The Forex Rich List – The Richest Traders in the World
With many Forex systems today claiming to hold the key to prosperity, we have decided to come up with a list of people who have made it big in the Forex market. In this list are the richest traders in the world along with information about how they scored their big hits and how they are living at the moment.
Martin Schwartz
Martin Schwartz, also known as Buddy, is known for winning the US investing championship in 1984 via trading options, Forex, and stocks. One of his major works is the book Pit Bull: Lessons from Wall Street’s Champion Day Trader, which he published in March 1999.
Before he began his trading career, Schwartz served in the US Marine Corps Reserves, where he rose to be a captain. Initially, he worked as a financial analyst at EF Hutton before quitting the job to buy a seat on the American Stock Exchange, where he traded futures and options to make a whopping $600,000 within his first year of trading as an independent trader, earning over $1.2 million within two years of constant trading.
Outside of work, he is the owner of several champion horses, winning several races, such as the Prix de Diane, Meadowlands Cup, Coronation Stakes, Prix Vanteux, and Prix Vermeille.
George Soros
George Soros broke the Bank of England with his large pound short position during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK crisis. With the position of the pound, he risked $10 billion and made a stunning $1 billion in a single day of trading. He is one of the richest traders in the world and a mentor for many new and aspiring traders.
Born in Hungary, Soros emigrated to England to study at the London School of Economics. Afterwards, he got his first full-time job in an entry-level position at the Singer & Friedlander company before applying at brokerage house FM Mayer of New York as an arbitrage trader. After this job, he moved to Wertheim & Co as a forecaster of European Securities, before starting a couple of investment funds later on.
He then went on to found Soros Fund Management in 1970 for which he was chairman. During that time, he built a short pound position leading up to September 1992 because he recognised the possible negative impact of the British pound on the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
George Soros has been an active philanthropist since the 1970s, providing funds to improve the educational standards in South Africa as well as other African countries. He has also backed groups that wanted to purchase soccer and baseball teams and he still has an SEC filing that shows that he holds a 1.9% stake in Manchester United.
Stanley Druckenmiller
Stanley Druckenmiller is one of the richest traders in the world. He started his trading days under the guidance of George Soros, who helped him carve out a successful trading career. He is partly credited for foreseeing the potential pound crash even before the UK Black Wednesday Crisis in 1992. He has a net worth of $3.5 billion keeping him amongst Forbes 200 richest people in the world.
For close to ten years, Stanley Druckenmiller managed funds for George Soros as the lead portfolio manager of the Quantum Fund. As one of the richest traders today, one would think that he had a rich background, but that was not the case. He was born in Pennsylvania, where he grew up in a middle-class home. As for his education, he received a BA in Economics and English but later dropped out of a PhD program at the University of Michigan to take a position as an analyst for the Pittsburg National Bank oil sector.
He worked at the bank for close to a year before going on to create his firm Duquesne Capital Management. Things did not go as planned at his firm, and with his qualifications, he was hired by Soros to trade for Quantum fund; this was the beginning of his success story. After working for Soros for 12 years, he decided to go back and focus on his own firm, Duquesne, at which he posted an average annual return of 30% without any negative years. He is popularly known for his top-down trading strategy, which earned him a good reputation and a lot of money in return for his trading knowledge and self-control.
After much success, in 2009, he was dubbed as one of the most generous men in America, donating over $700 million in fundraisers and support for medical research, anti-poverty efforts, and education.
Jack D Schwager
Jack D Schwager is popular in the financial trading market because of his book Market Wizards. He has also written many publications on technical analysis, futures trading, commodities, and hedge funds.
He is one of the richest traders in the world; he is an economist, a mathematician, and is presently a portfolio manager for ADM Investor Services Diversified Strategies Fund. He gives talks at conferences and seminars and delivers lectures on various analytic topics.
Alexander Elder
Popular trading book author Alexander Elder was born in the Soviet Union, grew up in Estonia, and later moved to New York. Some of his popular publications are:
- Rubles to Dollars: Making Money on Russia’s Exploding Financial Frontier
- Entries and Exits: Visits to Sixteen Trading Rooms
- Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management.
- The New Sell and Sell Short: How to Take Profits, Cut Losses, and Benefit from Price Declines
Before focusing on his trading psychology, Alexander Elder worked as a psychiatrist in New York and as a part-time teacher at Columbia University. When he finally started trading, he focused his professional trading approach on money management rather than the technical aspects of trading. His trading psychology comprised of the ‘three Ms’: mind, method, and management in trading. This psychology helped him become one of the richest traders in the world.
Lawrence Hite
The hedge fund manager, Lawrence Hite, became one of the richest traders in the world by focusing mainly on systems trading. In 1981, he co-founded Mint Investments, which grew to become the largest commodity trading advisory firm in the world.
After three decades of commodity trading, Hite left his firm, Hite Capital Management, where the main focus was on proprietary trading and the funding of continued research and development in the systems trading field. He also became the principal investor and chairman of the Metropolitan Ventures Partners, where he thrived and attained success. Outside of trading, Lawrence Hite has been an active philanthropist, creating his charitable enterprise called The Hite Foundation.
Bill Lipschutz
Bill started trading as a student at Cornell University in the late 1970s. During that period, he traded $12,000 and won the trade with $250,000 as the resulting fund. Enjoying the outcome of the initial trade, he continued trading. He lost the entire stake after a poor trading decision, something he termed as a hard lesson in risk management. In 1982, he began working with the Solomon Brothers while he pursued his MBA.
He migrated into the newly formed foreign exchange division at Solomon Brothers at a time when the Forex markets were increasing in popularity. At the time of entry into the company, Bill became a huge success, earning $300 million per year for the company by 1985. He became the principal trader for the firm’s Forex account in 1984, holding the position until his departure in 1990. He has also held the position of portfolio manager at Hathersage Capital Management since 1995.
Bottom Line
One thing that all these trading giants have in common is the fact that many of them have threaded the path of success and carefully made it a task of continuing the habit of learning. Trading is not a task; it is a lifestyle. Most people who have made a lot from trading understand this aspect of the game.
These so-called richest traders have found a way to give the majority of what they have earned back to the world making them not only popular for their trading exploits but also their ability to balance work and life.
Many traders have not made it to the point they expected; many traders do not expect to reach the point at which they attain the success that these people have. It is important to understand that if you can think it, then you can make it. Do not strategise and then doubt yourself, because no matter how well you trade, if you do not expect to become one of the wealthiest traders in the world, then you never will. There is no substitute for hard work in the Forex industry; at the same time, there is no room for doubt. You can get there; you can do as well as they did. All you have to do is believe.