Bill Lipschutz - Biography

Bill Lipschutz is a foreign exchange market (forex) trader and the co-founder and Director of Portfolio Management at Hathersage Capital Management.

Early Life and education

Lipschutz was born and raised in Farmingdale, New York. He earned outstanding grades throughout junior high and high school. One of his favorite subjects was maths. Lipschutz had an interest in tennis and became an avid tennis player.

Lipschutz attended Cornell University and earned a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from their Architectural Design program after five years. He simultaneously enrolled in business classes and earned an MBA in finance in 1982 from the Johnson School of Management, also at Cornell University.

Early career

Lipschutz’ career as a forex trader may have started by accident. While at Cornell University, Lipschutz inherited $12,000 worth of stock after his grandmother’s death. In his inheritance, there were over 100 different stocks in numerous locations. It cost Lipschutz a substantial sum in fees in order to liquidate and consolidate the risk capital into one location.

While attending school, he began investing the risk capital in his free time. He would spend hours in the library, researching and reading everything possible regarding the market. This research increased his interest in financial trading, and his portfolio was eventually worth close to $250,000. The great success was, however, short-lived, as the risk capital was virtually blown with one bad decision and a turn on the market. Lipschutz considered the loss a valuable learning experience to apply to any future investments. Through his college career, Lipschutz became more interested in the stock trading and continued to pursue it with success, while leaving his architectural degree behind.

During the time spent at Cornell, he met his wife, Lynnelle Jones, who was working for economist Henry Kaufman as a research assistant. Lipschutz interned for Kaufman and Salomon Brothers before graduating in 1982. He joined Salomon Brothers as a full-time employee in May 1982.

Career

During a Salomon Brothers training program Lipschutz was pulled aside and asked to be a part of the newly formed Foreign Exchange (or forex trading or FX for short) Department. Salomon Brothers created a team of their brightest traders, came up with a workable plan for learning currency trading and hit the market running.

The foreign exchange markets took off about the same time Salomon Brothers were jumping into the market. Lipschutz became a powerhouse with the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, where the majority of forex trading took place. At the peak of his career, Lipschutz had 50% of all the currency option volume on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange and 80% of all open interest option. He was considered to be amongst the top five of all forex traders worldwide. By 1985, Lipschutz was pulling in $300 million per year for Salomon Brothers.

Lipschutz was the principal trader for Salomon Brothers’ proprietary foreign exchange account from 1984 until he left in June 1990. In 1988, he was appointed a Director of Salomon Brothers, heading the Global Foreign Exchange Options Group and the New York Foreign Exchange Trading Desk. In 1989 he was named the Managing Director and Global Head of Foreign Exchange.

Despite his enormous successes, Lipschutz left Salomon Brothers. He felt they were becoming too large and were losing their appeal as a cultural institution. He opted for early retirement. His retirement did not last long. Currency trading was becoming bigger and more profitable than bonds or stocks, and Lipschutz took it on.

Briefly in 1990 Lipschutz went to work as the President and CEO for the North Tower Group, a subsidiary of the Merrill Lynch Corporation. Then in 1991 he founded Rowayton Capital Management, an asset and management firm where he was the President and CEO until 1995.

In 1995, with former Cornell classmates Lipschutz formed Hathersage, a currency hedge fund manager company where he is the Principal and Director of Portfolio Management. The company, a $200 million dollar company, manages only fourteen investors. It is run out of his home, and the homes of several of his employees. Together with his friends, and his wife, there are seven employees total. Each has a very specific role in the company and its day to day operations to make it successful.

Awards & recognition

Lipschutz was inducted into the Trader Monthly Hall of Fame in October 2006.

Lipschutz has been featured in two print books about exceptional market traders. The first was The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America’s Top Traders by Jack D. Schwager. Written in 1992, it features several of the top market traders from the 1980s and 1990s. The second was written by Alpesh B. Patel in 1998.

References

External links

• Official Site Biography