Understanding the foundation of Warrior Trading begins with learning about Ross Cameron, the creator of the original blog that evolved into the award-winning trading platform. Cameron has walked an unconventional path to success. Now, he uses the Warrior Trading site to support and educate aspiring traders.
Cameron and the Warrior Trading site have become well known thanks to his success as a day trader and the high quality of what the site offers. But relatively few people may know that after he graduated from high school in 2003, Cameron had a career goal far removed from the stock market: He wanted to become an art teacher so he could teach ceramics.
Circumstances forced him to reconsider that goal and work hard to become a day trader. Obstacles included severe anxiety attacks that forced him to drop out of school, his father’s cancer diagnosis, the economic shambles caused by the Great Recession, and other factors he details in his new book, How to Day Trade: The Plain Truth.
“Each of us is dealt a set of strong and weak cards. What counts is whether you decide to throw away the weak cards, get some new ones, and how you play that hand,” Ross Cameron wrote in his book. “Luck and skill will decide the outcome. What I love about day-trading is how luck may always play a part, but there’s nothing stopping you from working hard to increase your skills.”
Ross Cameron Becomes a Day Trader
In his book, Ross Cameron goes into fascinating detail about how he transitioned from aspiring ceramics teacher to a famous day trader.
After he enrolled in college to study art and education, anxiety attacks led to Cameron leaving school. He returned home to provide support during his father’s illness, taking a job at the local gas station. He eventually attended community college and after his father died, attended Vermont College.
He never forgot his interest in trading, which started with a class on the market in middle school. Ross Cameron and a fellow student partnered on running a simulated portfolio. He also had a friend in high school who made $16,000 on penny stocks. So, facing the Great Recession’s tough job market after college, he decided to try his hand at day-trading.
The book details his many ups and downs, as well as how he eventually developed an approach that consistently made him money. This involved, among other factors, studying his own trading habits to understand why he did well with some trades and worse with others. It also required firm guardrails on trading and a great deal of discipline.
It worked. Most famously, Ross Cameron is known for taking a $583.15 account in 2017 and growing it to $10 million. It’s important to note that Ross Cameron’s experience with trading is not typical. Becoming an experienced trader takes hard work, dedication, and a significant amount of time. Your results may differ materially due to a number of factors. Available research data suggests that most day traders don’t make a profit.
What Happened With Warrior Trading?
As he learned more about day-trading — and his own tendencies as a trader — Cameron decided in 2012 to create Warrior Trading, initially as a blog. He built the site on his own. The blog followed his journey as he continued to learn how to day-trade, providing a transparent look at his trades and a place to discuss what did and did not work for him.
In January 2013, he created his popular YouTube channel, uploading videos to accompany his blog posts. Both the website and the YouTube channel began to attract aspiring traders.
By 2014, the site had drawn enough traffic that Cameron decided to open a day-trading chatroom. He also started teaching about day-trading with a specialized program. In 2015, he wrote his first book, How to Day Trade: A Detailed Guide to Day Trading Strategies, Risk Management, and Trader Psychology.
At this point, he had a large account to trade with and some asked whether he could grow a small account using his strategies. Cameron took up the challenge, starting a new account with $583.15. In 44 days, he had more than $100,000. By 2022, the account held $10 million — quite an accomplishment, if far from typical.
He documented the journey on YouTube. He has also kept a publicly available account of his trades on the Warrior Trading site, later writing about the experience for the website Entrepreneur. He said he learned many lessons while growing the account. They included the idea that people don’t credit themselves enough for “base hits” in a world where everyone is focused on “home runs.” Small gains over time lead to big results. He also wrote about the idea that day-trading gives everyone a fresh start each day.
“Of course, I’m biased, but day-trading has taught me to be more disciplined in all aspects of my life,” Ross Cameron wrote. “Every day the score resets to zero, and nothing but your actions will determine your results.”
What Awards Has Warrior Trading Received?
It’s no mean feat to receive accolades from both Investopedia and Business Insider — but Warrior Trading has. Investopedia crowned Warrior Trading as the Best Comprehensive Day Trading Course for 2023, while Business Insider put Warrior Trading on its Best Day Trading Courses List in 2023 list.
The platform is now well established as a leading software and education company focused on day-trading. It offers courses on day-trading, a chatroom for traders to exchange ideas and information, a simulator to practice trading, and much more.
Additionally, Ross Cameron is featured as a leadership network contributor at Entrepreneur — a natural role for someone from a family of educators.
Both of his grandmothers were teachers. His grandfather worked at Dartmouth College, his uncle is a professor at Yale, and his mom was an activity therapist — a type of teacher — at a nearby hospital. Cameron said he enjoys teaching himself.
That commitment to education is apparent in the Warrior Trading website, where both novice and veteran traders can improve their skills using the charts, scanners, and news the website provides. They also can learn from Warrior Trading courses designed by Cameron.
“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,” Ross Cameron says. “The idea here is that as people start to gain interest and as they start to feel invested in learning more, that they start filling in all of the details around these simple core concepts.”