Damon Vickers

Market pundits may not always agree with money manager and media personality Damon Vickers, but they'll know where he stands. Mr. Vickers has a 25-year track record of articulating investment themes with striking clarity and then holding his ground as the daily barrage of market noise forces others to falter.

Fortunately for his investors, Mr. Vickers often stakes out his turf in just the right spots. He was one of the few to call the top of the bull market in March 2000. He predicted the dot-com collapse. He warned investors about Enron. He liquidated all of his real estate by the end of Q1 2006 and advised others to do the same. Sensing a weak market, he went on to call the second market top in 2008. That same year, during the worst market year since 1987, a private fund initially capitalized by Mr. Vickers had a return of 63% by shorting GM, Lehman, AIG and others.

Damon has navigated both bull and bear markets over the last 25 years. Damon's Trend Following approach allows him to embrace both up and down markets equally. His investment style has resulted in consistently being called upon by the financial media at crucial turning points.

Mr. Vickers first made a name for himself as a rising star in the early 1990s when the media noticed his ability to spot social trends and use them to play the market. The knack regularly landed Mr. Vickers, and his clients, in some of the fastest growing companies before the major mutual funds caught on and drove up the shares.

In the mid-1990s, Mr. Vickers was one of the first to recognize the Internet as a powerful force for business and social change. He was an early adopter, building positions in stocks like Cisco and Applied Materials, and several specialty retail stocks like Starbucks, Amazon.com and Outback Steakhouse.

"It's all about placing capital in the path of social change that drives sales and earnings growth," says Mr. Vickers.

His prescient calls, and the courage to stick with them, explain why Mr. Vickers has been a popular guest on news programs such as CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, CBC, The London Times, The Washington Post and CNBC Asia. He is also author of the New York Times Best Seller, "The Day After the Dollar Crashes."

Damon is the third generation in a financial family. His father was a floor trader for Goldman Sachs on the NYSE, and his grandfather worked at Kidder Peabody & Co. Subsequent to his father's career on Wall Street, they moved to California to live at Odiyan, a Buddhist monastery in northern California. Damon was initiated by Lama Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche at the age of 13 and is still a practicing Buddhist. Damon enjoys quiet moments in the Pacific Northwest and collecting Tibetan art.