When I first met Steve Cohen back in 1999, we were discussing SACâ??s vaunted trading strategies, the ones that made his hedge fund one of the most successful in the finance world and burnished Cohenâ??s rep as one of the worldâ??s best traders.
I said that based on my reporting â?? I was working for the Wall Street Journal at the time â?? Cohen started SAC in 1992 with a technique that wasnâ??t that much different than a day trader: He was trading huge blocks of stock by looking for â??teenies,â? or small price increments, that he could magnify into massive returns because of the sheer size of his trades.
It was the only time Cohen seemed angered during our discussion, as I recall. â??No,â? he shot back emphatically, â??we employ real trading strategies around here. We do research.â? Cohen went on to explain how his firm, SAC, had transformed itself into something much more than a day-trading sweat shop â?? it was now, he claimed, essentially the biggest and best information gathering machine in the world.
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