I know you once entered an options trading contest. Can you tell me about it? It was originally organized by two traders on the СВОЕ floor. They got 47 traders together, each of whom put
up $5,000 in a winner-take-all contest. Each trader opened a $100,000 account with the same clearing firm.
How long was the contest for? Three months.
What were your results? I turned the $100,000 into over $900,000 without
any pyramiding [using profits to increase leverage].
That's a rather phenomenal performance. Yes, but the markets were very good at that time.
What did you trade when you went out on your own in 1980? I traded everything. I continued to trade stock options. When stock index futures trading began in the early
1980s, that became a primary market for me. I also traded the commodity markets. In fact, during the last two
years, my trading has shifted to nearly 90 percent commodities.
Do you remember your first soybean trade after the debacle in the 1970s? For a long time, I avoided soybeans. But, as I began to find myself trading the commodity markets
effortlessly, I knew deep down that I would eventually get back the money I lost in soybeans. I never forgot about it.
It sounds like you were looking for revenge. Yes, exactly. Every time I looked at a commodity chart book, my eyes would edge over to the soybean chart,
then I would quickly flip the page. I watched the market peripherally for years before doing anything. When soybeans
went down to $4.75,1 knew they were near a low, but I didn't want to buy them until I was sure I couldn't lose on the
trade. I was like a Sicilian whose wife had been murdered ten years earlier, waiting for the perfect moment for
revenge. When my technical analysis convinced me that the market had bottomed for real, I jumped in on the long
side.
