The Calculated Risks That Allowed Me to Retire at Age Forty

My Story

My father is my hero.

He was born in 1933 in a tiny village in India at a time when the country was incredibly poor, with people dying of hunger every day. His mother died when he was 3, and his father passed away when he was 20.

Somehow, he managed to put himself through college. But even when Dad got a job in Bombay — India’s biggest city — he was still broke with a family to support.

So in 1974, he applied for a job in Dubai, a little-known place at the time.

“Don’t go!” his siblings told him when he got the position. But while India’s prospects were horrible, Dubai had just found oil. He knew taking a chance on Dubai was a better bet — a calculated risk.

“I have nothing to lose,” he told his family when he took the job.

In hindsight, going to Dubai was a no-brainer. The city grew spectacularly, and Dad made 100,000 times more money than if he’d stayed in India.

By the time he died in 2000, he’d put my sister and me through college. And he’d saved enough so my mom never had to work or worry about money.

My dad took a calculated risk when he took a chance on Dubai, and it paid off in spades.

I’m my father’s son. Calculated risk-taking is my philosophy when it comes to investing and trading. It’s how I made money for clients while on Wall Street. It’s how I invest my own money now.

See, a calculated risk in the financial markets means you take opportunities when the odds are in your favor. That way, when you invest, you have a good chance of making money. You never get a guarantee, of course, but when I get good odds, I make the bet.

And looking back over my 25 years of investing, it’s worked out for me more often than not…

I started my career on Wall Street in 1991 as a research assistant at Deutsche Bank, and I quickly advanced to prominent positions at Bankers Trust and ING, managing multimillion-dollar accounts. In 2006, I was recruited by the two owners of a $6 billion firm to be the key manager of their hedge fund.

Soon after I joined, the firm’s assets under management soared … to $25 billion.

Everyone took notice.

Barron’s named us one of the “World’s Best” funds for averaging 43% returns during my tenure.

The Templeton Foundation even invited me to take part in a prestigious investment competition. They wanted to see what I could do with $50 million. Well, during a two-year period, I was able to make a 76% return. Not bad, considering I did this during the 2008 and 2009 economic crisis, and I did it without shorting stocks or making risky bets.

When I won the competition, I was thrust into the limelight. And I’ve since appeared on CNBC, Fox Business News and Bloomberg TV — but even when I was center stage, most people never knew about my personal gains, or the strategy I’ve used to secure my wealth.

For instance, I uncovered a stock by the name of Sarepta Therapeutics when it was in the infancy stage of developing a drug to treat muscular dystrophy. I invested in the company and made a gain of 2,539%.

And while most people were skeptical of Netflix in 2008, I wasn’t. Having insight on technological advancements, I knew the future of television was streaming online video. I invested and made gains of 634%.

I also saw a huge opportunity in Universal Display when they created organic LED technology. I discovered the opportunity very early on and pocketed gains of 293%.

I got in on the ground floor of Google’s initial public offering (IPO), despite a huge amount of negative sentiment surrounding the stock — and made more than double my investment. Since its IPO, Google’s stock has shot up a whopping 2,234%!

After making all my gains, I retired at the age of 40 and moved into a country home located on the outskirts of Raleigh, North Carolina.