Interview  |  NOV 1998

Be Rich or Be Right? CTCR's Courtney Smith by Thom Hartle

Trader Courtney Smith has added publisher and editor of Commodity Traders Consumer Report to his long list of accomplishments. S&C spoke with him on why traders lose and how to change that. So when did you start in the business? I started trading in the early 1970s, around the time that the International Monetary Market started up on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). In fact, some of my early trades involved making a market in currency spreads. I was one of the few people looking at the carrying charges in the currencies, and I made a market from off the floor. It was a bit tough because back then, commissions were around $60 on my spread transactions. I’m sure your broker didn’t mind. What did you do after that? I primarily traded my own account. Around the mid-1970s, I formed a money management company with Jack Grushcow. It was called Grushcow and Smith, and we managed futures money. We did that for several years from Vancouver, British Columbia. Then in 1980, we split up and I moved back to the United States. Is that when you went to work for Paine Webber? Yes. I was director of futures research at Paine Webber. Later, I went to work on Wall Street for a boutique firm. During 1987, I was the head of the derivatives operation at Banque Paribas, the French bank. I did that for two years and then I was treasurer of the Swiss bank BSI, until it was taken over by Swiss Bank Corp. In 1990, I set up my own company, Pinnacle Capital Management, which I operated until just very recently, when I joined Orbitex Management, which is a mutual fund and hedge fund company. While I was running Pinnacle in 1993, I was also chief executive officer of futures broker Quantum Financial Services, which was later taken over by ING Bank.

by Thom Hartle