It flopped, never getting more than 400 subscribers. “From September until November, I spent about two to three hours a day studying technical analysis,” examining charts showing short-term stock-price movements-an activity akin to Talmudic scholarship for some traders and little more than tea-leaf reading for other investors.Ĭollins, thin, sandy-haired, his right arm sheathed in tattoos, had previously tried to achieve YouTube stardom with a channel devoted to running advice. To bone up, “I read some books and watched successful traders on YouTube,” he says. “It transfers to me-it makes me hyped about it.” And I like that,” says one AMC investor, who is also a fan of Collins’ YouTube.

A buddy had already caught the day-trading bug and passed it along to Collins. After an injury forced him to stop long-distance running, he found himself with more free time. And well, he’s in every way a personality.”Ĭollins graduated in May 2020 and assumed active duty. “And we got a lot more out of him than we might’ve expected given his high school credentials,” says his university coach, Tim Miles. John’s, he studied nutrition and ran track and field. I’d crash in the backseat after I got done working, then wake up and do it again.”Īt St. “I’d work from 11 in the morning until 11 at night,” he recalls, “and I would have my car in the parking lot of the Wild Wings. His father died a year into college, and in summer 2019, Collins found himself living on his own, working as a bartender and server at a Buffalo Wild Wings. John’s University, an hour north of Minneapolis. He grew up in Minnesota and had a ROTC scholarship to get through St.

That's the attraction to it.” And then maybe, once caught up in the moment, you also throw down some money on black, too.īy rights, Collins shouldn’t have been gambling like this at all. There's no way you're not going to watch it play out. “It's the same psychology as if you're in a casino, you walk by the roulette table and you see someone throw down $50,000,” says Matt Kohrs, 26, who runs a competing YouTube channel covering AMC. It does make for compelling YouTube content. “They view it as confirmation you don't have to have been in the market for five, ten, 15 years to make money.”) His outsized voice and unabashed enthusiasm for AMC amount to flagrant violations of finance’s traditional rules and norms, where retail investors are rarely seen-and certainly not heard-while media members covering or commenting on a company are not also investors in the business. (“I think people appreciate that I'm just a regular guy,” Collins says. He’s gotten rich, quickly, turning $8,000 in savings last December into roughly $1 million today through trading AMC stock and options. He maintains a day job while living on the web as much as possible. (To use these investors’ slang, these are meme stocks or, put with crude humor, “stonks.”) Collins has no formal finance education and is not some professional investor stationed behind a Bloomberg terminal. Collins is indicative of the investing set behind the extreme price movement upending the shares of GameStop, AMC and other companies like Wendy’s and BlackBerry–seemingly irrespective of their corporate fundamentals.

Matt kohrs charles payne