Quote from FishSauce:
Being a billionaire means jacksh*t.
The two brothers who setup Alticor/Amway/Quixtar are the biggest scam artists (despite a "legal" business model) and yet they're among the richest in the world.
I am not saying that Soros is a scam artist. In fact, I find him annoying but at the same time pious and righteous. <b>But just because you're a billionaire does not necessitate a sense of "king"ship</b>
As far as Krieger goes, from what I gathered he setup a tiny shop to trade for "fun." Aka Semi-retired.
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:
Whatever happened to Andy Krieger? At one time he ruled FX.
I well remember the infamous Bank of England trade. It was just totally obvious that the Brits would have to delink and devalue from DM. Only question was when. Get that one wrong and you were toast as the pair did a nasty whipsaw before the delinkage.
Quote from trader99:
I don't think it WAS obvious then. It might be obvious in HINDSIGHT. Anyone can played Monday Morning Quarterback. hehe.
But even IF it was OBVIOUS TO YOU, would you have the GUTS to put on a FEW BILLION DOLLAR POSITION?!! This is where position sizing is KEY! He had the right conviction and was going to LOAD IT UP! I'm sure a few other players/traders probably came to the same conclusions, but I HIGHLY DOUBT they had the GUTS to put on such size. Especially an unhedged one directional bet!
Now, that's the genius of Soros. Sure, other people helped him and traded for him and he got the credit. But like Druckenmiller noted it was SOROS who taught him when you have the CONVICTION you gotta be a PIG and LOAD it up! I remember this funnny story from Market Wizard when Druckenmiller was particularly proud of his yen bet of a few hundred millions. He came to Soros office and boasted about it. And Soros said,"You called that a POSITION?! Put on a few more billion!!!" And he did. And of course banked it well. Soros gave his traders the CONVICTION to TRADE SIZE!
Quote from lescor:
"KNOWING" you are right can be dangerous in trading. The guys at LTCM knew they were right (they were, all their spreads eventually came back). But their confidence (arrogance) led to position sizes that meant if the market didn't wise up and agree with them soon enough, they were out of business.
The market doesn't always recongnize or care about fundamentals.