A renowned portfolio manager says San Quentin prisoners should create an investment club to learn how to make money with Wall Street stocks.
David Samra led a financial seminar sponsored by San Quentin Prison Report on October 8. Forty prisoners attended the event held in Protestant Chapel. Afterward, Samra commented that he was surprised at how clean San Quentin was and how nice the people seemed.
Samra is the managing director and founding partner of Artisan Partners’ Global Value Team. He manages nearly $28 billion of the Artisan Partner’s $96.6 billion in assets. He was invited to talk to the San Quentin group by KALW reporter Nancy Mullane, who thought it would be a good idea for Curtis Carroll to meet Samra.
Carroll, who goes by the nicknamed “Wall Street,” is the co-founder of the SQPR financial literacy class. He learned to read while in the Alameda County jail. “I reached for the sports section of a newspaper and accidentally picked up the business section. An inmate nicknamed OG asked me if I knew anything about stocks. I didn’t know anything and he gave me the basics.”
While in the San Quentin’s Reception Center, Carroll meet a fellow prisoner, nicknamed “Papa Joe,” who was an avid investor. “I’d wait for Papa Joe to throw the Wall Street Journal in the garbage and pick it up. One day, he caught me and we got into an argument that resulted in a partnership.”
Carroll used $400 in profits from the sales of his tobacco-stamps business and added $600 from a fellow inmate who paroled and opened an E-Trade account. Carroll did not consider it risky. “It was time to test my new skills,” he said.
Years later, the partnership ended and Carroll received a percentage of the profits. Carroll claims to have purchased 2,000 shares of Akamai Technologies for .71 cents and later sold them for $5.
Explaining his strategy, Carroll told Samra: “I buy undervalued dividend paying stocks and stocks trading at penny status, companies like BP, SiriusXM, and Rite Aid.”
One financial literacy participant, who goes by the name Sam, has seen tremendous results from the class. “I’ve been participating in the class for three months. I follow the advice of ‘Wall Street.’ Every thing I learn in class, I share with my daughter, wife and other family members when I go out to the visiting room. My daughter is very excited to see her investment growing towards her future,” he said.
Samra said in his investments he adheres to two rules: “Don’t lose money. And don’t forget the first rule.” He recommends reading the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, annual reports and value line surveys. He does not recommend penny stocks and likes index funds, such as the S&P 500.
Carroll called Samra his super hero despite Samra’s opinion that, “The job of a hedge fund manager is boring. I spend my day reading financial publications and analyzing reports.”
That revelation did not seem to bother Carroll, who called the stock market the “greatest inventions of all time.”
Carroll spends hours a day reading business newspapers, magazines and analyzing companies annual reports. He created a research questionnaire using Yahoo Finance page to help select his stocks. One of those stocks was Citigroup. “It had to drop from $50 to $1,” he said. “The government purchased $45 billion dollars of Citigroup stock so I figured it had to be a safe investment. The government wouldn’t spend $45 billion on stocks if they weren’t sure on a return, I betted the same way.”
More information about Curtis “Wall Street” Carroll can be found at www.wallstreetfeel.com
