Andy Krieger, or also known as Andrew Krieger, is one of the richest forex traders now working from the shadows. Currency trader Andy Krieger went down in history with just one deal: he stirred the currency market to New Zealand, betting against its currency and winning $ 300 million. He then went into the shadows so much that he was considered the creator of bitcoin.
Highly successful marketers are often well known: their stories are hyped in the media, movies are made about them, and they write inspiring books themselves. But the story of Andy Krieger is not like that: this man refused to be in the public’s eye, although he certainly would have been popular.
Thirty-three years ago, he alone brought down New Zealand’s national currency and caused several billion dollars in damage to the country. With just one operation, he entered the history of commerce. To this day, Krieger is considered one of the most successful forex traders in history. Only George Soros himself earned more than he did from a transaction on the forex market.
Andry Krieger’s forex strategy
Krieger once focused on the New Zealand dollar (NZD), which he believed was at risk of short selling and market crash as part of global panic in financial assets. Going short it’s when one believes the price of a currency would drop. Going short in forex you only need to place sell orders.
He has already applied the extraordinary 400: 1 leverage to his high trading limit. That way, he gained one more short position than New Zealand’s money supply. As a result, he earned $ 300 million in earnings for his employer.
Next year, Krieger left a reported $ 3 million in his pocket for the exchange. After that, Krieger himself received threats from New Zealand. In fact, he was even forced to hire a guard, and he has not visited this country since.
Krieger’s education and start of a career
Andy Krieger studied oriental languages and philosophy but became a merchant
Krieger first came into contact with the shares at the age of fourteen “I loved two things: baseball statistics and Wall Street dating.”
‘’I spent days watching them, comparing and choosing stocks to buy. I didn’t have video games, so, I sat down with my dad and told him that I should buy certain newspapers. I remember some of them grew up quite well,” he said at the Big BIG Trade Event on YouTube.
Krieger’s education is quite atypical for a merchant: he studied Sanskrit, Bengali, Hebrew, and Indian philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.
He was about to become a philosophy professor. However, Andy was recommended to continue his studies at the Wharton School of Business, where he obtained an MBA. And, incidentally, he did an internship at JP Morgan.
He soon got his first serious job. He got a job as a foreign exchange market trader at the American investment bank Solomon Brothers in 1984 at the age of 28.
“My first boss told me, ‘Welcome aboard! I’m sure you can do a great job, relax. But if money is lost, you will fly out of here like a bullet. It wasn’t very comfortable,” Krieger said.
Trading changed Andy. For example, after being a vegetarian for a long time, he went back to eating meat after. His explanation was as follows – trading on the stock market is so aggressive that it is foolish to worry about harming animals.
Andy Krieger – his greatest successes
Two years later, he moved to Bankers Trust, one of America’s largest banks of the 20th century. It was there that he achieved his greatest success.
Andy Krieger joined Bankers Trust in 1986 after leaving a job at Salomon Brothers. He immediately earned a reputation as a successful trader. The company rewarded him by increasing his capital limit to $ 700 million, much more than the standard limit of $ 50. millions.
He put this bank in a perfect position to profit from the collapse of October 19, 1987, now known as Black Monday. Andy operated so aggressively and efficiently that he was entrusted with managing an account of $ 700 million at the end of his first year.
It was more than the GDP of some small countries in those years. Typically, merchants received 14 times fewer deposits (about $ 50 million).
At times, the number of transactions he made exceeded one billion dollars. Bankers Trust Vice Chairman George Voyta later admitted that no one could understand Krieger’s strategy. Andy lived up to the trust by making a lot of money for the bank.
Krieger’s and Soros Forex collaboration
Offended by receiving a small fee from the Banker Trust, he left Bankers Trust, switched to Soros. Krieger himself received only 1% of the Banker Trust’s profits ($ 3 million) from this operation. It offended him so much that he called it “an insignificant amount.” Therefore, in 1988, he announced his departure from the bank to go to the George Soros Foundation and, curiously, almost at the same time, $ 80 million disappeared from the Banker Trust. The bank’s capitalization fell 2%.
The New York Times launched an investigation and concluded that it was Krieger who could be involved in the robbery. Another scandal broke out, but Andy could not be proven guilty.
On Andy’s arrival, Bankers Trust’s forex trading earnings rose from $ 50-60 million to $ 512 million in one year, and after his departure fell to $ 153 million.
Andy only worked for George Soros for a few months. After that, the merchant went into the shadows and avoided speaking to the press as much as possible. He went to Asia, where he met Buddhist lamas and Hindu yogis.
After a while, he returned home and founded his own analytical agency “Capital Holding Corporation,” which advised clients and managed assets worth $ 500 million. He founded multiple firms called Northbridge Capital Management, Krieger & Associates Ltd, and several others. His clients include billionaire and former presidential candidate Ross Perot and multinational companies such as Anheuser-Busch and Tiffany’s.
Andy Krieger’s Forex book and teaching career
In 1992, Andy wrote a book, Money Bazaar, on currency trading. In the book, he explains how business moguls try to manipulate the market and control the value of world currencies.
It is also known that he donates 10% of his income to charities. He does it through the Karma Foundation, which funds educational projects and helps people with disabilities. In 2004, he donated $ 350,000 to the victims of the Indonesian tsunami.
He now teaches trading and still operates the currency and commodity markets but does so anonymously. Andy claims that only twice in the last 30 years has he suffered losses at the end of the year. The profitability of his transactions in 2007 exceeded 300%, and in 2008, at the height of the crisis, 81%. According to the Wall Street Journal, Krieger’s firm made $ 592 million in 2019.
More precise amounts of Krieger’s net worth and income remain a secret, as well as his life in general. An aura of mystery surrounds his figure. He was included in the list of people who may be hiding under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. But Andy himself reacts humorously to such rumours: “I was involved in coding, my daughter’s name is Joshi, and her name is Satoshi, so maybe.”
