Really Rich Guys - Top 10 Traders

[El Diablo]

tpf,

"I was not aware of such accomplishments being noted, remembered, etc in the halls of financial history."

How many of the guys in the top 10 list (from article in OP) were you familiar with?

Are you familiar with Warren Buffet?

You can make your same argument at $10M, $100M, $1B, etc. At a certain point for most everyone, which is differnet for each person, it stops being primarily about the money (except as a scorecard).

[Isura]

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how do you get up for work if you have 1B+ net worth? i dont understand this world at all.

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The same drive that got them to 1B

[thatpfunk]

"Are you familiar with Warren Buffet?"
Y. None of the others.

"You can make your same argument at $10M, $100M, $1B, etc."

At $1B you can concievably do almost anything you want for the remainder of your life while providing for several generations of your extended family to live more than comfortably. For me, this is the retiring point if you are that successful.

[guids]

The people who get up to go to work when they have 1 billion dollars are the same ones who have the chance to make that in the first place.

[Dale Dough]

Someone please enlighten me about those compensation schemes.

50% of profits? 3% plus 30% of profits? Wow. Is there a law that prevents these guys from just taking some kind of coin flip (and possibly lie about it) once they have earned the trust of investors?

[Scorpion Man]

[ QUOTE ]
tpf,

"I was not aware of such accomplishments being noted, remembered, etc in the halls of financial history."

How many of the guys in the top 10 list (from article in OP) were you familiar with?

Are you familiar with Warren Buffet?

You can make your same argument at $10M, $100M, $1B, etc. At a certain point for most everyone, which is differnet for each person, it stops being primarily about the money (except as a scorecard).

[/ QUOTE ]

I know a bunch of these people. (at some level, i was these people, but fewer zeros). And for some of them it's about what you talk about. I have to tell you, though...for many its because they just cannot figure out what else to do, they are defined by their jobs and the status it confers on them, and while they are not all about SPENDING the money, they are, to a real extent, about accumulating it. I have friends who make tens of millions a year and drive a 1997 dodge caravan or novastar or whatever the hell it is. I have watched people go from nothing to 9 figures. IMO, the main reasons they do not derail depends on personality. Many are geeks who just do not have other interests in life. Many cannot really manage real organizations so both can't and don't want to run large companies. Many do not have the people skills, patience, or willingness to defer to others to enter politics (guilty here).

Soros is the best example I can think of of a guy who made his money and then turned his passions elsewhere. For most of the others, it's just a perpetual game. For the very best/biggest like Ken Griffin, it's about ego and power and dick measuring. THe funny thing about finance people...no matter how much they have, they just look up and get pissed off that someone in the world is bigger or better than they are.

[ozyman]

[ QUOTE ]
Someone please enlighten me about those compensation schemes.

50% of profits? 3% plus 30% of profits? Wow. Is there a law that prevents these guys from just taking some kind of coin flip (and possibly lie about it) once they have earned the trust of investors?

[/ QUOTE ]

There is nothing specifcally on the books to deal with tany abuses of the hedge fund compensation structure. The fallout of Amaranth blowup is going to be the first big legal test for shareholder recourse as one of the big pension funds is suing them for securities fraud. It is still very early along in that case though.
If you want to read a bit more: Pension Fund sues Amaranth for Fraud

[ozyman]

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how do you get up for work if you have 1B+ net worth? i dont understand this world at all.

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how do you stay in the house doing nothing all day if your job is flying a helicopter to the building you own with the people who work for you and going and running [censored]?

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to clarify: i am not advocating hanging out at the house all day, at all. im talking about taking the wife and kids to africa or china or australia taking your yacht to south america or going around the world in a hot air balloon or learning to fly jets or buying a [censored] country for gods sake.

1B is easily enough to set your family up for generations and still spending as much as you want for the remainder of your existence.

i assume that these people have the power/ability to do anything they want for everyday of their waking lives. why anyone would spend a day working just baffles me. especially if you have a family.

edit to add: basically why every uber-rich guy isnt like Branson (from what i understand) baffles me. if there are legit reasons besides power hunger then id like to be enlightened.

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I used to work for at a company run by selfmade billionare ($50+ mm annual comp for probably the past decade). The best comparison I could make about the mindset of the owner was that of a beatuful women with anorexia, it really was an illness at the same level of compulsion and lack of grounding in reality. It doesn't matter how much you try to tell them they look great, you just can't reason with them.
Two years ago at about this time when the list of highest paid HF managers came out, he circulated a hard copy of the article to everyone in the company with a memo trying to justify his compensation and to rally the troops. He was really cheap too, if you were circulating something in a manila folder, you had to write in pencil so you could erase the writing and use the folder indefinetly. The CEO will never retire, ever.

[Dale Dough]

[ QUOTE ]
THe funny thing about finance people...no matter how much they have, they just look up and get pissed off that someone in the world is bigger or better than they are.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have that same thing when it comes to poker. If only I could turn that feeling into an actual work ethic...

[El Diablo]

Dale,

" Is there a law that prevents these guys from just taking some kind of coin flip (and possibly lie about it) once they have earned the trust of investors? "

For a lot of guys in this industry, getting lucky on some coin flips and getting people to let you make larger and larger coin flips is a pretty accurate description of the business.