About Ross Cameron
Updated 10/23/2023
If you recognize his name, that’s likely because Ross Cameron is now synonymous with extraordinary success in day-trading. His rise to fame involved a financial journey that defied convention. Beginning with just $583.15, he masterfully navigated the volatile world of trading to amass a staggering $10 million, chronicling this unprecedented — and not typical — odyssey through a series of YouTube posts.
This remarkable run, which started in 2017, unfolded in daily installments on the video-sharing platform. What Cameron achieved is far from the norm. In day-trading, where losses often outnumber gains, his triumphs stand as a testament to a singular approach.
Perhaps most notably, Cameron has never set foot on Wall Street, eschewing the conventional trajectory of traders. He founded Warrior Trading, which provides resources on and teaches people about momentum day-trading.
But what many don’t know is that through his remarkable journey in trading stocks, Cameron has always maintained a deep love for classic cars.
Why Ross Cameron Created Tire Kickers
Ross Cameron is much more than just a successful day trader. He’s also a huge car guy. He bought his first Mercedes-Benz, a 1985 300D with a diesel engine, not long after he graduated college during the Great Recession. That car has what is referred to as the “million-mile engine.” Cameron saw it as a symbol of self-reliance and restored it himself.
He came up with the idea of tirekickers.com in 2019 as a website where he could post content that focuses on his love of four wheels. The site provides long, informative pieces on some of his favorite rides. It also offers car buying resources and how-to guides on everything from properly washing and waxing a vehicle to testing a battery and cleaning oxidized headlights.
It’s a labor of love for Cameron. He calls himself “the ultimate tire kicker,” enjoying everything car-related, from reading classifieds and attending auctions to comparing different models. He’s focused on purchasing pre-1980 classic cars. He started with a 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 and a 1961 23 Window Volkswagen Microbus.
He’s also a family man. In 2016, he married Lauren in Lenox, Massachusetts. They run Warrior Trading together, with Cameron creating all the educational content and Lauren managing the day-to-day operations. They live in the Berkshires with their two children, two dogs, a wild deer known as Floppy, who has become a close friend of the family, and a chipmunk named Red Bottom.
You can learn all about Cameron’s love for cars on the tirekicker.com site. For those interested in how he got into day-trading and later teaching others about it, the following offers some highlights from his life and achievements (so far).
Growing Up in Vermont
Born and raised in picturesque Vermont, Cameron started his career as a newspaper delivery boy. His first exposure to the world of trading happened at an early age. During middle school, between 1997 and 1999, his school’s curriculum delved into the stock market frenzy of the “dot-com bubble” era. Teachers organized students into groups entrusted with managing simulated portfolios. Every investment they made surged, in stark contrast to the realities of Wall Street.
In the summer of 2001, Ross Cameron took a bold step, funding his inaugural real-money trading account with Ameritrade. He exhibited a shrewd acumen for investing in established enterprises such as Exxon, Caterpillar, and Pfizer, but with a small account, he didn’t see significant income from his investments.
From 2003 to 2009, he attended college. However, in the midst of his studies, he returned home to support his father, who was grappling with a diagnosis of lung cancer. During this time, Ross Cameron found employment at a Sunoco gas station and also took on a role as an assistant teacher in a ceramics studio.
A pivotal juncture arose when Cameron moved to New York City. Eager to explore potential career avenues, he applied for an internship at a hedge fund — but didn’t get the job. However, he later secured an internship at an architecture and design firm.
He pursued completion of his college degree while immersing himself in the world of architectural internships. The practical knowledge gleaned from his professional experiences found expression in his senior thesis, a dedicated exploration of environmentally sustainable design.
However, a career in architecture turned out not to be in the cards.
Making the Move Into Day-Trading
New York City provided Ross Cameron with many opportunities, but the city’s frenetic pace and pressures took a toll, culminating in feelings of anxiety and even panic attacks. In light of this, he returned to the familiar terrain of Vermont.
He looked for employment in an architectural firm. However, he quickly learned that salaries in Vermont were about half of those in New York City. To make matters worse, the Vermont job market continued to lag in recovery from the Great Recession.
Necessity, as the old saying goes, became the mother of invention. Cameron found himself compelled to explore alternative avenues for income. Ultimately, he decided to give trading stocks a go.
He didn’t start by focusing on day-trading. However, it wasn’t long before he learned that with a small account, long-term investing couldn’t produce the returns he needed to make an income. He began to day-trade. In 2012, he started Warrior Trading as a blog where he could chart his trading journey.
Cameron soon realized he could change his life by mastering the stock market. However, his goal wasn’t to get rich. Rather, he wanted to make enough to live on his own terms, avoiding having a boss or a nine-to-five job.
