Victor Niederhoffer
Victor Niederhoffer (born December 10, 1943) is an American hedge fund manager, champion squash player, bestselling author and statistician. Life and career Niederhoffer was born in Brooklyn to a Jewish family. His paternal grandfather Martin (Martie), an accountant and court interpreter, married Birdie (née Kuminsky) in 1916. His maternal grandparents were Sam and Gertrude Eisenberg. His father, Dr. Arthur "Artie" Niederhoffer (1917–1981), graduated from Brooklyn College in 1937, and then from Brooklyn Law School, and finally with a Ph.D. from New York University (1963). He served in the New York City Police Department for 21 years (retiring as a lieutenant), and then taught as a professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice for 14 years. Also he taught at Hofstra University, Brooklyn College, New York University, Queens College, and the New York City Police Academy, authored several books on the police and criminology including Behind the Shield, The Ambivalent Force, The Gang, and The Police Family: From Station House to Ranch House (co-authored with his wife), and was awarded the President's Medal of John Jay College for his achievements in criminal justice. His mother, Elaine (née Eisenberg) Niederhoffer (1925–2006), was an English teacher, author, and editor who had descended from a long line of rabbis. His brother Roy Niederhoffer, who is himself a hedge fund manager, worked for Victor and his hedge fund from 1987 to 1992, trading fixed-income securities. Niederhoffer 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 was run by Lee Henkel (who died May 30, 2008), the former general counsel to the IRS. Niederhoffer pioneered a mass marketing approach in investment banking and did a large volume of small deals at this firm. He also bought many privately held firms with Dan Grossman, his partner during this period. As a college professor in the 1960s and 1970s, Niederhoffer wrote 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 to 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. Soros held Niederhoffer in such high esteem that he sent his son to work for him to learn how to trade. Academia As an academic at Berkeley in the 1960s, Niederhoffer wrote a number of papers on anomalies in stock market behavior. His paper Market Making and Reversal on the Stock Exchange (1966) made Niederhoffer the father