Best Stock Strategy Review: Part I – Performance History of David Jaffee

Thanks for reading today’s review of Best Stock Strategy.

What is Best Stock Strategy, and what are they selling? According to the BestStockStrategy.Com website, they are selling a stock options trading course titled “Best Education Available” for “only” $1,849 and “Real-Time Trade Alerts” for $349 per month.

The service does include a 7-day trial for $19.

Regardless, the annual cost for the alerts service would equate to $4,200 per year — therefore, if trading with a $10k account, you would need to earn a 42% return just to break even. Not very realistic.

TradingSchools.Org contacts David Jaffee of Best Stock Strategy

My initial contact with David Jaffee occurred sometime in late 2018. I sent out my usual “lion and lamb” email where the “lion” email is a very poignant and direct email from the official TradingSchools.Org website. In that (lion) email, we get straight to the point and notify the vendor that a review will be pending.

At about that same time, we sent out the “lamb” email, where we use an alias and act like a complete newbie — with money to waste and little understanding of trading.

Most vendors immediately take the bait and respond to the “lamb” email, while subsequently ignoring the “lion” email.

To my surprise, I received a very unique response. Mr Jaffee, who owns BestStockStrategy.Com, responded to the lamb email by stating, “my service is probably not for you.” And, “getting rich quick” is not realistic.

Concurrently, Mr. Jaffee was more than willing to engage with the official TradingSchools.Org email.

My opening emails are usually more of a jousting match where I am poking and prodding, searching for weaknesses, evidence of fraud, chicanery, or any clue that might point me in the direction of “what is most true.”

I started with Jaffee as very warm and friendly. But my questions always get hotter and hotter, to the point of being very uncomfortable. At this point, most people will bailout. But to my surprise, Jaffee kept coming and kept reciprocating the testy exchanges. I like that.

Essentially, my job is to expose the vendor as a fraud, or elevate the vendor as someone worthy of actually purchasing the product or service. There can be no middle ground.

As I explained to Jaffee, the only truth I am immediately concerned are actual verifiable account statements that can be matched with filed tax returns. Nobody is going to lie on their tax returns and claim they made “more” than their year-end profit and loss.

Jaffee agreed. And he cooperated.

Account Statement Revelations

Most vendors, selling these sorts of courses and signal services want nothing to do with showing TradingSchools.Org actual account statements over an extended period of time.

The simple truth is that 99.99% of these guys are frauds and phonies. They rely upon “hypothetical performance” or “simulated trades” as part of their sales scheme.

Equally disdainful are the phonies and frauds that might screen flash an actual account statement — with one or two outsize profitable trades.

The very worst are the vendors that proclaim, “If I show you my account statements, then I would be required to register as an investment advisor” or “my lawyer told me it’s illegal.” Or some other total bullshit excuse that seeks to only confuse, obfuscate, or divert.

With Jaffee, I told him plainly that I wanted to see everything. The good and the bad. He agreed.

Next, we reviewed actual performance for the years 2015 through 2018. And they are as follows…

2015 Performance: The year 2015 was the most painful year of David Jaffee’s trading career. At one point, during the month of August, he experienced an incredible $1,000,000 draw down over a 3-day period.

Overall, he lost $100k for the year. But as he explained, “I learned a tremendous amount from those trades.” And, “the losses tested me to the limit and yet I fought back and ended nearly positive for the year.”

2016 Performance: Overall, for the year, David Jaffee ended with a profit of roughly $250k.

2017 Performance: This was an interesting year. He finished with a profit of roughly $750k. Excellent performance, and I felt that the June 2017 account statement is most representative of a “typical” month of trading for David Jaffee.

I have included the entire June 2017 statement below. You can see the account gently swing, and it gives an overhead view of his style of trading and his frequency of trades.

June-2017-BestStockStrategy.com_

As you can read, just the June 2017 account statement encompassed 35 pages.

