The Greatest Trades of All Time: Top Traders Making Big Profits from the Crash of 1929 to Today

CHAPTER 9

Martin Schwartz: From Amateur to Superstar

Martin “Buzzy” Schwartz is the epitome of a trader. He is not a big-league hedge fund manager and, since the 1990s, he has essentially faded into obscurity. No doubt he is enjoying his early retirement brought on by the immense profits he made trading in the 1970s through the 1990s.

What makes Schwartz's story amazing is that many people can relate to it. He was essentially a blue-collar guy who happened to have done well in school, got his MBA, served in the Marines, and then quit his day job to become a trader. Many people share Schwartz's dream, but not everyone will enjoy his success, especially since the markets have changed dramatically since Schwartz's time.

START SMALL, GO BIG

Schwartz came from a pretty average background. He went to Amherst College in 1967 and from there served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves for about five years while studying to get his MBA from Columbia University. He landed a job at E.F. Hutton—a brokerage firm that had been around since Jesse Livermore's time—as a financial analyst.

Being a financial analyst apparently got old quickly. Schwartz soon realized he needed to make more money and do something that excited him. On the advice of a friend, he started looking into trading stocks and decided that he wanted to eventually quit his job and become a trader full time.

One of the things you need to do before you start trading is to save up or raise capital. In a book he wrote in 1999 called ...