The College Friends Who Bet Their Way to Billions
Jeffrey Yass and Susquehanna Group
This is a recap of my thread about Jeffrey Yass and his partners at Susquehanna International Group with some additional quotes and comments. I loved this story of six college buddies bootstrapping their way to success by marrying trading and gambling skills.
One of my followers met Yass in person and shared this wonderful quote of his:
“The beautiful thing about the market is that it's a poker table with unlimited seats. If you think you can beat me, there's a seat open. If you won't to take the seat, I don't care what you think.”
In 1987, six college friends made $30 million with their new trading firm. Today they're billionaires, having proven themselves on the trading floor, in poker rooms, on race tracks, even in startups.
"In the choice of fame and fortune, they chose fortune."
The story starts with Jeffrey Yass. Yass was born in 1958 in the Bronx and grew up in Bayside, Queens. His father was an accountant and also ran a small fintech firm called Datatab. When he received warrants in the company, he explained the instrument to his son and they studied the financial pages together.
Yass made first trade in high school, buying options on Alcoa!
"I'd see options in the newspaper and I would realize that mathematically they couldn't be right, that you could buy one and sell the other and the odds would be in your favor."
He enrolled at SUNY Binghamton and found a group of friends with similar backgrounds. They cared about math and games, played poker in the dorm, and bet on horses at the Monticello race track.
"People would give them money to take to the track. Whatever method they came up with, it was phenomenal."
"If it was a choice of going to class or going to the races, they would opt for the races and still get A's on tests."
"They were fascinating characters. They were sort of intellectuals but they didn't go about life that way. They were gamblers."