Yesterday the following article appeared in the New York Post that 17 year old High School students Mohammed Islam and Damir Tulemaganbetov had made millions playing the stock market. Now it appears that the story was completely made up and in fact the pair had made nothing except in virtual portfolios. In a follow up interview with the New York Observer they admitted that:
Is there ANY figure? Have you invested and made returns at all? No.
So it’s total fiction? Yes.
Are you interested in investing? How did you get this reputation? I run an investment club at Stuy High which does only simulated trades.
Damir Tulemaganbetov, said people “will be mad” about the lie but that they were “sorry”. I guess the lesson is don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers! Pretty embarrassing for the New York Post but also for UK newspapers like The Telegraph which carried the original story. Journalists don’t seem to bother checking their sources these days!
Contrarian Investor UK
IMPORTANT: The posts I make are in no way meant as investment suggestions or recommendations to any visitors to the site. They are simply my views, personal reflections and analysis on the markets. Anyone who wishes to spread bet or buy stocks should rely on their own due diligence and common sense before placing any spread trade.
High school student scores $72M playing the stock market
By Laura ItalianoDecember 14, 2014 | 4:52am http://nypost.com/2014/12/14/stuyvesant-hs-student-nets-72m-on-the-stock-market/
He’s the teen wolf of Wall Street.
A kid from Queens has made tens of millions of dollars — by trading stocks on his lunch breaks at Stuyvesant High School, New York magazine reports in its Monday issue.
Mohammed Islam is only 17 and still months away from graduating — but worth a rumored $72 million. “The high eight figures,” is as specific as the shy and modest teen would get when asked his net worth.
Islam bought himself a BMW but doesn’t have a license to drive it. And he rented a Manhattan apartment, though his parents, immigrants from the Bengal region of South Asia, won’t let him move out of the house yet.
Still, the cherubic prodigy is living, and dreaming, large. “What makes the world go round?” Islam asked in the interview, explaining his preference for trading and investment over startups. “Money. If money is not flowing, if businesses don’t keep going, there’s no innovation, no products, no investments, no growth, no jobs.”
Islam and a pair of other young, Wall Street wolf-cub buddies eat regularly at hot spot Morimoto, where they enjoy $400 caviar and fresh-squeezed apple juice.
They hope to start a hedge fund in June, after Islam turns 18 and can get his broker-dealer license.
“Mo’s our maestro,” one of the kids explained.
The three pals intend to make a billion dollars by next year. All while attending college. “But it’s not just about the money,” Islam told the mag, which ranked his spectacular success story as No. 12 in its 10th annual “Reasons to Love New York” issue.
“We want to create a brotherhood. Like, all of us who are connected, who are in something together, who have influence.
“Like the Koch brothers,” he added, referring to sibling oil magnates Charles and David, worth $40 billion each.
Islam’s biggest inspiration, though, is Paul Tudor Jones, a billionaire hedge-funder and private asset manager from Connecticut who ranks as the 108th-richest American, according to Forbes.
Battered by losses, Jones would jump back in the game again and again. It was a lesson Islam found instructive when, while dabbling in penny stocks at age 9, he lost a chunk of the money he’d made tutoring. Islam swore off trading, realizing, “I didn’t have the balls for it,” he said.
Fortunately, he turned to studying modern finance, reading up on the titans of trading and ultimately finding inspiration in Jones. “I had been paralyzed by my loss,” Islam remembered of his 9-year-old self.
“But [Jones] was able to go back to it, even after losing thousands of dollars over and over,” he said.
And while Islam still needs to rely on Dad to chauffeur him on inspirational drives past the magnate’s Greenwich mansion, he’s quick to quote from the guru whom he credits with getting him back in the game and making him “who I am today.”
