My picks:
Martin Shkreli Ray Dalio Jamie Dimon David Einhorn
I think these are the players who should be honored when the Mt Rushmore of finance is constructed.
Who ya got?
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Honorable mention: Christian Bale (for his role in The Big Short). I'll never forget getting inspired by his performance and deciding to switch my major to finance with the dream of becoming a hedge fund manager like Christian Bale.
I think Christian Bale's other financial character is more memorable...
Yeah really, what is going on here.
Dimon Cohen Paulson Randolph & Mortimer Duke (Counting the pair as 1)
LMAO get ur head out of your arse
Fuck Hank Paulson
John paulson
Mike Milken #leverup
Gotta have our lord Milken.
Warren Buffett Steve Schwarzman Frank Quattrone Ray Dalio Robert Smith
Notable mentions:
Fahmi Quadir Michael Lewis Lew Ranieri Steve Eisman
Yes to Milken. Had overwhelmingly positive impact on corporate/real estate growth, was scapegoat went economy went into tank and — as far as I can tell — yes he was guilty of breaking the law, but it wasn’t fraud, it might have been helping clients temporarily “park” money so that they could reduce their tax liability.
Totally wrong, Milken wasn’t a scapegoat on the contrary he was found guilty on lesser but more easily proven crimes a la Al Capone. He essentially stole huge amounts of money from insurance companies and thrifts by selling them worthless bonds, and on top of stole huge amounts from his employer by giving himself instead of Drexel warrants in the companies he was financing.
I don’t agree at all; just because some of the companies he funded eventually failed does not mean that he defrauded anybody. For God sakes, these were called “junk” bonds –– meaning they were below investment- grade investments. As Milken frequently stated, a portfolio of diversified junk bonds will produce above average returns, even if you consider that some of the companies you invest in will go bankrupt. These were accredited investors, very sophisticated people, who invested in his companies. Bottom line, these were not government bonds, they were substandard, below investment-grade debt instruments, and he even disclosed this in a way by labeling them “junk” bonds.
It was pretty much all fraud.
Honorable mention: Angelo Mozilo
Was grinding in a scummy end of the business for 40 years, had 'no idea there was a bubble' (wink,wink) and sold the biggest piece of shit of all time to tier 1 insiders for top dollar.
The Sandler’s did this way better than Angelo.
Milken Buffett Kravis Donald Valentine
A bunch of filthy fucking casuals in this thread. The real gods are people like Black, Scholes, Merton, the guys behind LTCM, Weiner, Levy, Markov. Whoever says Michael Lewis belongs in their list needs to change their major to journalism.
Agree on Lewis. I remember as a little kid reading Liar's Poker and he had basically made it to the mountaintop (or made it sound like he did - who knows, maybe he knew he was not going to make it) but then he says "No, I'm too good for this. I think I'll go become an author."
Because getting it had been too easy for him...because of socialization...
rant over
He was a senior analyst/junior associate when he left. He was only at Salomon for 3 years. I worked with a MD at Citi who was in his training class, and they are still friends. My MD didn’t think he was cut out for it. Good writer though...
No Fama, French, Shiller?
You sir have fine taste.
Finally someone who gets it!
Are we limited to just 4, like the actual Mount Rushmore?
Buffett: no explanation needed. Greatest investor of all time, inspiration to countless investors. Kravis: pioneer of the LBO, which at the time was revolutionary. Milken: massively underrated. He is one of the important American businessmen in history; I would rank him in the tier below the likes of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Morgan, Walton, Gates, Jobs. During an era in which capital was controlled by the big boys club and virtually inaccessible to small businesses, troubled firms, and minorities, Milken used high yield bonds to launch an egalitarian finance revolution. Countless successful firms owe their existence to Milken. Bogle: founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Group. It is not as sexy as PE or active investing, but Bogle applied academic theory to launch the passive investing revolution.
Great post/insight on both Milken and Bogle.
Bogle Buffett Dimon Blankfein
Original.
1) Dalio 2) French 3)Kravis 4)Soros
1) Buffett 2) Kravis 3) Jim Simons 4) J.P. Morgan (for you kids who don't realize this was a real, and extremely influential, person)
Ray Dalio? He belongs in a Northern California hippie commune. Would make a great spiritual shaman. And I say this with all seriousness and (a bit of) respect.
In no particular order:
Torn on the fourth because I feel like any of the key players in managing the GFC could make a serious case.
Mount Rushmore of infamy
For fun: Swensen, Morgan, Rothschild, Robertson, Rockefeller
I'm surprised you're the first to mention Rothschild, he'd be at the top of my list.
John Pierpont Morgan Sr. George Soros Michael Milken Marc Rich
4 is too hard, Meriwether and Jim Simons probably belong in there as well.
Each of these guys more or less opened up a new area of finance with their "bare hands." Kravis gets a lot of love which is sort of justified but what he was doing wasn't as unique as the others.
george soros, warren buffet, jim simons, ray dalio
Can't forget people like Giovanni de'Medici, Jakob Fugger, the Rothschilds, J.P. Morgan, etc. Obviously the influence of the modern guys is easier to trace, but we can take the above as representatives of their respective eras.
I thought "Rushmore" was an American thing.
But, if we have these foreigners in the mix, might as well add Adam Smith too.
