John Arnold on Trading, Energy, and Evidence-Based Philanthropy

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at Mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com. Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm here with John Arnold.

John is arguably the greatest energy trader in all of world history. In 2007, he became known as America's youngest billionaire. These days, working with his wife Laura, he does Arnold Ventures, where we're sitting right now, and Arnold Ventures is one of the most important and influential voices and actors in philanthropy. John has done much more. That's just a brief outline.

John, welcome. Thank you for that intro and great to be here. Your days as an energy trader, do you think you were especially good at trading at the close or you didn't like doing that? Yeah, there was always an imbalance on the close. And so if you could sense what it was, whether it was imbalance for buyers or imbalance for sellers, it definitely offered an opportunity.

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