Hard Work or Talent - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... Looking into the history of the US trading market there are a number of individuals whose reputation has span over years while others have popped into the market lately and made it big within a short time span. Making it big in this respect is related to how much one has made or makes in trading deals and the factors that surround their continued successes in making the right choices, deals and bets for that matter. Two characters are to be discussed and offered as examples in supporting the view that talent is the one that matters not hard work.
Ken Griffin is the first one to consider and he is the Managing Director/CEO of Citadel Investment Group (Traderslog 2008). Considering its large size, it is important to study a few trends of its CEO. He started trading stock options and funds in his college days. Later developed the fund mentioned above with 4.2 million dollars (Traderslog 2008). Today it stands to be the one of the largest in the world with current management portfolio of 13 billion dollars.
John Arnold is the other trader whose mastery of his business is given credit by a cross-section of huge and reputed players (Demon 2009). Taking his background for instance in Enron as a trader it is clear that his fortunes in this line of business were destined for success after scooping over 750 million dollars for the company. He was handsomely rewarded with 8 million dollars bonus. He used the bonus to start his own hedge fund by the name Centaurus Advisors, LLC. Soon he was making billion dollar bets in energy related trading and to the surprise of many he trades few times a year in the most awkward moments of the market. Last year he made slightly less than a billion dollars. In the few times he has spoken he says that he buys things at the time when they are below fair value and sell when he believes they are way above it according to Demon (2009). This simple concept relies more on talent i.e. his innate understanding of concepts ...Download file to see next pagesRead More