Chat With Traders

There’s no other way to say it; Larry Hite is the definition of a market veteran, he’s someone who first developed an interest for trading and markets during the 60’s…

Besides a reputation for extreme risk management, Larry is perhaps best known as co-founding Mint Investments—a hedge fund formed in 1981. He’s also considered to be one of the forefathers of trading systems and a pioneer of trend following.

By 1988, Mint achieved an average annual compounded return of over 30%—it’s best year being 60% (in 1987, the year of the stock market crash) and it’s worst year up 13%.

By 1990, Mint was the world’s largest hedge fund at the time, with $1-billion of assets under management. It was also around this time, that Mint’s performance caught the attention of Jack Schwager, as Larry was profiled and interviewed in the first book of the best-selling Market Wizards series.

Now almost 30-years on, Larry has written a book of his own titled The Rule. It reflects on life experiences, trading lessons, and pretty much, how the most unlikely kid in the classroom went on to generate a significant personal fortune.

During this episode, Larry and I discuss trading, risk philosophy and probability, life and memorable moments, and Larry’s work as a philanthropist too.

Aaron Brown is highly regarded as an authority on the subject of risk management. Although he originally started out as a poker player and sports bettor (then a trader and portfolio manager), for the past 30-years Aaron’s been a dedicated risk manager. And for the past 10-years, he was the risk manager for quant fund, AQR.

Aaron has also authored several books (ranging in topics from poker to finance and risk), contributes to Bloomberg View and writes a column for Wilmott Magazine.

On this episode, part one, we talk about: Aaron's early days playing poker, unconscious influences on decision making, the goals and objectives of a risk manager, how Aaron managed the quant equity crisis of August 2007, and much more too.

Mark Gardner began working in the field at 17-years old, straight out of high school. Initially he began with back office duties, before broking on the floor of the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE). Then later he was picked up by a large Bank Bills trader to exclusively execute trades, and who he learned a great deal from.

Around 2005, Mark started trading his own book. Over the 10-years that followed, Mark had only two losing months—and to date, he’s never encountered a losing year. Though in 2015 he did suffer a substantial blow, losing months and months worth of gains in the space of just a few short hours.

Today, Mark is also a partner and the chairman of Genesis Trading (one of the larger prop firms in Australia). He’s also leading a new venture, 42Trading, as a foray into quantitative trading. And to top it off, Mark is the president of the Australian Securities Traders Association too.

Throughout this episode we speak about Mark's insane work ethic (and no, that's not exaggeration!) We also get into lessons from his past, why he sees a future in quantitative trading and more...

Turney Duff was a hedge fund trader on Wall Street who lead a truly excessive lifestyle. In 2013 he released a book about his experiences—titled, The Buy Side. And currently, Turney is a consultant on the Showtime TV series, Billions.

On this episode we cover everything, from what it was like to trade more than one billion dollars at Galleon Group—which was the hedge fund run by Raj Rajaratnam, currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for partaking in one of the largest insider trading rings in U.S. history.

Following on from this, we discuss Turney’s relationships with the sell-side and the extreme measures they’d take to win his business. Which leads into the shenanigans which took place after-hours—the cocktail of drugs, alcohol, sex, money and power.

We finish up with Turney’s fall from the top, some of the greatest realizations he’s come to, and the life he leads today… Enjoy!

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Brendan Poots is the founder of sports betting hedge fund, The Priomha Group, who mainly bet on football, cricket, golf and also horse racing and tennis.

Priomha setup shop in Melbourne (Australia) in 2010, and more recently, have expanded with a second location in Gibraltar (Europe). From inception up to the release of this episode, Priomha’s Cloney fund has returned a little over 220%.

From listening to our discussion, you’ll gain great insight to how Brendan runs his operation—from getting investors to buy in, to controlling risk and minimizing the volatility of returns, and how the fund makes money trading sports games.