Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein interviews Paul Tudor Jones as part of the Talks at GS series on Yahoo Finance.
Q1 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc, Also read Lear Capital: Financial Products You Should Avoid?
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein Interviews Paul Tudor Jones
Transcript
That must be for you. OK. Here we go. Good to see you. Hello everybody. Welcome to Talks at GS and I'm pleased to welcome everyone who's watching on Yahoo Finance and to introduce our guest today Paul Tudor Jones. I'd say daresay a good friend of mine we've worked together for for a number of years on various matters I'm sure that will come up. Paul was born and raised in Memphis Tennessee. So the accent is which you know has worked very very well for him is not a put on Bill here not a put on. In 1980 four years after graduating from the University of Virginia just four years he went from trading cotton futures to founding his own hedge fund tutor Investment Corp.. In 1988 he founded the Robin Hood Foundation a nonprofit dedicated to alleviating poverty in New York City. And in 2013 he cofounded just capital a nonprofit dedicated to building a marketplace that better reflects the priorities of the American people. Now that is some sketchy thing and there's a lot to fill in in between. And so let's just let's start and I think the first the first thing I would just want to ask you for the benefit of the people here and a lot of young people who are in the early stages of their career you get out of school. You trade cotton I think. Did you work for firm at all. I went to work for E.F. Hutton E.F. Hutton. That sounds so conventional. Yes. No one here just a joke. Yes yes yes.
There was this great commercial When E.F. Hutton talks and then it would be like a flash mob everybody listens. That's like Superman changing in a phone booth. What's that phone booth say trade ego on the floor. Cotton futures very rough and tumble you go. You do well. You started. Tell me how did how did how did you become who you are. Well it's funny I got to be a trader probably because when I was really really young I was a game fanatic. I played every single game and there was monopoly life hard cheesy poker. I used to play hours of solitaire. I just loved playing games. And so you're very competitive in solitaire at everything. Well gosh there's a lot of things I can say and I. Thank god I see the head of my the head of my investor relations here is going to be calm. There's a lot of this is a public venue. Don't be yourself. Yes whatever you do. That's what I get whenever I walk out. Whatever you do don't get yourself. So anyway I play I play a whole bunch of games chess bag and I was older when I was in college. I was the booking fraternity so I had by the time I graduated from college already had probably at least a Master's in probabilistic theory. And so when I was in college I had no idea what I wanted to do other than drink beer and that I was extraordinarily good at. So I think it was February of my senior year the guy that I inherited the book from said to me man his name was Bob Wilson of Wilson Arkansas.
Robert E. Lee Wilson the fifth of Wilson Arkansas he said you gotta try this soy bean futures I'm back and we're hedging up they had a huge plantation to time in Arkansas. We're hedging up our soybean crop and this just makes this makes football gambling just pale in comparison and then literally that weekend I read a story on a guy named Richard Dennis who was the biggest local at the Board of Trade and then he used to say that he did his best trading when he was hung over because there was no emotion. And I thought this is starting to get close to what I'm culturally pretty good at. And I just it's so funny. What I found in life I heard I was home last night my kids who are 21 and 28 and we listened to their commencement address from Stanford this year and I act as first name was Sterling. He's the actor the black actor on this is us. What's his last name. Sterling brand Sterling Brown said to have the secret to a happy life is not to have a career or a profession or to want to go do this but to have a calling. And so for me I think in everything that I've done it has been a calling. It's drawn me somethings draw me to it rather than me thinking gee I've got to go there.
Also see PTJ on a lifetime of lessons from bubbles
