Stuyvesant Senior Made $72M Trading Stocks on His Lunch Break(nymag.com)
nymag.com
Stuyvesant Senior Made $72M Trading Stocks on His Lunch Break
http://nymag.com/news/articles/reasonstoloveny/2014/mohammed-islam-stock-trading/
4 comments
There's so much that doesn't quite gel about this story. He was trading penny stocks when he was 9? He went off to read high finance books as a result, and then successfully and consistently applied them? What on earth (and who) was he tutoring at 9? And as you say, the returns to do that would be pretty phenomenal.
I would love to read more details about this, there is something not quite right here.
Let's try to imagine a possible scenario:
Kid makes $1M from trading penny stocks by age 15(let's say starting with 10,000k at 12).
Then takes that $1M into $72M trading more serious securities(not enough liquidity in penny stocks to make $72M).
I could believe $5M figure (Lebed was 15 when he made around a million in late 90s from his penny stock antics) and I could believe he found some inefficiencies in thinly traded stocks such as penny stocks and even figured a way to painlessly exit penny stock trades.
I have a hard time believing he found a way to trade to $72M in regular securities without Other People's Money. (There is only that Japanese guy who has done something similar)
What I mean that the big money is generally made when OPM is involved. Paul Tudor Jones (and Buffett earlier in 1950s) and many others have made their money by taking a cut from successfully managing OPM.
Let's try to imagine a possible scenario:
Kid makes $1M from trading penny stocks by age 15(let's say starting with 10,000k at 12).
Then takes that $1M into $72M trading more serious securities(not enough liquidity in penny stocks to make $72M).
I could believe $5M figure (Lebed was 15 when he made around a million in late 90s from his penny stock antics) and I could believe he found some inefficiencies in thinly traded stocks such as penny stocks and even figured a way to painlessly exit penny stock trades.
I have a hard time believing he found a way to trade to $72M in regular securities without Other People's Money. (There is only that Japanese guy who has done something similar)
What I mean that the big money is generally made when OPM is involved. Paul Tudor Jones (and Buffett earlier in 1950s) and many others have made their money by taking a cut from successfully managing OPM.
If you start with $1000 and make a profit of 6% per day for a full year, you're there. Or start with $100 and make 7% per day. But if you can only generate a piddly 1% per day (which itself would be a mind-blowing achievement for any fund manager), you'll need $10M to start.
The article is very, very short on details of what has actually happened here, apart from "Rich people like to hang out with other rich people."