TTU27: Magician-turned Trader: “Reality Doesn’t Matter” ft. Scott Foster of Dominion Capital Management – 1of2

Top Traders Unplugged

Niels Kaastrup-Larsen

Business, News, Business News, Investing

4.8 • 712 Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2014

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Our next guest was a philosophy major and a magician before he ever considered trading in the stock market. In Part 1 of our talk, he describes how philosophy and psychology determine his firm’s decisions and the story of how he started trading in a small town in Pennsylvania.

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In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

On the 20th Anniversary of Scott’s firm, he looks back on how it all started.
Scott’s life as a magician and how the principals of magic influences his perspective on trading and the market.
How he became a philosophy major and how he applies philosophy to trading and everything his firm does.
How he started trading in the market, getting a group of his college friends to take out cash advances on their credit cards and investing it.
The Austrian perspective on economics that his college was well known for.
How he educated himself in futures trading and invested long before he ever met another trader.
Scott’s initial lessons learned from trading in the stock market; how he lost almost all of his capital in one day and had the first sleepless night of his life.
How he made the mistake of investing in coffee and cocoa in the late 1980s and what he learned from that experience.
How he started his first firm in 1989.
How Scott traded while living in rural Western Pennsylvania.
How a philosophy major with no connections to the financial world used his network to find a mentor.
The story of Scott becoming a principal at one of the biggest short-term CTAs in the world.
The story of Dominion Capital Management, which he started in 1994 by moving to Chicago.
Why he is based in Traverse City, Michigan.
How his firm is a bit different and why they don’t have any mathematicians or scientists on their team.

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Resources & Links Mentioned in this Episode:

Learn about the Square of Opposition that Scott explains in the episode.
In Scott’s first job at a firm, the company hired people belonging to Mensa.
Learn about how trading was conducted and firms operated before the use of personal computers and the Internet. Scott’s firm had a VAX computer.

Follow Niels on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or via the TTU website.

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And you can get a free copy of my latest book “Ten Reasons to Add Trend Following to Your Portfolio” here.

Learn more about the Trend Barometer here.

Send your questions to info@toptradersunplugged.com

And please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest Rating & Review on iTunes or Spotify so more people can discover the podcast.

Follow Scott Foster on Linkedin.

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Disclaimer

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to Top Traders Unplogged, episode number 027 with Scott Foster, founder and president of Dominion Capital Management.
0:09.3	This episode is sponsored by Saxo Bank.
0:12.6	Imagine spending an hour with the world's greatest traders. Imagine learning from their experiences, their successes, their successes, and their failures.
0:22.6	Imagine no more. Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged, the place where you can learn from the best hedge fund managers in the world,
0:28.6	so you can take your manager due diligence or investment career to the next level.
0:33.6	Here's your host, veteran hedge fund manager, Niels Kastrop Larson.
0:48.7	Welcome to another episode of Top Traders Unplocked.
0:50.7	Thanks so much for tuning in today.
0:55.4	I know how valuable your time is, so I appreciate you spending some of it here with me. On today's show, I'm talking to Scott Foster, founder and president of Dominion Capital
1:02.1	Management. Scott is the first person that I've come across who managed to combine elements
1:08.5	from philosophy, psychology, and magic into a disciplined trading strategy
1:14.7	which focuses on finding the universal truth in human behavior and apply them successfully
1:21.8	in the financial markets. This is truly an educational journey which keeps surprising right to the end.
1:30.0	And for those of you who are new to the show, I just want to let you know that you can find all of the show notes, including a full transcript of today's episode on the top traders onploc.com website.
1:47.0	Now let's get started with part one of my conversation. I hope you will enjoy it. Scott, thank you so much for being with us today. It's
1:58.3	great to have you here. It's good to talk with you, Niels.
2:01.9	Fantastic. Now, the first thing I noticed in preparing for our conversation today is, in fact,
2:08.0	that you're celebrating your 20th anniversary as a firm. So let me start by congratulating you
2:14.0	on a very big milestone in a business where only few firms can say that they
2:19.9	have successfully been navigating the financial markets for two decades.
2:24.6	Well, thank you.
2:25.1	I didn't think we'd make it at times.
	...

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