A high school dropout, who once lived homeless on the streets, Michael Parness is now a hero to investors and traders everywhere. Michael is chief executive officer and founder of TrendFund.com, the leading online trend-based advisory service for the individual trader. Launched in 1999, Trendfund.com has over 100,000 customers in over 40 countries worldwide.
Michael's best selling book, Rule The Freakin' Markets! was published in six languages, has provided thousands of individual investors with practical trading tips for reading the markets and trading with confidence - without the help of brokers or analysts. His second book, Power Trading/Power Living has sold over 50,000 copies, and his third book, Rule Your Freakin' Retirement! is due out March, 2009. His "everyman" approach to trading breaks down the market into historical trends or market tendencies, which provide explosive short and long-term market opportunities to his members.
A legendary trader who famously turned a few thousand dollars into several million, Michael serves as Trendfund.com's lead financial advisor, guiding thousands of subscribers who seek his trading expertise in both bull and bear market conditions. Like all Trendfund members, Michael uses an online persona; his trading name, "Waxie," is a nod to a former career in sports memorabilia.
Offering resources to traders at all levels - from housewives to Wall Street analysts - Trendfund.com helps its members take control of their money through analysis and tips from Parness and his team, interactive chats, real-time news, personalized trading classes, and pre- and post-market intelligence.
Michael is a native New Yorker whose first entrepreneurial venture was the creation of a sports memorabilia company called Waxman. Over a ten-year period, Michael built Waxman into New York's top provider of sports collector's items. After taking a broker-friend's bad advice and losing his life savings, he developed an interest in the financial markets, and spent his spare time researching market trends and developing his own theories on market behavior.
Determined to earn back his losses and vowing to never use a broker again, Michael began trading for himself, with the moniker "Waxie." Making use of the skills and instincts he cultivated through years of careful research, Michael turned $33,000 into more than seven million dollars in less than three years.
Michael is regularly consulted for investment advice by major media including The Wall Street Journal, CNNfn, CNBC, New York Post, FOX News, Financial Times, Business Talk Radio and Crain's New York Business. His informational trading seminars draw thousands of attendees across the country, and he has guest lectured at UCLA and Tulane University. At Tulane University in Spring 2004, Michael will be the first graduate level teacher in the country to focus on Day/Trend Trading. His "Trend Trading To Win" infomercial has sold over 100,000 trading courses around the world on how to make money in any market.
An award-winning playwright, Michael's work has been produced extensively in New York and Los Angeles. In 2006 he co-founded Full Glass Films and has since written and directed Crazy for Love (David Krumholz, Lorraine Bracco, Rosanna Arquette), and produced Gospel Hill (Samuel L.Jackson, Danny Glover, Julia Stiles & Angela Bassett), Foreign Exchange, The Insurgents, and Jake's Run. In addition, Dustin Hoffman optioned Michael's life story and it is currently being cast for a potential 2009 lens date. Michael's been honored at the United Nations for his charity work with children, and his Trend Fund Foundation has helped many abused and disenfranchised kids seek a better life.
Michael, 45, after returning to school, finally graduated Summa Cum Laude from Hunter College in New York City, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in English. He lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side where he continues to rule the freakin' markets every day!