2018 Performance: Another positive year with David Jaffee earning roughly $500k.

Going back through 4-years of these statements was very time-consuming. We are talking about nearly 1700 pages of account statements. It is not easy having to redact 1700 pages of the individual account number!

David Jaffee deserves much credit for the hard work.

Jaffee wanted a positive review. I said no.

At the end of this financial colonoscopy, poor David Jaffee must have thought that his super-premium five-star review would be published at any moment. He thought he was “calling the shots,” and a “slam dunk” for a five-star review.

But I told him “nope.”

As I explained to David, “Most of my readers have small accounts.” And, “My readers would never be able to replicate this sort of trading activity.”

Which is true, how many of you reading this have a cool million dollars just laying around? Probably not many. In order to replicate his style of trading, nearly none of my readers would be able to benefit. And so, I said “take a hike.”

Well, I didn’t say it quite that way. But as I told Jaffee, “Look, who cares if you can deliver a rocket ship? None of my readers will be able to fly it. Therefore, this is not a product I want to write about.”

Jaffee got really mad. He called me on the phone and screamed, “You are a fraud and phony!” and “I never would have cooperated if I had known you were going to be an asshole!” And then he hung up the phone.

I didn’t think I would ever hear from David Jaffee again.

David Jaffee comes back. The 2019 challenge.

The new year arrives. And with a new year comes a fresh perspective. But not from me. Anyway, Jaffee reaches back to me and wants me to write a positive review. Considering how 2018 ended with our bickering and fighting, I was pretty surprised that he wanted more disappointment.

So we talked it over. I told him again that nearly all of my readers would never be able to benefit from his style of options trading. That in order to execute his style of trading, you would need an outsized account. Of which, nearly none of my readers actually have.

And so, David Jaffee came up with a challenge to put my theory to the test. In his proposal, he would open another LIVE account with a starting balance of only $5k and trade it for the entire year. After a year, we would report exactly the results — regardless of the performance.

Truthfully, I thought he had nearly zero chance of success because he is primarily an options premium seller — which requires a very large balance. But David really wanted to shove it down my throat.

In order to prove the trades, David added TradingSchools.Org to the private WhatsApp feed, which is the method in which the trading alerts are communicated to the subscribing audience.

After having my WhatsApp connected, I immediately began to receive the trading recommendations. However, to be completely honest…I muted the live feed. Yes, it was nice that I received the live feed for free, and I appreciated the transparency, but I just don’t have time to follow each and every trading signal.

Regardless, we had the live account being tracked. And the performance of the live account would serve as the performance proxy.

Best Stock Strategy 2019 Performance Summary

For the entire year of 2019, David Jaffee traded with two live accounts. The first account was his large, primary trading account. This account is what he uses to earn his income and pay his bills.

The second account, the smaller account, would be the “official” account in which I would report the performance to my audience. I know that David was ultra motivated and really, really wanted to kick my ass. (His feelings were still hurt over not getting the original review)

And so, 2019 came and went pretty fast. As we got closer to the end of the year, I knew that David was having a really good year in his large primary account. He self-reported excellent profits — but I never verified this. Truthfully, I did not care. I only cared about the smaller account.

However, I was very aware of the performance of the smaller account, and I followed this closely.

On October 12, 2019, David Jaffee created a video and published it on YouTube. The title of the video was: Options Trading | 100%+ YTD Profit | 100% WIN RATE | NO LOSES | LIVE TRADING

I would consider this video the “Fuck You Emmett Moore” video…

If you watched it, this is a great video. David Jaffee knuckled down for the entire year, he really wanted to perform well.

Once again, on February 22, 2020, David Jaffee created the final, year end video. This video finalized all trades taken for the entire year. Included is extreme detail, where he logs into the brokerage account and pulls the account statements from the brokerage logs.

Its all there folks, have a look…(another fuck you Emmett Moore video)

If you watched this video, you can see that David Jaffee of Best Stock Strategy finished with an incredible performance of 117% return and a 100% WIN RATE.

