Meet the Experts
Bryan Bottarelli
Whether it was selling the Star Wars figures he collected as a little boy for 50 times their value or using $125 of grass-cutting money to buy a Michael Jordan rookie card that he later sold for $1,500, it was clear Bryan Bottarelli was a born trader – possessing the unique ability to identify opportunities and leverage those investments.
Graduating with a business degree from the highly rated Indiana University Kelley School of Business, Bryan got his first job out of college trading stock options on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE). There he was mentored by one of the country’s top floor traders in the heart of the technology boom from 1999 to 2000 – trading in the crowded and lively Apple computer pit. Executing his trades in real time, Bryan learned to identify and implement some of his most powerful trading secrets… secrets that rarely make their way outside the CBOE to individual traders.
Recognizing the true value of these methods, Bryan tapped into his entrepreneurial spirit to take a risk. He walked off the CBOE floor and launched his own independent trading advisory service called Bottarelli Research. From February 2006 to December 2018, Bryan gave his precise trading instructions to a small, elite group of high-level traders – most who joined him on day one and have been clients ever since.
As a so-called “play tactician,” Bryan uses his hands-on knowledge of floor trading to shape opportunities and chart formations into elegant, powerful and profitable recommendations. And by using the same hedging techniques taught by professional floor traders, Bryan is able to deliver his clients remarkable gains while strictly limiting their total risk.
Along the way, Bryan has developed a cumulative track record that could impress even the most successful hedge fund manager.
He now spends his days moderating one of the most elite trading forums ever created, The War Room.
Karim Rahemtulla
Karim began his trading career early… very early. While attending boarding school in England, he recognized the value of the homemade snacks his mom sent to him every semester and sold them for a profit to his fellow classmates who were trying to avoid the horrendous British food.
He then graduated to stocks and options, becoming one of the youngest CFOs of a brokerage and trading firm that cleared through Bear Stearns in the late 1980s. There he learned his trading skills from veterans of the business. They had already made their mistakes, and he recognized the value of the strategies they were using late in their careers.
Educated in England, Canada and the United States, Karim’s fluent in several languages. His undergraduate studies were completed in economics and foreign languages. His graduate studies resulted in a master’s degree in finance. Karim travels the world regularly, seeking out the best investment opportunities.
He developed a covered call strategy in the late ’90s while Investment Director of The Oxford Club and identified a unique aberration. The trading system he built around this allowed him to hand his readers a win percentage of more than 80%.
Not satisfied with that system, he turned to LEAPS and put selling strategies as co-founder and chief options strategist for the groundbreaking publication Wall Street Daily. After that, he honed his strategies for readers of Automatic Trading Millionaire, where, since inception, he has not recorded a single realized loss. And that’s including a span of more than 40 recommendations over an 18-month period.
While even he admits the record is not the norm, it showcases the effectiveness of a sound trading strategy.
He has closed out positions in as little as a few hours for triple- and quadruple-digit gains. His focus is on “smart” trading. Using volatility and proprietary probability modeling as his guideposts, he makes investments where risk and reward are defined ahead of time.
Today, Karim is all about lowering risk while enhancing returns using strategies such as LEAPS trading, spread trading, put selling and, of course, small cap investing. His background as the head of a venture capital publication gives him unique insight into low market cap companies, and he brings that experience into the daily chats of The War Room.
With more than 30 years of experience in options trading and international markets, Karim also contributes to The Oxford Income Letter and Wealthy Retirement. He is the author of the best-selling book Where in the World Should I Invest?