The world’s greatest investors: Michael Steinhardt

Michael Steinhardt carved out a profitable career in variant perception: finding where the market consensus was flawed, then trading against it.

Dr Matthew Partridge
By
published
in Features

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Michael Steinhardt mastered variant perception

Michael Steinhardt was born in New York in 1940. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1960, aged 19. He worked for seven years as an analyst with the Wall Street bank Loeb and Rhoades. In 1967 he set up his own investment fund, Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co. Apart from a brief one-year break in 1978, he continued to make the main investment decisions for the firm, taking over sole control from his partners in 1979. He finally wound up Steinhardt Partners in 1995. In 2004 he returned to the investment world as chairman of WisdomTree Investments.

What was his strategy?

Did it work out?

This saw him amass a $1.2bn fortune, according to Forbes. However, his career was not without controversy in 1994 he had personally to pay $40m to the Department of Justice to settle claims that he had manipulated the bond market.

What was his best trade?

What lessons are there for individual investors?

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Dr Matthew Partridge
Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri

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