Yes, you are reading that correctly. No losses. Not a single loss for the entire year. Truly incredible. Absolutely amazing performance.

With such an amazing performance in hand, how could I refuse David Jaffee a fair and honest review? So here we go…

Many of you reading this will probably stop right here. Probably not read a single word past this point. You have seen the performance, and that is good enough for you, right? Wrong!

In my opinion, we need to dig further. We need to understand as much about the trading vendor as possible. I want to know every aspect of their lives. The good stuff, the bad stuff, the embarrassing stuff, the painful experiences, the personal victories, and most importantly…the secrets, the demons, and the graveyard where we hide the secrets.

These things are the important things. These things are the things that shape the trader, that mold their thought process, that give us the real clues as to their success. The account statements are just the finished product. I want to know the “why.”

The personal history of David Jaffee

The next part of this review is going to take a deeper dive into the life of David Jaffee. All of the information you are about to read was gathered from multiple hours of telephone interviews, many back and forth emails, and verifying information through third parties. Let’s begin…

David Jaffee was born and raised in a town called Monticello. No, not the slave plantation that Thomas Jefferson was running down in Virginia. Rather, this Monticello is way up in the Catskills, with an average population of only 6k residents.

Monticello, New York is not a very special place. In fact, its main tourist attraction is an old jail that was featured on the TV show, Ghost Hunters. Apparently, the ghosts of murdered inmates still inhabit the cells and have finally figured out a way to open the cell doors at 3 AM.

David’s father was the town doctor. But as David explained, his father did not really like being a doctor. Instead, his father had always harbored dreams of being a Wall Street investment banker.

As David explained, “my father seemingly regretted not going into finance on Wall Street.” And, “he might have become bored as the doctor of a small town and encouraged me to become an investment banker.”

Essentially, the seeds of David’s path toward finance and speculation were planted by his father. David explained, “My dad pushed me in this direction. I just sort of accepted it, and then later I embraced it.”

David was an excellent student and applied at both Harvard and Cornell. Although David was not admitted to Harvard, he was admitted to Cornell’s Applied Economics and Management program.

Cornell is the quintessential Ivy League school. The Applied Economics and Management program is considered one of the top 10 economics programs in the United States.

In particular, the Economics and Management program was specifically tailored towards individuals that would eventually manage large public companies.

Economics is an arcane field of study. Many would argue that it’s an impractical “art” rather than a “science.” The Cornell program was specifically geared towards the practical application of economics within existing large companies.

As David explained, “We were taught how to thoroughly examine public companies from the ground up. We went way beyond accounting and forensic accounting. We figured out how to properly value what a public company is actually worth.”

David excelled at Cornell. Eventually he became the assistant of Pedro Perez, the head of the Economics department.

In 2004, David Jaffee graduated as an Applied Economist at Cornell. A lot of people like to claim they graduated at the top of their class (magna cum laude) but David actually did…the following degree proves it…

David Jaffee goes to Wall Street

As with most Ivy League economics graduates, they are heavily recruited by some of largest public companies. And since David graduated at the “top” of his class, he pretty much had the “pick of the litter” regarding which company he would work for.

This might sound crazy for most people. Most graduate from a University and hope like hell they can find a job. But Ivy League schools are heavily recruited and students essentially walk out of college into high paying jobs.

The Ivy League Finance graduates represent the “cream of the graduation crop.”

David sure thought he would have no problem landing his dream job at Blackstone, as an investment banker. In fact, he was so sure that it was the “Only place I would accept.” And, “I was expecting a huge salary and to walk in and be running the place in two weeks.”

Things didn’t go as expected.

David was conditionally offered a job at Blackstone (his dream job). But he still had to be interviewed. He thought this would be easy.

