Really Rich Guys - Top 10 Traders

[LearnedfromTV]

hah great quote:

Arnold declined to comment on our income estimates, as did Centaurus’s Perkins, though Perkins shared his views on why a trading bounty is such a beautiful thing. “You ask a big CEO what he makes, and it’s a huge number, but it’s all tied up in stock and options. Traders get paid in cash. It’s liquid. It’s real. You can go, ‘Here, look,’ and slap someone across the face with it.”

[IggyWH]

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And I think I need to learn more about natural gas.

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I have done work on Natural Gas projects for a few different companies and it is unfathomable the kind of money they throw around for no real good reason. The only thing I could come up with is they are swimming in so much cash, they need to spend some of it to make it look like they aren't raping everyone.


Here's a good for instance :

I was working on a 68 mile pipeline going in Eastern Kentucky for Equitrans (Equitable). The pipeline had a hard time getting final approval because it really was not needed in the opinion of many, but I guess they greased the right wheels to get final approval. Construction started late December/early January. They have a good bit of pipe already in the ground for it. They just now decided that they are going to tie into a line at a different starting point, which means they are going to just forget about a mile and a half of pipe already laid. We're talking millions of dollars invested in this mile and a half alone and they're just scratching it like it's nothing.

Original goal of this line was something like 650 million but I was told they budgeted probably 3 times that since this was their first brand new line they were putting in themselves. I got to think by the end of things, it'll be well over a billion dollar project.

[crazy canuck]

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And I think I need to learn more about natural gas.

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I think you should read about Brian Hunter.

[chisness]

these traders are destroying top ibankers

[JMa]

wow...what do you think these guys networth are?

[Duke]

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And I think I need to learn more about natural gas.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have done work on Natural Gas projects for a few different companies and it is unfathomable the kind of money they throw around for no real good reason. The only thing I could come up with is they are swimming in so much cash, they need to spend some of it to make it look like they aren't raping everyone.


Here's a good for instance :

I was working on a 68 mile pipeline going in Eastern Kentucky for Equitrans (Equitable). The pipeline had a hard time getting final approval because it really was not needed in the opinion of many, but I guess they greased the right wheels to get final approval. Construction started late December/early January. They have a good bit of pipe already in the ground for it. They just now decided that they are going to tie into a line at a different starting point, which means they are going to just forget about a mile and a half of pipe already laid. We're talking millions of dollars invested in this mile and a half alone and they're just scratching it like it's nothing.

Original goal of this line was something like 650 million but I was told they budgeted probably 3 times that since this was their first brand new line they were putting in themselves. I got to think by the end of things, it'll be well over a billion dollar project.

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This sounds a lot like: "Let's connect to where the gas is actually coming from." And well, that sounds like a good reason to me.

[econophile]

omg that abandoned pipeline is a sunk cost . . . literally!

hahahahaha

[DcifrThs]

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33 years old, 1.5-2 billion in 2006. I'm really glad that number is so inconceivable to me that it has little effect.

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WOW. What kind of profits do you have to generate to make that much a year. It's per year, right?

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depends on your fee structure.

guy who owns the hedge fund i work at is easily worth 20bil.

he keeps no body guards but is so down to earth it is scary.

asked once "how do you think the money has changed you?" he said:

"it hasn't. i know many people say that and it has, but that is because the pursuit of money has always been high on their lists. the highest thing on my list is the pursuit of excellence at all costs. when you pursue excellence, the money doesn't matter so much, as long as you love what you do, always try to get better, have great people around you and a great family you'll be the happiest person ever. that is what life is about. if the money started to change me, i'd be notified by those around me very quickly."

he dresses in jeans very often. in teaching our Market History class, he takes about 1.5hrs out of his extremely busy day every monday to teach new analysts about the history of markets that he lived & traded through.

anyways, those top traders are surely at the top of their craft. but reading "fooled by randomness" lets you know that they can very easily talk bigger than they trade in expectation. large risks are necessary for large rewards. therefore, those at the top are likely those who have benefited disproportionally from the risks they take, almost by definition.

meanwhile, those who make a consistent living taking less relative risk, but earn a higher risk-adjusted-return, tend to not break out. our fund is one exception simply due to the fact that the clientelle are huge pension funds/endowments/fund of funds etc that give us money based on the risk-adjusted-return we have generated & continue to generate since our process is both transparent to our clients (vs. funds like renaissance & goldman who are basically black boxes) & target a specific level of risk for them that they know they can reduce it or increase it at any time.

blah blah blah, you gotta be lucky to be in that top 10 list of traders. i would LOVE to see the rolling list of the top 10 including those that fall out of that list year by year. i bet you'd find a far higher % that blow up vs. your average population of traders.

Barron

[steel108]

I know nothing of the trading industry, but the firms don't jump out at me. Are they all boutique firms?

[bottomset]

nvm