Street Stories: Managed Futures
Bill Lipschutz
Performance Data: Lipschutz's first experience in actual trading was prompted by a $12,000 inheritance that steadily built up to $250,000 over a four-year period. Although he ended up blowing the entire account because of one drastic mistake of wildly overleveraging his position, that does not take away from the skill that was needed to produce the steady equity growth in the first place. Despite having had no previous experience whatsoever in the currency markets, Lipschutz was significantly profitable in his very first year of trading these markets and extraordinarily profitable over the next seven years.
Q. I heard that you had a degree in architecture. How is it that you ended up as a trader?
A. While I was enrolled in the architectural program at Cornell, my grandmother died and left me a portfolio of a hundred different stocks with a total value of $12,000, which I liquidated at great cost because all the positions were odd lots. The proceeds provided me with risk capital. I found myself using more and more of my time playing around with the stock market. It wasn't that I got less interest in architecture, I just became a lot more interested in trading.
