I started out my trading career with $12,415 of bar mitzvah money. My parents gave me their blessing to use it to trade, figuring it was my money to lose. I didn’t lose it — in fact, I made my first million while still in college.I took the logical next step and started a hedge fund. I ran the #1 short bias hedge fund on Wall Street from 2003-2006, starred in the television documentary Wall Street Warriors, and appeared regularly on CNBC all before the age of 26. And then I crashed and burned.That’s when I went back to my roots: penny stock trading. On TimothySykes.com and in my Trading Challenge, I started teaching others about this shady, lucrative world, and soon some of my students crossed the million-dollar mark on their own. That’s every teacher’s goal, right?I want my students to do what I did: Figure out what you want out of life, then make it happen. Trading is a GREAT way to do that.These days, I’m deeply committed to giving back with my charity, Karmagawa, and making the world a better place through my influence.