It has been nearly seven years since I have completed a thorough update of my About Me page. But, along with the new website, I thought it was time.

Even if you already know my story, I think you may find it a worthwhile read, especially if you are curious to know what I have been up to more recently as well as my future plans for The Kirk Report. Enjoy!

Thank you for taking the time to visit my website and learn more about me and my passion. Here is my story which has served to inspire many…

Who Are You?

My name is Charles E. Kirk. I am 39 years old and live in a small college town named Cedar City which is in southern Utah. I began trading with a $2,000 deposit in 1993 and now trade with a $3 million dollar portfolio. Since 1999 I have been a self-employed, full-time independent trader.

Objectives For This Website

My #1 goal for The Kirk Report is to teach and inform the little guy investor and trader by sharing what I’ve learned, what I’m currently learning, and my thoughts and analysis about the markets. For over seven years, I have helped thousands of people to make more informed, intelligent and unemotional decisions about their investments.

Lifetime Achievements

The things I’m most proud of include the following…

• Having both the courage and focus to trade stocks for a living instead of working at a job that I wouldn’t absolutely love;

• Beating the market every single year of my career (at least so far);
• Living a debt-free life;
• Helping thousands and serving as an inspiration to investors and traders in their own journey;
• Giving back more and more each year with the loyal support of my members (20% of all membership dues are donated to charity);
• Losing over 70 pounds and keeping most of it off;
• Graduating in the top tier of my class in law school;
• Shooting a 4 under par in 69 at Cedar Ridge, my home golf course.

My Family

My wife of 17 years is a college professor at Southern Utah University. After being a high-school Spanish teacher for 15 years and earning her doctorate, she currently teaches Spanish and mentors others who are considering entering the teaching profession. While we do not have any children, we have two furry family members – Bert & Ernie.

Personal Passions

My personal passions are my wife, the stock market, helping others through this website and golf. I also enjoy movies, traveling, card games and hiking in Utah.

My Approach

In the early days, I was much more a long-term, fundamentally-focused “buy and hold” investor but as both my knowledge about the markets and skills improved, I taught myself how to trade. Although I truly think that the vast majority of individual investors would be best served as an indexed only investor (with some defensive market-timing for our new volatile era), through trial and lots of error I’ve been able to develop a strategy that works best for me and utilizes my skills and knowledge to its fullest potential.

If you try to boil my approach down now to just a few sentences, here’s what I basically do. I first start by screening for stocks and ETFs that have both technical and fundamental characteristics the market has rewarded in the past based on both market environment and business cycle. I then add stocks/etfs that based on those screens which have the greatest forward potential by adding them to a tracking watchlist. I then watch and wait for an ideal entry points which I consider that offer a low risk, high reward opportunity. If that is found (sometimes it literally can take years), I buy the stock.

As I’ve often said, it isn’t what you trade that makes the biggest difference but how you manage that trade. After adding a new position at a low/risk high/reward entry point, I then let the position prove itself by moving into the direction of the trade (I short stocks as well). If it does as I think it should do, I then add more to that position. If the stock moves against me, I sell it. Plain and simple. I don’t average down into losing positions unless in very rare circumstances. Finally, I manage my risk at all times through proper allocation, position sizing and consistent stop loss method.

Like most everyone else, in recent years I have been trading ETFs more and stocks far less often using short-term trading strategies to benefit from market volatility. I also typically hold no more than a handful of positions at a time and my hold times vary depending on market conditions but average anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. In current market conditions, it is rare that I hold any stock for more than six eight weeks.

My personal trading goal is to produce 1% per day, 5% per week of income in my personal trading portfolio after all expenses, taxes, and fees. I meet that target frequently, but certainly not always. Market conditions play a significant role in short-term returns no matter what other traders may tell you.

Finally, it is my view that risk management above all else is the most important thing. No one can be correct about the markets all of the time including me. But, it’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important, but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong. In essence, I do everything in my power to gain as much when I’m right and to lose as little as possible when I’m wrong. If you can do that as well, you will be successful!

Favorite Investment Quote

“There is only one side to the stock market; and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side.” – Jesse Livermore

This quote is a favorite of mine because it sums up one of my personal trading philosophy which is not to be an “opinionated market guru” but simply to do everything I can to be on the right side of the market and to find and exploit as many low risk high reward opportunities as I can. In most markets most of the time, I hold a neutral but opportunistic and positive approach. My goal is to make money, not to predict or prove to others how smart I am.

