Donald Luskin (born April 1954) is Chief Investment Officer for Trend Macrolytics LLC, a consulting firm providing investment strategy and macroeconomics forecasting and research for institutional investors. Luskin was a contributing editor and columnist both for National Review Online (NRO) and SmartMoney.com. His columns touch on investing, economic and political matters. Luskin was a frequent guest on Larry Kudlow's CNBC television show, Kudlow & Company. He has published three books, Index Options and Futures: The Complete Guide, Portfolio Insurance: A Guide to Dynamic Hedging and I Am John Galt: Today's Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It (co-author Andrew Greta). Lushkin also wrote a blog, "The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid," based on the title of his as-yet unpublished book. The blog's tagline was: "How big government, big business, big media and big academia block your road to financial freedom—and tell you it's for your own good." Luskin is a self-avowed libertarian, and his blog linked to other financial and political blogs espousing similar beliefs. He has been a columnist for TheStreet.com and Business 2.0 magazine. His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Journal of Portfolio Management, the Harvard Business Review, and other publications. Biography and achievements On his former blog, Luskin stated he "attended Yale in 1973–1974; dropped out to rejoin the real world as soon as possible." After dropping out of college, Luskin worked for several years as a creative consultant to Los Angeles companies such as Mattel and Teledyne, and motion picture studios Warner Brothers and LucasFilm. He and two colleagues developed a series of all-night treasure-hunts, one of which was adapted into the Walt Disney motion picture Midnight Madness. Luskin's investment career began in 1979, when he started a hedge fund while an options market maker on the Pacific Stock Exchange. As his fund grew and evolved, he became a market maker on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (where he helped pioneer index options trading, executing the very first OEX contract) and the New York Stock Exchange, where he traded the first option contract in the NYSE's history. In 1984 Luskin joined Jefferies & Co., a brokerage firm. There as senior vice president, he invented POSIT, a crossing network enabling institutional investors to exchange entire portfolios with each other. POSIT was later spun out of Jefferies as a separate publicly traded company, Investment Technology