An
American Hedge Fund:
How
I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator
& Created a Hedge Fund
by
Timothy Sykes
Why are
successful hedge funds the most well kept secret in the financial world? How did someone under the age of 25 make over a million
dollars as a manager of a hedge fund? Not knowing anything about hedge funds I was intrigued to read the book, and I wasn’t
sorry.
Most books
about stock trading are dull and full of figures. Timothy Sykes book is definitely not dull. It is a well written “rollercoaster
ride” through his life. At the age of 26 he has earned and lost millions of dollars playing the stock market. Today
he is the manager of a hedge fund with over $1 million, a regular commentator for CNBC, and he has his own show on INHD, “Wall
Street Warriors”.
Beginning
in high school when Mr. Sykes used his Bar Mitzvah money to buy stocks, he realized he liked stock trading better than his
chosen sport, tennis. Moving through his college years, as he blew off classes to trade and even traded stocks from a ship
at sea, yet managed to graduate from Tulane, Mr. Sykes increased his income and started his hedge fund as well as setting
up a scholarship at Tulane for students, like himself, who were creative outside of academic fields. It is an adventure as
we follow him from Tufts to Tulane in New Orleans, to New York City, to Orlando, and finally back to Connecticut. We get a
peek into what happens to the life of a college freshman, who, when he makes $123,000 in one day on trading, treats three
dozen of his friends to dinner in a Boston restaurant. In some cases, I was practically on the edge of my seat as Mr. Sykes
described the ups and downs of his trading.
Will you
learn how to make a million dollars by reading this book? Maybe not, but you will learn how to trade by selling short and
selling long and what they mean. You will learn the influence of a bull market compared to a bear market and how even when
stock prices fall, some people like Mr. Sykes make money. Possibly you will learn how to assess stocks, since there are many
specific examples of stocks he analyzed. He details the ways he was able to triple and, sometimes, quadruple his assets. At
the same time, Mr. Sykes is not afraid to show his losses and how he celebrated with his friends and family when the money
started rolling in from successful trades.
Ultimately,
this is more the memoir of a boy who spent his formative years learning the ins and outs of stock trading and finally became
a young man who was much wiser and wanted to share his knowledge with any young hopefuls who wanted to get into the business.
Barbara
Ehrentreu - Muse Book Reviewer
*GREAT RE
AD