The Blackstone fiasco

Several weeks later, David drives to New York City with dreams of big money and beautiful women floating through his head. All he had to do was march into the place and start enjoying his “unlimited shrimp cocktail.”

His suit was crisp. His mind was on the razors edge. And his tongue was sharp. Too sharp.

The interview went horrible. He walked in cocky and ready to be the next Carl Icahn or Warren Buffet. He wondered if they would give him a billion or a trillion to start buying and selling companies.

Unfortunately, Blackstone withdrew the conditional offer immediately after the interview. He had completely crashed and burned on his interview. His sharp tongue and cocky attitude got him sent right back home.

As he explained, “I was devastated. Totally shocked. Embarrassed. I practically taught all courses for the professor and was the blue-chip recruit that everyone wanted.”

CIBC World Markets

With his tail between his legs, and after being thoroughly humbled, he called back to the recruiter at CIBC World Markets and told them he “was ready to accept their offer pending an interview.”

A couple of weeks later, he headed back to New York City for another interview. But this time, he figured he should probably be a little more humble.

The interview went great. He was immediately hired as an investment banker with a $10,000 signing bonus and starting salary of $60k (plus large, ~125%, discretionary bonus), yet he still felt regret about fucking up the much more prestigious position at Blackstone.

With job-in-hand, David Jaffee packed his bags and moved to New York City.

His father was so proud. His father was finally going to be living the life he always dreamed of. Or, as David explained, “My Dad was living vicariously through me. However, the more time I spent as an investment banker, the more I wondered if this was what I really wanted to be doing with my life.”

CIBC World Markets: The horror show begins

In February 2004, David Jaffee began his first “Big Shot Wall Street Investment Banking job.” He was assigned to the Industrial Growth and Services Group, headed by Mark Henkels.

His job was to focus on all of the US publicly traded Industrial Growth companies (mining, metals, steel production, etc) and figure out who was undervalued, and who was overvalued.

He remembers that during his very first week, his fellow investment banker in the same group, Richard Pistilli, told him, “Get out now. Run while you still can. Nobody survives this place. It’s hell.”

The next week, another fellow investment banker takes him to lunch and say’s, “This place will suck the life from you. They will ask for 100%. You will give 100%. They will ask for more. They will never stop asking for more.”

Yet another few weeks pass, and yet another fellow investment banker say’s “95% of people quit after a year. You will discover why. This place is hell on earth.”

Life as an investment banker at CIBC World Markets

As David Jaffee quickly discovered, the job was indeed “hell on earth.”

The “job” began at 9 AM. But the workday virtually never ended. As he explained, “Typically, I would work from 9am – 11pm on Monday – Thursday. On Friday, I would leave around 8pm and on Saturday and Sunday I would work about 9 hours each day. While the hours were bad, the stress and sleep deprivation were much worse. There were days when we’d be in the office until 3 am. When staffed on a difficult deal, it was common to have 3 – 4 consecutive days of high-stress with minimal sleep. This was the killer. Because not only was your body unable to replenish itself, but your brain begins to literally fear going into work, dealing with constant stress, and not knowing when you’re going to be able to catch up on sleep.”

Jaffee told me that there was one time where he was close to quitting. He was working on a deal with Apollo Management’s acquisition of Metals USA and he had already worked 3 days straight past 3 am. His body gave out and he told his Associate, Brian Kotter, that he felt sick and was going home.

Bankers usually perceive this type of behavior as desertion and Brian Kotter wrote a scathing email, at 5:05 am to their Director, Paul Parhar.

Jaffee actually saved the text from the email and it read as follows:

David asked to leave at 1:30 tonight and was unable to continue working due to fatigue. I told him he could leave as it was clear he could not productively work. This put me and Rich in a great bind as we were responsible for turning and proofing the ASC OM that was sent to the client a short time ago. In addition, the analysis that Apollo was expecting to be sent tonight also had to be completed. Rich helped me with this and both have been sent to the respective clients.

