Victor Niederhoffer, a well known hedge fund manager, champion squash player and statistician, studied statistics and economics at Harvard University (B.A. 1964) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D. 1969). He was a finance professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1967-1972). In 1965, while still at college he co-founded with Frank Cross a company called Niederhoffer, Cross and Zeckhauser, Inc., an investment bank which sold privately held firms to public companies. This firm is now called Niederhoffer Henkel, and is run by Lee Henkel, the former general counsel to the IRS. Victor pioneered a mass marketing approach in investment banking, and did a large volume of small deals at this firm. Niederhoffer also bought many privately held firms with Dan Grossman, his partner during this period.
As a college professor in the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote numerous influential academic articles about market inefficiencies which led to the founding in 1980 of a trading firm, NCZ Commodities, Inc. (aka Niederhoffer Investments, Inc.). The success of this firm attracted the attention of George Soros. Niederhoffer became a partner of Soros’ and managed all of the Fixed Income and Foreign Exchange from 1982-1990. Soros said in The Alchemy of Finance that Niederhoffer was the only one of his managers who retired voluntarily from trading for him while still ahead. In fact Soros held Victor in such high esteem, that he sent his son to work for him to learn how to trade.
This bio is slightly out of date. Neiderhoffer lost essentially all his clients' money in 1997, built his business back up again and, in the early 2000's, lost all those new clients' money.
