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Forrest Gump, the fictional character portrayed by Tom Hanks in the 1994 Academy Award-winning film of the same name, did not need to worry about money. Why? Because his friend Lieutenant Dan helped him to invest in a fruit company.
Those familiar with Forrest’s story know that it was not actually a fruit company — it was Apple Computers. The scene where Forrest tells his Apple stock story brought a chuckle to audiences around the world. For Jerremy Alexander Newsome, however, who was six when he first saw Forrest Gump, the scene was life changing.
“I’ll never forget that Saturday afternoon in 1994 when I first watched Forrest Gump with my oldest brother and my dad,” Jerremy recalls. “I saw that he invested in a fruit company and was able to take that money and build schools, homes, churches, and hospitals. I thought, ‘Whoa, you can do all of these amazing things with money?’ So, naturally, I wanted to get as much money as I could. I was only six years old, but I knew I wanted to do exactly what Forrest Gump did, so I begged my dad to invest in Apple.”
It didn’t happen right away, but eventually, Jerremy’s dad caved in and agreed to help him invest. In fact, he agreed to match dollar-for-dollar whatever money his son invested. Jerremy made $1,500 selling blackberries door-to-door in his community, which — when matched by his dad — bought him $3,000 worth of Apple stock.
Six years later, Jerremy’s dad helped him to sell the stock, then handed him a check for $12,000. That was the moment that sold Jerremy on investing.
Fast forward a few years and Jerremy is making bigger trades, and thus, more money. He was doing so well that friends and family were giving him money to trade for them, which he did. In fact, he successfully invested $400,000 of other people’s money, including his dad’s entire retirement fund, and watched it grow to $1.2 million.
“I was king of the world. I was unbeatable. I was impervious,” Jerremy says, remembering that time in his life, “but I was also only 20 years old. I didn’t know anything about protecting gains, managing capital, or mitigating risk. I knew nothing and within a few short weeks, thanks to the silver bubble of 2010, I lost everything. I lost all the money that my friends and family had given me. But worse than that, I lost their trust.”
The experience left Jerremy broke, and broken. He saw himself as an abysmal washout who had not only failed himself but his closest friends and family. After calling his dad to share the news, he decided, unsurprisingly, that he never wanted to feel that way again. But that wasn’t the end of his journey.
“I decided that I didn’t want anyone else to ever experience the pain that I had felt,” Jerremy explains. “I realized that either one of two things had to happen — either I was going to die, or I was going to make this work.”
That night launched Jerremy’s life on a new trajectory. For him, it was do or die. Literally. To get money to start trading again, he borrowed $12,000 in cash from the Korean mafia.
“I met this guy in a shady parking lot,” Jerremy says. “He had $12,000 in cash in a paper bag. When he gave me the money, he opened his jacket and showed me an Uzi. He said I need to either pay him back or die. The clock was ticking — proverbially and literally.”
From that point, Jerremy became, in his words, “absolutely and irrevocably obsessed” with trading. For the next six years, he slept only six hours a day, spending the rest of the time educating himself and refining his trading strategy, discovering better ways to trade and maximize his returns.
“The reason I had lost everything was because I didn’t have any rules in place at all,” Jerremy mentions. “I traded recklessly and emotionally with no plan, no rules, and no knowledge of when I was gonna get out. So, during those six years, I developed a plan, rules, and a procedure that I forced myself to stick to with extreme discipline.”
As far as what kind of self-discipline Jerremy established, some of the things he pushed himself through included full-body waxing, going vegan for a month, and even donating money to the political party that he opposed if he broke his rules. It may seem strange, but it worked. Jerremy eventually stuck to his plan, making enough money through trading to pay back all of his debts — including $12,000 to the Korean mafia and $480,000 to his family and friends. In the end, he had enough money to trade full-time, but he still wanted to do more.
“I wanted to teach others how to do this, too,” Jerremy says, “and I wanted to do it for free. Education should be free. There shouldn’t be a cost for bettering your brain.”
Jerremy started by teaching kids stock trading in school. For them, he wanted to be the “money mentor” that he’d never had himself. Eventually, his journey led him to a conference — a “pitch-a-thon,” as he describes it — where people with a plan for investing were trying to sell their insights to others. Jerremy realized he was in the wrong place and it led him to an epiphany.
“I thought it would be so crazy if a company existed that helped people learn to trade by focusing on and talking about how people were real, then showing them real trades and real wins and real losses,” Jerremy remembers. “I don’t want Lamborghinis. I don’t want martinis and bikinis. I just want someone who has character and charisma and love and passion. I want them to talk about the real aspects of trading, like life and debt and money and freedom and happiness and joy and prosperity. I want someone to talk about real life trading.”
Jerremy says as soon as the words popped into his mind, he knew he had found his company. He took out his credit card, bought the domain “reallifetrading.com,” and never looked back.
In the seven years that followed, Jerremy, along with best friend Matt DeLong, built a community of vibrant, happy, loving, and philanthropic individuals who are focused on finding freedom through trading. Through their website, www.reallifetrading.com, they connect with anyone, anywhere in the world, who is committed to real change and real impact. They offer what they have learned for free, and because of their success, they have been able to establish the Real Life Foundation, a charitable organization committed to supporting non-profits by raising and donating funds to a variety of social, educational, and humanitarian causes.
As a result of his journey, Jerremy has learned the difference between being a trader who is rich, and a trader who is real.
“The legacy that I want to leave is one of love, happiness, abundance, and enrichment,” Jerremy says. “I trade stocks, but what I truly want to do is create freedom for others.”
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Photo provided by the author.