Based in Europe, Nicholas is a widely recognized expert on exchange-traded funds and an accomplished investment expert. Nicholas has been a regular commentator on CNN International and Fox Business Network. He has also been cited in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Fox Business News, CBS MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance and MSN Money Central.
Here’s a little more about the journey that led him to you…
Growing up in Pittsburgh, Nicholas earned spending money by selling flavored ice cubes at Little League baseball games, delivering the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 5:00 a.m. and shoveling snow during the harsh Pennsylvania winters.
For a kid from the Rust Belt who was a big Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers fan, he also lived a double life. He spent his summers studying in West Germany (before unification), France, Italy and communist Hungary on scholarships he diligently applied for while in high school.
I was lucky. My parents made me aware of opportunities other kids couldn’t even dream about. Every summer, I had the chance to dip into a completely different language, reality and culture. During the bad old days of the Cold War, not a lot of kids from the United States were spending their summers in Europe, let alone behind the Iron Curtain. It was as if I got to visit another planet each summer. And then I spent the school year back on planet earth.
Luckily, this was the kind of unusual background that top colleges were looking for.
Nicholas earned a B.A. in both economics and history and an M.A. in history in less than four years from Stanford University.
There, he discovered the work of free market economist Friedrich Hayek and wrote two theses on his work.
That work put him on track to win a Fulbright scholarship to the Karl Marx University of Economics in Budapest, making him one of the first Fulbright scholars to study behind the Iron Curtain.
Assuming his academic interests in the Soviet Union and centrally planned economies was a professional dead-end, he turned down an economics Ph.D scholarship to Oxford University and went on to attend Harvard Law School instead.
Truth be told, he wasn’t a big fan of the law. Compared with the exciting world of clashing economic ideals, law seemed pedestrian and boring. Harvard proved better fit for his classmates, including future president Barack Obama and good friend, now Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch.
As luck would have it, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down before he graduated. Suddenly, Eastern Europe and Russia were open for business.
After Harvard, he joined the world’s largest law firm, which had just opened offices in Eastern Europe. His mission – as he put it then – was to “help dismantle centrally planned economies.”
For nearly four years, he worked on the privatizations of some of the leading banks, oil companies and telecom companies in the region, listing them on regional stock exchanges. It’s this work that first exposed him to the fascinating world of investing.
Nicholas then set out to learn all he could about finance and embarked on a successful and varied business career, including launching several investment funds in Europe, founding a London-based roundtable of leading investment experts like Steve Forbes and Nassim Taleb, and writing for Eagle Publishing’s The Global Guru for 12 years alongside four other investment advisory newsletters.
In January 2018, Nicholas became The Oxford Club’s first and only ETF strategist, writing for the daily Liberty Through Wealth e-letter (formerly Investment U) and our flagship newsletter, The Oxford Communiqué. He is also the Editor of the new ETF trading service, Oxford Wealth Accelerator.
Outside of work, Nicholas focuses on managing his personal investments and his growing family.
Articles by Nicholas
Why Temperament Trumps Intelligence in Trading and Investing May 28, 2020- You would expect that the world’s most intelligent business experts would also be the most successful investors, but that’s not the case. Here’s why.
You Need to See a Psychiatrist May 26, 2020- Many top traders seek the help of coaches and psychiatrists, but every investor should evaluate their psychology and how it affects wealth creation.
Secrets of Successful Swing Trading May 22, 2020- Swing trading is one of the best ways to make money over a short period. But why is it so successful? There are a variety of factors.
The World’s Most Successful Investor Is a Swing Trader May 20, 2020- Swing trading has made many a hedge fund manager a fortune - including the world’s most successful investor. But it can work for small investors too.
How Swing Trading Lets You Bet on a Market Bottom May 19, 2020- Swing trading has allowed hedge fund managers like Paul Tudor Jones II to become billionaires. Here’s how you can you apply this strategy to your portfolio.
How Quant Trading Took Over Wall Street May 14, 2020- Over the past 10 years, a battle has been raging on Wall Street. But not between stock pickers... between humans and computers - quant trading systems.
The Greatest Moneymaking Machine in Wall Street History May 12, 2020- The greatest investor in history isn’t who you would expect. And what led to his market-beating success wasn’t fundamentals - it was quantitative investing.
The Tyranny of the Negative Headline May 7, 2020- There is no shortage of scary headlines in the news. What does the onslaught of media negativity mean for wealth builders?
How to Think About Risk May 5, 2020- Financial advisors and hedge fund managers have many different tools to calculate risk. But which makes the most sense for your personal portfolio?
Welcome to the New World of Quant Investing May 1, 2020- The explosion of computing power in recent years has made quant investing accessible to everyday investors. Now you don’t need to beat ‘em... you can join ’em.