Model Portfolio crees:10STX

My name is Christopher Rees. I was born in England in 1950. When I was ten years old my school began teaching me how to shovel horse manure onto loganberry plants. I think they were trying to tell me something about my future prospects. By the time I was twelve I was plotting my escape down to the finest detail. I never went to university. I have no degrees or diplomas.

I left England on foot when I was sixteen carrying a heavy rucksack. The rucksack contained years of carefully considered items. After a week of walking through France and nearing the hot Spanish border, I walked off the road into a wood. There I left the rucksack and all the 'definitely needed' items. I walked out a free, liberated and instantly lighter man. Now it was just me, the clothes I was wearing and a rolled up sleeping bag, a passport and a whole world to discover.

In the following years I traveled to over 30 countries doing different jobs to get by. I worked as a tailor in Afghanistan and as a cook in India. I did construction and carpentry in Switzerland. I played professional poker in California and ran a graphic design shop in Tampa. I've also been an eco-tourist guide, sailing instructor and charter boat captain in Belize and Guatemala. I've also washed my share of dishes.

Somewhere in between, I returned to England to run a catering business. It didn't take long for rain, cold and taxation to drive me out again. I decided to move to the States.

Not long after my first arrival in Florida, I suffered a bone-crushing toothache that sent me to the nearest dentist. It was to be a life-changing moment. I was put into the waiting room where I waited and waited and waited. After some time I went looking for the dentist. I found him in an office hunched over a computer screen full of flashing numbers and colorful charts. If this dentist would rather be doing this than looking after his patients, then I wanted to know what he was doing. Thus began over 25 years (and counting) of learning about the markets and investing.

I've been managing my own money since about 1985 but I never managed to compound it. I'd always eat down my portfolio in order to finance my adventure and freedom. Then I'd work, save, re-invest and travel again.

After sailing around the Caribbean and Central America on a thirty-three foot sloop for fourteen years (much of it single-handed), I decided it was time to get serious about my life (within reason) and to slay, once and for all, the troublesome financial dragon.

I sailed to Marathon, in the Florida Keys, and got a job working nights as a waiter in a local restaurant. I spent the days in my beloved Marathon Library doing research, learning how to use computers and formulating my plan. I decided, if I did things right, I could retire to the Dominican Republic (a favorite from my travels) and live off my investment portfolio. My investment strategy was going to change from passive (1985 to 1999) to active management. I concluded I could produce 15% per year if averaged over, say, a five year timeframe. I waited tables, studied and fine-tuned my portfolio management tool kit. When I had saved the money needed to make it work at 15%, I sold my sailboat, flew to the Dominican Republic, and set about being a reclusive retired bum in paradise managing my own portfolio. In Oct, 2000, I began managing a portfolio at Marketocracy. Over the following years, I slowly rose through the ranks of their 88,000 tracked portfolios into their top 100 and then into their top 10.

I now live (without dragons) in the Dominican Republic with my wife and daughter.

Posted by Christopher Rees at 4:38 PM | Permalink

Feature writer, Danny Buckland did a profile story on Christopher Rees' life journey that ran as a feature article in Britain's Sunday Express on January 8, 2008. Chris' journey will amaze you and give you insight into what drives him and what makes him such a great investor. It will make you laugh, cheer, and most of all it will give you a great personal feel for the guy that many of us are saying, "that's who I want helping to manage my money."

Britain's Sunday Express

They used to smirk at the kitchen porter who arrived at work with a Wall Street Journal tucked under his arm and colleagues could scarcely believe that he spent his free-time hunched over a computer screen and leafing through financial publications in a local library. As they spent nights off drinking, hard-up Chris Rees continued his monastic lifestyle, spurred on by a tortured childhood and being branded a failure at school. Now the former porter, waiter and odd-job man has an enviable lifestyle with an ocean view apartment on a Caribbean island and the wealth to keep him and his family in a luxury that seemed remote after he trudged out of his secondary school gates as a 16-year-old. Click here to read the full article

Posted by Mark Taguchi at 10:00 PM | Permalink