About

In 1994, I received a $10,000 inheritance from my grandfather when he passed away. I was 17 years old, I had just graduated high school, and I was on my way to college at Virginia Tech. Everybody that I talked to told me to invest the money. So I took $4000 and put it in two mutual funds that my local bank pushed. I remember watching my money “grow” at an astounding rate of 5% per year. Boring…

After reading up on mutual funds and investing, I stumbled upon Datek Online (now known as Ameritrade). Datek was one of the first online discount brokerages. They offered lightning fast trades over the internet for only $9.99 per transaction. So, I took $2000 and opened up an account at Datek. At that time, daytrading was just in it’s beginning stages because up until Datek opened up shop, there was no way for anyone to technically “daytrade”. First off, not everyone had internet access back in 1994. Secondly, real-time quotes were expensive! When Datek opened up shop, they offered FREE real-time quotes and cheap commissions. Only then, did daytrading become feasible.

After I opened up my account at Datek, I started reading everything in sight about daytrading. There wasn’t much, but there was enough. I remember reading motleyfool.com, pristine.com, zacks.com and signing up for the chat room at daytraders.com and watching CNBC religiously. I was hooked. I remember scheduling my classes around the trading day. That meant no classes during the market open, between 9am and 11am, and no classes at the market close, between 3pm and 4pm. I also remember being glued to my computer screen, with CNBC in the background, and clicking the refresh button to update my real-time quotes (streaming real-time quotes were in it’s beginning stages and were expensive!). I was more engrossed in daytrading than I was ever in any one of my classes. It was pretty bad. I don’t think I did any homework or studying until AFTER the stock market had closed.

Anyways, the first stock that I bought was Enzon (ENZN) back in 1994-1995. It was a pharmaceudical company that only produced a few drugs. I don’t know how I found that stock, but I did. I bought a few hundred shares of the stock at around $2 and change. I studied it. I knew everything about the stock. I even listened to a few of their conference calls. And then, I sat there and watched it. Every day. For a year. It barely even moved. Finally, after a year of boredom, I sold it for a small profit. Right after I sold it, it took off. It traded at $84 in 2000.

After playing around with $2000 for a year or so, I decided that in order to make some real money, I needed some more money to play with. $2000 was not enough to day trade with. Not even close! So I sold my mutual funds, paying the 10% early withdrawal fee, and deposited that money into my Datek account giving me a little over $6000 in playing money. I was also able to con…err…umm…sell my daytrading skills to my mom and my brother. They both agreed to give me $2000 a piece because I told them that I’d turn it into $4000 for them within a year. (Boy, were they idiots.)

Within the first two years, I had made a very nice profit of about $13,000. I had done well at daytrading by grinding it out in a conservative daytrading approach. I had bought stocks on dips and waited for up to several months to reap the rewards. I even paid a ridiculous amount of money in taxes. It was all good. Those were the “internet bubble” days.

As I gained confidence in my abilities, I saw and read all around me that daytraders were becoming millionaires because stocks like EBAY, AMZN, and YHOO were going up 100% in just a few shorts days. Everybody and their moms started talking about the stock market, kinda like how everybody is talking about the housing market these days. So, I dabbled in these internet stocks. Like everyone else, by January 2000, I had lost the majority of bankroll, over $20,000. I thought that that was it, my daytrading “career” was over.

In July 1999, I finished college with my Electrical Engineering degree (EE). Although I got my EE degree, my heart wasn’t in Engineering. I didn’t want to work for anybody, but what options did I have? I thought that daytrading was the solution, but at that time, I barely even had enough money to buy a couple of shares of Yahoo. It wasn’t going to work unless I was able to build my bankroll back. So I got a job.

Luckily, when I came out of school, guys like me with Engineering backgrounds were in high demand. I was able to land a job at an up and coming IT company. They offered me a position as a Network Engineer. I started working for them in August 1999. I was 22 years old.

After my first year of working, I was able to save a few thousand bucks. I immediately opened a Traditional IRA and put about $2000 in there. I remembered investing in AOL and this company called Ariba. That $2000 turned into $180 in no time because we all know what happened to AOL. And Ariba, well, let’s just say that it was way overpriced when I bought it. Another $2000 down the drain. Boy, did I suck!

By 2002, and after my second year of working, I was able to save another few thousand bucks and I opened up a Roth IRA. I put $3000 in my Roth IRA account. I was also maxing out my 401k at my work. These are two things that I recommend everyone doing. The 401k and the Roth IRA are the two most important things, investing wise, for the average every day person.

Anyways, by 2004, I stumbled upon the poker affiliate business. I worked on the boogster.com website almost day and night because I saw the potential. By July 2004, I opened up shop at boogster.com by myself. I started promoting my website anywhere and everywhere that I could (ebay, craigslist, fatwallet, poker forums, bonuswhores, etc.). My only real competitors at that time were PokerSourceOnline and eCasinoDeals. By January 2005, a few of my customers posted great reviews about my site on the various poker forums. And that was it…the ball has been rolling ever since.

In June 2005, almost a year after I started boogster.com, I made the decision to quit my job. Just like that. My heart was never in engineering anyways. Although I was great at it, it just wasn’t what I really wanted to do. I hated grinding it out, sitting in a cubicle 8 hours a day! Hated it.

August 26, 2005 was the last day at my job. I couldn’t have been more excited to start my new “life”. I was anxious to try my hand at daytrading full time. I even bought $245 worth of DVDs from Pristine.com. If I was going to do it, then I’d do it right. Buying those DVDs was probably the best decision that I could’ve made because not only did it open my eyes to the world of daytrading, but it also reinspired me to become great at it.

By the time I quit my job, I had turned my $20,000 invested into about $25,000 by swing trading random stocks, mainly gold stocks. FYI, $25,000 is the minimum required to open an unrestricted daytrading account.

After building my $25,000 into about $37,000, I started learning about options trading. As soon as I knew it, my $37,000 went all the way back down below $25,000! Yeah, it was ugly. I don’t recommend learning options trading by trial and error. Not only did I lose all of my gains back in a few short weeks, but I was also now below the $25,000 threshold for a daytrading account. Luckily, or I guess you can say skillfully, I was able to turn that $25,000 back into about $43,000 by year’s end.

By the end of 2005, I had a nice $23,000 gain. A more than 100% gain in less than 4 short months. Not too shabby huh? So, here I am today, daytrading full-time, playing poker occasionally, and betting on sports when I’m bored with the other two. Oh yeah, and of course, there’s boogster.com, the idea that made all of this possible.