Skip to main content

Bloomberg profiles SAC's Steve Cohen

Bloomberg has published a lengthy profile of trader and SAC Capital founder, Steve Cohen. If you're not already familiar with the now-legendary hedge fund manager, you will be by the time you finish reading it.

Here's an excerpt from, "Steve Cohen's Trade Secrets".

"...Though Cohen attends more golf and other outings than he once did, most days the balding, blue-eyed, stocky investment manager does what he knows best: He trades. He has a perch in the middle of the Stamford floor, and his bets account for about 10 percent of profits -- down from more than 50 percent 10 years ago.
He doesn’t like noise, so the phones on the floor don’t ring; they light up. He prefers jeans and sweaters to suits and looks more like a tax accountant on casual Friday than a trading titan running a $12 billion hedge fund firm.
Near the trading floor hang pieces from Cohen’s extensive art collection, which includes works by Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.
Cohen maintains the temperature on the trading floor at 69 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) to make sure no one dozes. If a portfolio manager or analyst can’t answer a question about a stock, Cohen is likely to lash out. “Do you even know how to do this f---ing job?” is a standard barb, current and former employees say.
Portfolio managers make money, or they’re fired. They usually last about four years..."
Aside from this overview, I found the first half of the article to be largely weighted towards scandal (or hints of it) and an account of how SAC weathered the rough seas of 2006-2008. 

I have to say that I was interested in hearing more about Cohen's background and his methods of stock trading, which the latter part of the article tries to address (a difficult task as Cohen would not comment for this piece).

If you want to get a fuller, more personal view (though possibly dated) of Cohen's trading style, check out his interview in Schwager's Stock Market Wizards and check out the related article links below.

Related articles and posts:

1. Steve Cohen opens up to Paul Tudor Jones - Finance Trends.

2. Steve Cohen interview w/ Jack Schwager (preview) - Google Books.

Popular posts from this blog

Finance Trends 2019 Mid-Year Markets Review

Email subscribers of the Finance Trends Newsletter receive the first look at new articles and market updates, such as the following piece, sent out to our email list on Sunday (6/14).   Hello and welcome, everyone! If you received our last email notice over the July 4th holiday, you'll know that this weekend's newsletter will serve as a mid-year market update and a follow-up to issue #29, " How to Reinvest in a Rising Market ".   Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let's start the show...  Finance Trends Newsletter: Our Mid-Year Market Review When we last spoke, back in February, the U.S. stock market was rallying off its December-January lows. As the S&P 500 and Nasdaq reclaimed their 200 day moving averages in February and March, it became increasingly apparent that a lot of retail investors (and perhaps some institutional investors) were left under-invested while watching this recovery move from the sidelines.  The U.S. stock ...

Round trip stocks: momentum booms and busts

" No tree grows to Heaven ." - Old proverb adopted by Wall Street. What happens to hot momentum stocks when their rocket fuel runs out? How long can they continue to fly before they come crashing back down to earth? Why is the stock that you paid $100 a share for now trading at $39? These are questions that many novice traders and investors may be struggling with in the wake of the most recent market correction. Momentum stocks have been hit hard as the Nasdaq 100 and Russell 2000 indices have moved lower in recent weeks. Caught unaware by the recent slide, some traders may be wondering when their beaten-down stocks will snap back and allow them to exit with smaller losses (or even reach the mythical "break even" point).  While growth stocks still firmly within their uptrends may form constructive technical bases and move higher after this correction, others may experience sharper pullbacks or break down into full "stage 4" declines (see chart below...

How to "Pull the Trigger" on Your Trading Ideas

In our last post, I quoted hedge fund manager, Jim Leitner on the importance of following up on your investment ideas.  Today I'd like to follow up and share some thoughts on how you can learn to consistently "pull the trigger" on your best trading setups and investing ideas. In order to help you do that, we'll take from the best and offer up key insights from interviews with top traders and trading psychologists like Alan Farley, Brett Steenbarger, and Doug Hirschhorn .  Now before we get to their key insights on overcoming trading anxiety and pulling the trigger on your trading ideas, let's remember what Jim Leitner said in his interview: "Learn to love to listen to people and when you hear something interesting, follow up on it. Don't just think, "Well that's an interesting idea" only to find out a year later that the company you could've bought shares in is now up 500-fold. You never want to say woulda, coulda, shoulda...