Victor Niederhoffer, the Wall Street maverick known for bold bets and an unconventional lifestyle, died Aug. 4 at age 82. On Wall Street and the squash court, he became well-known for winning without behaving like anybody else.

In the mid-1990s, Niederhoffer asked a friend to explore emerging markets in Southeast Asia. The friend reported that in Thailand brothels had been cleaned up and people were leaving long cigarette butts in ashtrays—just the kind of close-to-the-ground intel Niederhoffer looked for.

Niederhoffer spent his life studying patterns and looking for connections. Early in his career, he developed an investment strategy based on the idea that markets had patterns and didn't behave completely randomly. It was a radical idea when he argued his case as a student at Harvard and the University of Chicago in the 1960s, but he did well enough that George Soros hired him to manage some of his money.

By the mid-1990s, Niederhoffer was a hedge-fund manager whose bets were as bold, risky and nontraditional as his lifestyle. He wore loud pastel clothes embellished with whatever he'd had for lunch, banned air conditioning from his office, ran to squash matches at the Harvard Club carrying his racket, and read voraciously for trading inspiration—even believing half-full Big Gulp cups in garbage cans signaled elevated discretionary income.