Our people are our greatest asset.  We are very proud of our management team. Their backgrounds are available by clicking the links on the left of this page.  Our president's background is below:

Daniel J. Schweihs

dan@hard-loans.com
Voice: 615-373-1980 - Ext. 18
Direct toll free: 800-207-2954
Fax: 615-373-7710
Cell: 615-969-1954

Dan Schweihs brings clients strong mortgage industry experience along with 30 years of businesses experience in investments, finance, engineering and computer programming plus an excellent educational background.

In 1984, along with two Northwestern University professors, Dan founded Disciplined Investment Advisors, Inc., a computerized investment management firm that pioneered computerized stock-selection and trading.  As Vice President responsible for sales and marketing and as one-third owner, Dan built the fledgling firm's portfolio from zero to more than $1.1 billion in assets under management on behalf of institutional investors. That was a lot of money back in the '80s.

This was done at a time when every textbook used at every graduate business school touted the “efficient market theory” and stated that the theories his firm was using did not work and would not work.  After describing his firm's services in early sales presentations, Dan was scoffed at by prospective clients and told that his business concept was completely irresponsible.  He was told that this sounded like the professors in a Walt Disney movie and in some cases, that he should leave the prospective clients' office immediately!

When Dan started this venture, personal computers were considered to be toys.  They didn't even have hard drives.  Their brand-new, 300-baud, dial-up modem required dialing a standard telephone and placing the hand-set in the suction cups on the modem.  Dan did 3,000 ticket, $30 million, computerized trades with this primitive equipment.  Dan started this business with $300 in cash and his credit cards.  Five years later, Price Waterhouse valued his one-third ownership at $5.6 million. 

Previously, Dan served as Vice President of Institutional Trading at Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb.  When Dan joined Lehman, they only had 23 institutional traders in the entire U.S.  At age 32, he was one of the youngest persons at the time to hold the Vice President title in the history of the 150-year-old Wall Street investment banking firm.  During his first year at Lehman, Dan developed an account package from $12,000 in annual commissions to $1.2 million in annual commissions.

Before joining Lehman Brothers, Dan also served in the Chicago and New York offices of Dean Witter Reynolds, where he was responsible for institutional sales and block trading.  Dan moved to New York and took his first job on Wall Street back when the Dow was in the 900s.

In addition, Dan's expertise in investment and finance is complemented by six years of experience in an industrial field.  At age 26, he became National Sales Manager of the Air Pollution Control division of Standard Havens, Inc., a Kansas City-based manufacturer of engineered capital equipment. Dan has accumulated a wide variety of sales and management experience over the last 30 years!

Dan has also honed his computer programming skills since taking his first computer-programming course in 1969.  He has learned a wide variety of programming tricks since learning Fortran.

Dan received his MBA with a double major in finance and economics from the University of Chicago.  He was one of only two students from a class of 450 to complete the two-year program in 15 months.  Dan has also taught a graduate-level class in corporate finance at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.  He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana.  Rose-Hulman was recently ranked as No. 1 in undergraduate engineering departments by U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges”.