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Tom Sosnoff: A Q&A with the $600 million man behind Thinkorswim

Daleela Farina — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Technology, Economy, People, Investing, Media, Southwest Airlines

In an era when so many things have gone so wrong on Wall Street, the story of options trader Tom Sosnoff stands out as one thing that's gone right. Sosnoff is co-founder of online brokerage firm Thinkorswim, the top-rated online broker in Barron's and one that's amassed some $3.6 billion in client assets from more than 70,000 trading accounts over the course of a decade.

Sosnoff, who spent 10 years as an options-market maker at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, created Thinkorswim in 1999 and sold it this year to TD Ameritrade (AMTD) for more than $600 million. Now senior VP of the TD's Trader Group, Sosnoff took a break from trading to chat with DailyFinance about the stock market, investing trends, and what it takes to build a successful company.

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Stocktwits founder Howard Lindzon on the next big thing in social media

Daleela Farina — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Technology, Economy, People, Investing, Media, Home Depot

It's not often that you get to interview a man like Howard Lindzon. Not only is he a successful hedge fund manager for Knight's Bridge Capital Partners and a successful player in venture capital, but he is also the creator of the highly popular Twitter-based stock market discussion platform, Stocktwits.com.

Among those in financial circles, Lindzon is best known for his start-up deal making prowess: He is the man behind WallStrip, which was acquired in 2007 by CBS for an undisclosed amount (but estimated to be around $5 million). He is also the author of the book The Wall Strip Edge, an easy read which provides practical investing strategies. This candid Canadian has a track record of success, so we spoke with him about the future of social media, start-ups, and of course the stock market.

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Paul Kedrosky: Investing for the next recession

Daleela Farina — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Energy, Technology, Economy, People, Investing, Health Care, Media

Paul Kedrosky is a former top-ranked sell-side internet equity analyst at HSBC James Capel, turned venture capitalist at Ventures West, an institutional venture capital firm with more than $400 million under management. But he is best known for his popular blog, Infectious Greed, which covers the stock market, business, technology and trends. He is a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, with a Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario, an M.B.A. from Queen's University, and a Bachelors in Engineering from Carleton University.

Kedrosky's articles on the stock market and speaking appearances at events such as the 2009 Milken Institute Global Conference are highly regarded in finance, technology and social media - not to mention his regular appearances on CNBC. Basically, if you want a well-rounded opinion from a highly respected financial blogger, look no further. Here is our interview with Paul Kedrosky.

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Brett Steenbarger: The right psychology for successful investing

Daleela Farina — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:10:00 EST

It takes tremendous focus for a blind man to climb Mount Everest, a swimmer to take on the English Channel or a speed demon to race an automobile at 400 miles per hour at the Bonneville Salt Flats outside of Salt Lake City. But Brett Steenbarger, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, N.Y., says that when it comes to performance psychology, nothing may require as much focus and perseverance as investing.

I recently sat down with Steenbarger, who specializes in "brief therapy" - short-term approaches to changing emotional patterns and patterns of thinking and behaving. Steenbarger, who has also been a financial markets trader since the late 1970s, has applied brief therapy to trading and in 2003, published his first trading book, The Psychology of Trading. The book led to a relationship with a Chicago trading firm, Kingstree Trading, and in 2004, Steenbarger started full-time work as a trading coach. Since then, he has started the TraderFeed blog, which has grown into the largest trading and market psychology site on the Web, and he has written another book about performance development among traders Enhancing Trader Development. He also published a self-help guide for traders called The Daily Trading Coach. Steenbarger's aim? To help traders to help themselves with short-term, practical techniques based on sound research in psychology and psychiatry.

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