Why does Buffet go to work? How about Larry Ellison, who has apparently been more or less paying himself 80 mil a year for the last 4 years, plus all that before and his stock? Why does Jack Welch show up write books etc? They can't stop. Some is self serving, but they like work. Same with trading, it becomes an addiction to sit down and work. I have a friend who is CEO of a company, not huge, but more than big enough to pay him a good salary, and his wife works and is a doctor. The company was started by his father in law, and his father in law keeps telling him to retire, as his wife, the father in laws daughter makes more than enough. He also has been upfront that they will inherit stupid money. He has no desire to quit. For him it is a competition. He wants to make the company better and bigger. He can recite what the company does, and what the competition does, and what he wants to do to kick their ass. He is 50 years old, has been told to retire, could retire, but he loves everything about what he does, so why would he retire. And he does go out and play golf 3 -4 times a week when he can, and takes employees with him. Funny guy, as he has talked any number of people who never played golf to at least come out and walk the course and take a swing at least. It cracks me up as he doesn't try to sell a story to his employees, he just does what he thinks and stays on the right side of things, and for the most part the people their love the guy. He would be a good case study for the knucklehead MBA programs. I gather his father in law is very similiar, which is probably why he was able to build his company from zero with no financial help. None, he started out of his parents house, and did nothing unless he made money to expand. His parents weren't broke, but he felt it was wrong to ask them for money as he was all ready living in their house.
Impressive. If you know or had to guess what sort of charts your guy uses to place that many trades (assuming he uses charts), care to share? .... thanks. This sounds like a friend of mine who's a veteran ES/SPX trader at the Merc. No charts, obviously. Can't imagine how anyone paying retail commissions could win big this way.
I use to follow a guy's thread on silicone investor website in the late 1990's to early 2000's. He started with $3K and turned it into $2.3 million simply buying long options on tech stocks during the amazing tech boom (Nasdaq 5000) of the late 1990's to early 2000. The Bear of 2000-2002 took his $2.3 million down to $200K. He actually had financial and newspaper articles (in pdf form) on his thread documenting his success and downfall. (I think one newspaper article was even titled, "$3,000 to $2.3 million to $200,000," or something like that.) I followed some of his option trades on his thread and he was usually (but not always) correct on the trades. He took a far more conservative approach to his trading (but still just long options) on this SI thread then he did in the Nasdaq boom cycle.
Well, Ellison is living a full life and certainly isn't frugal.... The conundrum wasn't why do they still work (that is understandable), but why one with a fortune is extremely frugal? After all, if one can not/will not use the fruits of their work, they aren't really different from the average Joe. And even if they don't want to have luxury items and such, they still could use the money for something better than keeping it in the bank, or invested in bonds. I mean it is his money, but again, what is the point??? There is a reason why Bill Gates is going to give away most of his fortune...
He uses 60/30/15/5/1 minute charts, lots of indicators, S/R, but knows Price Action extremely well, he also has Outstanding understanding of Astro as that pertains to trading. Much of what he tried to teach me was beyond my ability to grasp his concepts but I was able to take bits and parts to add to my ideas of how to trade. Where he and I often agree is longer term trading of Commodities as he looks at 20/100 year charts on some markets, when price is on the floor, it has only one way to go and selling Puts. He will sit on something and rollover for couple years like buying Cocoa in late 2005, Corn in early 2006, Sugar 2008. Plenty of billionaires who keep working, like Jim Rogers.
Larry Ellison No I don't think he goes to work anymore... have you seen his most recent spending spree? :eek: If he stays in AZ for the week, he buys a house!
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=22&art_id=8254&sid=5971309&con_type=1 Looks like this guy made the bulk of his money because of some sort of fat finger error.