2006 CNBC Champ / Thomas Ko / Biography

From MSN

Thomas Ko has been a successful trader ever since he began paper trading at an early age. He calls himself a student of the markets and a master of his own success.

Ko lives in the Silicon Valley and has been working for the past decade as an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) engineer for companies like LSI Logic and Broadcom. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from San Jose State University with a minor in computer science.

He’s a big fan of TheLion.com financial site as well as CNBC’s Squawk Box. The latter led him to enter Squawk’s recent Fantasy Portfolio Challenge, running a $1 million portfolio for about six weeks.

With bold moves, he raised the portfolio to $5 million, making him the top finisher out of 150,221 contestants. That won him the top prize, a 2006 limited edition Maserati GranSport -- and an invitation to MSN Money’s Strategy Lab.