UTHR--off topic follow up. This is a brief article on Lizard King a.k.a. Scott Slutksy
Worth magazine, August 1988
Scott Slutsky has a lot of complaints about practicing law full-time, but he never mentions the long hours. No wonder, since he now spends pretty much all his waking time online, trading, researching, or swapping tips with other investors.
It seems to be time well spent. Slutsky says his portfolio returned more than 100 percent a year in each of the past three years; during the same period, the Standard & Poor's 500 Stock Index returned, on average, about 31 percent.
Slutsky, now 39, discovered a fascination for online trading about four years ago, after a law-office colleague introduced him to it. Within months of his first transaction, Slutsky had converted his spare bedroom into a trading room, cut his caseload to nearly nothing, and started trading full-time. "I love the challenge of trading," he explains. "It involves psychology, emotion, research, and hard work. And the results are immediate."
Only minutes after his alarm clock wakes him at seven, Slutsky is at his trading desk, where he's surrounded by three computers, three telephones, and a television tuned to CNBC. One computer runs America Online--to keep in touch with fellow online traders--and IQ Suite (www.iqc.com), a $25-a-month site that gives him quick access to stock-performance charts. Another computer runs Track OnLine (www.tdc.com/ tolhp.html), which for $212.50 a month feeds him real-time stock and options quotes and market news. That computer also runs PC Quote (www.pcquote.com), a service that, for $75 a month, alerts Slutsky when his stocks hit their target price. The third computer links him to discount broker Brown & Company (www.brownco.com), which he vastly prefers to the competition. "It never makes mistakes and gives you a confirmation immediately," he says. All told, Slutsky's trading operation costs him about $8,500 a year in Web-site fees and phone bills.
As a trader, Slutsky is a technician, spending every evening scanning one-month performance charts for stocks whose prices and trading volume are moving sharply in one direction or another. This homework yields a list of stocks that he'll follow the next trading day. He executes more than 1,600 trades a year, holding a stock for anywhere from a few seconds to a few weeks.
About the only time Slutsky isn't thinking about trading is when he's sleeping. That suits him fine. "The hours go by so fast you can't believe it," he says. "I'm exhausted, but I love it."
Source: www.worth.com
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