Soon he had enough experience in the market where he felt comfortable teaching others. In 2014, he created a Warrior Trading chatroom for day traders. He started teaching them what became the first version of the Warrior Pro course. He then decided to put what he had learned into a book.
In 2015, Cameron wrote How To Day Trade as a companion to his courses at Warrior Trading. The book eventually became a bestseller in its genre on Amazon. Remarkably, Cameron continues to employ the tactics included in the book to this day.
The Challenge That Made Ross Cameron Famous
In 2016, Cameron primarily traded with an account with a balance of around $50,000. However, to show his theories could work with a small account, he seeded one with a mere $583.15 in 2017. Within 45 days, the account grew to more than $100,000. By year end, its value had surged to over $300,000.
The momentum continued in 2019, as he exceeded $1 million in profits, culminating in an impressive total of over $10 million by the close of 2022. While an independent accountant’s audit of his trading performance can be examined here, his results were far from typical.
Ross Cameron’s insights are featured on Entrepreneur, where he expounds on the nuances of momentum day-trading and imparts wisdom garnered from his experiences navigating day-trading with a modest account.
Ross Cameron Talks About Developing Experience as a Trader
In a recent interview, Ross talked about some aspects of his approach to day-trading that have helped him succeed. For example, he spoke about one of the most problematic issues for any trader to overcome, even himself. That’s the ability to deal with the emotional side of trading.
“You can know all the textbook stuff about trading, and then you find yourself in the heat of the moment, throwing it all out the window and making emotionally impulsive decisions. Now, you’re making a gut decision and it’s not really based on intuition,” Cameron said. “You might be telling yourself it is, but it’s actually based on an emotional response having just experienced a loss, frustration, anger, and suddenly you can start snowballing.”
Ross advocates for the idea that traders develop self-control, discipline, and self-awareness. Before trading, people should consider their state of being, asking themselves if they’re in a position to trade at peak performance, and also to examine the market and see if it offers any opportunities that suit their strategies.
He said true instincts for the market come with experience and work in tandem with a well-thought-out trading strategy.
“You should have a trading plan, and it would have your strategy, it’ll have your parameters of, ‘This is the time of day I trade. These are the price stocks I trade. These are the chart patterns I prefer. This is my list of ‘definitely avoid that,’’’ he said. “It essentially gives you guardrails that you put around your trading. As a beginner trader, you’re going to have a lot of guardrails to keep you very narrowly in a safe area of the market because as a beginner, you don’t have the benefit of that educated intuition.”
A Focus on Short-Term Volatility
Cameron also focuses his skills and knowledge on short-term trades. It requires a different viewpoint than a traditional, fundamentals-based trader.
“I do not spend a lot of time trying to analyze the fundamentals of a company. My average trades are five minutes long. They’re very short. So I am capitalizing on short-term periods of volatility, and those can be the result of breaking news, but what I focus on is the price action. So that’s technical,” Cameron says.
It’s not as simple as trading on news, however. Stocks sometimes drop even with good news about a company. In other cases, bad news can make a stock rise. It all depends on how the market as a whole views the news.
Cameron says while he likes to see news that impacts fundamentals, he’s more focused on how the market reacts to the news. “I really don’t, at this point, try to go to the lengths of dissecting fundamentals because it feels like trying to read a horoscope. It just feels too much of a guess,” he shares. “Ultimately, the price action is almost reading the news for me because the price action is either positive and reacting well or the price action is negative and reacting poorly, and that tells me what the news is or whether it’s good or bad.”
What Ross Cameron Is Up to These Days
Cameron has many different irons in the fire. When it comes to cars, you can check out his content here on the Tire Kickers site. He’s published a series of videos about some of his cars on his YouTube channel, including the 1969 Mustang Boss 429, the 1955 Porsche Speedster, and a 1963 Split Window Corvette.
He’s also deeply involved in teaching others through Warrior Trading. Ross is the third generation of his family to teach. He says family members taught him teaching methods that he continues to use today.
“I do really enjoy teaching. The way I teach is I really do try to make it very simple initially by focusing on the simple concepts of, ‘We’re looking for a stock to trade. What are the characteristics of a stock worth trading? What does the chart look like?’ So, we really do start with laying a very simple foundation and trying to keep it simple,” he explains.
You can read more about day trading on the Warrior Trading site, including his Momentum Day Trading Strategies. He’s also developed a list of books to check out on Goodreads. Cameron is also on X (formerly Twitter) and you can also find him on Facebook. He has a Warrior Instagram and his personal Instagram here. He posts topical posts on Warrior’s Medium account. He also has a podcast on Apple.
