Until a few months ago, Jerrold Browning, a 58-year-old male nurse at the multiple myeloma clinic at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, knew nothing about the stock market. That changed this year between February and May. Mr. Browning, who spent the last 14 years of his life at the clinic, one of the country’s premier cancer hospitals specializing in the treatment of myeloma and stem cell transplants, also became what he proudly said was “an active and aggressive assistant trader.”

He traded the American market during the day and the Russian market at night, going both long and short. Impressively, most of his trades, which ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, were moneymakers.

Mr. Browning owed his success to the adroit trading skills of the fellow calling the shots and whose money was at stake. One of Wall Street’s most colorful figures, Berman died in the hospital May 17 at age 73. Actively trading from his hospital bed, is how Berman, armed with a laptop computer, the latest edition of Investors Business Daily, and watching CNBC, spent the last five months of his life.

“Even when he was getting IV fluid, chemo treatments, and was sick to his stomach, he still wanted to keep busy trading,” Mr. Browning said. And when he was too ill to make calls, Mr. Browning would phone-in the trades. He recalls being forced to phone-in one trade outside a recovery room when the hospital personnel inside that room wouldn’t allow Berman, after surgery, to make a call.

“He had that look, as long as I’m trading I’m still alive,” Berman’s second wife, Katia, said. She noted “he did very well in his trades and loved to say that even when he was sick, he could still beat the market.”

The son of a Lithuanian rabbi, Berman came to America in 1939 when he was six years old. “He was lucky,” his wife said. “He made it out on one of the last boats to leave Germany. If he hadn’t, he would have wound up in the ovens.”

An incessant reader who frequently sent books to his friends, deeply dedicated to his Jewish faith, and a major contributor to the Democratic party during the Clinton years, Berman started off in business as an insurance salesman. That led him to Wall Street where he worked as a broker at a number of firms, including Neuberger & Berman (no relation) and Neuberger & Loeb. In later years, from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, he opened a couple of brokerage firms in Boca Raton, Fla., bearing his name.

Berman was a conspicuous figure wherever he went, always sporting large white sneakers, even at black tie affairs (“because my feet hurt,” he explained).

Many years ago, I asked money manager Michael Steinhardt who he felt excelled on Wall Street in ferreting out scams and overvalued companies. “Call up Meyer Berman,” he replied.

He picked well. Berman, one of the Street’s best short sellers, had uncovered many companies whose stocks subsequently collapsed, among them Gale Industries, Career Academy, Cameo Parkway, Acme Missile, and U.S. Surgical.

A longtime colleague, Al Jacobs, described Berman as “instinctively, a brilliant analyst who had a knack of sniffing out the good and bad.” He credited much of Berman’s success to his dogged investigative techniques, such as field research (visiting factories to determine the tempo of a company’s business activity), talking to its suppliers, vendors and competitors, and sifting through footnotes of SEC filings.

Mr. Jacobs also notes that Berman had the ability to shift gears quickly when he thought he might be wrong. In 1974, for example, he held a big short position in Great Western United, a large sugar producer. While reading its prospectus, he came across information suggesting the company would thrive. In one session, Mr. Jacobs recalled, Berman covered his entire short position and immediately went long four times as many shares as he had been short. The end result: the stock was a huge winner that year.

Not every pick, though, sparkled. In recent years, Berman took a sizable stake in Eagle Building Technologies, which ran into SEC problems and went bankrupt. That error cost him a good chunk of his wealth, and some clients and close friends took a beating. As Mr. Jacobs puts it: “Every money manager at some point has a stock that goes to zero.”

By now, I figure, Berman, whom I’ll miss, is already teaching angels the do’s and don’ts of trading for what I’m sure will be a heavenly performance.