Sightings, July-August 2003

TOC Advisor and Benefactor Victor Niederhoffer was profiled by the Financial Times on May 1, 2003, in an article by Lauren Foster titled "Renaissance Man's Nine Lives." After referring to Niederhoffer's encounters with financial ruin, in 1987 and 1997, and to his autobiography Education of a Speculator, Foster wrote: "He is again back in business, now trading his own account and managing money for overseas clients. His second book, Practical Speculation, co-authored with Laurel Kenner, recently hit the bookstores."

In addition to being a leading money manager, Niederhoffer has a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Chicago and was five times U.S. squash champion (hence the description "Renaissance man"). "At the peak of his career," FT reports, "he managed about $130 million and his returns—running at about 30 percent a year for more than a decade—put him in the top 20 percent of future traders. Business Week named him America's best commodities fund manager in 1994." Today, however, Niederhoffer concentrates on stock markets around the world, shunning currency and bond markets. He also stays away from emerging markets, having lost almost half the funds under his management in 1997 by taking a bullish stance on Thailand. "I've learned my lesson," he told FT. "I won't even go within a block of a Thai restaurant."

This past spring, TOC's executive director, David Kelley, taught an advanced seminar in the cognitive science program at Vassar College. The seminar dealt with the fundamental categories we use in thought and speech. "Categories like objects, attributes, and actions provide the framework for our conceptual knowledge of the world," said Kelley. "We explored the different perspectives that philosophers, cognitive psychologists, and linguists bring to bear on this framework." A former philosophy professor at Vassar, Kelley was one of the founders of its cognitive science program. He team-taught the seminar with professor of psychology Janet Andrews.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand described what is surely one of the most emotionally charged tennis matches ever played. But her connection with the game does not end there. Tennis great Martina Navratilova is a Rand fan. When asked to name her favorite book, she picked The Fountainhead and explained her choice in this way: "The striving for excellence, sticking to your beliefs and ideals even if it means going against the popular tide. Accepting responsibility—wow, what a concept—too bad politicians don't read these books."

Amazingly, Navratilova's great opponent, Chris Evert, is also a Rand fan. Asked about her favorite book, she responded in the February 2003 issue of Good Housekeeping: "When I was younger, a book that made a big impression on me was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read it when I was first making the rounds of tennis tournaments."

From March 1973 to November 1988, these two fans of Rand's novels created the greatest one-on-one rivalry in sports history, facing each other eighty times, including sixty finals. Said Evert after it was over: "We brought out the best in each other."