Born in 1870, in Camden, South Carolina, Bernard Baruch started his finance career by working as a runner for stock brokers.
In 1899, he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for $19,000 (equivalent to roughly $670,000 today) with the money he made from trading stocks.1Source: Forbes
By the time he was 33, in 1903, Baruch had amassed an estimated fortune of $3 million.2Source: Nasdaq That’s about $105 million in today’s dollars.3Source: In2013Dollars.com
Baruch isn’t as well-known as his contemporary, Jesse Livermore (who I feature in my latest book , The Stoic Path to Wealth). It’s likely because Baruch wasn’t as fond of the spotlight as Livermore was.
As a business owner, Baruch founded a company that dominated the rubber market in the United States. His partners in the enterprise included big names like John D. Rockefeller Jr., the son of the Standard Oil tycoon, and the philanthropist George Foster Peabody, among others.4Source: University of California Press
