Bernard Baruch: the world’s greatest investors

published 16 September 2016

16-9-15-Baruch-1200 — By age 30, Bernard Baruch was a millionaire

Bernard Baruch was born in 1870 in Camden, South Carolina. After graduating from City College of New York with a degree in classics, he became a banker's apprentice. He then became a broker, and started trading for himself. By 1897 he had made enough money to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, and set up his own brokerage. In 1916, he became involved in politics, advising President Woodrow Wilson and later Franklin D Roosevelt. He died in 1965, aged 94.

What was his strategy?

He was particularly interested in mining companies, and would make highly leveraged short-term bets based on his own fundamental, often contrarian, analysis, while using stop-losses to limit his downside. Indeed, he later described the ability to cut one's losses as the most important element of successful trading.