Benjamin Graham deserves at least an honorable mention. He's obviously remembered more for writing about investing rather than deploying his own capital but so many of today's hedge funds, mutual funds, and other investment vehicles operate according to his investment philosophy. Not to mention that Buffett wouldn't be Buffett without Graham
Dick Fuld and MonacoMonkey
JP Morgan NM Rothschild Sidney Weinberg Morgenthau Jr. (FDR's Treasury Secretary) Alfred Winslow Jones Michael Milken Soros Lewis Ranieri (Gutfreund too) Jamie Dimon Buffet Black, Scholes, Merton Marc Rich Geithner
Shortlist: Boesky, Hamilton, Mack, Fuld, Geithner, Graham, Tudor Jones, Bacon, Kovner
Stephen A. Schwarzman
What Schwarzman and Blackstone have done is nothing short of incredible but any "titan" in PE owes their life to Kravis. What he and his cousin did paved the way for anyone working in the LBO world today. Merchants of Debt is still one if the best reads on the foundation of an industry.
He may not have been the "first mover" of the industry, but he and his firm are at the TOP of jungle that is Wall Street
how is Ben Graham not being mentioned..
He seems more like Ben Franklin than those on Mt. Rushmore
David Tepper is notably absent from this thread. He'd be on my list for sure, a blue-collar guy from Pittsburgh who rose to become arguably the greatest hedge fund manager ever, and one of the few guys who has had success in every asset class. His September 2009 CNBC interview was a clinic on macro/top-down analysis. From all the interviews I've seen of him, he seems like a guy you'd want to grab a beer with.
I couldn't narrow it down to four people, though. Maybe four living/current people, but not four from all of finance history.
JP Morgan - bailed out the US Treasury, saved the economy on more than one occasion Ben Graham - father of value investing Alexander Hamilton - really? no one's mentioned him yet? George Soros - arguably the father of macro
honorable mention buffett - couldn't put him in over graham, personal preference jim simons julian robertson jim rogers stan druckenmiller howard marks john templeton walter schloss phil fisher (arguably inventor of scuttlebutt) ed thorp
Ed Thorp is brilliant
I want to reach through the internet and slap you.
How many pharma companies have you built out? Have you gone out of your way to educate the general public about the ins and outs of finance? In general, the type of people who talk trash about Shkreli are the people who have never had an original thought and consistently regurgitate talking points that they get from some other limp dick, jerk-off. The herd mentality is strong with this one.
Please enlighten me then. Shkreli was sentenced to 7 years in prison for fraud and acted like a complete ass through the duration of his trial. Are you his little brother?
Buying drug patents invented by other companies and jacking up the prices isn’t innovation. That has been done plenty of times before. He managed to do it in the most notorious and seedy way possible.
I am the founder and CEO of a healthcare technology company so you might want to slow your roll on who has done something original. You’re a junior consultant?
I give back to the finance community by posting on WSO based on the more than a decade I spent in banking. Some people seem to appreciate it...what do you do?
Jim Cramer
Buy Lehman, bitch!
Alexander Hamilton, J.P. Morgan, Stephen Schwarzman, Martin Shkreli
Martin Shkreli? Why?
People are oddly obsessed with this guy on here. I think more in the trolling way a lot of the time.
I hope.
I sure hope it was a troll mention
Cuz it's funny
Disappointing to only see Stanley Druckenmiller on this post once. Dude averaged 30% returns with no down years for over 20 years. Guy was a god and dwarfed S&P returns, while also being the architect of arguably the most famous trade in history Black Wednesday.
when I did my final 4 of all time, I couldn't include him, purely because he was a protege of Soros. in my personal opinion, I prefer Rogers & Druckenmiller, but Soros kinda captained that ship, and as much as I hate his politics and his writing, he was incredibly influential
Those who are still alive: Jim Simons, Warren Buffet, George Soros, Paul Singer
Those who are dead and gone: John Pierpont Morgan, Benjamin Graham, Alexander Hamilton, Cosimo de' Medici
honorable mentions: Seth Klarman, Stanley Druckenmiller, David E. Shaw, David Einhorn, David Tepper, Jack Bogle, Peter Lynch, Julian Robertson, Bill Gross, Howard Marks, David Swensen
Jay Gould
Fama French
Buffet, Simons, Bogle, Schwarzman and/or Kravis
Schwarzman Fink Anshu Jain Shkreli
Though seriously,
Nathan Rothschild J.P. Morgan Steve Schwarzman Larry Fink
patrick bateman
Bid em up Bruce The Warburgs
Any Mount Rushmore would need to include Felix Rohatyn, the greatest investment banker to grace the last century.
For good measure, I would add Andre Meyer, Michael Milken and Siegmund Warburg.
1.) I'm sorry but investment professionals have to populate Mt Rushmore, only 4 spots and it's competitive enought as is. Imo, investment professionals (porftolio managers for large public or private funds) are the apex of finance. 2.) How about Paul J. Taubman, Ken Moelis, and Frank Quattrone?
I had never heard of Felix Rohatyn before, so thanks for the heads up.
Wow, talk about a life well-lived— to its fullest, and leaving your mark on the world. (And he’s still alive, no less.) I bet he’s got some stories to tell.
They just don’t make them like that anymore..
I would definitely have to throw Swensen into the mix
Non-Target Mt Rushmore 1. Dalio - A true non-target legend - Long Island University 2. David Tepper - An inspiration to all of us - University of Pittsburg 3. James Gormon - Went to University of Melbourne 4. Tom Gores - Went to Michigan State and never did IB, now a billionaire Notable Mention: Buffet - He went to non-target during 1949 SA positions - Wharton, Then University of Nebraska
Not mentioned thus far: Keynes, Milton Friedman, Larry Fink
Blackstone AUM: ~$430 billion... Blackrock AUM: $6.288 trillion.
Alexander Hamilton, Warren Buffett, JP Morgan, and Paul Volcker.
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