The Macro Trader Legend
Louis Bacon is one of the most famous traders in the world. He is the founder of Moore Capital Management, one of the leading investment firms in the trading industry. His personal wealth is estimated to be over $1.5 Billion and his hedge fund Moore Capital Management has AUM close to $15 Billion.
Forbes magazine named Louis Bacon as the 746th richest person in the world in 1990. He was placed 736th richest man on the list in 2009. By 2010, his wealth had grown so much that the Denver Post estimated his wealth to be close to $1.6 billion ranking him as the 238th richest man in America that year.
He is also a well known Philanthropist who has invested in several environmental conservation projects and efforts around the world.
Early Life and Career Beginnings
Louis Moore Bacon was born on July 25 in 1956 at Raleigh, North Carolina. He is the founder, principal and director of successful American hedge fund, Moore Capital Management. Bacon learnt vital business lessons from his father, Zachary Bacon Jr., who owned several companies including real estate company Bacon & Co. and at one time managed Prudential Financial’s and Merrill Lynch’s real estate projects in North Carolina.
Bacon attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria in Virginia, where he graduated. Upon graduation he proceeded to Middlebury College in Vermont where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in American literature in 1979.
Not so long after college, Louis Bacon got a clerking job at Walter N. Frank &Co after meeting Walter Frank while working at a fishing boat in long island. He worked there part time during his summer holidays in college. In 1981 he received his MBA degree in finance from Columbia Business School.
While at Columbia business school, Bacon first tried trading commodities on margin. However, it was a bad start. In the first three semesters of trading, he lost lots of money. He was even forced to borrow money from his father to pay for necessities at school. Then things started looking up in the fourth semester when he made profit for the very first time.
Beginning of His Career
Soon after finishing his MBA, Louis Bacon got a position at the trading and sales program at Bankers Trust. He however left the firm and went back to his old job at Walter N. Frank & Co. There he continued trading currencies.
He later got yet another opening at the New York Cotton Exchange floor. There he worked as a runner, more like a trainee trader. He quickly moved up the ladder getting a position as a qualified trader and broker of financial futures at Shearson Lehman Brothers. Bacon was later appointed and became the Senior Vice President for the futures trading division.
In 1987, he went into solo ventures by founding the Remington Trading Partners. With his immense experience and insights into trading and markets, Louis Bacon did well in his first years in trade. He was able to profit while the market declined for a while and then increase, by going short and long.
It was in 1989, that he used his middle name and founded Moore Capital Management LLC. The starting capital was inherited $25,000 from his family. He used the money to found Moore Global Investments Limited.
Moore Capital Management
Also known as MCM, this is the umbrella of several organizations including Moore Global Investments and Remington, Moore Macro Managers and Moore Emerging Markets at $1.5 billion.
Moore Capital Management was founded in 1989 by Louis Bacon and to date maintains its offices in the big apple. MCM has 429 employees worldwide with branch offices in New York, Zurich, London, Hong Kong and Washington, D.C.
From the start the firm was a global macro investor, trading in cash, derivatives and futures. The firm’s first investor was President of Dome Capital Management, Antoine Bernheim, who accounted for $1.5 million of MCM’s initial $1.8 million in assets in 1990.
Moore Performance
Philanthropy
Louis Bacon is a renowned conservation philanthropist who has spent more than two decades leading efforts to protect natural resources in the United States and abroad.
Louis Bacon created The Moore Charitable Foundation (MCF) in 1992 to financially support non-profit organizations involved in sustainable preservation and protection of wildlife habitats and improvement of water systems around the world. He is estimated to have donated more than $1 million to River keeper, and the environmental non-profit organization.
In 2012, Bacon donated about 90,000 acres of land for conservation in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains bordering The Sans Luis Valley in Colorado. This was confirmed by the then United States Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar and his counterpart from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Director. The easement is expected to provide a foundation for the proposed new Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area.
The Trinchera Blanca Ranch in the San Luis Valley is also owned by Louis Bacon. A section of the ranch is protected by an easement managed by Colorado Open Lands. Bacon also intends to donate 172,000 acres of land to Blanca for conservation.
Louis Bacon has also been involved in protection and preservation of sensitive land in New York, Bahamas and North Carolina. These include the Robins Island on Long Island where the hedge fund manager purchased the ‘Jewel of the Peconic’ reserve in 1993. He restored the land that had been deteriorating for 300 years by securing a land protection easement. It has now recovered back to the natural habitat it was before.
On Long Island he also purchased the Cow Neck Farm in 1998 and renamed it to The Cow Neck Preserve LLC and improved it greatly. He further donated 540 acres of conservation easement to the Peconic Land Trust for conservation. In 2010, Bacon purchased the Orton Plantation Gardens in North Carolina which was built in by his ancestor, Roger Moore, in 1735.
Bacon also founded the Waterkeeper Alliance, an umbrella for hundreds of local environmental organizations across the world that advocate for the conservation of clean water, energy, and farms. It is estimated that Mr. Bacon has protected over 210,000 acres of land from development in perpetuity across the United States.
800,000 acres of lands Including the Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado to northern New Mexico and The Red river and Tercio ranches have been protected from proceeds from his donation.
Mr. Bacon has also invested heavily in the Forestland Group, LLC, (TFG), a timber investment management organization that works to acquires natural regenerating hardwood and pine forests for sustainable basis.
Awards and Honors
In 2013, Louis Bacon was awarded the Audubon Medal, in recognition of his outstanding initiatives and achievement in conservation and protection of the environmental.
In 1998, The Moore Charitable foundation was awarded the ‘Conservationist for Life’ by the Nature Conservancy Long Island named for their outstanding commitment and environmental conservation.
Bacon was also the proud recipient of Riverkeeper’s Environmental Leadership Award and the 2010 Ranch Conservationist of the Year award from Colorado Association of Conservation District’.
He is also the Stanback Volunteer Conservationist of the Year 2014 recipient by the North Carolina Land Trust, the prestigious Land Trust Alliance President’s Award from 1,700 land trusts and the land conservation community for his continued leadership in conservation initiatives.
Louis Bacon also serves on both the Board of Trustees of Middlebury College and the Board of Overseers at Columbia Business School. In addition he is a member of the Investor Advisory Committee on Financial Markets, a member of the Board of Directors of the Foreign Policy Association and Leadership Council at Harvard Kennedy School.