Lex van Dam (born

Drachten Drachten () is a town in the northern Netherlands. It is located in the municipality of Smallingerland, Friesland. It had a population of around 45,186 in January 2017 and is the second largest town in the province of Friesland. History Begin ...

, Netherlands in June 1968) is a Dutch

investment Investment is the dedication of money to purchase of an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time. Investment requires a sacrifice of some present asset, such as time, money, or effort. In finance, the purpose of investing i ...

manager, investor, and writer specialising in trading in equities, currencies and

financial derivative In finance, a derivative is a contract that ''derives'' its value from the performance of an underlying entity. This underlying entity can be an asset, index, or interest rate, and is often simply called the "underlying". Derivatives can be ...

s. He lives in London. Born in a small town in Friesland, van Dam studied econometrics and investments at the University of Groningen. His professional career began in 1992, trading stocks for

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...

where he worked for ten years, latterly as head of the equities proprietary trading desk. After that he ran money at GLG which, at the time, was Europe's largest hedge fund. Since 2007 he has been a hedge fund manager at Hampstead Capital LLP, London. In 2009, van Dam featured in a three-part series on

BBC2 BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...

, entitled ''

Million Dollar Traders ''Million Dollar Traders'' is a 2009 British reality television series devised by hedge fund manager Lex van Dam, which attempted to recreate the famous Turtle Traders experiment devised by Richard Dennis in the 1980s. Background ''Million Dol ...

'' that aimed to educate eight ordinary people about the

stock market A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks (also called shares), which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include ''securities'' listed on a public stock exchange, as ...

, in a re-creation of the famous "turtle trader" experiment of

Richard Dennis Richard J. Dennis, a commodities speculator once known as the "Prince of the Pit," was born in Chicago, in January, 1949. In the early 1970s, he borrowed $1,600 and reportedly made $350 million in about six years. When a futures trading fund und ...

in the 1980s. Van Dam put up the sterling equivalent of $1 million of his own money for the novices to trade with over the course of eight weeks. As with the original experiment, those who lasted the course broadly confirmed the claim that novices could become professional-level traders, making small profits or at least lower losses trading in very turbulent markets during the filming than professionals, who lost four times greater amounts over the same period.Learning to trade at the school of hard knocks ''The Financial Times'' 19 Nov 2010
Van Dam set up the experiment to encourage the public to take greater control of their personal finances in the wake of the global financial crisis. Later that year, a companion book ''How to Make Money Trading'' was released in order to expand on the trading techniques featured in the television series. In November 2010, he launched The Lex van Dam Trading Academy which aims to teach people how to trade and invest in the stock market based on his 5-Step-Trading® methodology.Financieel Dagblad
/ref> Together with David Winner he translated a book about the football player Johan Cruyff, entitled ''Ajax, Barcelona, Cruyff, The ABC of a destinate Maestro'' by Frits Barend and Henk van Dorp.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dam, Lex Van 1968 births Living people Dutch financial writers Dutch hedge fund managers Dutch investors Dutch stock traders Goldman Sachs people People from Drachten University of Groningen alumni