The News JunkieQ: Your education background is in technology, but did you ever
take any economics or finance courses?
A: I did, but those were just required courses. I took nothing
beyond the required education.
Q: How did you figure out what kind of stocks you were inter-
ested in trading?
A: For the most part I knew I wanted to trade in and out, so
I wanted a stock that had a lot of volume. I traded the big tech
names in the beginning, mainly through word of mouth. Actually I
caught the market right about when it was breaking. So I learned
a lot about shorting stocks at that time, too. I was able to come out
pretty well in the market and kind of step up to the plate when
other people were dumping.
Q: So you mean shorting, right? How did you learn to do that?
A: Because I’m always very pessimistic. I saw all these companies
out there and thought, “How can they be possibly making money?”
I looked at the balance sheets of most of them and they weren’t.
They were losing money. So I said, “Why doesn’t everybody short
the stock?—I don’t understand.” So I would short the stocks that
weren’t making money, buy the ones that were, and see how it all
fell. And it turned out really well. I would just cover the shorts
and then put more money into the companies that were making
money—like banks—those were my favorites back then.
Q: So you traded the Warren Buffett way by making sure that
the fundamentals lined up?
A: Exactly.