MICHAEL MARCUS

Marcus started trading in the early 1970s after a friend told him you could make money in commodities. His first trade was a disaster — he bought soybeans on a hot tip, watched the position double, didn’t sell, and then watched it go to zero.

He lost everything. Most people would have quit.

Marcus doubled down on learning.

He found Ed Seykota, one of the pioneering computer-based trend followers, who mentored him and taught him discipline. Marcus then joined Commodities Corporation, the legendary trading firm in Princeton, New Jersey, that was basically a finishing school for the greatest commodity traders of the 20th century.

At Commodities Corp, he turned $30,000 into approximately $80 million over a roughly 10-year period.

His returns were staggering — he reportedly compounded at over 100% annually for several years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was one of the biggest individual currency and commodity traders in the world.

He also became a mentor himself, most notably to Bruce Kovner, who went on to found Caxton Associates and become a billionaire.

Marcus stepped back from active trading in the late 1980s. He moved to Hollywood and became a film producer, which is about as dramatic a career change as you can make.

Commodities Corporation was the legendary Princeton-based trading firm where Marcus made his name. It was founded in 1969 and became a breeding ground for some of the best traders in history — Marcus, Kovner, Louis Bacon, and others all passed through.

Goldman Sachs eventually acquired the firm in 1997.

After trading, Marcus moved into film production and Hollywood ventures. He produced several movies and TV projects, though none achieved the same legendary status as his trading career.

Marcus was a technical and fundamental hybrid trader. He used trend-following principles learned from Ed Seykota — basically riding momentum in the direction of the prevailing trend — but overlaid his own fundamental analysis of supply and demand in commodity markets.

He traded across commodities and currencies. He’d buy coffee, sell gold, go long the Deutsche Mark — whatever the opportunities were.

His key principle was to follow the trend but use position sizing to manage risk. He’d start small, add as the position went his way, and cut quickly when it went against him.

The simplicity of his approach is deceptive. Anyone can describe trend following.

Very few people have the nerve to hold a winning position for months while it keeps going up.

The sustained commodity and currency bull market of the late 1970s. Marcus rode trends in everything from soybeans to gold to currencies as inflation surged and the dollar weakened.

During this period, his $30,000 account at Commodities Corporation grew to approximately $80 million. That’s a 2,666x return.

Put another way: if you’d given Marcus the price of a used car, he’d have handed you back enough to buy a large commercial building.

His very first trade. Marcus bought soybeans on a tip, watched the position double in value, held on hoping for more, and then watched it collapse to zero.

He lost his entire stake. He’s spoken openly about how that first loss was the most important experience of his career — it taught him that taking profits and using stops isn’t optional.

He also had some significant drawdowns later in his career, particularly when trends reversed sharply. But the first trade loss stayed with him forever as the lesson that you have to have rules and actually follow them.

Marcus’s philosophy comes down to a few rules. First: follow the trend.

If the market is going up, be long. If it’s going down, be short.

Don’t try to pick tops and bottoms. Second: cut your losses quickly and let your winners run.

The math of trading means you can be wrong 60% of the time and still make a fortune if your winners are 5x your losers.

Third: never risk more than you can afford to lose. He learned this on his first trade and never forgot it.

Fourth: the best trades are the ones where fundamentals and technicals align — when both the story and the price action point the same direction.

Marcus is extremely private. He moved from the East Coast trading world to Beverly Hills and largely vanished from public view.

He’s been married and has children but keeps all of it out of the press. In an era of social media and hedge fund celebrity, Marcus is a ghost by choice.

Marcus studied at Johns Hopkins University. He didn’t get a finance degree or attend business school.

His real education was the mentorship of Ed Seykota and the trial-by-fire of trading at Commodities Corporation. In the 1970s, the best trading education wasn’t in a classroom — it was in the pit.

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