My Nickname

I’m known by others in my trading circle as the “Coyote.” This name was given to me by a mentor who thought that my passion closely resembled Wile E. Coyote and his persistent pursuit of the roadrunner as I would “try just about anything to find an edge in the market often with disastrous results!” Much like Wile, I also have such a high level of tenacity, zero fear of failure, and confidence in myself that make the nickname quite appropriate. In addition, for what I lack in intelligence and acumen, I make up for it by working harder and longer than everyone else!

Education & Professional Background

I graduated from Cornell College in 1993 with a degree in Philosophy. Between college and law school, I was employed as a private investigator in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1999 I graduated at the top of my class at Hamline Law School in St. Paul, Minnesota. As you’ll learn by my story below, I never took the bar or practiced law.

Self-Taught Investor & Trader

After graduating from college, marrying my college sweetheart and working as a private investigator before going to law school, I decided to learn more about the market. I knew absolutely nothing, but wanted to at least figure out if we were just doing the right thing with our investment decisions. My wife’s employer started a retirement account for us, but we had no idea what investments to choose. Making things worse, those who we asked for advice seemed to know even less than us and we both felt dumb and unprepared. So, in what spare time I had back then, I started reading books, magazines, and just about everything I could get my hands on about investing and the market. Little did I know at the time that this would soon become my passion and future career!

The more I learned, the more I wanted to be involved in the markets in some way. Yet, I had really no money to “play the market.” So we scraped and saved what we could and adopted a “if you can’t eat it or wear it, you don’t need it” spending policy. After doing that for almost a year, I was able to gather enough scratch for a $2,000 online brokerage account.

At first, I thought the markets were relatively an easy way to make some money. Many of my initial investment ideas worked pretty well and I was doing pretty well. However, like most I had trouble knowing when to sell. I also didn’t understand how to manage and control my risk when I was wrong. In addition, I was so young and dumb and my ego inflated to the point that I thought I could spend only a few minutes a week and do really well in the market. Soon, I learned the folly of my ways.

After getting more aggressive with my positions and refusal to accept losses when they occurred, I learned how difficult it is to really “beat the market” and realized how little I still understood and knew. But, I never gave up!

In fact I doubled my efforts, if not tripled them. Every moment I could spare, I dedicated them to learning about the market and getting better. Ultimately, I became so obsessed with “beating the market” that I was spending more hours studying than working as a private investigator. In fact, I would take days off to work just to study and those concentrated efforts began to pay off. It was not too long after that when I started making more money trading and investing than working as a full-time private investigator.

Looking back, I was also fortunate to be learning to trade and invest during a time in which the markets were kind to most investors (between 1995 to 1999). There’s a saying that bull markets make everyone look smart and in my experience that is true. Looking back now, I often wonder if I had to start over at square one today if I would be as fortunate. Investors and traders now face so many more challenges than I did early on, so there is something to be said for “lucky timing.”

While my experience and success grew in the market rapidly, after working as a private investor for a three years it was time to carry through with our original plan for me to go to law school. From the beginning, I really wanted to do something professionally that would be to serve others and make the world a better place. I also desired to make my family proud as I was the first in my family to go to college and would be the first to pursue an advanced degree. So, in 1996 with the gracious support of my wife, I quit my job and we moved to St. Paul, Minnesota and I started as a full-time law student.

During law school, the internet started taking off as well as online trading. At this same time, I started a website called Quid Pro Quo which helped me and my fellow law students share “law outlines” on the internet so we could study faster without having to waste time attending lectures. It was one of the first law outline sites of its kind even though many soon followed my lead. It was helpful to share class notes easily online within our study group (i.e. the so called divide and conquer method) and it also enabled me to pursue my true passion which was trading during school hours. I’m embarrassed to admit now that I would often skip classes to trade and the having the outline website helped me do pretty well without attending every single lecture.

While I still planned on practicing law for a few years after graduating from law school if for no other reason than justify three years of law school and the amount of money put toward my law school education, my father’s passing one month after my graduation was a key turning moment in my life. My father, who loved his work as an executive in shoe business told me on his death bed that I should “do what I love” and the “money will always follow.” When he died, it was clear what I needed to do which was to make trading my full-time career. In other words, to follow my passion and wherever it took me.

