If I had to list my influences as a trader, I would have to list Warren Buffett, Stephen Cohen and Anthony Elgindy. All three helped lay the groundwork of what are now my trading strategies and philosophies. Warren Buffett first instilled in me the fundamental principles of the stock market, and how companies should be valued. Stephen Cohen helped to shape my day-trading philosophies, and made me realize that there were tremendous opportunities in taking short-term positions in stocks. And Anthony Elgindy helped me view the stock market in a much more cynical way, and in the end, helped to make me a ton of money, especially on the short side.

You might be asking yourself; how do you include Elgindy in with the likes of Buffett and Cohen? Are you serious? Two are world famous investors/traders, both are billionaires, and then you have a convicted felon who is currently sitting in jail? I'm not condoning what Elgindy did, but I can not deny the fact that he really helped to shine a light on the dark side of the stock market. Shining a light on stock brokers and how they were exploiting Joe Average. Shining a light on how market makers worked and how to exploit that. Shining a light on small cap companies and how they would sometimes attempt to manipulate the public for the purposes of expanding their own market cap.

He was brash, abrasive and often picked fights. He's certainly not a guy that I would hang around with, but I can't deny the reams of knowledge that I picked up by reading his posts on Silicon Investor. I would highly suggest clicking here, starting from post 1, and moving forward. Most of these posts take place during the first dot-com boom, and it is pretty educational to read about what Elgindy had to say about the state of the stock market at the time. Most of what he wrote turned out to be true.

The biggest thing that I learned from Elgindy was how to pick apart a company, and how to identify bogus press releases. I learned that there was a tremendous amount of money to be made in short stocks, especially stocks that had a certain odor to them.

I was never a member of Elgindy's site, and I am sure glad that I wasn't, as several people involved in the site went down with Elgindy. In case you don't know, Elgindy had a person at the FBI who was searching the FBI database for dirt on companies, and then using this information to drive down share prices, after he had shorted the stock. An obviously boneheaded move, as it seemed to me that Elgindy was doing just fine shorting stocks and running his membership site. I guess greed kills.

Like I say, I learned a lot from Elgindy, but that isn't to say that I respected him or the way that he conducted himself. I certainly learned a lot from him though, and for that, I have to thank him. I believe Elgindy is slated to be released from jail in 2019 (maybe earlier) .. I would be very interested to see if he is able to resurrect his life when he gets out.

Filed under: Trader Profiles

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