Alexander Elder
A professional trader; a world class expert in technical analysis, and a practicing psychiatrist. He believes that successful trading is based on three M's: Mind, Method, and Money. He was born in Leningrad and grew up in Estonia where he entered medical school at the age of 16. At 23, while working as a ship's doctor, he escaped from a Soviet ship in Africa and received political asylum in the USA. He continued to work as a psychiatrist in New York City, served as book editor of The Psychiatrist Times, and taught at Columbia University. After becoming involved in financial trading, he published over 50 articles, software, and book reviews and speaks at many conferences. In 1988 he founded Financial Trading Seminars, Inc an educational firm for traders. He is best known for his modern classic 'Trading for a Living'.
Bill Lipschutz
Beginning with $12,000 left to him by his grandmother, he built it up to over $250,000 in four years. For eight years he worked for Salomon Brothers and it is estimated that during this time he was responsible for in excess of one-half billion dollars of trading income.
Bruce Kovner
May well be the world's largest trader in the inter-bank currency and futures markets. In 1987 alone, he scored profits in excess of $300 million for himself and the fortunate investors in his funds. Two thousand dollars invested with Kovner in early 1978 was worth over $1,000,000 ten years later.
David Ryan
In 1982 he began working for William O'Neil and in 1985 achieved a degree of fame when he won the US Investing Championships held by Stanford University Professor Norm Zadeh, where he returned a phenomenal 161 percent for the year. He followed this up with a 160 percent return in 1986 and another triple digit return in 1987. For the three years as a whole his compounded return was a remarkable 1,379 percent.
Ed Seykota
One of the best traders of our time. Realized an astounding 250,000% return on his accounts over 16 years. (normalized for withdrawals, the account theoretically was up several million percent)
Howard Seidler
One of the original Turtles he has averaged 34 percent since he began trading in 1984.
Jack D Schwager
After earning an MA in economics at Brown University, Schwager began working as a commodity research analyst and has spent his entire career as a market analyst. He is the author of the critically acclaimed 'A Complete Guide to the Futures Markets' and has written widely for many publications. He is also a frequent seminar speaker where he lectures on a range of analytical topics. He is best known for his two publications 'Market Wizards' and 'The New Market Wizards', in which he gets financial wizards to share their insights. It has been said that Market Wizards is one of the most fascinating books ever written about Wall Street.
James B Rogers, Jr.
Began trading in 1968 with $600. In 1973, he formed the Quantum Fund with partner George Soros, which proved to be one of the best-performing hedge funds. In 1980 having amassed a small fortune he retired.
Jesse Livermore
Wrote an all time classic 'How to Trade in Stocks' One of the old breed who became a legend in his own time.
John Sweeney
Has written two great books - 'Campaign Trading: Tactics and Strategies to Exploit the Markets' and 'Maximum Adverse Excursion'
Larry Hite
Began with $2 million equity under management and 8 years later had turned this into $800 million.
Mark Weinstein
Beginning with a considerable string of losses he claims that his win ratio is now in the vicinity of 99 percent.
Marty Schwartz
Has scored enormous percentage gains in every year since he turned full time trader in 1979, but he has done so without ever losing more than 3 percent of his equity on a month-end to month-end basis. In the US Investing Championships held by Stanford University Professor Norm Zadeh his performance was nothing short of astounding. In nine of the ten four-month trading championships he entered, he made more money than all the other traders combined. His average return in these nine contests was 210 percent - non annualized! In his single entry in a one-year contest, he scored a 781 percent return.
Michael Carr
One of the original Turtles he averaged 57 percent annually.
Michael Marcus
Over a ten year period, he multiplied his company account by an incredible 2,500 fold. He turned a $30,000 account into $80 million.
Michael Steinhardt
One thousand dollars invested with him in 1967 grew to over $93,000 by 1988. To put it in perspective the same $1,000 invested in a basket of S&P stocks would have only grown to $6,400.
Monroe Trout
Over a five year period he has averaged a return of 67 percent, astoundingly his lowest drawdown during this period was just 8 percent, with profitability being registered for 87 percent of all months.
Paul Tudor Jones
Has accomplished what many though impossible: combined five consecutive, triple-digit return years with very low equity retracement. Took a $1.5 million account in 1984 to $330 million account in 1988.
Randy McKay
Conservative estimates have placed his cumulative earnings in the tens of millions.
Richard Dennis
Began with $400 and turned it into a fortune estimated to approach $200 million. Perhaps the best-known futures speculator of our time.
Tom Baldwin
Left a managerial job at a meatpacking plant with $25,000 in hand and now trades up to $2 billion worth of T-bond futures in a day!
Tom Basso
A successful trader in the sense that he is a very profitable trader while maintaining complete peace of mind and experiencing great joy.
Tony Saliba
Strung together seventy consecutive months of profits exceeding $100,000. Only the rare trader can boast both occasional dramatic gains and consistent trading profits.
Van K Tharp
A coach for traders and investors since 1982 and the founder and president of International Institute of Trading Mastery. It is goal to help people become the best traders and investors possible - overcoming problems in everything from system development to self-sabotage to success related issues. He has a PhD in psychology and is a Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). He has collected over 5000 successful trading profiles by studying and researching individual traders and investors, including many of the top traders and developers in the world. He is the only trading coach featured in 'The Market Wizards: Interviews with Great Traders.' He has also written many books and articles with 'Trade Your Way To Financial Freedom' being recognized as a modern classic.
William Eckhardt
Partner of perhaps the best-known futures speculator of our time, Richard Dennis. Created the famous trading group known as the Turtles. Has averaged over 62 percent return.
William O'Neil
In 1962 he pyramided profits in three exceptional back-to-back trades and parlayed an initial $5,000 investment into $200,000.
