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Stuyvesant Senior Made $72M Trading Stocks on His Lunch Break

15 points by el_benhameen 12y ago

jzwinck 12y ago
What would it take to make $72M? 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."
- iamwithnail 12y ago
  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.
sireat 12y ago
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.
el_benhameen 12y ago
http://observer.com/2014/12/exclusive-new-york-mags-boy-genius-investor-made-it-all-up/ http://observer.com/2014/12/exclusive-new-york-mags-boy-geni... Whoops.

15 points by el_benhameen 12y ago

What would it take to make $72M? 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."

iamwithnail 12y ago
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.

sireat 12y ago

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.

el_benhameen 12y ago

http://observer.com/2014/12/exclusive-new-york-mags-boy-genius-investor-made-it-all-up/ http://observer.com/2014/12/exclusive-new-york-mags-boy-geni... Whoops.