Jeff Yass

EARLY LIFE

• Yass was born in the Bronx and raised in Bayside, Queens. 
• Having an accountant as a father, he was exposed to arbitrage trading at an early age. 
• He spent his early years studying stocks and esoteric securities warranties at Datatab, his father’s publicly traded financial information company.

EDUCATION

• Yass attended public schools in Queens for his early education.
• He studied mathematics and economics in Binghamton University in an effort to sharpen his mastery at trading and gambling.
• He discovered his passion about the financial markets while at the SUNY Binghamton, so he began to study the options contracts that would eventually make him rich.
• During his senior thesis, he examined whether options, which had started trading at the Chicago Board of options Exchange in 1973, added value to society.
• He went on to become a professional gambler alongside his university roommate, Arthur Dantchik.
• He pursued graduate studies in economics at New York University but did not graduate.

• Yass met Millennium founder Israel Englander and was offered an empty seat on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange for $30,000 and a 50/50 revenue share.
• Alongside some partners, Yass founded the International Group in 1987, a company that has grown to become a giant in options trading and financial markets.
• Yass bootstrapped Susquehanna in part with startup capital plucked from racetrack pots and poker tables in the 1970s and early 1980s.
• He applied his gambling insights to options markets during the 1980s bull market.