A woman's place is ... not on the trading desk

PBS did a documentary about him in 1987 that is difficult to find. Legend has it he bought up as many copies as he could find -- he hates it. The few that are out there turn out on Youtube, occasionally, and get pulled down due to copyright infringement almost as fast as they go up.

He was a futures and commodities trading madman in a time when you could actually game some of those markets. It looked like he was doing it mostly by feel and an innate understanding of market psychology. He traded anything that wasn't nailed down to the floor, but mostly feasted on S&P 500 futures. The documentary shows one particularly bad day, in which he cut his losses - he gets out down $6 million, or something like that. But his comment was that it (it, being the market) will pay him back with 100 percent interest. Four months later, he had made back 7 times what he had lost that day, and it showed him on a day in which he was making a cool $5 million (in 1987 dollars).

He basically ran the trend on the run-up in stocks in 1986 and 1987, all the while anticipating black Monday, when stocks collapsed. He was calling the stock market collapse all along, even as he was profiting off the run up. If I remember correctly, he thought it would come in 1988, not end of 1987, but when it hit, he recognized it and was short everything and made a fortune.

Trading legend doesn't even begin to describe a guy like this. He has an innate ability to see things happening as they happen--things that others don't recognize. At the same time, he has what every trader needs, which is that he never feels "comfortable." He is always worried he is fucking up. And it keeps him sharp.

Whatever comments he made notwithstanding, for a typical trader prick (he does have that arrogance), he actually seems to be a decent guy with a heart. Even before he was one of the richest men in the world (he makes those Forbes lists now) -- early on, when he was merely making millions -- he vowed to give away at least 10 percent of everything he made, and he wouldn't just give away money, he was going into schools in Bed-Stuy and actually mentoring kids one on one. They showed a bit of that in the documentary that is hard to find.

Now his hedge funds are ridiculous. Typical fund like his charges a hefty fee and takes a percentage of profits. He charges an even heftier fee and takes an even bigger percentage of profits. And people are still eager to give their money to him.

He's one of those, that if I ever heard there was a Stevie Cohen or Bernie Madoff thing going on with him, it would crush my world.