I became a self-made millionaire before I was 30, starting from a single mother who worked 2 jobs to support my brother and I. My name is Erik. By all accounts, I'm nobody. I didn't come from money. I grew up in Newburgh, NY where violent crime occurs 2.5x the national median (see below) and my high school boasted a 13 (out of 100) college readiness score according to US News.
I've been trading for over 15 years, primarily using derivatives (options and futures). I'm truly passionate about investing and trading and continue to research the art to hone my skillset further. I've outperformed the S&P500 CAGR over my trading tenure by carefully developing a trading plan complete with strategy outlines, expansive data sets, and logging my performance carefully.
I've had several influential mentors expose me to alternative perspectives and a wide breadth of respective skillsets. I started investing, then trading, while in high school with what I saved from odd jobs like splitting wood and working at the local bowling alley. I earned my undergrad from Rochester Institute of Technology then went on to earn my MBA while on active duty as a Marine Officer - both with a focus on statistics. I doubled down on trading in my early 20's and got into real estate soon thereafter. These two mediums would form the basis of my aggressive wealth development. I then spread into angel investing.
The primary factors for my ability to create wealth quickly came from being scrappy (as my mom puts it). I look for any sliver of opportunity, assess, then go all in. The beauty with investing is you can start with very little and begin the compounding clock.
That leads us to esInvests - my finance and investing brand designed to share quality information without the bs. I dislike social media, am not a camera personality, yet I started a YouTube channel (esInvests) during COVID. I am vocal about what has helped me grow and I derive true satisfaction from sharing and helping others along their way. During COVID, many of my military friends were stuck at home and I offered to chat with people about investing basics. I found myself repeating simple concepts, so I made a few videos to make the conversations more productive. In order to succeed financially, we need to be a statistical outlier. The channel grew much faster than expected and the Outlier Community was born.
I regularly upload to my YouTube channel, on Twitter (@esInvests), and am dedicated to giving back to the community that helped me grow to levels unimaginable as a kid. I'm extremely fortunate to have had impactful mentors help me and it's my responsibility (and pleasure) to pay forward their efforts.