Monday. Lunch with Ed. Meeting The Great Ed Thorp is meeting Kareem (sky hook) or Jerry (Grateful Dead) or Steve (iPhone). Thorp created something FIRST. TWICE. He’s the original quant, the original card counter. 2nd Act. He created a fortune for himself and untold others as a hedgie. Ed’s an OC’s Wealthiest fixture … started his first hedge fund in ’69, firm became Princeton/Newport Partners in ’74. Hedgies today use his methods to make up half the volume on Wall Street, maybe half of U.S. billionaires. First Act. Lots of folks are 86’d from Vegas—only Ed Thorp unjustly. The film “21,” the MIT Blackjack Team, spawned by his thumping the house at blackjack. The longtime Newport Beach resident is also humble. His books, the 6th and latest, “A Man for All Markets,” do the chirping … barely.
I expect to meet a man whose mind works while engaging in small talk. Saw that in an instant. I didn’t expect my takeaway when I asked Ed for a seminal moment. It was 70 years ago. Ed was a rebel student at UCLA.
“I’m walking the cellar of my dorm one night, I hear banging,” Ed recounted. “These guys were lifting weights when they should have been … as I ran them down, they invited me into their gym. I learned that night the relationship between physical and mental fitness. And life.”
I’ve won bets all week—asking folks which guy in the pic is 85? Today Ed runs or lifts six times/week.
Follow the Fed? I’ll follow Ed, “The Thorpedo.” (I did ask Ed how to pick winners, his take on the markets. Next time.)
Todd Vande Hei figured it out, too. Like Thorp—no fat on the owner of Stark in Irvine. Vande Hei’s personal-training clients are C-suiters, mid-level, “anybody that puts a financial value on their health.” There’s over 1,000, “steady climb” since 2011. “I stopped white-knuckling this year—look at financials one hour a week.” Stark is whole-person, personal training—chiro, nutritionist, naturopathic medicine, “(gym) that’s a teaching hospital. Everyone makes rounds.”
Vande Hei’s eyeing Newport Ctr for 2nd store and on pace for $2.5M in ’17 sales. The gym also rejuvenated the owner—a C-suiter who ascended to pres. of a public textile co.—and got fired; an ex-exec who retired early, only to be “all in” on stocks and real estate in 2008. “I’m on Talega about to lose my home. I read a story about CEOs taking health to a higher level. It hit me. The medical, health, fitness communities are all siloed.” Another seminal moment.
Inspiration Teaser: Twyla Martin … next week’s OCBJ Special Report on Higher Ed.
Inspiration Bonus: Colleague Carol Fox. $80K at her 6th annual Bocce Inv’l for OC Crohn’s and Colitis: All class. Team OCBJ 4th of 26. Buried the lead again.
Inspiration Forever: The Great Fifi. Met her once, read her monthly, feel I knew her—forever.
