This Man Learned Stock Market From Prison & Became An Inspiration

Indeed this is a world full of wonders. One of the most inspirational stories I have heard. We can learn many lessons from the story of Curtis Carrol who has the nicknames “Wall Street” and “The Oracle of San Quentin”. Carrol is serving a sentence of 54 years in prison. He turned himself in for murder at the age of 17. He started to learn reading and writing at the age of 20.

San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men.

He grew up in a bad environment full of cocaine and heroin. In prison, serving his sentence, one day he grabs a newspaper and aims for the sports section so that his inmate can read it for him but he accidentally opens the business section so the old man asks him if he picks stocks. He says what’s that and that’s where the story starts to get beautiful.

He learned to read and write at the age of 20. He started to gain financial literacy and learn about the stock market at the age of 22. He has created a program called FEEL with his fellow inmate Troy Williams. FEEL stands for Financial Empowerment Emotional Literacy.

In this program, he teaches financial and emotional literacy and how the inmates can develop skills for life outside prison.

He has a youtube channel in which he talks about the stock market. I first came across his story in this video. This is his speech at a TED event. I strongly recommend watching this video in which he also talks about the importance of financial literacy in preventing poverty and crime.

Thanks for reading. You can follow to support my blog. You can also subscribe to receive my blog posts fresh out of the oven in email.