Chapter 3 - C.R.E.A.M

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. Wait, sorry; as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a biotechnology stock analyst. I seriously first considered the career my senior year at Virginia Tech. I took a class called Applications in Biotechnology. Back in 1996, biotechnology was a buzzword. No one really even knew what it meant. As an undergraduate major in biochemistry, I had a better sense than most. But it was not until I took a class on the practical applications of the field that I grasped the concept that biotechnology was a business, like any other business.

My first investment in the stock market was a biotechnology company called MedImmune. I started researching MedImmune while in college because I was looking for a job upon graduation. I sent my resume to MedImmune in 1995. I didn't get the job, but I did buy the stock for around $5 per share. I bought 1,000 shares. The $5,000 investment was the single biggest purchase of my life. My previous largest purchase, a used 1987 Buick Somerset, only cost me $4,100.

By the middle of 1998, MedImmune stock was over $50. I sold the shares and used the proceeds to pay for graduate school at Wake Forest University where I earned my MBA. It was a beautiful parlay of my undergraduate degree in biochemistry and the knowledge I gained from understanding applications in biotechnology that allowed me to make such a handsome return. Now I was using those profits to further advance my skills by learning business and finance.

In 2010, my career really took off. The year before I was put in charge of building and managing a newly created sponsored research product at Zacks called Zacks Small-Cap Research (SCR). SCR was my baby. Under my management, and with the help of some fine team members, SCR went from concept to over $2.5 million in revenues in 2014. The $559,000 I made in 2014 was the result of nearly $360,000 in salary and bonuses from Zacks thanks to the success of SCR. The other roughly $200,000 was in profits from trading in the stock market.

Between 2013 and 2015 I made nearly $400,000 from trading in the stock market. I traded mostly biotech stocks because these were the names I knew best. I had a competitive advantage since I knew the science, I knew the players, and I understood how the market worked. Making money in the stock market is never easy, but over time, investing in biotech stocks became natural. I did it so often that it became a normal part of my day. Perhaps it became a little too normal, and that's when things started to fall apart.

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