Model Portfolio crees:10STX

A shorter version of this Danny Buckland article featuring Christopher Rees was published in Britain’s Sunday Express newspaper on January 6, 2008.

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.

Rees is now a top performing player on the stockmarket whose skills regularly out-strip investment companies crammed with high-flying graduates and business specialists. His investment portfolio has reaped incredible dividends posting an average annual return over five years of 58 per cent which has helped lift him from poverty to paradise.

“I was working with ten other staff at the restaurant and when it came to wages and tips most would go out drinking and be skint the next morning. I’d go home and study and sleep and then go to the library when I could,” says Rees, who now lives on the Dominican Republic, where he owns several properties. “They would make the decision to spend and pee and I’d make the decision to save and invest. Multiply that out by 365 days, throw in a little investment success, and at the end of the year one guy’s got £20,000 in cash and everyone else is still penniless. Multiply and compound that out for ten years, and one guy is home and dry and all the others are going to be waiting tables for the rest of their lives.”

The rhythm of the world markets is now the soundtrack of his life and he rides the corporate convulsions with the skill of a surfer gliding just ahead of booms and crashes.
For once, rags to riches is an understatement.

Written off at school, Rees suffered from debilitating eczema and asthma attacks as a child. Confined to hospital for long periods, he had to be tied down at night to stop himself scratching as the infection cursed his youth. Missing vast chunks of schoolwork gave him no chance and few were surprised when he walked out the gates of his Buckinghamshire school the moment he could…and he just kept walking.

The adventurous teenager left his family in Stony Stratford with a rucksack and some savings with his parents Eric and Irene expecting him to make around six miles before heading home for his supper. But it was the start of a remarkable and heroic journey that has seen him take odd jobs in exotic locations around the world on a meandering road to redemption.

“I was born with asthma in my lungs and eczema all over my body. Between the ages of five and ten, I was tied down spread-eagled to a bed night and day to stop myself scratching at my skin. It was torture for a small boy,” says Rees, the son of a bookmaker. “My only good memory from the hospital was that there was a thickly treed wood out back. One day a maintenance worker loaded a bunch of us kids into an open roofed Land Rover and took us on a fast ride through the wood. I can remember the rush of crisp air, the speed, the sense of freedom and escape. The memory of that ride has never left me. About a month ago, I got to take a bunch of poor Dominican kids for a ride in the countryside in a borrowed open Jeep. They didn’t want to go back either. “Not long after I got out of the hospital, I took the 11+ exam. I could barely read or write. I couldn’t answer the questions because I didn’t know what the questions were. I watched the other kids scribbling away while I sat and looked at the clock wondering when I could go home. I failed.”

Few teachers took the trouble to help and despite catching up his peers swiftly and developing a keen interest in geography. “I’d often finish first in Geography tests but the teacher was convinced I was cheating by copying from the other kids even when I got the most answers right,” he adds. “I would get sent to the headmaster Jack Reid but he was a wonderful man and one of the few who believed in me. He told my mum that her son ‘was going to be famous one day and will do something with his life’. He died recently and I never got a chance to thank him. I wish I had.”

Rees travelled the world with a fierce independent spirit. He worked as a tailor in Afghanistan, a cook in India, a builder in Switzerland, an eco-tourist guide, a sailing instructor and a charter boat captain in Belize and Guatemala.

“I travelled to more than 30 countries and washed my fair share of dishes along the way,” he says. “I worked as a tailor in Kandahar for about a year. I wore full Afghani clothes and made my own turban every day. There were seven tailors in the town and each night a different tailor would host the other tailors for dinner. Each night we’d get together in a different house. We’d sit on the floor and eat with our fingers.

“The funniest thing about this time was that we all made 100% polyester three piece suits for export to Iran but the law changed so that no imports were allowed but you could cross the border with the clothes you were wearing. Overnight a market developed for really thin guys. We would dress them up with suits of different sizes. Ten pants, ten waistcoats, ten jackets. It was a sight.”

Settling down was never on the agenda and the money he made simply funded the next leg of a never-ending travelling experience that eventually took him to California where, penniless, he got the chance to play in a poker game and swiftly picked up the subtle nuances of human behaviour that make or break a card player.

“I played for about six months getting better all the time until I got involved in a high-pressure game. I was with guys who wore Stetson hats and chomped on cigars and the stakes kept rising,” he adds. “I stayed with them and then it was just two of us and he threw in the keys to a 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. I won without realising it was a classic car worth a lot more than the $700 he used to stake it. What a game.

“I had a car, cash and the next day I was gone on a six month trip to Florida. I was independent and the idea of staying in one place just didn’t really occur to me.”

