Aug

13

Hey friends. This has been a hard week and difficult to fully accept. So many things to write about Victor, but I'll pick just one small part to bring some levity and that is his sense of humor. Vic had a wicked sense of humor. It comes across particularly is his coded language and his voice that always carried a 40s Brooklyn accent. Here are a few that tickle me: "pretty kettle of fish", "gentlemen and ladies heal thyself", "haaaaaave" (for half), "fish dinner", "brisket at the petroleum club", "not bad for a poor speculator", "Ha!" (as a trade fills), "Mr. Coke", the tennis balls raining down on the roof, "Let's go for a walk". This last one really hits, I'll forever be taking walks with Victor and listening.

Steve Ellison responds:

The Chair’s invitation in 2004 to “join our group of scholars” changed the trajectory of my life. I treasure the many friendships I have from this List and have numerous anecdotes about Victor, but for the sake of brevity, I will confine myself to two instances from the economically depressed year of 2009.

In May that year, I went to a West Coast mini-Spec Party in honor of Kenny Sogi’s graduation from USC. The event was held at a beach house in Los Angeles County where James Tar was living. At some point, we decided to call the Chair in New York. For some reason, the most suitable phone for a conference call was in Mr. Tar’s car, so 12 of us jammed into the car to talk with the Chair. After we all identified ourselves, Victor asked, “What do you think of the market?”

One person after another in the car outlined his reasons for being bearish. After 5 or 6 people had had their say, maybe Victor was getting tired of the bearishness because he called on me by name. “Steve, you’re bullish, right?” I said that I was and cited a few findings from my counting studies.

In August that year, I went to New York for the smallest Spec Party I ever attended, I think between 20 and 30 people. While we were gathered in Victor’s living room, he asked us whether using stops was good practice. The conversation that followed, with everybody participating, was pure gold, a meal for multiple lifetimes.

Aug

12

Twenty-Seven Years with Victor Niederhoffer

When Vic died Aug. 4, 2026, I was halfway through “The Walking Drum,” a Louis l’Amour book set in the Middle Ages. It’s about a man who repeatedly started from zero, a pioneering trader, a scholar and explorer with vast intellectual curiosity, witty in conversation, a man of respect and great courage, a superior athlete, and a magnet for ladies — whom he always sought to protect.

That was Victor Niederhoffer.

Aug

11

Roy N.'s eulogy focused on the ways in which Vic's life could be said to be polytropic. I did not take very detailed notes, but as best I recall he said that polytropos (πολύτροπος) is a Greek adjective used as an epithet for Ulysses in the introduction to The Odyssey. It is a combination of polys (πολύς) meaning many or much and trópos (τρόπος) meaning a turn, way or direction. The exact meaning of the word is somewhat ambiguous, with modern translators making different choices:

George Chapman (1616): "Many a way wound".

Robert Fagles (1996): A "man of twists and turns". Vic's career certainly had many twists and turn and Roy reminded us of some of them. Some key dates were 1987, 1997, 2007 and others.

Samuel Butler (1900): "Many-sided hero". Famous in sports (tennis first and squash later), business (mergers and acquisitions), finance (trading) and acclaimed writer (The Education of A Speculator) Vic was many sided in his talents and accomplishments.

Emily Wilson (2017): "Complicated". Vic was certainly complicated as a person and in his private life. But "complicated" is also an allusion to "complicare" which in Latin means to "fold [a blanket or a sheet] into multiple layers". So we have the many layers idea again surfacing.

Robert Fitzgerald (1961): "Skilled in all ways of contending". Vic loved competition and was always trying to improve his skills and liked to teach others how to improve theirs. Life as preparation for battle.

E.V. Rieu (1946): "Resourceful man". Vic was certainly resourceful and recovered from many setbacks.

I could go on but you get the idea.

I just found out Polytropic is also a word in Thermodynamics, and I can just imagine Vic, who was always curious to learn new concepts, looking the word up in Wikipedia or a Thermo textbook, figuring out the charts and equations and asking: "what would a Polytropic trading strategy look like?, or What analogies to polytropic gases do we see in in everyday life?". Analogies between unrelated fields was an important thinking tool for Vic. An obscure new word could lead to unexpected insights he believed.

Aug

7

Victor Niederhoffer, 1943-2026, 1964 Intercollegiate Individual Champion, by Rob Dinerman

Niederhoffer is the only player, man or woman, to ever capture the Individuals without ever having played or even seen squash prior to entering college. He had, however, as a youngster growing up in Brooklyn excelled at tennis and in a number of the many “wall games” played at the Brighton Beach Baths, a sports complex located near the Niederhoffers’ home that featured more than 20 one-wall handball courts and was therefore known as a mecca for that sport. Although Harvard’s legendary coach Jack Barnaby usually didn’t directly oversee a player’s development until he became a sophomore — leaving the task of coaching freshmen to Harvard’s longtime freshman squash coach Corey Wynn — he made an exception in Niederhoffer’s case, spending at least 45 minutes in the court almost every day with his fast-developing prodigy, the rough edges of whose game and personality Barnaby gradually smoothed over, and whose learning and improvement curves were so steep that Barnaby later remarked that he “never had a boy who learned faster, assimilating everything I threw at him and coming back for more.”

Aug

5

From Andrew Lo:

We lost a giant of modern finance today. I feel fortunate to have known @VicNiederhoffer, to have learned from him, and to have been inspired by his example. A finance scholar, trader, world-champion squash player, and endlessly curious intellectual, he was as generous and kind as he was brilliant. He will be deeply missed. RIP

Aug

4

The Best Player ever to play Capitalist Squash

No player who plays squash in the US should go without knowing the name of Victor Niederfoffer who was, in my opinion, the preeminent amateur player ever to play the game in the US.

In fact, let me say that it was Victor Niederhoffer who inspired me to pursue a path of competitive squash.

An abundance of virtues that I admired were represented by Niederhoffer, by the game of hardball squash, and by how he played the game. One aspect of the hardball is the blinding speed of the game which keeps a typical rally relatively short, thereby compelling the player in a match to think about ending a point with outright winners rather than by keeping the ball in play. The game rewards boldness of shot and for a player, in a typical rally, to recognize shot openings very quickly and for a player to immediately put the next shot in that opening, (something that Niederhoffer executed better than anyone else during that era), rather than for a player to exercise restraint and patience by defaulting to keeping the ball in play.

Aug

3

Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2026

The Global Investment Returns Yearbook, a body of work assembled by Professor Paul Marsh and Dr. Mike Staunton of London Business School, together with Professor Elroy Dimson of Cambridge University, provides an invaluable foundation for understanding the long-term evolution of global financial markets. UBS is proud to continue supporting this authoritative reference, which remains highly relevant for our clients and the broader investment community.

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