“Paul Tudor Jones says, ‘You learn more from your losses than from your gains.’ ”
by contrarianuk
Students who claimed they made millions on the stock market made it all up
Dec 16, 2014 at 11:20 am in Market Commentary by contrarianuk
Yesterday the following article appeared in the New York Post that 17 year old High School students Mohammed Islam and Damir Tulemaganbetov had made millions playing the stock market. Now it appears that the story was completely made up and in fact the pair had made nothing except in virtual portfolios. In a follow up interview with the New York Observer they admitted that:
Is there ANY figure? Have you invested and made returns at all? No.
So it’s total fiction? Yes.
Are you interested in investing? How did you get this reputation? I run an investment club at Stuy High which does only simulated trades.
Damir Tulemaganbetov, said people “will be mad” about the lie but that they were “sorry”. I guess the lesson is don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers! Pretty embarrassing for the New York Post but also for UK newspapers like The Telegraph which carried the original story. Journalists don’t seem to bother checking their sources these days!
Contrarian Investor UK
IMPORTANT: The posts I make are in no way meant as investment suggestions or recommendations to any visitors to the site. They are simply my views, personal reflections and analysis on the markets. Anyone who wishes to spread bet or buy stocks should rely on their own due diligence and common sense before placing any spread trade.
High school student scores $72M playing the stock market
By Laura ItalianoDecember 14, 2014 | 4:52am http://nypost.com/2014/12/14/stuyvesant-hs-student-nets-72m-on-the-stock-market/
He’s the teen wolf of Wall Street.
A kid from Queens has made tens of millions of dollars — by trading stocks on his lunch breaks at Stuyvesant High School, New York magazine reports in its Monday issue.
Mohammed Islam is only 17 and still months away from graduating — but worth a rumored $72 million. “The high eight figures,” is as specific as the shy and modest teen would get when asked his net worth.
Islam bought himself a BMW but doesn’t have a license to drive it. And he rented a Manhattan apartment, though his parents, immigrants from the Bengal region of South Asia, won’t let him move out of the house yet.
Still, the cherubic prodigy is living, and dreaming, large. “What makes the world go round?” Islam asked in the interview, explaining his preference for trading and investment over startups. “Money. If money is not flowing, if businesses don’t keep going, there’s no innovation, no products, no investments, no growth, no jobs.”
Islam and a pair of other young, Wall Street wolf-cub buddies eat regularly at hot spot Morimoto, where they enjoy $400 caviar and fresh-squeezed apple juice.
They hope to start a hedge fund in June, after Islam turns 18 and can get his broker-dealer license.
“Mo’s our maestro,” one of the kids explained.
The three pals intend to make a billion dollars by next year. All while attending college. “But it’s not just about the money,” Islam told the mag, which ranked his spectacular success story as No. 12 in its 10th annual “Reasons to Love New York” issue.
“We want to create a brotherhood. Like, all of us who are connected, who are in something together, who have influence.
“Like the Koch brothers,” he added, referring to sibling oil magnates Charles and David, worth $40 billion each.
Islam’s biggest inspiration, though, is Paul Tudor Jones, a billionaire hedge-funder and private asset manager from Connecticut who ranks as the 108th-richest American, according to Forbes.
Battered by losses, Jones would jump back in the game again and again. It was a lesson Islam found instructive when, while dabbling in penny stocks at age 9, he lost a chunk of the money he’d made tutoring. Islam swore off trading, realizing, “I didn’t have the balls for it,” he said.
Fortunately, he turned to studying modern finance, reading up on the titans of trading and ultimately finding inspiration in Jones. “I had been paralyzed by my loss,” Islam remembered of his 9-year-old self.
“But [Jones] was able to go back to it, even after losing thousands of dollars over and over,” he said.
And while Islam still needs to rely on Dad to chauffeur him on inspirational drives past the magnate’s Greenwich mansion, he’s quick to quote from the guru whom he credits with getting him back in the game and making him “who I am today.”
“Paul Tudor Jones says, ‘You learn more from your losses than from your gains.’ ”