What kind of job did you get on Wall Street? Junior analyst.
Covering what stocks? Machine tools and then advertising agencies.
Were you investing in the stocks you were covering? I invested in anything.
Successfully? I came into the market on August 1,1968, right at the top. But I still had some money left, and in January
1970,1 figured out it was going to be a bear market. I don't know how I figured it out. As I mentioned earlier, I took
all the money I had and bought puts. By May, I had tripled my money. In July, I started shorting stocks, and by
September, I was wiped out. Those first two years were great: I went from being a genius to a fool.
So you were back to ground zero in September 1970. What happened then? I saved everything I had and put it back into the market. I didn't care about a TV or a sofa. The wife got rid of
me. I was the entrepreneurial spirit personified. Just like those guys who build up great retail chains, and plow
everything back into their stores, I was plowing everything back into the market.
Were you trading just stocks at this time? Bonds, stocks, currencies, commodities.
When did you get involved in these different markets? I traded all of them almost from the very beginning. Bonds and stocks from day one. Currencies fairly early
too. When I was at Oxford, I kept as much money in dollars as I could, because I knew they were going to devalue
sterling any day. I knew it was coming, and it did—a year after I left. Once again, I was a little early. Even then, I had
a strong awareness of currencies.
In the late 1960s, I also got involved in commodities by buying gold. In my early years in the business, I
remember interviewing for a job. The fellow asked me, "What do you read in the
Wall Street Journal' I said, "One of
the first things I read is the commodity page." The guy was stunned, because he did too. This was back before
commodities were
commodities. He offered me a job, and when I turned him down, he almost strangled me. This job
interview was in 1970, and I was already trading commodities.
