What are the largest fortunes ever made by INDEPENDENT traders?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Quote from wiesman02:

Dan Zanger had an incredible story. $10k to $40 mill in 2 years !
More...

I was just going to mention Zanger. His story is probably the most remarkable in that not only did he not use OPM but he didn't use leverage! It was all equity in a Reg T account.
 
Quote from atticus:

The EU has had retail exotics for over a decade. He started with betonmarkets making >$1MM and then gained access to bank dealing.
More...

Any hints on how he did it? I thought betonmarkets and retail exotics dealers marked up their products heavily.
 
Quote from riskreward:

Any hints on how he did it? I thought betonmarkets and retail exotics dealers marked up their products heavily.
More...

Yeah, the edge loss was large, but essentially recovered in 24h on short gamma bets. He parlayed something like 30 bets straight. I know he went from 10k to nearly 800k the first year. Betting-limits were the limiting factor. He opened accounts in his friends names, but always funded those accounts and shared the proceeds. IOW, he would've made more if not for spreading the wealth.

BOM's bets are generally very close to bank indications and volbroker in FX. Maybe 120bp edge loss on index exotics (DNT at 54 with FV at 48). FX is much tighter.
 
Quote from atticus:

Yeah, the edge loss was large, but essentially recovered in 24h on short gamma bets. He parlayed something like 30 bets straight. I know he went from 10k to nearly 800k the first year. Betting-limits were the limiting factor. He opened accounts in his friends names, but always funded those accounts and shared the proceeds. IOW, he would've made more if not for spreading the wealth.

BOM's bets are generally very close to bank indications and volbroker in FX. Maybe 120bp edge loss on index exotics (DNT at 54 with FV at 48). FX is much tighter.
More...

Do you mean short gamma bets on the vanilla with an exotic hedge? Or the other way around?
 
Quote from riskreward:

Do you mean short gamma bets on the vanilla with an exotic hedge? Or the other way around?
More...

No, outright short gamma bets in the exotics. Mainly double-no-touches and then he migrated to short lookbacks with bank dealers. IIRC he never hedged until he reached into the 10s of millions.
 
Quote from atticus:

No, outright short gamma bets in the exotics. Mainly double-no-touches and then he migrated to short lookbacks with bank dealers. IIRC he never hedged until he reached into the 10s of millions.
More...

what was the guy's background - education, experience ? Did he use to work at an exotic desk in a bank before ? Your average hedgefund trader or even an average CTA trader can't arb exotics.
 
Quote from gmst:

what was the guy's background - education, experience ? Did he use to work at an exotic desk in a bank before ? Your average hedgefund trader or even an average CTA trader can't arb exotics.
More...

He didn't arb anything. I arbed Oanda for six-figures in 2008, and that was with $20k limits per SSN. I also closed Trinitas Capital's retail operation via arbs in SP500 component exotics. So it can be done.

He was making outright bets on knockouts. No arb. No hedge. Obviously as he became larger the scale required laying off the risk, but that didn't occur until he was already into 8-figures.

MBA from INSEAD. Worked for GS in London under the head of prop/structured products (guy with hyphenated name, can't recall).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top