Last time I saw a mention about him was when he made Traders Monthly's Hall of Fame. He might be semi-retired. Too bad, I would be interested in a follow-up to his book. Especially would like to know how he handled the dot-com bubble and the newer faster electronic trading systems. He used to scalp the SP before Globex or when it was in its nascent. With the greater efficiency in the emini due to instantaneous execution of modern electronic trading system, I wonder if he was able to adapt.
Re-read his book, especially I believe the appendix where he shows his daily trading sheet. He was a scalper.
There's a link here but I can't log in. I know it's free to register, but I suppose they will sell my email-adress? http://www.traderdaily.com/magazine/article/1788.html [/QUOTE]
Article Hall of Fame : This Bull's Life Buzzy Schwartz's remarkably successful career as an independent trader has known no boundaries -- and heâs still going strong. By: A.D. Barber December 2005/January 2006 , Page 44 On a Friday afternoon four days after Hurricane Katrina has shredded his crude-oil options positions, Martin "Buzzy" Schwartz is battling. "Monday and Tuesday were the single biggest down P&L days of my entire career!" he barks. But before he hangs up the phone, he makes a rather bold prediction: "By this time next week, I will have made it all back -- and then some!" he declares. When Schwartz eventually sits down for an interview the following Friday at the Four Seasons in Manhattan, he has indeed made back all the money he lost in the previous week -- and racked up big gains beyond that, exactly as he said he would. At a time in life when he could be tending to his horses or sunning himself on a golf course, Schwartz, 60, is as active a trader as ever. "I'll be trading five years after I'm dead," he cracks. An ex-Marine who escaped a Wall Street research analyst's life to trade his own money on the floor of the American Stock Exchange, Schwartz would go on to become one of the best-known traders of his generation. During the heavily publicized U.S. Trading Championships once put on by academic and promoter Norm Zadeh, Schwartz -- who entered because he felt he was one of the best traders on the planet and wanted to prove it -- was, in fact, the greatest performer, period. His average return in nine four-month contests was a staggering 210 percent, adding to the reputation he had earned at the AMEX as the fastest gun in the options crowd. In the late '80s, Schwartz would launch a hedge fund, Sabrina Partners, which, although short-lived, was a stellar performer, racking up a high-single-digit return despite the bear market of 1990 before shuttering in July 1991 after the Gulf War rally. He's been a solitary man ever since, a prop trader constantly tinkering with his methodology to adapt to new markets and trading new products while rejecting the herd mentality. His ability to follow so many markets at once and jump in when opportunity knocks has yielded consistent performance regardless of broad market trends. In recognition of his gutsy and well-chronicled ascent (Schwartz turned a roughly $70,000 grubstake in 1979 into nearly $2 million by 1981); for a lifetime of annual returns averaging 25 percent; for never having had a losing streak of more than four consecutive months; and for his sheer passion for the trader's life, Schwartz, the Pit Bull, becomes the eighth inductee into the Trader Hall of Fame. "I've had a lot of successful contemporaries, and I haven't seen one I'd change places with," Schwartz says. "Even though they're wealthier than I am, that's not always how you keep score. You've got to have some laughs along the way." "Marty has nerves of steel," says Hayes Noel, a trader and old friend. Schwartz plays hard -- flying around the world to watch his thoroughbreds race -- but he's always been a hard worker as well. Growing up in New Haven, Connecticut, the younger of two sons, Schwartz shoveled snow for spending money before graduating to more lucrative means: poker games and horse betting. He excelled at Amherst College, from which he graduated in 1967 with a degree in economics, and later at Columbia Business School. While at Columbia, he enlisted as a reservist in the Marines. After receiving his MBA in 1970, Schwartz landed a job as a research analyst covering health-care stocks for Kuhn Loeb. He eventually landed at E.F. Hutton. Bored with writing research reports and feeling trapped, Schwartz, with the encouragement of his wife, Audrey, began to plot his escape in 1978. Trading on his own, he had always lost money; in fact, he was nearly broke when he got married. But assisted by his mentor, legendary short seller Bob Zoellner, the 32-year-old began to combine technical analysis with fundamental research and slowly built up his winnings. In