Alfred Winslow Jones was an American investor, hedge fund manager, and sociologist. He is credited with forming the first modern hedge fund and is widely regarded as the "father of the hedge fund industry."
Stanley Freeman Druckenmiller is an American billionaire investor, philanthropist and former hedge fund manager. He is the former chairman and president of Duquesne Capital, which he founded in 1981. He closed the fund in August 2010. At the time of closing, Duquesne Capital had over $12 billion in assets. From 1988 to 2000, he managed money for George Soros as the lead portfolio manager for Quantum Fund. He is reported to have made $260 million in 2008.
Soros Fund Management, LLC is a privately held American investment management firm. It is currently structured as a family office, but formerly as a hedge fund. The firm was founded in 1970 by George Soros and, in 2010, was reported to be one of the most profitable firms in the hedge fund industry, averaging a 20% annual rate of return over four decades. It is headquartered at 250 West 55th Street in New York. As of 2023, Soros Fund Management, LLC had $25 billion in AUM.
Victor Niederhoffer is an American hedge fund manager, champion squash player, bestselling author and statistician.
Michael H. Steinhardt is an American billionaire hedge fund manager, philanthropist, and former antiquities collector. In 1967, he founded a hedge fund, Steinhardt Partners which he ran until he closed it in 1995. After a hiatus from work, he returned to head WisdomTree Investments in 2004. In January 2014 he was on the cover of Forbes Magazine, referred to as "Wall Street's greatest trader." Forbes Magazine reported his net worth at $1.1 billion as of October 2018.
Jack Schwager is a trader and author. His books include Market Wizards (1989), The New Market Wizards (1992), Stock Market Wizards (2001) and Unknown Market Wizards: The best traders you've never heard of (2020). He is a well-known author, fund manager and an industry expert in futures and hedge funds. He's published a number of books, such as Market Wizards.
George Soros is a Hungarian-American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist. As of October 2023, he had a net worth of US$6.7 billion, having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations, of which $15 billion has already been distributed, representing 64% of his original fortune. Forbes called Soros the "most generous giver". He is a resident of New York.
The Quantum Group of Funds are privately owned hedge funds based in London, New York, Curaçao and Cayman Islands. They are advised by George Soros through his company Soros Fund Management. Soros started the fund in 1973 in partnership with Jim Rogers.
A synthetic CDO is a variation of a CDO that generally uses credit default swaps and other derivatives to obtain its investment goals. As such, it is a complex derivative financial security sometimes described as a bet on the performance of other mortgage products, rather than a real mortgage security. The value and payment stream of a synthetic CDO is derived not from cash assets, like mortgages or credit card payments – as in the case of a regular or "cash" CDO—but from premiums paying for credit default swap "insurance" on the possibility of default of some defined set of "reference" securities—based on cash assets. The insurance-buying "counterparties" may own the "reference" securities and be managing the risk of their default, or may be speculators who've calculated that the securities will default.
Farallon Capital Management, L.L.C. is an American multi-strategy hedge fund headquartered in San Francisco, California. Founded by Tom Steyer in 1986, the firm employs approximately 230 professionals in eight countries around the world.
David M. Smick, Sr. is a global macroeconomic strategist, magazine publisher, best-selling author, and documentary filmmaker. He is the chairman and CEO of Johnson Smick International, a global strategic advisory firm in Washington, D.C. where he is in partnership with former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Manuel H. Johnson. The firm provides strategic advice to a group of leading global money managers. Smick is a registered independent.
Gillian Romaine Tett is a British author and journalist. She is the chair of the editorial board for the Financial Times, jointly serving as its U.S. editor-at-large. She writes weekly columns, covering a range of economic, financial, political and social issues. Tett co-founded Moral Money, the paper's sustainability newsletter.
The Quants is the debut New York Times best selling book by Wall Street journalist Scott Patterson. It was released on February 2, 2010 by Crown Business. The book describes the world of quantitative analysis and the various hedge funds that use the technique. Two years later, Patterson published a follow-up book, Dark Pools: High Speed Traders, AI Bandits and the Threat to the Global Financial System, an investigative journey into the history of high-frequency trading and the spread of artificial intelligence in today’s markets.
Carol Junge Loomis is an American financial journalist, who retired in 2014 as senior editor-at-large at Fortune magazine.
James G. Rickards is an American lawyer, investment banker, media commentator, and author on matters of finance and precious metals. He is the author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis (2011) and six other books. He currently lives in Connecticut.
Sebastian Christopher Peter Mallaby is an English journalist and author, Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and contributing columnist at The Washington Post. Formerly, he was a contributing editor for the Financial Times and a columnist and editorial board member at The Washington Post.
Scott Bessent is an American investor, philanthropist, and educator. He is the founder of Key Square Group, a global macro investment firm.
Soros: The World's Most Influential Investor is a non-fiction book by Robert Slater, first released by McGraw Hill in 1996, that describes the early life, education, work, and philanthropy of a man many consider to be the most influential and successful investor of the twentieth century.
Sebastian Mallaby's The World's Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations (2004) is a financial biography book. British journalist Mallaby is a highly ranked member of the Council on Foreign Relations, working in international economics.
