Millionaire TradersQ: Can you tell us a little bit about your background in the
financial markets? Were you exposed to the concept of finance as
a kid or was it much later?
A: If I had any experience in anything related to stocks or in-
vestments when I was young, it was probably somewhat negative.
It’s not that I was discouraged from being involved in the markets,
but I was always encouraged to think of what I would call more
traditional occupations—law or medicine. I don’t know enough
math to save my life—and I always heard that to work in the mar-
kets, I would need to have a strong math background—so Wall
Street wouldn’t have been much of an option in my mind anyway.
Honestly, I was never encouraged to think about working in the
markets, so I guess you wouldn’t call it discouragement but it never
arose as an option, as a career, or even as a hobby, and it wasn’t
even something I was remotely interested in. The earliest that I
can remember being interested in investing at all was when I took
a course in high school as a freshman and it was a business course.
We were expected to buy stocks at the beginning of the semester
with a play account and then track the quotes in the newspaper for
the semester and see how it turned out.
Q: Did that whet your appetite in the financial markets enough
to keep you interested?
A: No, I think I took the class and forgot about it. But I really
enjoyed taking the class. I remember I bought Pioneer stock. It was
the company that made electronics and I really wanted a Pioneer
stereo with a CD player at the time. So I decided that I would pick
a stock based on something that I liked and I am fairly certain I
came in last [laughter]. So much for investing in something just
because I liked it and not because it had true upside potential.
Yet during that semester of high school, I was entranced by the
thought that you could actually buy a piece of a company or invest
in something and then basically play the game of waiting to see if
you had made the right decision. I was seriously interested in it at