August 1979, Schwartz bought a seat on the AMEX for $92,500 and began trading the remainder of his grubstake -- around $70,000 of accrued trading profits from the previous two years, buttressed by a $50,000 loan from his in-laws (talk about pressure). Schwartz responded, making $100,000 in the last four months of 1979 and repaying his in-laws (in cash) ahead of schedule. He made $600,000 in 1980 and well over $1 million in 1981. His rapid-fire scalping technique made him particularly well-suited for the highly volatile gold-mining stock market that was spurred by inflation in the '70s and early '80s. In the spring of 1982, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's introduction of futures on the S&P 500 gave Schwartz the opportunity to take his fast-action trading style to a whole new level. He began to zero in on how next-day action in the S&P's could be predicted by movements in cash bonds during after-hours trading Using his powerful new indicator, Schwartz earned more in October 1982 alone than he had the entire previous year. In the first years after the CME contracts were introduced, he was the single biggest-volume off-floor independent trader. When the Financial Traders Association contests began in the '80s, Schwartz dominated year in and year out, earning himself considerable publicity and a spot in Jack Schwager's Market Wizards. Initially humbled by the market crash of 1987, Schwartz, rather than sitting on the sidelines in shock, climbed back into the ring, successfully calling the bottom. He finished with his most profitable year ever. In 1988, he began managing an account for Helmut Weymar's Commodities Corp., the incubator that nurtured such trading luminaries as Louis Bacon and Paul Tudor Jones. After a brief stint there, Schwartz launched Sabrina Partners. It quickly proved more trouble than it was worth. "[Investors] don't give a damn about you," Schwartz says. In late 1990, Schwartz contracted a nearly fatal case of viral pericarditis, for which he required emergency surgery. Amazingly, just a month after he nearly died -- and despite the handicap of being heavily medicated -- Schwartz hit big during the outbreak of the first Gulf War, trading stocks, bonds, oil and gold to make a killing for his customers overnight while initial American air strikes wrought havoc in Baghdad. At the end of July 1991, Sabrina Partners returned all funds, totaling around $60 million, to investors and shut down. In 1993, Schwartz moved his family to Florida, but the slower pace of life in the Sunshine State did little to slow the pace of his trading. "It's who he is," wife Audrey explains with a touch of pride. "It's how he thinks of himself." Today, Schwartz has fulfilled his long-held dream of owning a stable of successful racehorses -- including a filly named Maids Causeway, who took the top prize at the prestigious Royal Ascot's Coronation Stakes this past June. It's all part of his goal not just to make money trading, but also to enjoy the fruits of it. "My parents combined never made more than $36,000 a year in their lives," he says. "I made $500,000 in one day yesterday." Score another one for Schwartz
Casper, Thanks. PS. Well, I could like to know how he made his money back and some more on his crude-oil options...
You can now get a audio CD with Buzzy - his interview with Jack Schwager in Market Wizards: http://www.amazon.com/Market-Wizard...1736750?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194180102&sr=1-2
nice find,Casper......had a feeling he was still banging away with a lo profile......a guy like that does`nt just walk away from this game.
I have both his interview and the cassette tape where Marty narrates. Marty narrating his own story is the best. The narrator in the market wizard and in the unabbridged CDROM audio just cannot do justice to Marty's description of trading. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/06...tails/104-9354234-6823954?ie=UTF8&me=&seller= Only $12 used and then create an MP3 with it. Well worth the time IMHO... Good Trading!
I guess I stand corrected (sort of)... it does not say on the same page that "he knows it's silly to do that, as roulette is random"... but, it does say "I didn't care that the roulette wheel was supposed to be completely random, that the odds were the same on every spin. I had to have a system." I suppose you could say that from that statement he might know that it's silly... I think it's silly that I actually looked this up. But while looking it up, I see he also said that that one of his gambling rules was to "change tables after a winning streak"... the next sentence: "the luckier you've been the surer it is that your luck is going to change".... no doubt, he's was and possibly still is an amazing trader, I just found these comments interesting.