Skip to main content

Bruce Kovner retires: a Market Wizard's career

Bruce Kovner is stepping down as chairman and CEO of Caxton Associates, the hedge fund he founded in 1983. 

Bloomberg has the details on the transition that will see CIO Andrew Law take over at Caxton: 

"...“After 34 years in the trading business and more than 28 years leading Caxton, the time has come to hand the leadership of the company to a new generation,” Kovner, 66, wrote in the letter. “I do so knowing that I will miss the adrenalin rush of confronting markets every day but also confident that new leadership will carry on the traditions, style and substance of Caxton’s successful history.”...
...Kovner is attempting a rare handover of power in the $2 trillion hedge-fund industry, where some of the most successful managers, including Stanley Druckenmiller and George Soros, chose to transform their firms into family offices rather than put another trader in charge. A family office usually oversees money for a wealthy individual and their relatives." 

And a note on Kovner's successor Law, who offers up some interesting comments on lessons learned from Bruce Kovner and similarities in their trading styles:

"...Law’s trading style has always been similar to Kovner’s, he said in an interview in his office on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Yet the older man drove home some important lessons.
“I’ve learned to listen to the markets more,” said Law, meaning that he pays close attention to how markets move relative to one another, and how they react to events. He depends on these observations, rather than what he calls “abstract fundamental preconceptions,” to forecast future price movements.
Law also embraces Kovner’s practice of cutting risk when he doesn’t understand what’s going on in markets, something that Law did in May and June of this year. “Bruce has done this many times in his career,” he said."

Kovner is a true trading legend whose trading career really took off once he joined Commodities Corporation in late 1976. On his performance as a hedge fund manager, Financial Times sums up his 28 years thusly: "An investment of $1,000 in Caxton made when the firm began trading in 1983 would today be worth $168,000.".  

Kovner sat down for a rare interview with Jack Schwager in 1989. The resulting chapter on "Bruce Kovner - The World Trader" can be found on page 31 of this Market Wizards ebook. Check it out.
Related articles and posts

1.  Bruce Kovner interview with AR magazine - Absolute Return.

Popular posts from this blog

Clean Money - John Rubino: Book review

Clean Money by John Rubino 274 pages. Hoboken, New Jersey John Wiley & Sons. 2009. 1st Edition. The bouyant stock market environment of the past several years is gone, and the financial wreckage of 2008 is still sharp in our minds as a new year starts to unfold. Given the recent across-the-board-declines in global stock markets (and most asset classes) that have left many investors shell-shocked, you might wonder if there is any good reason to consider the merits of a hot new investment theme, such as clean energy. However, we shouldn't be too hasty to write off all future stock investments. After all, the market declines of 2008 may continue into 2009, but they may also leave interesting investment opportunities in their wake. Which brings us to the subject of this review. John Rubino, author and editor of GreenStockInvesting.com , recently released a new book on renewable energy and clean-tech investing entitled, Clean Money: Picking Winners in the Green Tech Boom . In Clean ...

Slate profiles Victor Niederhoffer

Slate's recent profile of writer/speculator, Vic Niederhoffer has been getting some attention from traders and finance types in recent days. I thought we'd take a look at it here too, to offer up some possible educational value from Vic's experiences with trading and loss. Here's an excerpt from Slate's profile of Victor Niederhoffer : " I've enjoyed getting your e-mails. It sounds like you've thought a lot about being wrong. Well, the reason you contacted me, to call a spade a spade, is that I'm sort of infamous for having made a big, notorious, terrible error not once but twice in my market career. Let's talk about those errors. The first was your investment in the Thai baht, which pretty much wiped you out when the Thai stock market crashed in 1997. I made so many errors there it's pathetic. I made one of my favorite errors: "The mouse with one hole is quickly cornered." That is key. There are certain decisions you make in li...

Seth Klarman: Margin of Safety (pdf)

Welcome, readers! Signup for free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . Update: PDF links removed due to DMCA notice. Please see our extensive Klarman book notes below. New visitors, please check the Finance Trends home page for all new posts. Here's something for anyone who has been trying to get a look at Seth Klarman's now famous, and out of print, 1991 investment book, Margin of Safety .  My knowledge of value investing is pretty much limited to what I've read in Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor (the book which originally popularized the investment concept of a "Margin of Safety"), so check out the wisdom from Seth Klarman and other investing greats in our related posts below. You can also go straight to Ronald Redfield's Margin of Safety book notes .    Related posts: 1. Seth Klarman interviews and Margin of Safety notes     2. Seth Klarman: Lessons from 2008 3. Investing Lessons from Sir John Templeton 4. ...