I told David that I would be requesting an analyst change on this deal and that is what I am doing now. I am not comfortable with his ability to meet Apollo’s extremely large requests for analysis in a timely manner.

Ironically, there were no consequences for the “desertion”. Jaffee said that barely anyone ever mentioned it and that the group chose to ignore it and act like it didn’t happen.

During the nights when Jaffee was able to go home before 11 pm, he lived in fear that he would be called back to the office. Like a mindless automaton, “I would crunch numbers day and night, never ceasing to end, always another spreadsheet, and they always asked for more bullshit. Because…. much of the work really was bullshit. A lot of pitch books where the Managing Director would want to get in front of a potential client just to maintain the relationship. The Analysts and Associates would practically kill themselves to put together a book that would barely even be looked at.”

As David explained, “After a year, I could never satisfy the beast.” And, “Yes, they sucked the life force from me, like some sort of a science fiction movie. They were killing me — literally”

What exactly was he doing?

Many of you are probably reading this and wondering — what exactly was David Jaffee doing at CIBC World Markets? Great question.

The basic function was to play the intermediary and provide financing (both debt and equity) to companies so that they could grow larger and more profitable.

Essentially, David’s job was to satisfy the endless demands of his Managing Directors who would oftentimes get random ideas to pitch to the CEOs of these large companies.

Interested in an acquisition? David would tell you who you should target, how much you should pay, and how your company will look once the acquisition is complete.

Interested in raising money? David would tell you whether you should issue debt or equity, at what price, and how your company’s balance sheet will be affected.

Essentially, David’s job was to figure out who was “overvalued” and who was “undervalued and to provide companies with access to the financial markets.”

When a company was overvalued, “I asked David if he could be more specific with any particular deal that he constructed and executed? David replied, “Yes, I worked on too many follow-on equity offerings to remember. If the stock market is overvaluing a stock, then the company can issue new shares to take advantage.”

The goal was to increase cash flow with little risk and unlocking value for shareholders.

But what if a company was undervalued? As David explained, “If we found undervalued companies with poorly managed assets, we would contact their competitors and attempt to take the company over.”

Can you imagine a job such as this? Most of us contemplate buying 100 shares of ABC stock and hoping to sell it a week later for $50 profit. But David’s job was flipping a hundred million on Monday and putting 500 people out of work by Friday. Talk about stressful.

I asked David if he could be more specific with any particular deal that he constructed and executed? David replied, “Yes, I worked on too many follow up equity offerings to remember.”

However, there was one deal in particular that David was noticeably proud. This deal had to do with a company named Metals USA.

As David explained, “I was deeply, deeply aware of a company named Metals USA, a maker of steel products. I spent hundreds of hours analyzing every aspect of this company. I knew how much the janitor was making. The management was terrible, they were sitting on a goldmine, and they had no idea what their company was really worth.”

David went on to explain that he reached out to notable financier Leon Black of Apollo Management and pitched a Metals USA takeover. Leon has a personal fortune of over $10 billion, and his specialty is buying cheap companies and extracting value. As Bloomberg News recently reported,

Leon Black built his company, Apollo Global Management Inc., by buying struggling businesses with huge piles of debt at bargain-basement prices, imposing austerity measures on the staff, and extracting huge dividend payments and management fees.

Caleb Melby and Heather Perlberg of Bloomberg News

Of course, many of you reading this are probably thinking, “this sounds incredible” and “might even be too incredible.” I thought the same. And so, to verify this, I asked David Jaffee if he could send me something that substantiates his claims of executing a corporate takeover.

Jaffee did not disappoint. What arrived next in the mail can only be described as a huge box full of spreadsheets and financial analysis of Metals USA. The following is just a tiny little snippet of the mishmash of financial documents that were sent over…

(Side note: many readers might think this is overkill. But there is no such thing as overkill when attempting to evaluate an investment educator.)

Why are these documents relevant?

