Recently I've been studying the greatest traders of all time. Steve Cohen is one of the most infamous figures on Wall St. The billionaire and Mets owner even has a TV show called Billions written around him. Here are some takeaways on what made him so successful. [THREAD 1/10]

Cohen had a love for markets from a young age, and after graduating from Wharton traded in the options arbitrage division at Gruntal & Co, generating the firm $100K a day. Eventually, Cohen decided to launch his own hedge fund SAC Capital in 1992.

SAC Capital grew its AUM from $25 million to $16 billion with an average annual return of 30% -- becoming one of the best-performing hedge funds in the world. However, in 2013 SAC pleaded guilty to insider trading charges and converted into a family office called Point72.

SAC utilized a combination of fundamental/quant research alongside some other "questionable" data sources. SAC regularly traded 20 million shares per day in 1999, accounting for approximately 2% of all stock trading by 2006. Cohen personally accounted for 10% of SAC's profits.

Today Steve Cohen is one of the 100 wealthiest people on Earth and now focuses on his ownership of the Mets which he bought back in 2020 for $2.4 billion. Here are a few quotes on trading/markets from Steve:

Cohen on cutting losers and letting winners ride:

Cohen on how to trade around catalysts, using a short that he put on as an example to describe his thought process:

Cohen on the importance of understanding yourself:

Cohen on the importance of thinking for yourself:

I hope you enjoyed this short thread as much as I did learning while creating it. Let me know what trader/entrepreneur you'd like me to cover next :)