Henry Swieca

Henry Alexander Swieca was born in 1957 in Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York. He grew up in a Jewish family. His parents were Holocaust survivors from Poland who emigrated from France in 1955. Both of his parents died when he was nineteen, his mother from Lou Gehrig's disease and his father from a heart attack. Swieca was introduced to financial markets through an uncle who was a dentist and avid stock investor. He used a $50,000 inheritance to buy 1,000 shares in Warner Communications, using the shares as collateral for option-based trading strategies to gain risk management skills and generate additional income. He held the Warner shares for two years, doubling his money. Swieca was accepted into Columbia Business School on a two-year deferment, during which time he traveled and worked abroad before accepting a job at Merrill Lynch after knocking on doors of investment banks.