The first, and most obvious reason is that too many of the characters that I write about like to make all sorts of wonderful claims of running hedge funds or managing trading firms, but nearly none are telling the truth. Or, they are inflating their resume to some grotesque caricature of the truth.

However, with David Jaffee, I was able to see the very documents that companies typically use to decide whether to launch a $500 million takeover. I found it very interesting.

The second, and most important reason to evaluate these sorts of documents is that it reveals that David Jaffee really does understand how to take a public company and break it down, piece by piece, and get to a place where he understands what a company is actually worth.

Perhaps this is the very reason why he is very successful at trading options? Perhaps he understands a company better than the typical idiot that is relying upon “technical analysis.”

For a good laugh, I asked David Jaffee what would of happened if he sent Leon Black a financial dossier that included things like MACD, or stochastics, and then declared, “Leon, as you can see, this stock is cheap because the stochastics is under 20!” David just roared with laughter.

As David replied, “I wouldn’t tell him that because he would think I’m crazy and never talk to me again. Technical analysis is a complete and total fraud.” And, “It’s nothing more than financial witchcraft.”

So, how did the Metals USA work out? As David explained, we convinced Leon Black to buy the company for $450 million.

For anyone interested, you can read about the acquisition through the following link:

Metals USA Purchased for $450 million

How much did CIBC World Markets earn for engineering the acquisition of Metals USA? According to David, “I believe we earned a fee of around $25 million.”

And how did things work out for Leon Black of Apollo Management? Not bad. In fact, he ended up selling the company a few years later for $766 million.

The beginning of the end

After working at CIBC World Markets for two years, and burning the candle at both ends in the Industrials unit — David Jaffee was burned out.

Just as his co-workers had warned, the place was a living hell. The job was about getting other people rich. Although he had achieved his professional goals of buying and selling companies, as David explained, “I remember waking up in the morning and just wanting to die.”

Additionally, the job was literally killing him. “My mental health went into a steep decline.” And, “If I did not leave, I don’t believe I would have kept my sanity.”

Eventually, another position opened in the Financial Restructuring Unit (headed by Joe Radecki), which was regarded as a much less stressful position. Basically, as David explained, “We figured out how to keep companies alive, that had recently suffered some sort of shock.”

One would think this would be more stressful than the original position, but it turned out to be the extreme opposite.

David now had too much time on his hands. And a lot of money to spend.

The devil’s playground

New York City is the “city that never sleeps.” And, it is considered the “nightclub capital of the world.” A place where beautiful, aggressive young women are quite literally…everywhere.

Let me ask you a question…what happens when you take a mid 20’s kid, (and probably a virgin) and give him a fat salary with little work?

On top of that, you also give him a company credit card with unlimited spending at any restaurant or nightclub in the city?

Oh, and let’s not forget…you also give him unlimited “black car service” where a shiny limousine carries this pampered princeling from point A to point B.

I call that a recipe for disaster. And the sort of national tragedy that most of us would love to endure.

Let’s just say that Mr. Jaffee quickly went from mindless financial automaton to nightclub aficionado faster than an Olympic sprinter desperate to win the gold medal.

David quickly went from one extreme to yet another extreme. He went from chasing money to chasing women.

Remarkably, David Jaffee was quite open and honest about what transpired during this period of time. However, these stories would best be published in the likes of Penthouse magazine.

I won’t go into the hedonistic details. But let’s just say that if Emperor Nero were to read these descriptions — he would blush.

My personal recommendation to Mr. Jaffee would be — don’t ever submit your DNA to 23andMe.com. It’s highly likely that a bunch of unclaimed Jaffee pups is currently wondering “who’s my daddy?”

Nightclub Jaffee

For the next couple of years, while working at CIBC World Markets, or rather…not really working very hard at CIBC World Markets…Jaffee decides that he wants to be a nightclub promoter.

