Michael Goodkin

Michael Goodkin (August 12, 1942 – June 6, 2022) was a quantitative finance entrepreneur and author.

Biography Goodkin was born in Chicago. He held a BA from the University of Illinois, a JD from Northwestern University and an MBA from Columbia University in 1968. Based in New York and London, he traveled extensively for the companies he founded and also to play backgammon on the international circuit. He last lived in Chicago. Goodkin died on June 6, 2022.

Work Goodkin founded his first company, Counsel's Aide, while a student at Northwestern Law School. The company provided trial lawyers with student legal research by the hour. The first of its kind in the country, it was a successful and upon graduating he sold the company. and founded Arbitrage Management Company (AMC), an idea he had while listening to a guest lecture from Professor John Shelton of UCLA (another founder of AMC). Before graduation, he had raised $250,000 from private investors and hired professors and assistants to develop a computer program to trade Shelton's convertible arbitrage strategy. This is the first known attempt at computerized arbitrage trading. After running a successful hedge fund to prove the efficacy of computerized trading, he sold the company to a NYSE member firm and resettled in London.

A lecturer at forums including the University of Chicago and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Goodkin is the author of the 1981 best-selling novel, Paper Gold, and in 2012 he published his memoir The Wrong Answer Faster: The Inside Story of Making the Machine that Trades Trillions.