Timothy Sykes

Sykes graduated from Tulane University in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a minor in business.[5] While at Tulane, Sykes routinely cut class to day trade.[6] In 2003, during his senior year, he founded Cilantro Fund Management, a short bias hedge fund,[7][8] using $1 million mostly from his friends and family.[9]

In 2006, Sykes was included on Trader Monthly's "30 Under 30" list of up-and-coming traders in the market,[10] a selection which editor Randall Lane later called "our worst pick" among the chosen honorees.[9] Sykes claimed that the Cilantro Fund was "the number one long-short microstock hedge fund in the country, according to Barclays";[9] Lane later discovered that the rating came from "the Barclay Group," a small research company based in Fairfield, Iowa, and not the well-known Barclay's British bank.[11][12]

In 2008 Sykes decided to recreate his initial investing success by again starting with $12,415.[13][14] He named the attempt Transparent Investment Management (TIM).[3][15]

Sykes self-published An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund in 2007.[16] The book documented Sykes' experiences from day-trading in college to becoming a wealthy hedge fund manager.[17]

In 2012, Sykes created "Miss Penny Stock," a financial beauty pageant among the female representatives for his brand and company.[18][19]

Sykes currently works as a financial activist and educator.[20]

In 2007, Sykes launched TimothySykes.com. It serves as its own personal blog and a website dedicated to teaching penny stock trading.[21]

In 2009, Sykes launched Investimonials.com, a website devoted to collecting user reviews of financial services, videos, and books, as well as financial brokers.[22]

Sykes co-founded Profit.ly in 2011, a social service with about 20,000 users that provides stock trade information online.[23] Sykes said the service serves two purposes: "creating public track records for gurus, newsletter writers and students everyone to learn from both the wins and losses of other traders to benefit the entire industry."[24]

Sykes founded the Timothy Sykes Foundation, which has raised $600,000 and has partnered with Make-a-Wish Foundation and the Boys and Girls Club.[25]

In February 2017, Sykes donated $1 million to Pencils of Promise to help build 20 new primary schools across Ghana, Guatemala and Laos, to be completed between 2017 and 2018.[26]

Sykes is one of the founders of Karmagawa,[27] a charity dedicated to helping animals, preserving natural resources, and assisting those in need around the world. In 2019, Karmagawa worked with documentarian Amir Zakeri to create a documentary called "50 Minutes to Save the World,"[28] which documents the state of the coral reef.

Sykes has publicly criticized various businesses and celebrities, including Shaquille O'Neal[29] and Justin Bieber,[30][31] for promoting "pump and dump" schemes,[30][32][33][34] in which an investor purchases stock, hypes others into buying that stock to inflate its price, then sells the shares at a higher price and subsequently shorts the stock to profit from the resulting decline.

• Official website