This was the exact opposite of his collegiate and early career days. He went from shy, preppy Ivy League classic, to all-nighter party animal on an endless quest for “Yet more.” As in women.

As he describes, “I liked pretty women but didn’t want to spend $200+ on a date. Surprisingly, women aren’t overly attracted to investment bankers, but they are attracted to people who have elevated social status. And nightlife was perfect for that. Plus, the money in nightlife was as good as it was in finance. So why not do both?!”

Now, I wouldn’t describe David Jaffee as the most handsome sort. He barely registers a “6.” But what he lacks looks in looks, he more than makes up for with hustle, cunning, and devotion to the chase.

Regardless, David Jaffee applied the same sort of work ethic that he applied at Cornell and investment banking to his newfound, fledgling career as a nightclub promoter in New York City.

I won’t get into the specifics of nightclub promotion in New York City. (or any major city) However, according to David Jaffee, there are a few “golden keys” to unlocking success. And those include “beautiful women, hard work, staying away from drugs and alcohol, and being organized.”

As David explained, “It was all about how many outrageously beautiful women you could convince to arrive at your club and then booking tables for wealthy men who wanted access to these beautiful women.”

And according to various articles that TradingSchools.Org extracted from the web, we can definitely confirm that David Jaffee was very good at that game.

According to David, “within a couple of years, I was making way, way more promoting nightclubs than being a miserable investment banker.”

However, all of this came at a deep personal cost. After living two years on the red line of a hedonistic lifestyle and continuing to work as an investment banker…his mental health crashed once again.

At age 27, and in terrible physical and mental health, David Jaffee quit his investment banking job and walked away from being a nightclub promoter.

David explained, “I had made all the money I ever wanted. I had bedded more women than I can remember, and yet I felt completely empty inside. Nothing could fill that hole. Plus, the years of stress and anxiety was making me depressed and causing short-term memory loss and disabling OCD symptoms.”

Goodbye nightclub Jaffee. Goodbye investment banking. Time for a break.

Youth Hostel/Air Bnb Jaffee

For the next couple of years, “I just wanted to focus on getting healthy. I knew that I could always make more money as long as I was healthy.” And so, like many of us, David Jaffee decided to travel.

As he explained, “I just started traveling around the world and tried to live as carefree as possible.” Unhindered by financial stress and after living the life of a club promoter, Jaffee ends up spending time bouncing around youth hostels in South America.

“I loved the youth hostels. I was always meeting new people, making new friends, seeing new places, enjoying my life. Letting my hair grow out.” Jaffee said.

But you can only be a wandering traveler for so long. Eventually, David started to think, “what am I going to do with myself?”

At about that time, while youth hostels were popular, another “upscale type” youth hostel began to emerge — AirBnB. David visited Rio de Janeiro and stayed at an incredible hostel where everyone got along very well, and he thought this would be a great idea in New York City.

And so, with a renewed sense of purpose, David Jaffee moves back to New York City with the intent of not only opening youth hostels but also purchasing or renting prime location New York City apartments and converting them into AirBnB’s.

I asked David about the experience because, during this time, the idea of AirBnB’s was very controversial, and there were no rules and regulations concerning these properties in New York City.

David explained, “I tried a little of everything. I had low-end hostels with way too many beds, and I also had the exact opposite with upscale AirBnB’s that catered to the wealthy traveler.

Unfortunately, as David explained, “It was very profitable. But everyone started throwing together cheap hostels/AirBnb’s and packing in more and more people for greater profit.” The City of New York ended up cracking down on everyone, including David.

Similar to nightlife and investment banking, Jaffee brought things to the extreme. As he became healthier, he continued to add more responsibility and grow the operation. This eventually caught the attention of NYC’s Department of Buildings who broke up a few of David’s apartments and told him that it’s “Game over” and that he “needs to find something else to do.”

Although he was forced into closing the low-end properties, he kept the higher-end apartments that did not flout the rules.