His next saga was sailing a 33 foot yacht around the Caribbean, cruising past whales, dodging storms and keeping afloat with charters and odd job work

“It was magical. Sailing and being ‘out there’ can be very spiritual. Sometimes you feel very close to God. Other times it’s awful. One time I got caught in a bad storm off the Florida Keys. The boat was taking an awful beating. I was strapped to the wheel and the cockpit with a safety harness. Sometimes a whole breaking wave would come over the stern, flood the cockpit, and roar over the boat. There were moments when I couldn’t even see the boat. It was all under the water. You didn’t have time to be scared though. In bad situations, you’d always work through the problem first. When you got the boat somewhere safe and sound, or when the storm passed, then you could start shaking,” says Rees.

“I loved sailing. It was a wonderful life. But it’s hard work. If you put all the bad things and all the good things that can happen together, it’s probably a lifestyle best suited to those with deep psychological problems. I did it for fourteen years. I can’t swim, so I guess I qualify.”

The Eureka moment came about 15 years ago when his dentist was too busy to deal with his toothache because he was glued to a computer checking his stock dealings. The fuse was lit and Rees headed to the local library to plunge into the first academic phase of his life for almost 30 years.

“I realised immediately it was something I was fascinated by. The dentist got me started on the learning curve,” adds Rees.

He then started a marathon quest to save money and learn the nature of fluctuating stocks and the subtle financial climate changes that drove profit and loss. He crammed during the day and worked at night in restaurants where he would arrive with a copy of the Wall Street Journal under his arm.

He got his confidence by trialling his new found skills on the Marketocracy system which offers investors the chance to play the stock markets on a hypothetical exchange. It gives newcomers the chance to make mistakes without losing fortunes. The company has helped hundreds of people gain the skills to ditch their day jobs and make life-changing money.
“Chris’s story is inspirational and a great example of how learning to invest is available to anyone and can transform their lives. When you are learning it is best not to risk your life savings,” said Mark Taguchi, President of Marketocracy Research.

“Given his beginnings and what the world told Chris as a young man, it is remarkable that he has achieved so much and now performs on the real market with confidence, conviction and a belief that is the envy of professionals. His transformation has been phenomenal.”

Rees has seen 84 per cent of all his investments return a profit – a rate that would have City bosses purring with delight.

“My first recorded investment success was the purchase of two gold mutual funds. I bought U.S. Gold Shares and Invesco Gold. I made 93% on the first one and 42% on the second,” he says. “Investment success comes with hard work, discipline, patience and study. You also need to be very careful. But you don’t need to go to university. Everything you need is at the local library or online.

“The biggest investment winner was Irish company Elan when its Multiple Sclerosis drug Tysabri got pulled from the market when a few cases of a brain infection were reported and the share price plunged from $30 to $3. But, if you calmly and logically went through the medical reports and histories of the patient cases, you could see that the problem was with the drug being used in combination with others. Shares were trading on emotion, misinformation, poor journalism and faulty Wall Street analysis as well as just plain rumour and scaremongering.”

Rees is currently outperforming the giants of the British markets who have the benefit of working for massive City corporations. He has gone way beyond the imagination of his former teachers and schoolfriends but a life on the road means he is far from showy and lives a simple existence in the Caribbean trading in his best investment – happiness.

“About six months ago, I bought a small apartment overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. My daughter will be four in February. I absolutely love being a dad. I’m content. I’m successful, I have a beautiful wife Isabel and daughter Tina, the sun shines every day, there’s money in the bank, and I can see the ocean from here. What more could I want? “I don’t have a car or a boat. I don’t have a suit and tie. What I do have is a beaten up, tatty old dirt bike. I bought it second hand for $500 about seven years ago. It’s a great vehicle to have around here. Nobody wants to steal it.”

Rees monitors the markets from an office in his home and his portfolio has outperformed every mutual fund in the US. He could probably have been one of the wealthiest men in the world if his talent had been noticed earlier. He now believes that real world financial dealing should be taught in schools.

“It’s important. It is a major key to getting out of poverty and living a better life so it should be on the curriculum,” he adds. “But everything you need to learn to be a successful investor is available at the library and online. I’ve proved that. You don’t need a university. You don’t even need a teacher.

“I came to this late in life but the lessons are there for everyone. Determination, discipline and hard work are essential ingredients for success. Luck will not work. “For me, it was the simple expedient ‘I absolutely point blank refuse to not be successful’. In my case, I can’t fail. I won’t allow myself to. I am not going back. “There is no way in hell I’m going back to washing dishes for a living.”

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