Quote from TimothySykes:
Why are you satisfied with 4 quarterly reports and phone calls where management will always BS you? Baseball games are broadcast to millions nightly, every single stat imaginable is analyzed a million times over, people have favorite players and teams, and kids grow up wanting to be these people.
Think about the possibilities if we apply some or even all of those qualities to the stock market and hedge funds.
Who cares if they publish some sugarcoated lawyered down book about their strategies--I want to know much more, particularly on a personal level. I also want to know individual trade screw ups so I can know what to avoid. No, nobody but me publishes all their greatest success and failures and that's sad.
Are you saying that companies should report financial data more often than quarterly? And comparing investing to baseball shows where your mindset is. You run a $100 million dollar company and try to report financial data weekly or monthly. It is useless to see weekly fluctuations and quarterly is a good frequency to get a sense of the business. You are just waving your hands screaming give me data daily or monthly and you have to realize whether it is practical or feasible. Do you know the cost and time to produce reliable weekly or monthly data? This is the first I have heard that you want companies to report more frequently than quarterly.
And I don't remember a catalyst of your failure was not having enough financial date. I never remember you looking at anything but a chart and the news anyway.
None of the books I am referring to are lawyered down books about strategies. Please stop making GENERAL statements. Did you even look at the list I produced of over 10 hedge fund books, some of which are quantitivate discussions of strategies. You tell people here to not say anything without reading your book first and you are doing the same thing.
You never read any of the books I put on the list which describe different trading strategies. I bet I can find a number of people who can step in here right now and describe merger-arbitrage, long-short strategies, natural gas calendar spreads, etc... If you want to know much more than go out there and look for the information, it is out there.
I not only disagree with your assertion that hedge funds do not talk about their strategies or that the practices are shielded from the public I have proven that you can find this information on the web or in books. Hedge funds did not INVENT new trading strategies, they merely employ them with more flexibility and leverage.
As always congrats on the book, but you need to realize something when considering how you are marketing yourself. Yours is a story about you but not based on an original premise. It is worthwhile given your intersting story, but it is far from an expose because you were never in the Hedge Fund industry as you admitted this was mostly your money. When Genius Failed gave unique insight into a truly original gathering of minds and strategies and details the hubris that led to their fall.
So I hope your book does really well but it does not look good when you are calling for certain things that already exists. It makes it look like YOU missed the boat and explains some of the failings. So the books should be changed to include how little prepared you were to take on this kind of investing role without first doing your homework or due diligence.
EDIT: Honestly I am not looking for an argument and I repeatedly say I wish you success in the book because people like reading stories of trades so it should do well. I am just focusing on the point that a lot of info you decry as not being available is out there.
