day the phone rang and I answered by saying "Elite Trader - This is Baron!" and after I hung it up, I looked across the room and couple of my roommates were laughing their asses off.

I said, "What's so funny?" and one of them looked at me and said, "You should have answered the phone by saying "Elite Trailer" instead! They must have said that same joke a thousand times after that whenever the phone rang.

Anyway, I traded for several years full time and certainly made enough to live better than most, but never enough to retire or anything like that. I eventually became a master at tape reading and Nasdaq Level II order flow trading along the way, so much so that I wrote the first course ever on trading profitably with Level II quotations, and it was called Advanced Day Trading.

I charged a $199 one-time fee for people to access the material online. The reason why I did it that way is because I was constantly updating the material as the regulations and order handling rules were changing. So with that setup, I could notify my customers when something significant had changed and they could log back in to check it out. So it was less like a static book, and more like an ongoing work in progress.

Between my trading profits and the book profits, I earned a million pretty quick. There's no need to ask me what the exact split was between the two, because I honestly don't remember. They were both in the six figures though. It was crazy because I had virtually no expenses as I was earning that money because of my living conditions. In fact, I was scared to spend any money because I thought I was just going to wake up one day to discover that the party had ended. It's a good thing though.... because that's exactly what happened.

It didn't take long of course for the word to get out about my course, and within a couple of years, books were starting to appear in Barnes & Noble that were pretty much clones of my course. The first book I can remember that came along was "Stock Trading Wizard" in 1999, which was written by Tony Oz, one of my members. Hey, at least he listed me in the Acknowledgments.

More and more clones came out that year at the normal book price of $29, so that pretty much killed the demand for my course.

But it didn't make any difference. By the time that everybody else jumped into the game, I had already made enough money to move on with my life and live wherever I wanted. So I got rid of all the roommates and gave the trailer to a local church in late 1999. Today that trailer is still being used to give missionaries from foreign countries a free place to stay while they are visiting their supporting church.

I took my money and moved from North Carolina to beautiful Orlando, Florida because it seemed like an up-and-coming area that would be a great place to start fresh, buy a real house, and raise a family.... and that's exactly what happened.

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I eventually migrated out of trading full-time, not because I wanted to, but because ET ended up becoming so popular that there was just no way I could do both. Even though I never had a losing year trading, I decided that devoting myself to ET was my "highest and best calling" because it was a way that I could truly help people by bringing them together in a way that they wouldn't have otherwise.

Shortly thereafter, the site ended up getting some notable mentions in the media. My dad called me one day and said, "I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but your web site is being talked about on CNN right now."

And from that point on, more media coverage continued and it was blatantly obvious that my life was destined to go from "Elite Trailer" to Elite Trader after all. It's been a hell of a ride for 20 years now and although I've made plenty of mistakes along the journey, I wouldn't change a thing about it.
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Never knew that you lived up in my neck of the woods, Raleigh, at one time.

gwb-trading · May 23, 2017

ElCubano · May 23, 2017

awesome story Baron, Thanks for sharing.

jem · May 23, 2017

Just about the time I got my net worth to a million from trading and my trading business, I donated it back with the 4 houses I owned in Florida right before the crash.

I talked a bit about it at the time here on et.

Scataphagos · May 23, 2017

jem said:
Just about the time I got my net worth to a million from trading and my trading business, I donated it back with the 4 houses I owned in Florida right before the crash.

I talked a bit about it at the time here on et.
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Years ago when I was a money manager and financial planner... I had a client in Alaska who (against my caution) cashed out everything he owned to pour it into Florida RE. Timing wasn't good. He got slaughtered, sadly.

jem · May 23, 2017

The odd thing was a trader I never took the kind of risk I did with real estate. Not even close.
Had I traded that kind of big as a trader I would have been set for life. I had such an edge for a while that other traders told me I had to trade much larger. They even said you have to maximize profits because edges go away. I would say stuff like I am in this for the long haul. I don't want to risk wiping out my trading and my capital and freedom.

Then I risked it all on houses. I think it was partially induced by my change from single man living fairly low expense big freedom life style to getting married and having kids.

You get what you want out of the markets always haunted me. (I never understood how anyone would blow themselves up trading... but I did it with real estate)

Max E. · May 23, 2017

Totally know what you mean, i thik with trading, if your wrong, you are proven wrong so quickly it scares you, atleast if you buy a house its like a half a year till you even take posession, then what do you even do at that point, if shit goes south your locked in anyways.

Its the feeling of total control in trading that makes you hyperfocused on every tick every move every thing, cause you feel like you can find the exit instantly at any point if need be, and you feel like even if you make a poor decision if you focus enough you can get around it, unlike real estate where its like once you sign the paper your in for a half a year to a year atleast depending on the renos you wanna do.

Id love to chat Trading with you some time Jem, your a smart dude.

If you dont mind me asking were you holding any real estate through the 2008 meltdown? If so what was that like?

jem said:
The odd thing was a trader I never took the kind of risk I did with real estate. Not even close.
Had I traded that kind of big as a trader I would have been set for life. I had such an edge for a while that other traders told me I had to trade much larger. They even said you have to maximize profits because edges go away. I would say stuff like I am in this for the long haul. I don't want to risk wiping out my trading and my capital and freedom.

Then I risked it all on houses. I think it was partially induced by my change from single man living fairly low expense big freedom life style to getting married and having kids.

You get what you want out of the markets always haunted me. (I never understood how anyone would blow themselves up trading... but I did it with real estate)
More...

CSEtrader · Apr 3, 2019

It was not one, but ten. It wasn’t even trading on the market- investment and good luck on the crest of the rise of the market.

We moved to the Bahamas, we bought a home. Continued to make some profits as "investors", blindly, as I call it today.
It took us to lose two million in October 2008, before we get close to what it will become professional profitable trading.

In the same time, we’ve made a number of investments in "real" business, just to lose it all.

Fortunately, we did invest in serious teaching - teachers, seminars, visit Traders expo, tonnes of books.

We missed ET !!!! Is it why our journey is so long ...

Option_Attack · Apr 5, 2019

I retired and built a 6000 sf house on 3 1/2 acr waterfront. Do pretty much whatever I want now.

piezoe · Apr 5, 2019

I spent it on Medicare premiums, health care premiums, prescription drugs, dental care, life insurance, car insurance, house insurance, medical insurance, cable TV, gas, electric, water, sewage and garbage utilities, retirement plan, a car, a car mechanic, internet provider, a new roof, and Turbotax.