At first, Sykes believed he’d be best served by writing what he called “exposés.” The penny-stock world had a remarkable number of famous people vouching for suspect companies, which allowed him to get attention by attacking them. Tiger Woods was a spokesman for a nutrition company called Fuse Science—the logo was even on his golf bag—which now trades at a fraction of a penny per share. Justin Bieber made the cover of Forbes even as two penny stocks he’d sponsored lost almost all their value. And Shaquille O’Neal, during an NBA championship ceremony, wore a hat with the logo of a penny-stock company he owned a stake in; its dissolution ended with a 20-year jail sentence for stock fraud for the company’s chief executive officer. Sykes wrote relentlessly about these short targets—so much so that he received multiple cease-and-desist letters from lawyers representing the celebrities. It earned him street cred among day traders and potential customers: one truth teller helping small investors go up against big names.
But in the end, the reports didn’t lead to very much trading profit, and getting dragged into court would have been expensive. Sykes again shifted strategies. “I thought, What if you’re real but you use scam artist techniques?” he says. Or as Goode puts it: “He embraced the douche aesthetic.”
Sykes decided to pattern himself after Tom Vu, the Vietnamese American real estate speculator whose so-bad-they’re- good infomercials in the 1980s and ’90s showed him living a life of hedonistic luxury surrounded by bikini-clad models. In 2012, as a Hanukkah present to himself, Sykes bought the most ostentatious car he could think of, an orange Lamborghini. He paid $60,000 to appear on a Bravo life-on-a-yacht reality-TV show called Below Deck that he knew would portray him as a sleazy stock trader. He began flying private jets and staying in presidential suites so he could make videos of himself splurging and then post them on YouTube and Instagram. “All his marketing makes him look like a jerk,” says his mom. Yet it’s also made him wealthier than trading ever did.
Sykes’s life is now a virtuous (for him) circle of sermonizing, trading, and promotion. There is little in his personal life he won’t transmute into attention. When Bloomberg Businessweek asked for proof that he was actually dating his girlfriend, Bianca Alexa, and not just paying her to act as a live prop to boost subscriptions, Sykes e-mailed a scanned copy of the invoice for an engagement ring he’d purchased. (Weeks later he proposed during a vacation to Bali; she said yes.) Although he says he was banned from CNBC after posting on his blog an unflattering paparazzi-style photo of then-host Maria Bartiromo from the rear—the network declined to comment—he’s appeared on other channels.
While avoiding any talk of how many of his customers lose some or all of their money, Sykes makes full use of his outlier success stories. When a second customer, Tim Grittani, claimed to have made more than $1 million, the two were written up on CNNMoney and appeared on Fox News and Fox Business Network. “I’ve hung out with Tim when the cameras aren’t rolling, and he’s just a completely different person,” Grittani says. “When he’s not selling something he’s just a normal guy. The difference is incredible.”
Once a week, Sykes lets paying customers of Profit.ly access a live feed of his computer screen during a trading session. Making his wagers in front of an audience has made him more cautious. “People will cancel my newsletters if I don’t trade,” he says. “More people will cancel if I make a bad trade.” Sykes says he began 2014 with a $500,000 account. He ended the year up about $875,000, or a gain of 175 percent, his best year ever, he said in December. Meanwhile, he said he netted about $4 million from Profit.ly sales last year, including newsletter subscriptions, DVDs, and fees to access the writing of other self-styled gurus. The site encourages users to make all of their trades public; “transparency” is a big buzzword. Two years ago, a client from Tajikistan who says he made $250,000 using Sykes’s system thanked him by naming his first-born son Timur.
Goode and Grittani acknowledge that when it comes to Sykes’s students, they’re the exception rather than the rule. Both now get paid to run webinars on Profit.ly and have seen how Sykes’s douche marketing can attract the wrong sort of people. “Some new students don’t realize how much the odds are against them,” Goode says. “They’re gamblers. They’ll say, ‘If I win on this trade my wife gets a new camera. If I lose I’ll be prostituting myself in a Walgreen’s parking lot.’ ”
The live stream Sykes is conducting from his room at the Gansevoort hotel ends on a positive note. Near the close of the market, while still broadcasting, he buys shares of Technical Communications. His history tells him that the stock, having just won that contract from the Egyptian government, has a good chance of jumping $1 a share before fading again. Sure enough, by the next morning it’s done exactly that. Selling his stake just a few hours after he’d bought it, Sykes has banked a profit of $3,700, more than enough to pay for that night’s stay. He’ll later post an Instagram video of his digs, of course. Although by then, true to form, the hype will have taken over, and Sykes will have inflated the price of the room to $5,000. “Everything goes hand-in-hand,” Sykes says, leaning back in his chair, smiling, still in his bathrobe. “I teach, I trade, and I make money. It’s a beautiful marriage.”