But eventually, the building codes were changed yet again, and you could no longer operate multiple high-end Air Bnb’s without upsetting the local hotels and full-time residents. And so, David ended up selling his Manhattan apartments and decided to do something else.

“Don’t ever open a restaurant with a nightclub.”

Now, David Jaffee was officially out of the youth hostel and AirBnB business…what to do next? Open a restaurant with a nightclub!

It would be so easy — they said. It will make so much money — they said.

$1 million dollars later, and David Jaffee has opened his very first restaurant and nightclub. He was so proud. He thought the food was delicious. He would surely make a killing on the drinks. The most beautiful women would cat fight to get into this swanky location.

Except they didn’t. David wasn’t patient enough when opening the club and chose a bad, residential, location.

From day one, the place was like an endless money pit. A dark hole where you deposit your hopes and dreams and all that is returned is sleepless nights, stress, thieving employees, rude guests, unattractive women, and angry neighbors.

After about a year, and having poured his heart and soul into it…he made the worst possible decision, he decided to hire a manager to run the day to day operations. In speaking with David, he remarked, “After a year, “I realized that I didn’t enjoy it. I was rarely ever there. I helped book events, but the manager took over a lot of the operational responsibilities. With the endless stress of dealing with neighbor complaints, I had mentally checked out.

Finally, after a few too many loud parties and constant complaints from the neighbors, the club lost its liquor license.

A restaurant and nightclub in New York City with no liquor license is like a jetliner with no fuel. It’s guaranteed to crash and burn — which it did, shortly thereafter.

Goodbye New York. Hello Miami.

Fresh off the devastation of closing the New York City location, David Jaffee was once again at a crossroads. Go back into investment banking? Join the circus? Start a knitting group and make hats for bald people? Nope, he does what every irritated New Yorker does, he moves to Miami.

As David opined, “It was time to go. I had just gotten married. My wife got pregnant. And I wanted nothing to do with raising my child within the concrete jungle.”

And so, David moves into a Miami high-rise and wonders to himself — what should I do now? He thought about opening a restaurant. He thought about working at a local investment bank. He thought about alot of things.

Except, this entire time, David continued to invest his savings and for the prior several years — it was his only source of positive revenue.

The answer was right in front of his eyes.

Best Stock Strategy is born

If there was one thing David Jaffee was good at — it was figuring what public companies were actually worth.

He used this knowledge as an investment banker. His clients made money. He was successful.

Additionally, during the years he was running (and losing money with) the restaurant and nightclub, none of that would have been possible without his successful market speculation.

His market speculation was the very thing that kept everything going. It was a huge asset. But he simply never really thought of full-time speculation as being his final professional endeavor. It was just there. And he was good at it.

The idea behind “Best Stock Strategy” was never something that germane through his own imagination. Rather, it was his wife.

As David explained, “When we got to Miami, my wife was looking for something part-time and she made the fatal mistake of going onto the Google and searching, “how can I make money online?”

Hint: never Google “how to make money online.” What will next appear is akin to financial pornography. It’s like opening the door to hell. Once it’s opened a crack, then a swarm of zombie’s hands will wedge themselves within the crack.

What happened next was laughable. As David explained, “my wife would go onto YouTube and watch videos of people teaching other people how to make money trading stocks. I would casually, and disinterestedly watch these videos and just laugh.”

But David’s wife found it no laughing matter. She told him, “You should create something similar and teach people how to become an investment banker.” David replied, “Haha, you can’t teach this stuff. It takes years of devotion and hard work.”

David then explained to his wife, “Being an investment banker taught me nothing about short term speculation. Instead, being successful at short term speculation requires only a few basic tools, but plenty of nuance.”

We will define David’s investment approach as, “the secret sauce.”

In Part II of this article, we will take a deeper look into what this dude is actually doing to make outsized investment returns.

Additionally, in Part II, I will provide my overall opinion and recommendation (as if you really cared).