Lessons From Interviewing a Hedge Fund Manager

Takeaways from my conversation with Jim Roppel

Recently, I got the chance to chat with Jim Roppel, a veteran stock market trader with 30+ years of experience and the founder of the medium-size hedge fund Roppel Capital Management. He’s known for his feature in How Legendary Traders Made Millions: Profiting From the Investment Strategies of the Greatest Traders of All Time by John Boik as well as frequent appearances on investment podcasts.

Jim is a growth stock position trader, which means he looks to catch the bulk of multi-month uptrends in the leading stocks that have the best technical price action as well as fundamental growth factors. He bases his trading on the CAN SLIM system developed by William O’Neil, the founder of Investor’s Business Daily.

Our conversation was rich with insight, and so in this article, I want to share some of the knowledge I gained talking to him. I broke it down into sections covering his personal background, current market environment, routines, mindset, identifying market trends, stock screening, portfolio allocation, risk management, entry/exit points, post analysis, cryptocurrency, resources, advice, and lastly some additional golden nuggets I found throughout. Feel free to skip around to whatever you find intriguing, but I’d recommend reading it all — it’s worth it!

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. None of the content in this article should be taken as financial advice.

Interview Questions and Answers

Personal Background

I’d love to hear more about your background and how you first got involved in trading and the stock market.

I am dyslexic and I was not a good student in high school. I just struggled with education, but during my senior year of high school, I got the advice from my friend’s older brother that if I wanted to achieve anything in life, I’d probably need a college education. I listened to him and realized he was right, so I applied to Southern Illinois University, which had a program for dyslexic students. That lowered the requirements in an already low-requirements school so I got in there and I slowly dialed in on my grades which…