Weinstein (at right) collects his prize, a Maserati, at the NetJets First Annual Poker Championship in 2005.
Lots of money managers started investing at an early age, but few were as successful as young Weinstein, now 38 (named to
Fortune's 40 under 40 list).
While a student at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, Weinstein entered a citywide investing contest and beat out all 7,500 competitors by employing a specific short-term strategy: "I knew that if you want to come in first in an eight-week contest, you're going to need stocks that are going to move a lot, and that fundamental analysis was worthless over that short time frame," he tells Ahuja. So he read through the stock tables in the
New York Times (yes, people once read the paper for pricing information) and identified the most volatile companies. Rather than buy shares in popular names like Nike or Wal-Mart, the strategy favored by his peers, he chose from the group of companies with the biggest price moves.
NEXT: David Tepper, Appaloosa Management