At the time, I figured that the worst thing could happen is that I would lose all of my money (still not very much) and then have to go study the bar and then work as a lawyer. Frankly, the idea of falling back to “Plan B” was in itself a wonderful motivator to work as hard as I did back then. In addition, after telling many people what I was planning to do for a living, there were many who thought I was an idiot to give up a career in law (along with the job offers I had at the time) and who thought I was stupid for thinking I could “trade for a living.”

As I’ve often said, nothing is better in the world than doing something others say you can’t do!

How The Kirk Report Began

After working just on my own as a full-time trader for a couple of years and doing really well (the first year full-time trading I made twice as much trading as I would have been as an associate at a law firm), I missed being “out in the real world” and socializing with others. Trading full-time independently can be a pretty lonely existence and I thought it would be fun to share what I was learning with with others online like I had done back in law school. So, in 2000 I started a stock advisory called “MoneyXperts” and it grew to attract cult-like following.

After a couple of years, however, I decided to make a change and there were many reasons for this. First, running a subscription service, although financially lucrative if you know what you’re doing and half-way competent, was not the reason I became a trader. My passion was in the markets, not in selling subscription services! I also didn’t need the extra money or hassle of running a subscription based service as I was producing +100% returns in the market on an annual basis and could make far more trading than selling “hot stock picks.” I also felt that I was only helping those who already had a lot of money to “play with” and wasn’t doing anything to be a positive role model for those who I wanted to help the most. In other words, people just like me who were just starting out and who were poor, hungry, and very well-motivated.

From this experience, I also learned something important about other traders and investors. That is that most people don’t learn what they need to learn by simply receiving stock tips. They learn best by doing the work themselves (as I always have) and creating a personal strategy that they can manage and improve and which fits their own personality and skill sets whatever they may be. When it came right down to it, I could tell everyone what to do, but most wouldn’t listen. Subscribers would double-think recommendations. They would hesitate. They wouldn’t read what I was recommending enough to actually achieve similar results I was making on my own. Needless to say, this became very frustrating and signaled I was on the wrong track. I also felt like I lost my independence as a trader. Trading for a living provides a unique opportunity to set your own work schedule, but managing a successful stock advisory does not. It is a 24/7 job and I found it to be a tougher way to make a living than trading!

So, after making the decision to scuttle the newsletter in 2003 and taking some time off to rediscover my passion, dozens of former subscribers begged me to start offering insights about the market again at least in some capacity. So, reluctantly I agree to do so in September of 2003 by starting The Kirk Report based on what was then at the time very new and exciting way to deliver information online. While it seems quaint, at that time blogs were emerging as the new and best way to convey information to others through an easy to manage online format. It was a big step forward because if you understood how to write an email, you could create a site and offer insight with little to no internet experience.

The Kirk Report Then & Now

With the rise and interest in blogs, The Kirk Report was in the right spot at the right time and quickly became very highly regarded. It was clear I was providing a service that many people enjoyed and found helpful and that really made me happy. I was also reaching those, especially other “little guy” investors and traders who I hadn’t been able to help previously.

As the website grew and people loved what I was doing here, voluntary donations to support my efforts started rolling in. In sincere appreciation for that support, I started a “members-only website” which would offer a little something more (among other things including real-time access to my trading portfolio) for those who voluntarily sent something in.

As popularity with financial blogs grew, word soon got out about my impressive track record. I had been sharing trades I was making at the website and people were impressed with what I was doing. In fact, things really got crazy after a high-profile interview in Barron’s back in April of 2006. After that interview, I became famous throughout the world for The Kirk Report.

Following extensive press coverage of me and my track record (including verification of it) including many top awards, the membership expanded to a level I never thought possible. In a matter of weeks, a small group of people who voluntarily supported the website became a thundering herd who were seeking to know my secrets and who really wanted to follow my foot steps!

As you probably know by now, investors and traders always chase the “hot hand” and because I had one, I became everyone’s best friend. Not only did the membership ranks swell, but job offers started to roll in to manage money professionally. As a result, my ego once again swelled to the point that I was set for a painful, but important lesson.

