Martin S. Schwartz

Martin S. Schwartz (Buzzy, born March 23, 1945) is a Wall Street trader who made his fortune successfully trading stocks, futures and options. He received national attention when he won the U.S. Investing Championship in 1984. Schwartz is the author of Pit Bull: Lessons from Wall Street's Champion Day Trader.

Education
Graduated with a degree from Amherst College in 1967 and Received an MBA from Columbia University in 1970.

Career
Schwartz served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves from 1968 to 1973 and completed his commitment with rank of captain. After working several years as a financial analyst at E. F. Hutton, Schwartz accumulated $100,000, quit the firm, and bought a seat on the American Stock Exchange where he began trading stocks options and futures.

In 1985, Schwartz began his own fund in which he would manage other people's money as well as his own. He wrote the book Pit Bull: Lessons from Wall Street's Champion Day Trader, based on that professional life.

Other endeavors
Schwartz is a second Champion Horse owner. 

Campeón De Trading
Since his childhood he was an inveterate player and he liked nothing more than to compete with other players and thus demonstrate his skills. In January 1983 he saw an advertisement in a newspaper that mentioned a Trading championship with different categories: Stocks, Commodities and Options. Its competitive nature immediately prompted him to seek information about the event and sign up. It was an initiative by Norm Zadeh, in which each participant had to start with a minimum of $5,000, with no maximum, and after a trading period the participants had to show the results of their accounts to determine who had obtained the best profitability over the initial capital. The registration cost was $150 for the stocks section and $195 for the rest of the divisions, so it was clear that the goal of the contest was not to make money with registration fees, but to recruit the best traders.

In the first championship organized by Zadeh, 74 candidates for trading champion signed up. Our protagonist finished in third place, which was a success for any participant except for Martin Schwartz, for whom it was a great failure for not having obtained first place. In the second contest, 133 participants signed up and it was held between August and December 1983 and on this occasion Marty finished in sixth position with a net return of 69.2 percent. The winner obtained 388.4 percent, although the amount of the winner's account was $5,000 and Martin Schwartz was the absolute winner in terms of money generated since he participated with an initial capital much higher than the minimum required. The winner of the first contest was Frankie Joe, who was a 42-year-old experienced trader, who had worked for many years at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and who became the target to beat for Martin Schwartz since the rest of the participants obtained exceptional results in some contests and terrible results in others, which made them winners by chance and not because of their merits as traders.

The third championship began in February 1984 and the number of participants continued to increase clearly. 184 traders fought this time for the position of Champion trader, and in an article in the New York Times the previous contests were described and since Marty “Buzzy” Schwartz was the undisputed winner in terms of money won, his status as champion began to bother him. create significant fame on Wall Street and his rivalry in this third championship with Frankie Joe was total, they even exchanged racy phone calls and it was a life or death fight. During the 4 months of the contest, Marty converted his $482,000 into $1.2 million, generating a return of 254.9 percent, barely higher than Frankie Joe's 251.5 percent. Finally, Martin Schwartz had achieved first place, he was the undisputed King of Trading, a title that he won again in the fourth year with a 443.7 percent profitability. In addition to the great success achieved, this experience taught him another important lesson, about the stress of trading. Frankie Joe had been operating for many more years than Marty and looked almost twice his age. He did not want to sign up for the fourth championship and shortly after the beginning of it he would die of a heart attack. So many years of accumulated stress end up taking their toll and as we will see later, Martin Schwartz would suffer the blow of accumulated stress himself.