Bill Dreiss has been an early adopter from the very beginning. After going to MIT and Harvard, he wanted to form a business that would allow him to be location independent and allow him to surf, his life passion. Fortunately, systems trading found him.

He bought a computer before individuals owned them, started a systems trading firm before almost any of them existed, and has been in business trading his own model fro more than 25 years. You’ll gain a career’s worth of knowledge in this fantastic episode.

Thank you for listening and please welcome our guest, Bill Dreiss.

Subscribe on:

  

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why Bill’s firm is so unique
• How he went to Harvard business school and then went to work for a Think Tank in California
• How he developed his first trading system in the 1970s
• How he did systematic trading by hand in the early days, without computers
• The unique system that was the first system he built
  

  “On of the things I did early on is I went through the various chart patterns and decided that the only one that had any usefulness was a trend line.” – Bill Dreiss (Tweet)

• The first company that he started with a few partners in early 1975
• How he used to manage 180 clients before computers
• The first computer he bought before individuals owned computers
  

  “I was one of the first adopters of computers in 1976.” – Bill Dreiss (Tweet)

• Why he stopped managing outside money for a few years
  

  “After I got out of school I learned to surf and that became somewhat of an addiction and has stayed with me ever since.” – Bill Dreiss (Tweet)

• What made him setup his current company in 1991
• How he setup his first trading model with Dreiss Research Corporation
• Why he was heavily influenced by Boinot Mandelbrot
• Why trend following is declared dead every few years, but why it is only sleeping
• Why he trades longer term and only updates his system about once a week
• How he first managed to automate his system way before other people were able to do it
• How the environment has changed from very few system traders to almost completely system traders
• What differentiates Bill from a lot of other system traders
  

  “My system has remained virtually unchanged for 25 years.” – Bill Dreiss (Tweet)

• How he deals with risk management
• What drives him in his career and how he has kept it up for so long
• Why he thinks in how much leisure time he can have rather than how much money he could make
  

  “My trading system is setup on a remote server, and this is primarily for security reasons.” – Bill Dreiss (Tweet)

• How marketing a firm is very important
• Why surfing is so important to him
• Why being location independent was very important to him in setting up his business

Resources & Links Mentioned in this Episode:

• Learn more about Richard Dunchian
• Learn more about Benoit Mandelbrot

 

*This was originally published in Top Traders Unplugged.