As a one-man operation, you cannot begin to fathom the stress of a business surge of like that takes. At one time, over 100 new members were signing up every single day to be a member and I was unprepared and unable to handle it. For the next couple of years (between 2006 to 2007), to do everything I could to help keep people who had become members satisfied, I was working every hour possible (all days, nights, and weekends too). And, it was taking a serious toll on me, my health, and my family. In addition, my performance in the markets began to suffer immensely. Friends and members soon called it the “Barron’s Curse” since my hot hand where I could do no wrong turned colder than a Minnesota winter day. While I was still outperforming the market, I wasn’t doing much more than that a lot of effort was being made with little in return. At the time, I felt as if I had to prove something to others in order to justify their interest in me and their membership dues and as a result my trading became much more ego driven.

Bottom line, I became everything I worked so hard to avoid in previous years. In other words, another lame market expert who made much more selling financial advice than he did making money in the markets. In sum, I felt like one big giant fraud!

Of course, that was unacceptable to me and for my family who also knew I was not reaching my full potential. So, after a two-week vacation during Christmas of 2007, with the help of my wife I devised a new plan to get back on the right track. After much soul searching, I made the commitment to begin the process of scaling back my involvement at the website. Starting in January of 2008 I wrote a long letter to both members and readers in which I announced this new plan. In fact, you can still read that same letter if you like.

Among the many changes I decided to make included a controversial decision to remove unfettered access to my private trading portfolio and trades I was making in real-time. While at first many members balked at the change and were upset I was no longer enabling them to copycat trades (frankly they weren’t that great to begin with during that period because I was managing The Kirk Report far more than trading), others amazingly still gave me benefit of the doubt to see if I could still be helpful to them.

Looking back, it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and The Kirk Report transitioned itself into a much better educational resource. In turn, I started feeling like I was helping others again like I had prior to the Barron’s Curse. My trading also started improving significantly t was no longer “ego driven” and I no longer had to justify every single trading decision to thousands of people before making it. In sum, I returned to being able to freely trade the way I had in previous years and in which I was so successful in the past!

The Present

At the moment, I’m trading full-time again and feel like I’m making a positive difference again by helping others through this website. To help me not repeat the mistakes of the past, starting in 2009 I began taking additional steps to achieve a better work/life balance. For example, by moving most of the best content to only the members’ only site, interest in what I do here at The Kirk Report has slowed significantly. In addition, because I make it really clear with the new website design that I don’t offer tips or stock advice and/or provide real-time access to my personal trading portfolio, that will hopefully help keep the membership to a more reasonable level and help me serve those who are truly motivated to achieve success in the markets, not those seeking easy answers without doing any work.

In 2009 I also began a voluntary and completely free “mentorship group” where I give away my time to work closely with members who’ve been with me for three years or more. It has been an incredible experience and has surpassed my wildest expectations. I’m now helping people at a personal level and in a way that I only dreamed possible in previous years.

Future Plans, Hopes & Dreams

It is true that life happens “when you’re making other plans” but here’s a list of both short and long-term plans, hopes and dreams I have:

My short-term plans for the future:

1. To trade to the best of my ability and continue to learn;

2. Be the first person I know to beat the market every year his career;
3. Continue to work aggressively on helping others through the members’ only site;
4. Expand and further develop my mentorship group;
5. Finish development of an upgraded stock/ETF screener to help members;
6. Develop and share a new video educational tutorial series;
7. Be one of the “good guys” by serving as a positive, helpful influence to others in the financial industry who share similar goals.

My long-term plans are:

1. Retire from full-time trading at age 50 (now only 11 years away!);

2. God willing, spend the next +20 years traveling with my wife around the globe to places on our bucket list;
3. Make the world a better place by finding the best ways to give away our fortune;
4. Serve as either an investment consultant to charitable non-profit organizations and/or set up my own “non-profit” organization;
5. Publish a detailed book containing all of the lessons I’ve learned about investing, trading & the markets;
6. Become a scratch golfer (I need time and luck with this one);
7. I would like to serve as a volunteer for the local search & rescue teams for Utah’s park system.

More Information About My Memberships

If you are considering becoming a member, I recommend that you spend time reading some of my free reports (updated weekly). If you find those free reports helpful, then I’m extremely confident you’ll also find a membership helpful where I provide so much more. If you still want to explore being a member, all of the details about what a membership to my website includes can be found at the membership info page.

Thank you for your interest in me and what I do here. I truly hope that I can be of some help to you in achieving more success in the market!