The Treasure Hunterand I just became really fascinated with finance and economics
from that time on. I loved to study trends. I used to read the
commodities sections when I was a kid and I guess I related it to
some type of sports score.
Q: Given your interest, did you ever try trading before you went
to college?
A: No, I didn’t try doing any type of trading until college. That’s
when I started, and that’s when I got my baptism under fire. Shortly
after that class trip, I decided, well, hey, I’m studying finance,
economics—some of these guys on the floor looked like street
thugs—maybe I can outsmart them with a college degree. So I
opened up a trading account and started trading these commodi-
ties. I basically put in my whole net worth, which was about$5,000
and that wasn’t enough to meet the account minimum at the time,
so my father put in$5,000 of his money.
Q: How did you convince him?
A: I don’t remember how I did that sales job at the moment. But
I guess he kind of liked me and thought that the kid can now get
some practical experience and see if he knows what he’s doing. I
had also made some calls during my teenage years, like crude oil
is going to go up or the dollar’s going to weaken, and maybe he
heard some of these and they actually happened, and he thought,
“Well, you know, let’s let the kid roll the dice.”
Q: So your whole family was very supportive then?
A: Yes, they were very supportive, especially my father, ‘cause
like I said, he had to open the account, too. I think we had a joint ac-
count because he had to open it for some reason. It might have been
the net-worth thing, or maybe I was under 21 at the time. There
was some reason why we had a joint account. It was in his name and
my name and we opened it up. I put in$5,000 of my money, which