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You can read or
hear a lot of ideas and theories about trading, but when it comes
down to actual trading, what is often most helpful is knowing how
other people got into trading and how it fits into their lives
today. These profiles of people from a wide variety of backgrounds
and experience provide real-life stories of how and why other people
trade -- real faces and real people with whom you may be able to
identify as you develop your own trading program.
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David Mack
From drag racing, to serving in Viet Nam,
to trading – weekend tools salesman Dave Mack has lived with
risk all his life.
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Samuel
Jones Keeping up with his own investments
was an important decision
for this former science teacher turned IT professional.
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Bernadette Addison
Her Christianity has seen her through some challenging times
and helped her bring up a family while maintaining her
career.
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Louis Mendelsohn
Mr. Mendelsohn has built up a successful market software
business based on his passion for trading.
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Louis Mendelsohn
The right side of the tracks
Louis Mendelsohn has built up a successful market software business
based on his passion for trading. Larry Levy caught up with him to
find out more
According to Louis B. Mendelsohn, ‘In America, if you want to be
successful, you can be successful’. Mendelsohn should know. He has
risen from a childhood spent in humble tenements alongside the
railway tracks in Providence, Rhode Island, to a sumptuous 17acre
ranch in Florida – all thanks to a fascination with market patterns
that led him
into developing technical analysis software.
In 1960, two of Lou’s uncles made millions speculating in coins. A
misprint led to a speculative coin craze at the time and the price
of a roll of 50 of the 1¢ 1960P issue went up from 50 cents
(available at any bank newly minted) to over $400 a few months
later. Lou recalls, ‘I was 12 years old and didn’t have a lot of
capital at the time but I got in on the act a little bit and that
was kind of what got me into the whole notion of speculating.
However, going to college at Carnegie Mellon University really was a
whole new life for me. It opened my mind up.’
After graduating with an MBA in Healthcare Management from Boston
University, Lou held a variety of hospital administration positions
before climbing to the post of assistant executive director in a
Tampa, Florida, hospital. His teenage fascination with speculation
was rekindled in 1980 when one of the ward’s physicians was busy
riding the rally in gold to over $800 an ounce. ‘I was trading
stocks and options at the time and this eminent pathologist was the
first person who introduced me to the commodities markets.
‘As soon as I began to learn and study them – and of course the
microcomputer was just in its infancy at that point – I realized
“this is it”. I was hooked immediately.’ Working round the
clock.
Within a few months, Lou had resigned
his job and began working from home day and night, passionately
developing his own computer programs for back-testing the markets
with his Apple II Plus.
He recalls reading research by Frank Hochheimer of Merrill Lynch
regarding optimized moving average crossover systems using mainframe
computers. Mendelsohn decided to try and develop a similar program
for his Apple micro-computer. By 1983, a commercial version had been
launched called ProfitTaker.
In 1986 Lou began to notice that markets had become increasingly
related. The global market meltdown in October 1987 was proof if any
was needed that markets were highly inter-dependent. ‘I just felt
that the single-market approach was inherently too limited to deal
with the markets as they really exist.
‘I began to read and learn about an area called neural networks,
which had an artificial intelligence type of pattern recognition
capability where you could use a lot of different kinds of data to
find hidden patterns and relationships.
‘By the late 1980s I felt I had come across something whereby I
could marry the neural network mathematical tool with inter-market
relationships.’
A big following
Ultimately a program emerged known as VantagePoint that combines
these relationships to predict likely market
direction in the coming days.
While many other market software companies have waned over recent
years, Lou’s software has gained a significant
following.
His company, Market Technologies, has thrived by developing
technical analysis software and was recently named
in Inc. Magazine’s list of the 500 fastest-growing privately-owned
companies in America.
Unstinting support
Lou recalls early times working from home in the 1980s ‘with young
toddlers zooming around from one room to another’ and is especially
appreciative of his wife Illyce’s unstinted support of his passion.
His two eldest sons, Lane and Ean, now work in the business.
These days he spends as much time as he can at his ranch near Wesley
Chapel, Florida, going from ‘very high tech, to very low tech’.
Lou’s private office dates to the period 18901910 and his antique
technology collection includes pre-electric adding machines and
early wooden telephones.
He loves to raise horses and jokes that he has become skilled in
horse and goat midwifery.
Lou also likes classic cars and his collection includes a ‘56 Chevy
Model 210, a 1966 Pontiac Bonneville and his favourite – a 1937
Buick four-door sedan.
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